Enemy Basis | ✓

epilogue

DORRAN
[13 years later]

It was funny how things ended up and I would never have envisioned myself here today all those years ago that honestly seemed like the worst years of my life compared to the dream I was living now.

The sun shone down on me and my eldest daughter as we sat in the garden. Coraline was six years old and identical to me with her black hair and silver eyes with only the softer facial features similar to her mother.

Cora pranced around the garden with a sword, pretending to fight an invisible warrior or whatever she had envisioned in her cute little head. When she lunged and brought out her sword, I smiled to myself. I really could watch her all day.

Parenthood had been hard in the beginning, impossibly so. I was scared that I would mess up somehow, that something would go wrong but my wife had been there for me, helping me. She was one of life's true gifts and I never stopped being grateful for her and I never would be. I never thought I could love someone as much as Darcy but then my children came along and I was proved wrong.

August, our eldest child, being a year older than Cora, came running from the side of our house with a naughty smile on his face. And when I saw our neighbour's kid, Henri, sprint after August with the same cheeky smile, I knew that they had done something bad. Those two were best friends and thick as thieves and whenever they got together, something bad always seemed to happen. Henri seemed to bring out the chaos in August and he brought out the crazy in her. It was a really bad mix for us all, including the delivery man who had been terrorised the last time he had tried to deliver a package.

It was then that August looked at me.

It was obvious that Cora resembled me. Anyone who took one glance could see that but August did more than resemble me. He was my carbon copy had it not been for the beautiful green eyes that he took from his mother. August had been named after the month that Darcy and I got married in and the month that she found out that she was pregnant with our first child. Those days were some of the happiest in my life but when Henri started to giggle, I was brought back from my reminiscing of the past and back to the present with these trouble-making kids.

"Whatever you've done, please go and fix it before I have to," I ordered my son which he said nothing but smirked at Henri, leaving them both to run to the back of the garden where they would be planning some more of their evil schemes.

I really did try to stop them but there was nothing to do against my evil eldest. Darcy said that August didn't just resemble me physically but internally too. She said that she could see a lot of traits in August that she saw in me, the cunning lethality especially.

As I watched my son disappear into the back of the garden, I would never admit it to Darcy but she was right. He was my carbon copy through and through.

But he also was a troublemaker, always defying orders and that gene was solely responsible to my wife. She had passed that onto him, not me and I would never say otherwise.

"Why is there a man wet to the bone outside? Don't tell me it was August and Henri again," someone asked from the doorway to the garden, their sweet voice increasing in volume as they got closer.

I turned to see the person coming in and my heart stopped in my chest every time I looked at my wife.

It had seemed my love for her the strongest thing in the world once but after years had passed, it had only gotten stronger. Darcy was my everything, she was my world.

She walked towards me with our youngest daughter in her arms, cradling her softly in her arms even though she was much too old for that.

Isabelle who was four today giggled softly in her arms as Darcy tickled her stomach and the love for them both grew in my chest. It never seemed to stop.