It wouldn’t take Lydia to know what I’m thinking, to see how it overwhelms me … this time, with joy. I set my glass down on the table and rush over to him to give him a hug so big that I end up toppling over onto his lap.
Romulus laughs and holds me and kisses my cheek. When I let go and look up, I see that he has tears in his eyes too. Of all the things that have happened today, that is somehow the most surprising.
He is the one person that I thought I would never see cry.
“Well it’s about time,” Lydia says, her smile lighting up the room as she, Rory, Marlowe, and Kaleb return before I can make an even bigger fool of myself than I already have.
But when I look up at her, I see her eyes are filled with tears too, the happy kind.
The four of them must have been standing in the doorway, because from the looks of it, they heard everything.
Rory has to clear his throat and look away for a second to try to keep the rest of us from seeing the sparkle settling at the corner of his eye. Meanwhile, Marlowe and Kaleb help ease me down onto some cushions and blankets on the floor while Romulus stokes a fire to life in the grate.
“I’m sorry that I ran off,” I say, looking up at them as they settle around me. “I just got scared.”
“It’s okay,” Rory says, finally coming over to join us as well. “We all get scared.”
“But don’t do it again, okay?” Marlowe says. “We need to stick together now, all of us. If we’re going to make it through this and protect our babies, we need to stay together.”
I nod my head. I never meant to run off. All the times it’s happened before, it’s been because of some desire to get away.
But here, now, I know I shouldn’t need to do that anymore.
There’s no more running.
I am home.
After everything that’s happened today, I should feel devastated, that all of this is a hopeless and desperate situation … but now I feel a surprising sense of peace and calm wash over me.
I’ve been holding onto something my entire life, trying to parent my own mother and free us both from the cruel situation we were dealt. I’d been forcing a relationship for years that I wanted and needed, but that was never going to happen the way that I wanted it to. It was time for me to let go of it.
But here, now I have a family.
A family more real than my birth family could ever be to me.
This family will not abandon me. This family will die to protect me. And I know now that I would die to protect the little family that I have growing inside of me now too.
I’m not alone now.
We’re in this together.
24
Sabrina
Tonight, we take time to be together as our strange new family—Romulus and Lydia, and the boys, and me.
For the first time, I don’t get overwhelmed with sickness or exhaustion.
We talk about things that we will do in the future as if we aren’t facing a foreboding trial ahead of us. Amidst it all, of course, we can’t forget the looming shadow of Remus and his pack.
But even that doesn’t overshadow the glow of the night.
I lift my shirt over my belly in front of the fireplace and the shadows that the flames case dance across my skin while everyone watches the rippling movement beneath. It doesn’t even seem to matter that we don’t know which one of the boys fathered the pups. They are ours and that is all that matters.
As the night dwindles into morning and we all start to fall asleep by the fire, I notice that Romulus is still one of the only ones awake beside me.
“I want to help with the protection efforts,” I say quietly so that I don’t wake the others.