Bound By Blood

Chapter 4:Guilt

Eris’s POV:

“Hey, are you okay, love?” Phoenix’s concerned voice snaps me out of my head and I look up at him, giving him as contrite a smile as possible. “Are you sure you’re okay? You zoned out on us again.”

“Yeah just a little overwhelmed,” I answer honestly seeing how he looks at me with a concerned expression that has me sighing, “Just remind me next time we’re doing this to only share rooms with another pregnant witch, not another pregnant witch, a pregnant vampire, a pregnant wolf, hybris and hybrid all under the same roof. It’s a recipe for disaster.” I sigh and lean my head on his shoulder, not missing how he smiles down at me. “Oh, now you’re going to think I’m being overly hormonal and dramatic aren’t you.” I sigh, “Great. Just great.”

“No, no I wasn’t,” he carefully replies, seeing how I smiled at that. But not before Rosa also snorted out a laugh across the room and shared a look with Leila, who did the same, both Hunter and Ash staring at each other at a loss for words. “I’m not but some people might be.”

“Yeah, some of us are, Eri!” Rosa shoots back before she mumbles something to Leila that I don’t catch that has the other girl laughing and looking up at Ash, who looks faintly afraid and a little out of his depth. “You ok over there Ash or did something we say bother you?” Rosa challenges and I see Ash swallow as he tries to figure out a diplomatic way to answer Rosa.

Deciding that not answering is the best course of action, he just shrugs and goes back to doing whatever he’d been doing with Leila’s hair to calm her before, staring down at her with so much love and adoration I can barely remember how upset, lost and broken he was when we first met after he lost Angel. His first mate. He and Leila seemed to click effortlessly, and it made them both happier than I’d ever seen them. So, in the name of keeping the peace between a group of pregnant supernaturals, I keep my mouth shut. Even when I know something may be about to go wrong, since it all seems so perfect here and now. Like nothing could go wrong.

But of course, as soon as that thought occurs to me, someone has to break the silence that has stretched, undisturbed for an extended length of time. Though this time it’s not with anything bad. Yet. Instead, it’s just the quiet chatter of those gathered with us who were happy to be with each other in a world that, for once, isn’t wrought with bloodshed and violence. One that may allow us at least a modicum of peace whilst we try to give our children a shot at having a halfway normal life, even with who their parents are.

“How long do you reckon this will last?” This time it’s a human-looking Mae who answers where she’s holding her stomach and in her mate’s arms. I see Jackon’s expression when he looks at her, but I can’t understand what he’s trying to say to her without words. “This….this peace you four managed to broker with Amber and the others. How long do we think it will last?”

Rosa snorts and rolls her eyes, “Mae, I love you, but I hope you know that by the term broker you mean forced when all four of us were just about dead and lacking a cure.” She laughs, but it’s a hollow sound, filled with emptiness and desperation that I can see reflected in the four’s eyes when they remember what happened, Ash and Hunter holding the two girls closer just by reflex alone. Something that lets me see, even in their eyes, how afraid the two were that not only Leila and Rosa would vanish but that their future children would as well. “But about what you asked I.. I don’t know, and I’m sorry for that. Because it means that you, me, Leila, Eris and the other people close to us are having to bring children into a world that lacks certainty. And as your friend and beta wolf, I’m sorry to have to put you through that. No matter if you think it’s my fault.”

Looking in Mae’s direction now, I see her give her friend an exasperated smile filled with fondness and love. “I know that Rosa and neither Jack nor I blame you for this. Nor do we blame Ash, Leila or Hunter because we know it’s not any of your faults.” Rosa looks unconvinced, and I hear Mae’s sigh, the softest of sounds. “Unless the four of you started this, then it isn’t your fault and no amount of self-blame will make that fact change.” Her emerald eyes shine with emotion and I can see that she’s trying to convince her friend, but she’s not doing a good job. “Rose I hope you do know that.”

“I do I just.. you, me, Eris, the Lilias witches and the Damaris vampires are all bringing children into the world. Children who will be dragged into the same game we can’t seem to get out of alive. And they’d be kids Mae! KIDS! How is it fair that they have to take up the mantle the four of us couldn’t do last round, and a larger group of us couldn’t do about two years before that! How is it fair to put kids in the firing line?!” She dissolves into tears then and I see Hunter try to figure out how to comfort her when she seems to be inconsolable. “How is that fair?”

I sigh and see that Hunter’s looking at me for help. Just as I can tell Ash will be when Leila catches onto this latest cryfest that seems to be charged with nothing more than a minor fear and pregnancy hormones. Something I see a few seconds later when he locks eyes with his brother and then, seconds later, Leila shivers once. His eyes widen and I hide my head as I hear his low groan seconds before something else happens that I don’t want to know about. Ever.

“It isn’t fair,” I respond in level tones when the cryfest stops, seeing all the people it concerns looking at me. Hunter and Rosa sat side by side, hands interlocked. Ash and Leila - her on his lap with both their sets of hands resting on her stomach. The Lilias witches whom I’d offered sanctuary when Amber and the others had decimated their coven just before the latest round - the one before this coming one - of the game had started. The Damaris vampires who were well known by Hunter and Ash as being held in high esteem. And last but not least the Cassidy wolves. All people who have been dragged into this with no way to escape. “It isn’t fair that they have to be dragged into it but they have been and we have to make sure that they’re safe. Above all else.”

I can hear the conviction in my tone and know that it rests in the eyes of the others who are just as invested in this. Who have just as much to lose. Who knows the stakes in what would happen if we were to fail. But that they were all able to understand and accept no matter what because they were willing to put their children before themselves, as it should be.

But we also all knew the stakes. We knew what would happen if they didn’t manage to stop the others. What it would mean for their - our - children if they were forced to pick up where we all left off in killing Amber, Laurel, Heidi and the others. Something we couldn’t have happened since it would mean putting them in the firing line of a battle we couldn’t win but had been fighting time and time again for the last however long. Something we all agreed we wouldn’t want our children involved in.

So how would we ensure that they were safe as much as possible? How would we ensure that they would be as safe as possible without having them locked away somewhere? An option that although tempting would never be the final solution since no matter where we hid them someone would eventually find them and drag them back to all that they would have been avoiding. But how would we do it? How would we manage to figure out how to save all our children from all that we’d want to shield them from? How would we do it?

“How can we keep them safe?” Leila’s tone is contemplative but I can hear it in her tone, underneath the blankness. Underneath the confusion and contemplation. I can hear the raw desperation in her tone that I can see in her sky blue eyes. That I can see in Ash’s gold ones, Rosa’s magically mystical eyes and in Hunter’s when they all look at one another before the others just as stuck as us. The Damaris’, the Cassidy’s and the Lilias’. Me and Phoenix even if we won’t say it. “How can we keep our children safe and uphold our vow when we won’t even have the power to do what we need to do. The power we had but will lose when our children inherit it. The power we would have needed to defeat them eternally.”

“So we wait beloved,” Ash tries to figure out how to placate Leila enough but I can’t see it working since she’s in protective mother overdrive. “We wait and use whatever vestige of the power that would be lingering inside the four of us to put them down again, only this time somewhere they couldn’t run, couldn’t escape. And then when our children were old enough we would train them - you, me, Hunt and Rosa - and we’ll let them get rid of them when they’re old enough and they can’t fail. Doing it somewhere safe when they know the risks and the endgame of it all.”

“And until then?” Leila sounds hollow again and I see the desperate look she gives Ash when she twists in his embrace, looking him right in the eye to see if he’s understood what she means. “Ash, how do we keep them safe until then?”

“I know how,” Rosa’s voice is firm and I can tell when we look at her with a confused expression. Though she just shrugs and leans back, Hunter’s arms around her where he was looking at her with the same puzzled expression since she seems to have all the answers to our questions. “How do we keep them safe for now? Easy, we kill your mother and Azrael.”