Wandering over to them, I sit on the bench between them, and Casen leans down to the cooler at their feet and pulls out a beer, handing it to me.
Eziah sips his beer, his eyes shadowed with dark circles, and I know his nightmares or visions or whatever it is he suffers from have gotten worse, he has stayed a few times, and I have awoken to him stumbling around blindly in the house like he can’t see. I usually steer him back to bed, but last night he managed to wake Dominic up after he walked into the hall stand and broke a vase.
Dominic, at first, didn’t say a thing, just stared with that intense gaze he sometimes gets, a peculiar expression on his face.
“When all you know is darkness, how would one handle the light,” Dominic had spoken in an eerie voice. I glanced at him before asking what he meant. He seemed confused and claimed he said nothing. Dominic is also an odd man, intense, but I know it is from the shadows. We put Eziah back to bed, and I watched as Dominic had stolen his dream and plucked it right out of his head.
“That is one thing he shouldn’t relive, one thing that hurt her but doesn’t need to hurt him,” he said before slipping out of the room.
I still have no idea what he spoke of or saw, but the look on Dominic’s face kept me from asking.
“You alright, bro?” I ask Eziah, nudging him.
“I will be, I always am,” he says, watching Marabella and Kyan help open Lucas’s presents.
“I expected the shadows to leave him. Baby’s eyes change over time, and his never did,” Eziah says.
“Yeah, Dominic has a few theories about it. Kat did tell us, though, that he has a wolf, an actual wolf. He isn’t Lycan like Kaif,” I tell him with a shrug.
“Does it worry you?” I shake my head.
He is a happy boy for the most part though we have all worried because he never cries. Only the day he was born but hadn’t since. Marabella expected to be woken to feed him like a normal baby. After the third night, she started setting timers. That was when we realized he was waking up during the night. He was just silent. She would find him staring blankly at the ceiling or smiling or sometimes babbling in the dark. But he never cried.
“And you?” I ask Casen.
“It is what it is,” Casen says, tipping his beer bottle to his lips, glaring at his mate.
“And what is it?” I ask.
“Rose rejected me. She doesn’t want your parents to know, though,” he says with a shrug.
“And you accepted it?” he shrugs.
“Well, I didn’t reject her rejection, nor did I accept it, so it is what it is,” he repeats.
“So you are both pretending to be mates?” I ask.
Casen sighs. “Well, what else am I supposed to do? She hates me,” he runs a hand through his hair, visibly frustrated.
“Over Vince?” I ask.
“Kinda, but not really. She understands why I killed Vince. It’s the others she doesn’t get,” he says, standing up.
I want to ask what he means, but his eyes lock on my sister as she wanders inside with one of Kyan’s warriors and her friend. She doesn’t appear to be doing anything wrong, but Kyan also looks after her when Casen storms off past him after her.
“He won’t want to start anything here,” Kyan mindlinks before I hear it open up again. This time Kyan is talking to the warrior she walked off with.
“Stay away from my sister-in-law. She is off-limits, Mckellen, so move away from her,” Kyan warns.
“Huh? I’m not doing anything,” I hear him reply, but regardless a second later, he comes back out the doors this time alone, and Casen glares at him as he walks inside looking for Rose.
I shake my head, and Eziah slaps my chest with his hand. “Come on, Dad’s brought out the cake, and I want to get photos with the birthday boy,” Eziah says, dropping his empty beer bottle in the cooler. I chug mine doing the same and head over while Eziah fumbles for his phone to take pictures. Mara and Kyan wave me over, and I jog over before Mara passes Lucas to me while she and Kyan clear a spot for the cake on the table.
Everyone starts singing happy birthday, and Lucas giggles clapping his hands while I hold him close to his cake. He smacks it, sending icing everywhere, and making me chuckle, and when everyone stops singing, Lucas tries to blow out his candle, his attempts sending slobber and spit all over the cake. Probably much to Dominic’s horror before Kyan leans down and helps him.
Lucas claps, his fingers covered in icing, and holds his finger out to Kyan, who then grabs his little wrist and licks the icing off the finger that Lucas holds out to him. Silence falls as we watch the man who hates getting dirty play with and munch on his son’s sticky hand like he isn’t a germaphobe.
Lucas laughs, smearing some cake on his cheek with his other hand. Kyan laughs and reaches for a napkin, only then realizing everyone is staring at him as if he has suddenly grown two heads.
“What?” he demands, looking at everyone.
“Nothing,” Mara says with a giggle, and the chatter restarts.