Page 13 of Taken By the Twins

And then the demon artist Malphas found his mate in a human female called Shannon, and once she was expecting his spawn, time started counting down.

We are in a race against it. Haures has his mate, but while he is a bondmaster, he is no seer. If Damien and I bond out mate to us, we will finally be whole. Our powers will increase exponentially, and we might be able to see past the prophecy in a way to prevent it.

The child will be born. There is no doubting that. Any moon now, in fact, which means that we must find a way to convince Tandy to be our mate sooner than later. Though, if I’m being truthful with myself, it is not so much the fate of Sombra that has me desperate to make her ours.

It is the bond that snapped into place when she promised herself to us and gave us the mating promise that makes me ache to hold her in my arms while taking her at the same time as Damien.

But that must wait. Human mates need to be wooed, and whenever she allows me to, I try.

Damien… well, he will. As soon as Tandy is receptive to me, she’ll be receptive to him, and he can show her that he will be a good mate to her, just like I vow that I shall.

Whatever it takes.

Tandy is maddeningly stubborn.

It has now been four moons. Four mornings. Four eves. Telling me with a defiant tilt to her head that we gave her the room so she sees no reason to leave it, she’s stayed upstairs despite my repeated offers for her to explore the rest of the cabin.

I want her to like it. It is her home now, and if there’s something about the space that she wants adjusted, she need only tell us and it is done.

She insists that she has everything she needs once I explained to her how she was to relieve herself. Our bathtub needs magic to summon fresh water from the hotspring and disappear it, but we also have a water tube that’s of a temperature acceptable enough for her to drink. After the first night when she refused, she’s eaten every meal I’ve prepared for her. I wove her three dresses out of shadows that mimicked the one she was wearing when she summoned us, plus feet coverings after she admitted that the ones she had on—with the points on the end that made our wee mate appear a bit taller—were causing her discomfort.

She is pleasant at times. Endearingly sassy at others. Her essence reveals that she is doing her best to make sense of her new reality.

I am a logical male. Damien is ruled by his emotions, but I see clearly, and I lay out the facts. In my way, I made it clear toTandy that she is ours. She gave us the mate’s promise. We have no intention of returning her to her human realm no matter how she pleads sweetly or uses harsh human language that nearly singes my pointed ears.

She will understand. I am a logical male, and a good one, but most of all, I am a determined male.

I need Tandy. I need her affection. Her smiles. Her heart.

Her cunt.

If I do? Damien needs it double. Every day she is here, he withdraws further, though he insists that he is just biding his time until Tandy is ready to accept that we are her males.

She stays upstairs in her quarters. We’ve conjured a small room that we share so as no to intrude on her space until she welcomes us into it. Currently, Damien is sitting at the table, tapping his claw against a bottle of demon wine that was given to us as a gift from a grateful clanleader.

“You spent hours with Tandy this morning,” he says softly, and while there is no jealousy in his tone—because he is never jealous of me, only of the males that flash across his consciousness now that we have Tandy’s essence—I can’t help but experience guilt regardless that I spend most of time wooing Tandy while Damien lurks in the shadows downstairs. It’s his choice, and yet… “Has anything changed, Lucian?”

I shake my head. “When I look at Tandy, I see rain.”

In a fiery world like Sombra, we have only enough rain to survive. It is essential that we do. We are made of shadows. Without light, there is no shadow. With too much rain, there is no fire. If we flood…

There is no Sombra.

Damien blows out a rush of air through his nose. He jerks his head, the light from our enchanted orb reflecting off his horn. “She does not want us.”

“She will,” I say encouragingly.

“I wish I had your faith, brother. But she prefers human males. I see them in my head. She was quite desirable in her world, and the gods know she is what we dreamed of and more. But we are so different… why would she choose us?”

That’s what Damien says. Only I know what he means: why would she choose me?

He feels so much, but it’s not always pleasant.

I crouch down next to him, laying my hand on his thigh.

“You don’t have to look at her past, Damien. We all have them, and we cannot fault Tandy for what she did before she knew she was fated to be our one true mate. We are the doppelseers. We look to the future.”

His white eye flares. Just the white one. “I am aware. I’m sorry. I… I’m trying.”

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