MasukAnd 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
"You're diabolical," I said admiringly. "I prefer 'romantically strategic,'" Leah said with a grin. "Sarah and I already have a whole plan mapped out. By next Saturday, they won't know what hit them." Sarah joined us, having settled Liam and Lily with Orion. "Did I hear my name? Are we talking abo
"I tried to stop her," Orion said, and I could hear the strain in his voice, the exhaustion and the guilt. "At the hospital I told her no, told her it was too dangerous, told her she couldn't risk herself or the twins." "But you let her do it anyway," I shot back. "What was I supposed to do?" Orio
"Check her first," I said through gritted teeth . The words came out harder than I meant them to but I couldn't soften them, couldn't make myself sound reasonable when every instinct I had was screaming that Athena needed to be examined right now, needed to be checked and monitored and made sure s
Chapter 169 Tristan "But you were unconscious," Athena said, her voice rising to match mine and I could hear the desperation threading through every word. "You were hurt and bleeding and the doctors didn't know if you were going to wake up." I watched Orion from the corner of my eye and saw his j







