“So, you know how I bit Peter when we first met him.”
He nodded solemnly. “You made him your mate.”
“Well…”
Aidan was still looking a little soft around the edges when he pulled his shirt collar away from the bite site.
I watched my son, saw the creasing of his brows, the way he craned his neck to take a look at the pink mark. He s
eemed to study it for some time, almost as if he was having trouble recognising what he saw. His fingers went white as he gripped the tabletop, then the fine tremor began.
“Kade?”
Kade held himself still as a stone, but it cost him some effort. I could see it now, the muscles in his arms straining to keep him in his seat. Then he turned towards me.
“Baby…”
My arms went around him as soon as I saw his wide eyes and the tears filling them, then spilling out onto his cheeks. But he didn’t make a sound, not even when I hauled him up against me. He buried his face in my neck, and I felt the sobs racking his whole body. Then he began to howl.
Kade had cried plenty since we got here, but it was often a quiet, little, heartbroken thing. We’d clustered around him in bed, providing him with a wall of comfort, until he finally dropped off into a fitful sleep. Ophelia assured me it was a good thing, a processing of the unprocessable. But things had been so much better recently. It was as if my Tirian had waited until she knew Kade was OK before I’d made Aidan my mate.
“Hey…” Aidan said, getting up out of his seat and crouching in front of us, his hand going to Kade’s shoulder blade. My son detached himself from me in that instant and then threw himself at my newest mate, clinging to him like a spider monkey. “It’s OK, mate. If you don’t want this to happen…?”
Aidan looked up at me in concern as Kade’s wails only got louder.
“Kade, baby…” I said, my own voice breaking.
What the hell had I done? Wantonly fooling around in a car and making a permanent decision for the family like I was some feckless twenty-year-old? The shock I felt was so deep and thorough, I felt ice cold and frozen as I struggled to get my mind around it all. Kade… I thought. I’d let one man hurt him and then was hurting him with—
Peter’s hand felt burning hot when it came to rest on my shoulder. I jumped, spinning around to look at him, expecting to see condemnation, rage, disgust, or some other echo of my own feelings on his face. Instead, there was the same old warmth and concern and something deeper. My own eyes pricked as I shook my head slightly. No, I thought furiously, not compassion. Not that.
“Look,” he prompted.
I wanted to shout that I was looking, but I didn’t dare. Cringing, self-hating Flick came rocketing back, so I clamped my mouth shut. I stared at the two of them, cataloguing the evidence as I saw it. My son’s distress, which I had caused. Aidan’s terrified look as he stroked my Kade’s back, something I should have been doing. The ragged, hacking, hysterical scream of my child, as all the fucking poison I had been unaware was lurking there was thrust out into the world. It was the most harrowing song of pain I’d ever heard, and I’d made it happen.
I sat still and quiet, not moving, not doing anything. I didn’t dare, did I? Hadn’t I done enough? I needed to help Kade, make this better. I was his fucking mother, wasn’t I? I needed to fucking—
My thoughts stumbled to a stop when Kade finally pulled away, his face a sodden mask. He struggled to get words out, snot streaming down his face, his breath coming in great hiccuping sighs.
“Here you go, mate,” Peter said, getting out of his chair and pulling a hankie from his pocket. He crouched down low, pausing with the handkerchief held up until my son had a chance to see it, and when he registered it, he wiped the mess from Kade’s face as best he could.
“You…you…you…you’re…” Kade forced out haltingly, then stopped with a frustrated hiss. He looked at Aidan, then rested his head against my mate’s forehead. “You’re…my, my, my…my dad now?”
If someone had burst into the room brandishing a machete and sliced me open, I couldn’t imagine it hurting more right now. Tears fell with a rapid plop onto the tabletop, and my hand shook when I went to wipe them away.
“Of course, mate.” Aidan’s voice was a ragged mess, Kade watching his every response.
“We both are, Kade,” Peter said, “if that’s what you want?”
His face crumpled again, and mine did the same as he wrapped his arm around Peter’s neck too.
“Kade,” I said when he finally came back to me. “Are you OK with this? We can—”
“We can stay now. Never go back,” he said with a long sigh.
“We were never going back anyway. I would never let that—I’d never let your dad near you again, after what happened. Is that OK?”
If this was a Hallmark movie or something, he’d have just moved towards his new dads with open arms, but of course, it wasn’t. There’s something about that parental bond, as if they imprint upon us by just being around when we’re born. Some use that amazing opportunity to perform one of life’s greatest services—raising a child in a loving environment, noticing them and what they need, and making sure they get it. They shower them with love and affection and let them grow up feeling safe, safe enough to branch out and be who they are when they become adults. But even when you don’t, when you take that gift and ride roughshod all over it, disregarding the pain and uncertainty it creates in someone so small and unable to fight back, that bond persists.