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
Chapter 151 When we pulled up to the construction site I was impressed by how much progress had been made in just a few days, the interior walls were going up in our house and you could actually see the layout of the rooms now instead of just the frame. "Oh my god," Athena breathed, getting out of
Chapter 152 Tristan I felt tears forming in my eyes and tried to blink them away but they fell anyway. "I will protect these babies with my life," she continued, her voice fierce now. "Anyone who tries to hurt them, anyone who tries to take them from me, they'll have to go through me first, and I
Sarah came over and hugged me carefully, mindful of my still healing injuries. "I'm so happy for you," she said. "You deserve this, all of this." Orion hugged me next, his embrace tight and emotional. "Welcome to the family officially little sister," he said. "Not that you weren't already family bu
It was another twenty minutes before we finally made ourselves presentable and headed back downstairs where Derek and Orion were watching some game on TV. "Everything okay up there?" Orion asked, trying to look innocent and failing miserably. "Everything's fine," Athena said, her face still flushe







