LOGINAnd then it was just us. Our family. I picked up Arianna while Tristan got Adrian, and we carried them upstairs to their nursery. The room had been redecorated twice as they'd grown—first to accommodate their crawling, then again when they started pulling up on furniture. Now it was a mix of cribs
Chapter 214 Athena I looked at Adrian in my arms, then at Arianna in Tristan's. They'd grown so much—both walking now (well, Arianna walked, Adrian preferred to crawl at high speed). Both babbling constantly in their own twin language that we couldn't quite decipher. Both showing more personality
Chapter 213 Athena The backyard was full of chaos—the beautiful, loud, messy kind of chaos that came from having a joint first birthday party for twins. I stood on the back porch, watching the scene unfold before me with a smile that felt permanently fixed on my face. Colorful balloons bobbed
Chapter 212 "Mama's sorry," I soothed, bouncing her gently. "But we need to figure this out before you touch any more plants, okay?" "Can I see?" Lily asked, pushing past the adults to get closer to the plant. "Wow, it's so pretty! And it smells good too." She was right. The plant was giving off
Chapter 211 Athena "The plant," I said, knowing I wasn't making sense but unable to form coherent thoughts. "The dying plant in the living room. She touched it. Tristan, she touched it and it came back to life." Silence. All three men just stared at me. "What?" Orion finally asked. "The plant
Chapter 210 Athena Six months. Six months since Adrian and Arianna had come home from the NICU, and I still sometimes woke up in the middle of the night to check that they were breathing. The monitors helped, their steady beeping had become the soundtrack of our lives, but the fear never comple
Chapter 183 Athena "You're walking too fast," Derek repeated. "It's supposed to be a processional, not a sprint." "I'm not sprinting," Kiara said, her voice tight with annoyance. "I'm walking at a perfectly reasonable pace." "A reasonable pace for someone late to a meeting, maybe," Derek shot b
Chapter 182 Athena I stood in front of the full-length mirror in the bridal boutique's private fitting room, turning slightly to see how the dress accommodated my growing belly. At five months pregnant, I was showing much more than I had when we'd first done fittings, and the seamstress had don
"Thank you," I managed to say, my voice thick with emotion. We walked out of the office in a daze, everyone congratulating us, Sarah still crying happy tears while Orion stood beside her. His hand's on her waist. "Let's get pictures," Sarah insisted once we were outside. "We need to document this
We'd climbed into bed together and she'd curled into my side like she was made to fit there, and I'd held her and whispered how much I loved her until she fell asleep. I'd stayed awake for a long time after that, just watching her sleep, feeling grateful for this second chance, vowing to myself tha







