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Chapter 16 - The Past, Come What May (Donovan POV)

A/N: NOT EDITED.

Chapter 16 - The Past, Come What May (Donovan POV)

I walked robotically to our car, felt my brother Clay take the keys from my hand and push me into the back seat with Katherine, and the silent ride to where I didn't know. I couldn't - if ask - tell what route he took, how long the ride lasted, what I saw, even if the sky was blue. Nothing, we had lost our babies, Sawyer and Tristan, we had left life - who I was - back with those two wonderful children. Stiffly I heard noise around me, felt someone squeezing my hand, heard sobs, heard reassurances, but nothing - nothing ­ around me - could overwrite the ruling from Judge Williams.

In my haze the door opened and once again Clay was there at my side, his face haunted, stiff, he helps us out of the car, and into our house. Our family already inside, "We lost them," I whispered to him my voice shaking, "we - we had them and now, now we don't." I searched his face hoping that I had imagined this pain, this hurt and removal of who over six years I had become. I was still a brother, still a son, a husband, friend... brother in law, all those things, but I wasn't - I wasn't a father anymore. The most important roll I had ever had, wanted and cherished was gone.

"This can't be it," I shook my head the images in my line of sight all blurred together, "I can't - I can't just give them up like this..."

"Then don't," Margo said coming next to Clay, standing, her face mourning the lost of her niece and nephew the same.

Nodding woodenly, not sure what she was planning, I entered our home, and when they placed me near the couch, I sat at the edge not sure what was going to happen next, what I was supposed to do now. We hadn't planned, we didn't think... We had them for their whole lives and within months of meeting their birth parents, we had lost our children.

"I'm not going to lie, I think - there was just something wrong with the ruling, guys - I know you don't - that you're hurt right now but..." Margo shook her head.

"What judge in their right mind just gives two children back to the birth parents-" she stops abruptly, "Tell me what you want me to do Don, whatever it is, if you want to fight this ruling - then that is what I'll do!" she pleaded with me.

Glancing at Katherine, she seemed as far gone as I was, she stood on weak legs and left the room, going up the stairs, without replying to Margo, I followed her. Straight into Sawyer's bedroom, she sat on our daughters' bed, her face red, swollen and splotchy. One hand at her mouth she screamed, muffled and rocked back and forth, as her body jerked uncontrollably.

Helplessness. Rage. Failure.

My own emotions now pushed aside, I cradle my wife against my chest, "We'll get them back, we won't - this isn't right Katherine," I murmur believing those words, knowing that I was speaking the truth at that very moment. My eyes focused on a picture of Sawyer and Katherine on my child's bedside table, wide smiles, as in that picture they looked - happy. If this is how my grown wife was behaving, how on her earth were my children fairing? How were they holding it together? "We will do everything we can to get them back, Kathy, I swear," I promised not just her but myself as well.

Kaden POV

Cleaning up the house, we spent the morning after the ruling shopping, preparing and purchasing what the children would want when we finally arrived back home. Upon John and Etta's request the vampires that actually lived in the beach house of the main house we would now be calling home entered and took pictures for me to see what everything looked like. Personally, I had expected more color, but everything in the home was in shades of light pastels. We had enough bedrooms on the off chance that Etta and I wanted to build our very own baseball or football team, which I joked and teased about.