Page 42 of House of Kallan
I didn’t think he’d actually hit me with his book. It might hurt the book and he’s rather fond of his complete set of encyclopedias. Rather weird and redundant, since the information in them has likely already changed and then there’s the fact that we have the internet.
He might hit me with something else, but not with a book.
“I’m just saying. He doesn’t have any magic.”
This time, Aden’s eyes raised over the top of his book, and I could nearly feel the daggers he flung at me.
“You’re digging yourself a grave,” Cobalt said, chuckling. “Keep talking.”
Sighing, I pressed my face into Rahael’s chest. Aden wasn’t soft. He could fight with the best of them. Much of that fight was already shaped into him from his childhood. We’d honed it a little, but he was his own force.
Not that we ever gave him a reason to need to fight. Aden was our heart. When we got the call for Aden and his grumpy pants stepped foot into our house, we knew all he wanted was tobe himself. There was this shell around him that he’d hidden behind to protect himself.
We spent a lot of time making sure he knew he didn’t need to hide anymore. We didn’t tear the shell away but earned his trust so he could let it fall when he was ready, and we’d be right here to catch him.
Watching him grow and become who he was always meant to be has been one of my very favorite things in my life so far. Love between monsters was a connection on a supernatural plane. But when you loved a human, it was a very different kind of fall. Strangely consuming and obsessive.
Turning my head, I watched Aden for a minute. He was curled in the chair, wrapped in a blanket, and reading. There was always something peaceful about him these days, which was such a difference than when he’d first shown up.
Honestly, those first days, I was shocked that he’d even agreed to this. There was no trust in him. Not in himself or in anyone around him. He saw the world through a very dark lens.
When I first got him in my arms, I was pretty sure he was going to slug me. He wasn’t going to accept affection without a fight. But I was surprised. While he was stiff for almost a year, he never pulled away.
Now, I recognized it for what it was. He craved affection. He wanted to be loved and touched and held. But he was hurt far too many times to accept that it was real.
We made it real. We never gave up and no matter how much hostility and anger he projected, we made sure he knew that we were never going to give up on him.
One day, we woke up to a very different Aden. It was like a flip had switched. While he was still hesitant and cautious, all that hostility and anger had seeped out of him. He was tired of the fight.
His eyes peered over the top of his book again, and I smiled. “I can hear you thinking about me from over there,” he said, a frown in his voice.
“Just about how much I love you.”
He rolled his eyes and turned back to his book. But the book dropped so I could see a hint of the smile he was hiding.
I pulled out my phone. It was half-past three now as I turned on the screen. The text chat with Tatum was still up, so I scrolled back to read some of it. I couldn’t wait to have her here. To lie on the couch with her like this. Where would she naturally gravitate to?
A chair like Aden? Did she like to read like him and would get lost in a book?
Or maybe she’d sit on the other end of the couch with Cobalt and play digital puzzles to pass the time and destress. With how much she liked to work, I thought maybe she’d be at the table in the corner with Hadrian. He always had work open on his tablet.
I didn’t care where she naturally fell among us. As long as she was here. Where I could look at her and know that she was ours. Our wife.
“Do you think she’ll want to get married?” I asked.
“Well, that’s a shift in mood,” Lazarus said. He was sitting on the floor playing a video game.
“I’m trying to occupy my mind, so I don’t sit here and worry about Hawthorn all night,” I said. “When will he be home!?”
Rahael chuckled, his fingers tangling into my hair.
“We haven’t talked about marriage,” Hadrian said. “I think we have a few more steps to get through first, though. Don’t you?”
“No,” I said. “She can just move in and marry us. Like Aden did.”
“Aden had a lot of steps to go through, too,” Aden said. “That was kind of reckless of me.”
“No. You recognized that we were your home. Even in the state of mind you were in,” Hadrian said. “We’re all very glad you chose the contract you did, Aden. Even subconsciously, I think you knew we weren’t going anywhere.”
