what have we done?

Too late. By the time he’d burst out into the lobby, face flushed, blue eyes glittering like ice on one of his guests as she gasped at his appearance, Destiny was gone. He’d run for the street but there was no tiny, familiar figure waddling away, leaving a trail of tears for him to follow. She’d vanished taking the future he’d thought would break the curse that had laid a trail of destruction through his own life.

A furrow had been torn through the centre of him that burned. It had torn something in his chest wide open, leaving him feeling hollowed out as he pulled his phone. The explanation upstairs hadn’t been enough, the truth of what the blonde was lost in those half statements – what, not who. Grey didn’t even remember she was there until he’d gone back inside, the first call made as he’d stepped into the elevator, ignoring the whisper of the woman who’d gasped before.

’I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m not better at this, I’m sorry I didn’t think that you’d be there. All I wanted to do was protect you and Petyr. Look … my house is yours too, from the moment you threatened to redecorate it. Destiny … I know this still isn’t enough but please … come back, let me try again. I want to be everything you and Petyr need. Just … don’t cut me out of his life … out of yours … I couldn’t …” Take it.

The ache flared supernova bright again as the doors opened onto his apartment – empty, and too quiet without the light Tinkerbell brought to it – sharp enough that it felt like Leah’s claws were raking across him again. Disembowelling him, taking more this time, his heart, every bit of fresh life that had grown into it once he’d realised that Destiny had done more than just heal the flesh. She’d …

It couldn’t have been more than a handful of minutes since he’d bolted from the apartment but the blonde – what the hell had her name been? Did it matter now when she’d already done the damage? – had come to and was already crawling towards the elevator. Grey dropped into a crouch in front of her as she started to make that keening noise again. His lips peeled back from his teeth, the ice in his eye growing cold as he slid his fingers into her hair to pull her head back. ”You had to keep pushing. You should’ve stopped, you should’ve been able to see who the monsters are, honey. Don’t let what you saw with her fool you, I’m not your Prince Charming … I’m hers.” The crystal slipper was only ever gonna fit one dainty little foot.

Her eyes rolled like a terrified horse’s, all whites, the shrieks breathless and high only cutting off when the garrot finally slipped around her throat. Cheap heels drummed against the floor, blood spilling over the skin tight dress when the blade finally completed the sacrifice. That wave of energy rushed over him, the way it had done just a couple of floors below when Destiny had cut the life out of the threat Leah had sent in their direction. A shiver ran through him, raised hair on his arms, but without her there with him it didn’t feel the same. Grey sagged back on the floor, chest heaving, that pain no easier.

His eyes burned as he pushed his way up. Knuckles white for a moment as he let the blade clatter to the ground. The stink of her perfume was still in the air, burying Destiny’s scent that would’ve clung to the sheets as he slipped beneath them to curl around her back, a bracket for the growing bulk his hands would slide over. He should’ve pushed her away when Hilly had left. Sorry, honey, I’m off the market. There’s someone waiting for me.’ Should’ve felt that rush of warmth in his chest as he’d stepped out of the elevator and realised she was there, not the hollow chill that wasn’t fading. He shouldn’t have been staring down a lifetime without his son, without the light Destiny had chased all that darkness back with.

The dramatic old bitch was gone from the lobby when he stormed back through it less than fifteen minutes after the last time he’d been down. The guy working behind the counter – thankfully Cat wasn’t on tonight to see his life fall apart – tried to catch his eye but Grey was down the stairs outside the hotel in a rush. Fingers that felt as cold as that ball of ice in his chest tugging the door of the car open. If Destiny wouldn’t come back to him, he’d go to her.

Two more calls on the way over. Each a little more desperate than the last. The second had every rambling detail of what had happened at the club and after. A spill of information that could either wash everything clean or sweep it away in a tidal wave of the honesty Destiny had always wanted from him.

Calls four and five made with his fingers and forehead pressed to her apartment door. His voice growing rougher with each. Five culminated with the begged ’What do I have to do to make this right? Whatever you need me to say or do, I’ll do it. I’m his father, Destiny, I can’t walk away from him. I … I love you.’

The ragged declaration sounded hollow in his ears, and he’d said it to dead air. He’d had the squirrels at every window then, tiny paws and noses pressed to the glass like his were to the door, searching, finding nothing. Grey slid down the door, sitting in that hallway for what felt like an hour, preying that the elevator doors would ping open and she’d be right there, ready to let him make all that he had done wrong right for them.

It felt like an eternity later that he rose groggily to his feet to crawl back out of the building. Maybe she’d never left the hotel. Was Destiny in Cat’s suite now, the two of them bitching apart him until his ears should’ve been flaming? He’d take every moment of it if it meant he hadn’t lost them both.

Bent over the wheel of the car, elbows planted on the wheel Grey dragged in ragged breaths behind the shield of his palms. They drift upwards, heels of his palms grinding into his eyes until he saw stars. His phone sounded finally, not a call but, fuck, it didn’t matter, as long as she was alright, as long as he had another chance.

Hospital. Please come. If there was anything else to the message he didn’t see it. Flashes of road, the scream of horns as he’d blasted through a red light on the square. A crunch of metal fading into the white noise that screamed in his ears. His pulse was a hammering in his throat, like the slap of his hand on Destiny’s door just half an hour ago. Had he finally done what Leah had failed to when she’d put those invisible hands around Destiny’s throat and squeezed? Was he no better than the man whose fists had taken the children Destiny had been pregnant with before. Actions just as agonising as words, the one hope, their hope stolen by a foolish mistake.

Hope flared like the sun for just a moment as he barrelled into the ER, his throat tight enough to strangle him as he hammered a hand down on the nurse’s desk when she’d looked up at him and flicked her glance back down to her computer. ”Destiny Baccari. She’s here, what … what room is she in … she’s pregnant …” He didn’t need to say anything was wrong, she wouldn’t have been here otherwise … that hint of sympathy that had the power of a sledgehammer as it hit him in the gut wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

The sound of a bustling hospital melted away as he started down the hallway, no click of foot falls on the shitty lino flooring, no scream of patients in their own mini cubicles of hell, no answer to a doctor as he asked if he could help him. Just that ringing silence that tailed off into an ear piercing squeal only he could hear as he pushed the door open. There wasn’t helping either one of them.

Destiny wasn’t bolting now, wasn’t pulling away from his touch as he crossed the room to her. Slow, eyes red rimmed and burning like they were spilling over with acid not tears, he folded into those arms. Like the tears apologies and sobs spilled out, washed over him in that tidal wave he’d been expecting. Everything Destiny had threatened somehow made real. Not at her hands, no matter how much she hated him for the words he hadn’t been able to get out, Destiny wouldn’t have done that. Petyr had been her miracle, theirs, but something he’d done had cost them their son all the same.

He blinked at her, a sob rolling through him, uncontrollable as his hand fell to her bump and then flinched away like he’d stabbed. Grey swallowed, trying to find the words as he shook his head. ”No, no. Please … Did I do this? I fucked up … I wanted to take her like we did him, I wanted more … needed more to shield both of you. Did it do this? What … what happened?” Couldn’t protect him. The words were another stab of that knife, tearing through his gut like he was the one … Had … ”Leah?” The accusation was razor edged, cutting through his throat with just as much ease before the roar came and he was crumpling there with his arms around the hollowed out woman he’d come to love without realising it. As if in echo the world outside roared with him, birds taking flight, the world erupting with shrieks of a hundred kinds, a hymn to the tiny life ripped away from between them.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 1693

How could a mother leave her child? The question had burned in Grey’s head as he’d grown up and the whispers about what his mum had done to herself had started to buzz loud enough for him to hear. While her baby had lain in his cot, she had stepped into the bath and had let her life drain away in the water – what little there was of it after Malcolm’s infidelity and insanity had boiled most of it out. The pack had never thrown the truth of it in his face, continuing to treat him like the poor orphan boy right up until he’d found the truth of it all and Leah had decided to become the last Maddox standing. Then he’d wondered why his mom hadn’t just taken him the moment she’d found out. She could’ve gotten on a train and gone anywhere, but she hadn’t. She’d stayed and been hollowed out to a shell that had crumbled under the pressure, washing away in pink water and grief.

Those questions had burned their way back in when he’d found the sonograms in Destiny’s apartment. A child he hadn’t planned, one he hadn’t been ready for – how could he want to bring a kid into all the darkness still boiling through his life – one they were having whether he was prepared to be in its life or not. How could he stay and risk it all? How could he walk away, leaving that gaping hole right through his heart and in that child’s life?

How could he still stand when that gaping hole had been torn through him with the loss of his child? For more than an hour he’d felt the pit that Destiny had opened up in his gut but he’d thought he could have that filling. He could make his apologies and still get to be where he’d decided he’d wanted to be. He could be a father, a partner.

The shell that had been a yard thick shield until just a few short months ago was now thin enough to shatter as Destiny clung to him. Gone. The part of him Petyr had filled was gone with barely a word. But … he was right there, he could still see where his son had been.

Grey reached for their son but realisation had him pulling back. Petyr had been there but the tiny heart that had beat had stopped, Destiny had said as much. Stress could do that and he’d brought it on plenty. Picking the wrong way again, steeping his hands in blood when every action was supposed to stop Petyr from ever feeling it on his hands. ”I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…” It was too late for his own apologies but they spilled out the same, driven on a wave of guilt. Was this what it had been like for Malcolm when he’d gathered his wife’s cold body to him?

Destiny wasn’t cold, she was warm in his arms, solid, like she should’ve been as they mended the rift he’d put between them. Her hands on his cheeks, smoothing tears away with her thumbs, dragging them back towards his ears as she’d done before. Little moments of comfort, of connection, doing nothing to stop the pain now. His eyes flicked up towards her for just a moment, relief that he desperately wanted to cling to disappearing too fast as he brought his hand up to her cheek. He huffed out a breath that left everything beneath his skin burning as his confession had her frowning. The woman had been a mistake, the tiny gift he’d received from her not enough for anything in the end. ”Important,” he filled in as she asked. ”She wouldn’t take no for an answer, even when I tried to tell her … about you … she was a guardian, it would’ve helped if I could sacrifice her … maybe if I’d done it before…” Those maybes were going to choke him.

The rage that filled him as the truth in Destiny’s stuttered words finally strung themselves into a recognisable scenario left the image of his own hands around Leah’s throat flickering behind his eyes. His power and the bitch of nature had taken her life the first time, leaving his sister’s body speared on the broken branch for her ‘father’ to find, this time Grey was sure he’d do it with his own hands, rage and grief leaving him tearing her to pieces, the same way he’d been clawed apart again. He shook his head at Destiny, cutting off her apology. Last time he’d coldly asked why she hadn’t fought back, this time he knew it would’ve been different. For Petyr she would’ve fought to her last breath. No amount of self-defence had changed things this time.

Realisation struck like a sledgehammer and Grey fell to his knees, screaming until it tailed off into ragged breaths, sobs wracking him, echoing through Destiny as he finally buried his face in her throat. It spilled from him like poison from a wound finally lanced, only this was endless, welling up again as soon as the pressure was released. ”She’s dead,” he whispered into Destiny’s throat, numbly holding her through the bite claw of her nails against his shirt – not his flesh, she could’ve clawed him like Leah and he was sure he wouldn’t have felt a thing now. In the wave of the scream it was all numb. ”I’ll find her and she’s gonna pay. She’ll pay and we’ll find a way…” If Leah had come back, surely there was a way? He’d give everything, Destiny would…

The frown cut deep as she rolled away. The heat was radiating, skin damp beneath the touch of his fingers, his own skin heating as she clung to his arm still, rolling just her head away. Too hot, the breaths not seeming to stop. They’d barely started looking into birthing plans – there’d been the videos he’d started to watch online, the Lamaze or whatever it was called – the facts he’d been trying to drum into his head.

Contractions. The pain they were meant to ride out together until Petyr was here and it would all be forgotten as they got their first look at their boy. Tiny cries leaving both his parents filled with that teary joy he’d seen on other faces before – the ones he’d always called bullshit on because parenting had never been like that in his experience. This was meant to rewrite all of this. ”I’m here, baby, I’m here. You didn’t know … you couldn’t have known … I should’ve said …” The burn intensified in his eyes, spilling lava like over his cheeks again as he whispered almost inaudible promises that he wasn’t going anywhere. ”I’m not leaving, I swear, no matter how hard you push. I’m here for you, for…” Petyr. His heart shattered again as he fumbled for the little button dangling next to the bed. Red. For an emergency.

As red as the blood that spotted his fingertips as he lowered his hand, skimming over the heaving bump. The burning symbol of all that was wrong, all they were losing. Grey looked up desperately as people in white coats spilled in. ”Something’s happening, I think he’s … he’s coming … I can’t lose her too. You’ve gotta save her, don’t let them both go. Please.” There would be nothing left if that rush of blood cut off with the shriek of monitors. The thin shell that remained now would be gone too, everything ground to glass, razor sharp dust grinding in every wound he was still capable of feeling. Grey bent again, tears spattering the mattress, the gown she wore, Destiny’s skin as he pressed his lips to her temple. ”I love you. I love you and I’m not leaving. We have to stay strong … we have to get through this, you hear me? You can’t leave me when I love you.” Words he’d only said aloud once before. Not to a recording this time, whispered straight from the ragged remains of his heart to hers.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 1352

Old castles were built with battlements around them, layers of fortifications to protect that relatively delicate central point. On the run from the pack with all his former shields – like self-delusion and blindness – stripped away, Grey had tried to rebuild his the same way. Keep people separated out into those various areas, fewer and fewer let into each successive one, only Cat allowed into that last one but even she’d been kept off of the drawbridge into the real centre of his life. It had been because she hadn’t needed to know at first and then there’d been enough consideration, friendship, there that he hadn’t wanted her caught up in it all.

Even now he couldn’t say when Destiny had slipped through each of those rings. That first incursion had maybe happened in that first flash of light, the smudge of sooty fingerprints proof of where she’d broken through at least. Indelibly printed on his skin and deeper, even though he hadn’t really known it, not until it had all been revealed in the white light of fear tonight. With that giggle and a flash of a smile, so untouched by everything that had happened to her, she’d danced across that drawbridge, blasting straight through the last defence until there had been three of them at the top of that tower.

They should’ve been untouchable shouldn’t they? Leah could reach out with her bony, hateful fingers, power slipping from them to wrap around Destiny for the moment, but she couldn’t break through. Petyr was supposed to be safe, every sacrifice another layer of stone thrown up around him to make sure that his light - so much like his mom’s, oh please, let it have been that – got to keep shining. Should’ve been.

Grey couldn’t see the fingerprints on Destiny this time. No smudges of bruises at her throat to show where that bitch’s touches had landed but he could practically smell it everywhere. Fouler than the soot that had coated his own skin, nausea rolling through him at just the imagining of it. Coating Destiny’s skin, working its way deeper until it burned in her skin. Trying to tear its way free, burning that little light out with it, destroying all the hope that had filled both of them. Leaving room for the fear to grow.

It choked him as he punced the button again and again, screaming for the doctors he knew were already too late. Grey knew it in his heart but the thought of losing both of them threatened to be the hammer blow that shatter him forever. The blow that would leave the Grey Maddox he could’ve been dust, the thing that remained standing afterwards a shadow of who he had been, the worst parts left, ready to surround Leah and destroy with just as much violence.

Please. I love you, I love you, I love you. Don’t forget it. Don’t leave. Please.

Silent prayers and promises rolling from him as he remained there beside her, holding onto that hand that still gripped him. Tear filled eyes locked on one another. The red spread in his peripheral vision though, a flood of it that brought that tidal wave of fear back with it. A blink sent a fresh course of tears down his cheeks. ”Hold on baby.” A whispered order he wasn’t sure either of them had the ability to follow through on. There were no guarantees, just that desperate hope that had opened up that scarred ground inside for the growth of something new that now burned like the fever through her. The hope that all that they could have would be different. That it would all be alright.



At some point they’d brought him a stool, so he could stay right there. Holding onto her, whispering those same hollow words over and over. Love, hope, promises, pleas for all that he was sure he didn’t have the right to beg for. Fingers shaking as they brushed damp hair back from her face. The doctors and nurses words a quiet buzz in his ears that Grey could barely take in. Eventually they’d faded away, leaving the three of them alone. They had done all they could but in the end, there had been nothing they could do for that tiny flame of life that had been snuffed out far too soon.

In days or weeks the apartment would be silent. In a few months’ time they were both supposed to have filled it. A space carved out in their room for the crib. Bottles and diapers cluttering up those cold surfaces. Most of what had been in the work room packed away, no need for it with the darkness gone, dealt with in time for that new life to really start. Now the emptiness would remain, matching the one inside of him.

Eyes flat, desolate, despite the raw, raging agony behind them settled on that tiny swaddled bundle as the last nurse handed him to Destiny. Burning dry now, like all of the tears had been seared out of them. They continued to spill from Destiny though, her sobs putting fresh cracks through his heart as she handed their son to him. Grey’s hands shook as they cradled him. How was he meant to do this? How did you do it to support their head? To keep the tiny, fragile life safe? The little voice in the back of his mind whispered that it didn’t matter now but still his hand curled under the tiny head. ”He’s perfect,” he whispered hoarsely. ”Perfect, just small.” So small still, never to get any bigger.

The tears weren’t gone, they’d just been biding their time to break free again now. His vision swam, hiding that tiny face until he blinked rapidly, trying to clear them. He didn’t want not to see, he didn’t want to lose a second of the too few he was going to have with his son. One thumb stroked the tiny shell of an ear as the door clicked quietly shut. You weren’t meant to be able to see who babies looked like when they were this small were you? They were almost unformed, right on that brink of beginning to grow into themselves. Petyr was more unfinished than most, hadn’t had that time yet, but Grey was sure he could see Destiny in the elfin features. Better to have all that light of his mum in him.

His eyes flicked up, met the ones he was sure Petyr would’ve had as Destiny settled a hand on his arm. Slowly, he sank down next to her, settling that tiny form against his chest, close enough for them both to wrap around. What?” The question slipped out hollowly, understanding not striking until she began to tell him what had happened, who had come. Grey stiffened as she said ‘like her’, but he hadn’t … The tiny sob wracked through him, the tremors reaching the tiny bundle. Thank God. ”He was OK? They hadn’t … he … he sounds just like his mom. All the best parts.” Full of the love and light they’d both wanted for him.

The tears streamed, one arm working out from beneath Petyr to wrap around Destiny and draw her in. His face turning into her hair as he pressed his lips to the side of her head. The ‘sorry’ he whispered for his part in all of this nightmare lost in her hair. ”It would’ve done. We would have had him if it wasn’t for her. You did nothing wrong.” He had though, his mistake tonight giving Leah the opportunity to take. ”We’d have been together and we’d have been happy. He would’ve grown up knowing nothing but the love of his mum and dad. He’d have had the best mum. You’d have been the best.” For all the words that had stuck in his throat and gone unsaid, he’d wanted it all just as badly. An unexpected need that they’d come so close to having.

There was no question in his head now as to who was blame. He and Destiny had done everything right when it had come to Petyr but Leah hadn’t. In her desire to destroy him she’d taken the wrong life. ”We’re going to love him forever, and he’s going to know it, but it’s … it’s not over for us. We’re going to get through this and we will be a family.” Leah would die. The curse would lift and there would be something after for the two of them. Grey dropped his head, pressing his lips so carefully against the tiny curve of Petyr’s brow the way he had his mum’s. It felt wrong to think of the violence now but there was a relief that came with it, as though the world that had been shattered was starting to click back in places around the gaping hole torn in the centre of it.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 1507