Page 74 of Black Hearted
Then I noticed Aribella was unusually quiet. When I looked her way, she quickly pulled her hair forward, trying to hide a purple bruise on her temple I hadn’t noticed before.
I froze, pausing mid-bite, and pinned her with a soul-searching gaze.
“Aribella,” I said calmly.
She chewed at her lip, casting a nervous glance at Stryker.
Surely he wouldn’t hurt her … right?
“Yes?” she squeaked.
“What happened to your face?” I pressed.
“Nothing,” she said far too quickly.
My gaze flicked to Stryker, whose expression darkened. “I would never,” he growled, snatching his half-eaten chocolate cake back as though punishing me for even thinking it.
I turned to my husband, who had “guilty” written all over his face.
“Why in the stars are you treating me like a child?” I snapped. “Who bruised Aribella?”
“I got into a little scuffle in town when I was buying a gift forthe babies,” Aribella answered, her voice sing-song and far too sweet. “Do you want to see what I got?”
Her deflection only fueled my irritation. Isolde had mentioned seeing my mother on the train, and this was too coincidental.
I leveled Aribella with a serious look. “No. I want to know why you’re hiding that bruise from me.”
Stryker laid a giant hand over his wife’s. “Don’t worry. When I find who did it, I will disembowel them,” he said, his gaze still dark. “You just focus on healing.”
I relaxed a little. “So you don’t know who it was? A random angry citizen?”
The brothers exchanged glances, a silent conversation passing between them that told me I wasn’t getting the whole story.
I spun toward Zander. “Zander Warrick, don’t you lie to me. Who hurt Aribella?”
Zander frowned, a pained expression taking over his face. “Your mother did, my love. I’m sorry, but she’s here. Somehow.”
No.
Anger rushed through me, and I instinctively reached for my magic. But as I did, a wave of sudden weakness overcame me. One of the babies began to cry, and my head jerked toward them. It was one of the baby girls—the last one to be born.
“Stay calm, Dawn. Just focus on the babies. We’ll handle your mother,” Isolde said firmly. “If you use any magic, it takes from them.”
She was right. I’d reached for my magic without thinking.
Closing my eyes, I took three deep breaths. Slowly, my daughter’s cries subsided, and I opened my eyes to find her calm again.
I turned to Zander. “We need to name them. I can’t keep calling them girl one and two and boy one and two.”
Zander leaped at the distraction, his face softening. “Yes. Do you have any thoughts?”
Standing, I walked over to our first son, the slightly larger of the boys. He was sucking his tiny thumb, his head adorned with a shock of dark brown hair the same shade as Zander’s. The baby’s light blue-gray eyes reminded me of Stryker’s, though, I could see Zane and Adrien in his perfect little face, too. “I think we should call him Callum,” I said, wanting to honor the beloved Warrick brother Zander and the others lost before I met them.
“I’d love that,” Zander said, his gaze falling on our son with nothing short of complete devotion.
“That’s very kind of you,” Stryker added, his voice thick with emotion. When I glanced at him, I saw his eyes glistening.
Stryker, the most fearsome and prickly of the brothers, often came across as a hardened warrior. But in moments like this, his softer side shone through—a side that few ever got to see.
