Page 123 of Diary from an Inked Throne

She shook her head. “After what I did…”

“After what he made you do.”

She wiped her tears with the backs of her hands. “I’m not blameless.”

“None of us are. But all I care about is Nyah and James and that they’re happy. I don’t think they can be if they’re visiting you in jail. So don’t go. Don’t turn yourself in. Let sleeping dogs lie and be the mother and grandmother they deserve.”

Constance stepped in and put her arms around me, holding me tight in a hug I couldn’t bring myself to return, though I hoped one day, when she’d proven herself, that I would.

“I don’t deserve this, Dax.”

Maybe not, but Nyah did.

37

LUCA

SIX MONTHS LATER

Dear Diary,

Babies aren’t the only thing that keeps us awake at five in the morning.

James’s wailing cut through the silent night like a banshee’s scream.

Nyah, with her mommy superpowers, was up and halfway out of the bed before the rest of us could even react. I managed to catch her wrist as she climbed over me to go get our son.

“Nope.” I pulled her back down in the bed. “I’ll get him. You sleep.”

Nyah frowned at me. “It’s my turn. You got up with him at least three times last night.”

I brushed my lips over hers and tucked her back in. “I don’t care. I’d get up a hundred times a night for that little boy.”

She smiled at me in the darkness. “I love you.”

I grinned at her. “And I love when your tits are falling out of that top.”

She shoved me off her. “You’re such an asshole.”

I covered her warm body with mine and kissed her again. “I love you too.”

Lynx shoved me sleepily. “Yeah, yeah, love, kisses. Whatever. Go get the baby before the underworld summons him home.” He burrowed his head beneath a pillow. “This eight-month sleep regression thing is insane. Who’s that mad about sleeping? Sleeping is good!”

I chuckled and left the room to go try to remind our son of that.

While Nyah had been laid up in bed recovering from the broken bones she’d suffered in her fall off the balcony, Dax, Lynx, and I had secretly converted her old bedroom, the one next to mine, into a nursery.

None of us had wanted to paint the room blue. We’d made excuses like colors not being gender assigned, and whatnot, but I saw the looks in Dax’s and Lynx’s faces.

And I knew they mirrored mine.

We were all thinking about the babies we’d have in the future. And so a neutral color made the most sense.

We’d picked a mint green with some yellow and gray accents that had definitely been Dax’s suggestion, since neither Lynx nor I had any idea about what colors went well together. Lynx and I had rolled paint on the walls while Nyah watched old Twilight movies in the room next door, blissfully unaware of what we were doing.

But the best part of the room was the mural Dax had painstakingly painted, all while reminding us that cartoon animals were not exactly his usual style.

I still smiled every time I walked in there and saw the bigger, male elephants he’d painted on the wall above the crib, the three of them surrounding a smaller female, with a baby at her stumpy feet.