Chapter 152
Shitty, shit, shit!
Kadeem quietly gauges my reaction.
“Kadeem,” I begin, not wanting to hurt him, but panicky all the same, “Could we just - pretend you didn’t give me this?” It comes out in the vein of an anxious Western villain. Walk away slowly, and no one gets hurt.
“Suit yourself.” He goes back to working on his computer. “But you might like what you see in there,” he adds.
I run my fingers over the soft, velvety surface of the box. My voice comes out high-pitched as I try to change the subject. “Are you getting nervous about your surgery?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“It doesn’t ruffle my feathers,” Kadeem mumbles, half-distracted. He pauses. “Erbao’s surgery on the other hand…”
My stomach knots at the thought of it. “Me too. But for both of you.”
“It’ll all be worth it,” he says, looking up to smile.
Seeing Erbao healthy will be worth it. Thank the Goddess Kadeem was a match for his kidney transplant.
“Something did ruffle your feathers once,” I say, “Maybe something medical.”
“Impossible.” He clicks his pen to scribble on a sticky note.
“There’s a bottle of Valium in your bathroom that says otherwise! It was for an MRI, wasn’t it? Or a dental procedure.”
Kadeem chuckles. “I’m surprised you remember, given your state that night.”
“The memory is seared into my brain.”
“Susan wanted to go on a dinner cruise,” Kadeem explains, “I was still getting over my fear of water.”
Mystery solved! And the mention of Susan only slightly angers me. Slightly, because she’s dead, and slightly, because Kadeem told me that they did not, in fact, start sleeping together until well after the whole, me being framed for his attempted murder, thing.
“That’s good,” I say slowly, fiddling with a few strands of my hair as my heart begins to pound, “Because I was hoping we could honeymoon in Miami. I have mermaids to find.”
“Honeymoon?” Kadeem asks softly.
“Yes, if you want to?”
“That’s quite the turnaround.”
“I know.”
“What a roller coaster, you are.” Kadeem shakes his head, one part exasperated, one part amused. “Ardally, I love you.”
I smile at the new twist on the old nickname. “I love you, too.”
“But what’s in the box, is not what you think,” Kadeem continues.
“What?” I glare at him.
“Take a look,” he says.
I raise an eyebrow, my heart fluttering, and attempt to force the box open with my one working hand.
“Here.” He gets up to help.
“Oh. It’s beautiful, Deem, really.”
It’s a delicate-looking necklace in a drop pattern with three gold pendants. Kadeem takes the box to remove the necklace for me while I stand up.
He brushes my hair from my neck and reaches his arms around me to fasten it, then moves back to face me. My fingers reach for it. The pendants are thicker than I’d realized. Then I notice the tiny brackets on each one of them.
“It’s a -”
“Locket,” he nods. He leans in to open them. Inside of each are two tiny pictures. Five for our quintuplets. One for Kadeem. “To keep us with you,” he says, “When you go off to do all of that exploring you always dreamed of.”
“Wait. What?” Tears are forming in my eyes. “I - but I can’t just -”
“We’ll get Erbao through his transplant,” Kadeem says, tilting my chin up to him, “And then, what would it hurt if you and Julia hit the skies or the road here and there? Or as often as you like.”
I bite my lip, holding back emotion - feeling so understood and loved, I could sob. He gently closes each locket, starting at my clavicle, then tracing further down my chest. He pauses.
“I’m not going to choose work or the pack over you again,” he says solemnly. “Riley and my gammas can handle most things. So, maybe you and I can also do some traveling… if you want me - and the kids, too.”
“I want you,” I burst out. Blushing, I take a breath and reach to caress his cheek, feeling his rough stubble beneath my fingertips.
“But you don’t want to -” I hesitate, feeling my words start to stammer.
Kadeem’s brown eyes are filled with tenderness and adoration.
“Help me out here,” I laugh sheepishly, “Don’t make me embarrass myself again.”
He interlocks his fingers in mine. “Don’t think for a second I don’t want to marry you. I’d have done it again ages ago, if I thought that’s what you wanted. But I’d rather you be happy and not just fall back into what wasn’t really fair to you before - not when there was so much you wanted to do.”
He raises an eyebrow at me, “Also, I just want to call your attention back to your first reaction to that jewelry box.”
“Well, it is a ring-sized box!” I counter. “Necklace ones are bigger.”
“That’s what had it laying around,” he argues. “Your locket is vintage.”
I open my mouth again.
“Going back to the point,” he cuts me off, “It’s not me who doesn’t want to settle down.”
“It’s not that - exactly.” I clear my throat and gesture flippantly, “Complex trauma, blah blah.” I swallow, “And, then, my general assholeness. It’s still hard letting my guard down sometimes, despite the fact that you’ve been there for me, almost always, from the beginning.”
Me, saboteur, I start to make a crack about us being Brokeback Mountain, telling him I can’t “quit him,” but then I don’t.
“You’re home,” I whisper.
Kadeem wraps his arms around me. "You're my home, too. And we’ve faced a lot, but we’ve always found our way back to each other."
A silent understanding passes between us. The weight of our shared history, the battles fought and scars earned, all fade away in this moment of raw vulnerability. I see the love in his eyes, a love that has weathered storms and emerged stronger each time.
I lean up to kiss him, pouring all my love and longing into it. Kadeem pulls me closer as the kiss deepens.
Our hands explore familiar territory, tracing each curve and plane with a reverence born out of years of intimacy and deep affection. I feel my pulse quicken as desire flares between us.
“You wanna get out of here?”
It’s a full moon in late February. It isn’t cold, and the trees are already budding with leaves in the patch of woods behind the cabin.
Kadeem and I both took a while to fully recover from the effects of Bob’s wolfsbane and silver - especially me. My arm healed at a human rate.
It could have been much worse. Kadeem got a smaller dose of poison, but his weakened state caused him to falter in his fight against Diana, and I still wake up from nightmares that he was killed.
Usually, it’s my hands gripping his throat in those dreams, and I wake up in tears. He just draws me close and I fall back to sleep listening to his steady heartbeat against my ear.
Things are tense again with Layla and Pack X. To everyone’s surprise, Kadeem made a bold move, lifting several restrictions on vampires.
“Extremism only breeds more extremism,” he says, addressing the Council and the pack, “No one wins by doubling down - it’s what led to the attacks. True safety will come through mutual cooperation.”
Maybe it’s not the typical Alpha response, but it’s the words of a wise leader. One who no longer feels like he has something to prove.
I shift from my wolf form to pluck a dandelion and blow its seeds across the sky. Neighboring plots of land are being sold and construction vehicles have begun to dig up the earth.
“Better not be the start of a housing development,” Kadeem groans. “Watch them put in one of those cookie-cutter ‘planned communities.’”
To alter a Robert Frost line, nothing wild can stay. Magic, it seems, is slowly fading from the world.
But for now, the evening air is filled with the sounds of quintuplet pups, yipping while they race across the grass, growling while they wrestle in wildflowers, and howling their tiny howls at the moon.
And most importantly, Erbao is mending from his transplant. I chuckle as he jumps to nip at Kadeem’s ear.
Kadeem’s eyes flicker to me and he joins me, nuzzling my leg.
“What movie are we?”
He pops into his human form to answer. “Oppenheimer.”
I let out a sigh, “Deem.”
He leans back against the trunk of an oak. “Someday I’m going to say ‘The Notebook,’ which is what you secretly want me to say- ”
“It is not,” I interrupt.
“Yes it is,” he says. “But even then, you won’t be satisfied.”
“Because it won’t ever be genuine.” I blow my bangs out of my face with a pouty exhalation.
He studies me for a moment before a smile spreads across his face, revealing his dimples. “It’s The Notebook,” he confesses. He tries to hide his playfulness and appear serious.
I can’t help but giggle.
“How was that?” he asks, wrapping his arm around my waist.
“Nice try,” I say, leaning into him.
He’s silent, glancing up at the moon, before he rests his head against mine. “Don’t swim away with the mermaids, Ardal.”
“Don’t worry.” My fingers are pressed against his chest, and I trace the muscular curves of it. “But I think I could keep up, don’t you? I was a pretty good swim trainer, once.” I smile up at him.
“Yes, you were,” he agrees.
We gather our pack of little ones and head back to the house - me, the wild thing, the Alpha, and our quintuplets.
