Page 42

The plastic stick weighs more than a grenade in my palm. Three weeks of phantom nausea and phantom fears dissolved into two solid pink lines that refuse to blur no matter how hard I squint. Wind chimes clattered outside our bedroom window, marshaling the summer breeze into the room. It carries the scent of wild bergamot from the fields beyond our crooked cabin.

Jackson’s boots thud up the porch steps, trailing clods of dirt from the vegetable patch. I pressed the test against my sternum.

“You hoarding secrets in here or just reenacting Macbeth with that stare?” He leaned against the doorframe, shovel still in hand, sweat gluing his gray tee to the ridges of his abdomen. A clump of soil crumbles from the blade onto the reclaimed oak floor.

I hold out my hand.

His calloused fingers pluck the test. A full five seconds pass—his jaw shifting, throat bobbing, shovel slipping to the floor with a woody clatter.

“That’s...not a prank, right? Because if it is, I’m dropping your phone in the well again.” His laugh cracks, eyes darting between me and the stick like it might transmute into a garden snake.

I grab his wrist. “The seer barfed live scorpions predicting this. You think I’d joke about our life becoming target practice for every cult in five states?”

His exhale punches out, hot against my forehead as he yanks me against him. “So the hellcat prophet’s inheriting your smart mouth and my criminal record. World’s doomed.”

I flick the sweat-damp collar of his shirt. “You’re going to teach them lock-picking before potty training, aren’t you?”

“Priorities.” His mouth finds the hinge of my jaw, words vibrating into my skin. “Legends start with breaking rules. Why else did you think I kept you?”

"Do you really think she was right? That this will be the child of prophecy?" I'm scared to ask, but it's the only reason I'm not jumping for joy right now.

Jackson looks at me and smiles warmly, pulling my head against his chest. "I do. But I think that it also means they'll change the world in the best way. They'll have me and you for parents and mentors as well as whatever powers you pass down. I don't want to worry about what the world may think. I want to enjoy this blessing that we have now. Here."

I kiss him hard, thankful for his words, whether I believe them or not.

"I love you," I whisper against his mouth.

"I love you too. And this little one will only know love. And that's a hell of a start."

I've never heard Jackson be so positive or reassuring. I don't know if it's the hormones or me, but I can't handle it anymore.

The shovel still lays abandoned as we stumble into the hall, his hands mapping my spine through thin cotton. Our bed swallows us in a cacophony of creaking springs and breathless laughter. Golden hour bleeds through the curtains, branding tiger stripes across his shoulder blades as he peels my tank top away, his mouth tracing the newly exposed skin from collarbone to hip. When his lips dip lower, teeth catching the waistband of my shorts, I arch into the honeyed heat of his devotion, fingers clenched in dark brown hair.

He laughs against my thigh—rich and dark as molasses—before surrendering to gravity between my legs. Every stroke of his tongue writes benedictions where our families etched curses, rewriting scripture in the slick heat of my pulse. His mouth moves with the reverence of someone dismantling an altar, each flick against my clit sparking wildfire nerves that race up my spine. I bite my lip raw to keep from yanking his hair, fingertips skating instead over my own ribs, tracing the dip of my waist where sweat glues cotton to skin. The paradox of self-touch against his devotions makes me lightheaded—my palms charting the swell of my breasts, his teeth grazing that tender junction where thigh becomes want.

When I arch, the headboard's iron scrollwork digs into my scalp. Sun-warmed dust motes swirl above us, gilded by dying light as his rhythm fractures. My thighs tremble like bowstrings, clamping reflexively around ears still pierced by his mother's silver hoops. His groan vibrates through me as I break—a choked sound between prayer and triumph—body seizing like green wood catching flame. Release isn't gentle; it's the crack of a walnut shell, the wet snap of pomegranate seeds bursting under thumb. Ancestral shadows scatter from the violence of it, leaving only the salt-tang of sweat and the honeyed aftermath pooling beneath my hips.

By the time I drag him back up, we’re both trembling like maple seeds spiraling in a gale. I straddle his hips, knees sinking into mattress featherdown gone molten beneath us, sunlight pooling in the hollow of his throat like liquid betrayal. Our joined gasp when I sink onto him scatters like startled ibises taking wing—white flashes against the deepening indigo of dusk. His cock sheathes itself in the kind of heat that could forge new constellations, my body a furnace stoked by the unspoken promises between our ragged breaths.

He arches beneath me, all corded muscle and summer-bronzed skin, and I relish how familiarity never dulls this first breach—only sweetens the blade. His hands chart familiar constellations up my ribs. His thumbs stroke my nipples in slow circles, and I grind down harder, letting sticky honeyed heat smear across his stomach.

"Say it," I whisper, though he already knows. His answering growl rumbles through me, the sound of distant thunder promising storms yet unnamed.

When his mouth closes over my breast, I become riverbank clay dissolving beneath monsoon rains. My fingers knot in hair his hair, his teeth nipping just hard enough to make the chapel of my body convulse. He murmurs forbidden oaths against my skin between sucks—prayers that would scandalize the star-readers who marked our charts as adversaries. I ride him with the fervor of wild mares trampling their bridles, each downward thrust punctuated by the creak of ancient bed joints. Shadows stretch across the walls like inkblots, twisting into shapes that mock the brittle scrolls forecasting our doom.

We burn daylight tangling in sweat-slick sheets, every gasp a hymn to spite the fates scribbled in our bloodlines. My breasts sway with each roll of my hips, sweat painting cuneiform tales across his chest—stories of insurgency written in saline and shuddering want.

When his teeth graze the shell of my ear, I dig crescents into his biceps and decide prophecies can choke on their own poetry. Our rhythm fractures the silence like a war drum—the slap of flesh, the headboard’s staccato rebellion against plaster, his choked litany of "Seraphine, Seraphine, Sera—" becoming louder than any decree etched in temple stone. When release comes, it’s twin flames meeting in midair—a conflagration that sears away every lie about what we’re supposed to be. I collapse against him, tasting salt and futures rewritten, as the last sparrow of daylight flees our entwined shadow.

We lay together, covered in sweat and bliss, tangled in a thin sheet and each other's limbs. It's peaceful and something I have finally gotten to know.

Jackson is running his hand over my body in a mesmerizing way that shows appreciation more than lust. He pauses, palm flat over my abdomen. “They’ll come for us. You know that.”

I bite his thumb. “Let them. We'll be ready. And so will they." I pat my stomach only wanting to focus on the now.

The future can wait, but as I said, we'll be ready. And so will the child. For whatever is destined.