Page 39 of Kael

"I'm okay. Don’t do anything to make it worse."

"You shouldn't have been in that situation. I shouldn't have let you go alone."

"Kael, you didn't know—"

"I should have been watching. I should have—"

"Kael." I grabbed his hand and held it against my cheek. "Look at me."

He looked at me.

"I'm okay," I said again. "You came. You stopped them. You protected me. I'm okay."

He stared at me for a long moment, then pulled me into his arms.

"Bria," he whispered into my hair. "If anything ever happens to you—"

"Nothing's going to happen to me." I hugged him back. "Because you won't let it."

If I didn't have faith in anything else, I had faith in that.

Chapter 21

Malachai

"I can handle it if you want."

Kael grunted on the other end of the line. "No, I'll handle Darius myself."

We spoke for a minute longer, with him telling me the rest of the day's events. He was going through a lot for a woman like Bria.She will only create more problems,I thought, but didn't say it. Indigo was teaching me to, as she would say, "keep some shit to yourself."

I headed upstairs from the kitchen with a bottle of water in search of my wife and daughter. I stepped through the door of the study and stopped.

Indigo was on the phone, her back to me, one hand pressed to her temple. She didn't hear me come in, too focused on whatever was being said on the other end of the line.

"I don't think it's okay for you to come to any of the kids' events anymore."

Her voice was flat and final—the tone she used when she'd already made up her mind and wasn't looking for an argument.

A pause.

"I know. It won't be forever."

Another pause, longer this time.

"I'm not asking, Cooly. I'm telling you."

She said his name with a weariness that made me stop and listen. This wasn't the Indigo who screamed and threw things; this was the Indigo who had finally run out of patience. I wondered why.

I leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, and watched. She didn't know I was there.

"I know you've done a lot for me, and I'm grateful. But that doesn't mean you get to decide what my life looks like. It doesn't mean you get to show up whenever."

A long silence.

"You're not going to make me change my mind. You don't know me as well as you think you do. And stop calling me Midnight. I got kids. I don't want them to ever ask me why."

She listened for a moment, then laughed—a short, humorless sound.