Page 36 of Loving Amari

He chuckles when Tofi nearly slams into him, images flashing:Daddy!

Amari bends down and pets her gently. “I’m here, Tofi, baby. I’m here.”

I just smile as the children surround us. Tofi leans against him, vibrating with happiness.

“I can’t stay long,” he tells her, his voice thick with emotion. “I missed you so much.”

Tofi sends images of loving her daddy, and I watch Amari choke up a bit. “I love you too.”

“I feel like I took you for granted,” he continues, rubbing Tofi’s sleek body. “When this is over, we are going to spend more time together. I swear it to you.”

He moves from Tofi to Noki, then begins embracing the other children. Moria and Kemnebi skitter up to me, and I look down at them.

“How are things going?” I ask.

Kemnebi and Moria start sending us images, but they also seem anxious to get some love from Amari. As I process the images, I see what looks like a massive mob of lost souls. With Aya’s help—she doesn’t have access to magic, but she’s managing to reroute them with distractions to different parts of limbo. It reminds me what I’ve heard about Aya being so good at distractions.

I notice the mob seems endless, yet I haven’t run into one of these lost souls. The weight of the realization settles over me. Moria, Kemnebi, and all of my children have always been working overtime since I’ve taken over limbo, making sure I don’t see any of them. They’ve been my most true, loyal guardians, and I didn’t even know it.

I look up when I hear Aya’s voice. “The fear of limbo is fading. Nathaniel has emboldened many of them, empowering them to believe they can take you down.”

Aya walks around the spiders, approaching us. “And they can, in numbers.”

“This isn’t sustainable,” she continues. “Eventually your children are going to tire out. All these souls need is one—just one of your children to fail—and they’ll kill all of them.”

Fear rises in me like bile. I remember feeling the death of Verde and Petra. I cannot handle that again. I won’t lose another one of my babies.

Verto comes into view, and I look up at him nervously. His massive form towers over us, more intimidating than comforting right now.

Aya points at him. “It’s the big one that’s keeping them down. As soon as they see him, they back off.”

I sigh. “The one time I’m grateful for Brookstone and Blackburn.”

Aya looks at Amari, her ghostly form shimmering. “What are you doing here?”

Amari glares at her. “Is it a problem that I want to be with my mate and children?”

“Yes!” she exclaims. “You are a vulnerability in here. You need to go back to the living where they cannot access you.”

Amari looks at her, then deliberately ignores her, turning back to the children.

Aya starts to say something else, but then a door suddenly appears in the void.

“Oh shit.” She looks at me, her blue eyes wide. “It’s him.”

The children immediately skitter around Amari, creating a strange web around him that glows pink—an additional cloaking over the one I’ve given him.

The door flies open, and I gasp when I see the hallway of the academy, all the closed dorm rooms stretching before us.

“Children, break the cloak,” Amari commands, but they don’t listen.

I look at him, then step forward toward the door. The children’s sole focus is protecting him, and I appreciate that more than they know.

“He cannot defeat you in the living unless he possesses a body,” Aya calls out.

I look back at her and nod, then step through the door. The moment I cross the threshold into the academy, I look around. The door stays open behind me, a portal between worlds.

I look down the hallway and see one of the young shifter children at the edge of the corridor. His eyes glow an unnatural blue.