Chapter One: Twenty Years
These are the moments
I know heaven must exist
These are the moments
I know all I need is this
I've found all I've waited for, yeah
And I could not ask for more
~Sara Evans
The house was by no means a mansion. Ranch-style with four rooms, it was moderate and comfortable. There were chips in the peeling paint, slats missing from shutters. At some point, the third stair leading to the front door broke. It was habitually stepped over in lieu of replacing. Now, it was more a fixture than anything, kept because it reminded the occupants that this was home.
Though there was work to be done, it was by no means ill kept. The house was meticulously built and could withstand the fiercest of tempests. Solid. It was a solid structure held up by expert craftsmanship and love. Nothing could destroy the house that nestled so snugly between mountain and river.
Gardens were kept in order, blossoming with spring warmth and steady rain. Dew clung to the bright green leaves and sprays of fragrant color as fog drifted and swirled around the mountains. Morning had dawned beautifully crisp and achingly serene.
There, in the rear of the house, stood greenhouses that could feed a small army through several months of drought. Beside the expansive glass building that smelled of peat and growth were two entwining rosebushes. Beloved Huskies had been buried there several years ago, mourned as though they were children.
Dogs always belonged to this house, a fixture as much as the broken step and soaring mountains. Two such animals were roaming freely between the house and mountains, where thick woods teemed with life. Their white and gray coats gleamed as dawn spilled over the white-topped mountains. They sniffed as though searching for anything amiss, guardians to those that dwelled within the well-lived house.
Battered and aged as the house, a truck was parked in the long, winding driveway that cut through the valley of trees and grass. Beside it, a Land Rover in much better condition was parked haphazardly. Behind that, a sturdy, rebuilt Firebird that could scream testosterone at the top of its powerful engine.
On the lake, bumping into the dock lightly as it swayed to current, sat a tuned up old plane called the “Little Blue Beast”.
In the stillness, one might have thought this place a dream. It was peaceful, lying so innocently unaware of its beauty in the outskirts of Henry, Alaska. Light crept through shadow, bathing the entire valley in brilliant glow.
And then, a feminine, commanding voice broke the silence, joined a beat later by tones of youthful exasperation.
“HENRY! JAMES! JEAN!”
“What?”
“You are going to be late, get out bed, NOW!”
“Mama! I can’t go to school today! I don’t have anything to wear!”
“Go naked, just get out of bed.”
“Where’s my toolbox?”
“Look under the sink!”
“MOM! Henry won’t let me have the keys!”
“It’s my turn!”
Ororo Munroe chuckled over her first cup of coffee, looking up with an arched brow at the stocky, scowling man that came into the kitchen from the hall. There was amusement barely concealed in his eyes, his warm, welcoming smile the same as it had been every morning for the last twenty years.
“Everyone in this house have to wake up yellin’?” He grunted to his wife as she handed him a steaming mug of strong coffee.
“It is how we greet the day,” Ororo answered with a grin over her cup.
He grunted, sidling up to her with the skill and grace of the natural predator. Logan, once known as the fierce mutant Wolverine, dropped a kiss onto his wife’s smiling lips. His free hand hooked one finger into the loose flap of her robe, one brow arching enticingly.
With a toss of her snow-white hair, Ororo evaded another teasing kiss. Her husband growled lowly, tugging on the edge of her robe to pull her closer. Twenty years and he could still get her blood pumping with one feral look. It reminded her of the man he’d been, of the man he’d so willingly become and how the two melded into the man she couldn’t live without.
“I can’t find my shoes!”
A masculine voice echoed from the hallway, the sound still wrenching Ororo’s heart. Never would she understand how her son could be turning into a man before her eyes. Hadn’t she just brought him home from the hospital with his identical brother? Where had the years gone?
“Look in the flamin’ livin’ room where you left them!” Logan called over his shoulder.
“Not those shoes!” The voice Ororo pegged as Henry’s shouted back, fuming with teenage irritation. “The white ones!”
“Outside,” Ororo offered loudly. “And come get the brown ones. I did not raise a group of baboons.”
“Yes, Mom.”
A beat later, while Ororo and Logan rolled their eyes, a vision in golden skin and long white hair appeared from the direction of raised male voices.
“Mother.” Jean Munroe said in her typical fifteen-year-old whine. “Tell Henry that he needs to let me into the bathroom!”
Ororo rolled her eyes toward heaven and begged her daughter’s namesake for strength.
“You take more time,” she explained patiently. Again. “Let the boys use it first.”
Jean stomped one foot, her legs seeming longer than her mother’s in pajama shorts just shy of decent. Ororo could not understand how her daughter flourished on the cusp of womanhood just as surely as her brothers morphed into men.
“You always take their side!”
Knowing tears were only a heartbeat away, Ororo cut her gaze to Logan. He sighed, set his coffee onto the countertop and turned to his only daughter. Jean and Logan were many things, but Ororo knew them most intimately as a manipulated father and Daddy’s little princess. It would have irritated her, had Ororo not observed that her sons were princes to her manipulated mother.
“Jeannie…” Logan’s placating tone was shattered when his daughter burst into tears.
“Daddy, can’t I use your bathroom?”
“No,” Logan answered her, glancing to his wife. Ororo regarded him coolly, though inside she was rolling around on the proverbial floor with mirth. He never had an ounce of willpower when it came to their children.
Many would have thought the brash, reckless Wolverine was impervious to anything resembling emotion. Twenty years taught Ororo that his family was the light of his life. So deep was the need to protect them that he wanted to buckle to any whim they might have. At first, it was adorable. With three teenagers in the house, however, Ororo was now continually pegged as the “bad guy”.
Not this morning, she mused as Jean wailed, clenched her hands into fists and stomped out of the room.
She applauded her husband with a gentle, almost sarcastic clapping. He scowled at her, reaching to wrap her into his arms. Resisting only because it made him smile, Ororo was dragged against his chest. Logan pinned her to the counter, dropping his mouth to hers in a kiss that turned every bone in her body to water.
Ororo lost herself in him, in the simple knowledge that this man loved her to distraction. It was never a question, never faltering as decades passed between them. Her hands wound into his still-unruly hair as his cupped her shoulders to hold her in place.
They pressed familiar bodies together, flexing to feel every inch of one another. Ororo’s toes curled as she hitched her backside onto the counter. The scratch of his unshaven cheek thrilled her to the core, sending a jolt of lust through her that some would think undignified for a woman pushing fifty.
She couldn’t have cared less.
“Ugh,” said a young male voice from the hall. “God, do you guys have to do that?”
Logan lifted his mouth from hers with a groan. He glared at his son, making a “shoo” motion with his hand to the tempestuous Henry. Ororo chuckled, winking at her often-volatile son. He inherited his parents’ tempers, while James was calm as the surface of a frozen lake. The twins were opposites, but still bound together in a way that no other could understand.
Henry stomped into the room with the flair of his father, even as Jean triumphantly yelped from the bathroom. A moment later, her music was up and the shower was running. Henry shook his head, moving to the deck to retrieve his shoes.
He was a tall boy of seventeen, dwarfing his mother and father with that lanky frame. Both twins topped out at six foot two, growing into large feet that made them clumsy just last year. Their skin was a mixture of mother and father, the dusky shade darker than Logan’s but lighter than Ororo’s. Their eyes, however, were all Logan. Dark, deep, and brimming with everything they could never say. While James’ typically reflected an inner peace, Henry’s quite often reminded his mother of a storm-tossed sea. Both boys were built for speed and liked nothing better than to be at 100 miles per hour.
Though were identical to the last freckle, Ororo could always tell her sons apart. Now that they were older, the twins fought to separate, if only just. Henry’s chin bore stubble worthy of his father, his hair kept in long, tight braids. James, on the other hand, was tidy as a pin. His close-shaved scalp was a topic of heckling from the Gates brothers for some time, but Ororo thought it suited him.
Henry needed messy; James preferred neat.
Ororo shook her head when Logan moved to his youngest son and caught the boy in a headlock. James laughed, a smooth, throaty sound that still held a trace of the little boy who told her, on no uncertain terms, that he loved her at the tender age of three.
Henry reentered the house, armed with his shoes and rolling his eyes as his brother and father played in the sitting room. He moved into the kitchen, causally taking ingredients for breakfast from neatly arranged cupboards.
Sensing her cue, Ororo finally slid from the counter to stand beside her son. Henry gave her a brief smile, a reprieve from the angst that was being seventeen. She was forcibly brought back to an autumn night so many years ago, when he suggested in the dark to his siblings that Mama and Dad belonged in a comic book.
She still had their lovingly created series, all fifteen, locked in a memory box in her closet.
“Cheese omelets?” She questioned her broody child, tugging on one of his braids.
“Sure.” Henry jerked one shoulder in a half-shrug. Such an innately Logan gesture, it made his mother bite back a smile.
As she began to whisk eggs, Logan shouted at his daughter to “turn that damn noise down” but was ignored as she finished her daily routine. Ororo shook her head, wondering what she was going to do with that girl.
Jean was, by all accounts, a normal, healthy fifteen-year-old girl. She was stubborn, fought with her mother over every last detail, obsessed with boys, music, and shopping. Ororo often thanked whatever God there was that her children could be normal. They never knew fear or rejection because they were different.
Not even their status as bi-racial tainted their quiet Alaskan lives.
When breakfast was served, Ororo had the distinct pleasure of watching her men “ as she often referred to them “ dig into the carefully prepared food. Jean came in from the bathroom, freshly showered and with an over-generous helping of makeup covering her flawless face.
Though her sons were content with jeans and sweaters, Jean hated to blend into wallpaper. She’d pulled on a pair of tight black trousers with buckles along the sides, heeled boots, and a top that was sure to send her father right through the ceiling. Ororo widened her eyes warningly before her husband looked up.
Jean sighed, but she did pull a zippered hoodie over the long-sleeved top that revealed more than a hint of her feminine attributes.
Ororo was pleased, at least, to see that Jean left her long, snowy tresses down to twist wildly at her shoulders. An added bonus was the lack of purple, green, or blue streaks, which were often added via some cosmetic popular among her age group. At least, she thought, there would be one less argument this morning.
But never peace and quiet.
Jean was just finishing a bowl of granola when Ororo glanced at the clock. As usual, the children were running late.
“Up!” She commanded them with the experience of seventeen years. “You’re going to be late. Henry, it is James’ turn to drive, give him the keys.”
“Mom!”
“I said give him the KEYS!”
Thunder boomed in the heavens and her son was immediately cowed. James had the audacity to smirk as Henry handed over the car keys. Ororo hated that the boys insisted on driving the trio to school every morning, but she had to come to terms with their aging.
Soon, far too soon, they would leave her. Eyes and clouds misting with the knowledge, she quickly rushed into the living room like a force of nature. Books were gathered as children bickered and Logan hollered at them all to shut up. She scooped up a pair of socks, grasped Jean’s leather backpack and shuffled her chicks from the nest.
“Be careful, James,” she warned as they bolted for the Firebird. The dogs barked happily, restrained by Logan’s quick command behind her. “If you get a ticket…”
“I know, Mother,” her son said as he opened the car door and tipped the seat forward so Jean could slip into the back. “We’ll be fine.”
Henry, still moody with her, did not stop to speak as she slammed into the car. Ororo shook her head, returning Jean’s cheerful wave.
In moments, James roared the engine to life, shattering the stillness that surrounded their home. He backed out of the drive at a sedate pace, but the second they were out of view, she heard tires squeal and rock music bounce off the mountainsides.
“Baboons,” Logan grunted as he came onto the porch, coffee in hand. “We raised baboons.”
Heart aching, as it did every morning, every time they drove away, Ororo turned to her husband with a smile. “They learned from the best.”
“Wench,” he tossed at her affectionately.
Ororo moved to him, winding her arms around his neck and arching her body eagerly into his.
“I know.”
~**~
As he finished sanding the edge to a handmade armoire commissioned out of Anchorage, Logan thought about his life. Next week would be the twentieth anniversary of his marriage to Ororo. Twenty damn years.
When they’d started this journey so long ago, it was with reluctance and a cry of his name into a satellite phone. He wondered often as his children grew what would have happened if he simply shrugged off Ororo’s scream for help that night so long ago.
Would he be here, locked in the blissful wild of Alaska? Would he have three children he adored, a wife that he refused to live without?
No, Logan thought with a shake of his head. He wouldn’t have any of it. If her terrified voice had not struck some forgotten chord inside him, he doubted anything would be as it was now. The house on the water, the dogs in the yard, the peace of the Alaskan mountains, none of it would be his. He needed this place, enjoyed the man he became when tied to Ororo through the commitment of marriage.
Oh, hell, he loved that damn woman. Logan smirked as he reached for a fresh sheet of fine grit and attached it to the planer. His work was soothing, leaving time to think in the silence. With three teenagers running around, silence was a rare commodity.
Thinking back to the woman he willingly shackled himself to, Logan glanced to the dock, where her plane took off several hours ago. That woman was his, all his and had been since the moment he set foot in Alaska. She drove him insane, with her temper, with the pure, primal lust she could still invoke in him with a saucy look.
He smirked again, wondering what the kids would think about their parents going at it on the living room floor. Damn, but ‘Ro could still light his fire. He once thought marriage would be boring, grinding both parties down until they were affixed in a rut. Not ‘Ro and Logan. Every day was an adventure.
Since the death of the malicious Sinister two decades past, Logan never left Ororo’s side. They were in it together, the promises made on their wedding day never tossed aside if they became inconvenient. Sure, they sometimes fought so long, so hard he thought they’d kill one another; that just added some spice to his life.
She was still beautiful, no matter how she complained about the miniscule lines on her face or the pull of gravity on firm breast. He enjoyed the hell out of those breasts, he would tell her. Sexy, strong, loyal, his Ororo was more woman than he could handle sometimes.
Of course he’d fallen for her, he mused while sanding an edge of good, solid oak. Light on dark, the other half of the man he never hoped he could be. She gave him the gift of love, the ultimate prize of fatherhood. What more could a man ask for?
“Eeyore!” He shouted for one of the family’s pair of Huskies, his keen hearing betraying the canine’s intentions. “You best keep outta Mama’s garden or she’ll have your guts for garters!”
With a pitiful whine, the year old pup bounded back to the front yard to join his sister, Tigger. Logan still found the names hysterical. That’s what you got when you let teenagers name the damn dogs. This was the third set of Huskies to call this place home.
Andine and Eliar, Ororo’s noble companions lived to ripe old ages. They’d seen each kid born before their bodies gave in to time. Logan nearly cried at the memory of the animal that took a bullet for the woman that became his wife. The family buried the beloved dogs beside the greenhouse; Ororo planted rosebushes over them.
After Andine and Eliar came Scarlet and Rhett. They were gone just a year now and the pain was still fresh. Logan loved each pair of dogs they reared as parts of his family. They were never replaced, but they needed the companionship, the love that came from such splendid creatures.
Tigger was watching him with warm blue eyes, her tongue lolling out of her mouth in puppy-laughter as Eeyore barked and tripped over his own feet while chasing something on the lawn. They were an interesting pair: wise Tigger and stupid Eeyore. Logan thought that the children had named them all wrong.
Twenty years and he was completely content here in Alaska. The Northern Lights never failed to hold his awe the same way Ororo’s buzzing skin kept his attention. He would never tire of it, never want to leave. This was his home, the one he’d built with his beloved wife.
When the phone rang, Logan turned toward the house. He set the planer down, jogging through the open door from garage to kitchen. The cordless rested in its cradle, snatched up when Logan noted the number flashing on caller id was Fairbanks High.
“Munroe,” he grunted, so accustomed to the surname now it was automatic.
“Mr. Munroe,” came the cheerful voice of the principal. “How lovely to talk to you again.”
Logan sighed, rubbing his eyes tiredly with a thumb and forefinger. “Which one and what’d they do?”
Mrs. Kendra Smith chuckled into the line. It was no surprise to hear from her in the middle of the day. One of the Munroe Hellions was constantly in trouble. Logan wondered how much more patience he was going to have to pray for before the three of them settled the hell down.
“Jean,” she said with a sigh. “She was caught smoking on the grounds during her lunch break.”
I’m gonna break her neck, Logan thought with an inward snarl. “Jesus. Want me to come in?”
“Do you mind?” Mrs. Smith asked carefully. “I fear it’s her third strike this year.”
“Oh, hell. Sorry,” he apologized for swearing immediately. “Yeah, I’ll be there in about half an hour.”
“See you then.”
Logan cradled the phone and let loose a slew of curses that would have shot Ororo’s eyebrows into her hair. At thinking her name, he grasped the phone again and punched in the number for his wife’s cellular.
“Logan,” she answered on the second ring with an exasperated sigh. “What’d they do?”
Smiling to himself at the fact that after two decades nothing surprised her, he patted his pockets, looking for car keys.
“Jeannie was smoking at school.”
“I’m going to dye her hair orange,” Ororo said viciously. “Third strike. Immediate suspension. Damn it.”
“Yeah,” Logan sighed, locating his keys on the counter and grabbing them. “Your daughter’s cruisin’ for trouble.”
“Why is she my daughter?” Ororo’s smile was audible. “Are you going down there?”
“Yep,” he answered quickly, whistling for the dogs. “I’ll bring her home. We grounding her?”
“What else can we do? String her up to a tree by her toenails?”
He tucked his tongue into his cheek, amused at the fact that his wife was irritated. She was damn cute when she got all worked up.
“It’s got potential.” He shook his head as the dogs trotted in, Tigger bumping his leg with her skull affectionately.
“Behave,” Ororo chided him. “Call me when you get back?”
“Course. I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
~**~
When Logan appeared at the school, Jean immediately sank into the chair where she waited. She might have had her father wrapped around her finger most of the time, but even she knew there was a line.
He did not bother to look at the receptionist, his dark eyes meeting the cerulean of his daughter’s. She looked ready to bolt or cry, but he didn’t let up. Jean was a temperamental child, made worse when her mutation manifested at thirteen.
Luckily, her mother’s heritage bred true and she was gifted with weather manipulation. The woman once called Storm taught her daughter the control required, the beauty of her mutation. Unfortunately, Jean’s rebellious streak was starting to rear its ugly head. Words like “restraint” became four-letter to the prickly young woman.
“You an’ me, kid,” he said in a deathly quiet tone that had her cringing. “Are havin’ a nice, long talk when we get home.”
“Yes, Daddy,” she said meekly.
Mrs. Smith came out of her office, silently beckoning Logan inside. The principal was entrusted with more information than many, including the mutations of two of the Munroe children. Though Ororo and Logan agreed no one should treat Jean differently, the school’s principal needed to know what his daughter was capable of.
Fortunately for Jean, even her rebellion knew limitation. She had never, not once, struck out with the ferocity of nature.
Logan gave his daughter a final glare before stepping into Mrs. Smith’s tidy office. She smiled sadly, gesturing for him to take a seat. After he folded himself into an uncomfortable chair, the pretty blonde woman shook her head and sighed.
“She’s having a rough time, Mr. Munroe.”
“I know,” he agreed with a nod. “I don’t know what she’s fightin’ so hard against.”
Mrs. Smith shrugged before folding her hands on the top of her compulsively neat desk. She was a slight woman, but her soft green eyes had a hint of steel in them. This woman fought for the hard cases, the so-called badass students most left to twist in the wind. She had a compassion that made her human, made her exceptionally good at her job.
Logan liked her enormously, though he would prefer to see less of her.
“She’s fifteen,” Mrs. Smith said easily. “Everything is against her, the world, you, her mother, me…she’s just acting out.”
Scrubbing a hand over his face “ mentally noting that the boys, while wild, had never been suspended “ he let his head fall back in despair.
“Was she alone?”
“No,” Mrs. Smith answered primly. “She was with Timothy Gates. I’ve already called his mother.”
Logan could not, would not, stop the slow, borderline sinister smile that curved his mouth. Mary Gates, Ororo’s old friend, was going to ream the hell out of her son for this.
“Oh, yes, the formidable Mrs. Gates.” Mrs. Smith laughed with a wink. “I can’t wait until she gets here.”
“Tim’s a good kid,” Logan defended quickly. “So’s Jean. Someone saw them smoking?”
“I did,” responded Smith airily. “I walked around the building and there they were…”
His eyebrow hitched high on his forehead as she trailed off. When a teacher or principal trailed off that way, nothing good was coming.
“What?” He demanded. “What were they doing?”
Mrs. Smith cleared her throat and tried for dignified. “They were kissing, Mr. Munroe. Cigarettes in hand.”
Crimson covered Logan’s vision. Some kid, that little punk Timothy, was kissing his Jeannie. God, did he have his hands…were they… Oh, God, it was too awful to think about.
“Mr. Munroe?”
Brought sharply back to the present, Logan took several deep breaths to calm himself. Ororo was in for a rant when she got home. At least, with her, he could really let loose and not frighten her. She would understand.
She might actually dye Jean’s hair orange.
“How long is the suspension?”
“Three days,” said Mrs. Smith cautiously. “She’ll have to write an essay on the dangers of smoking, but I don’t see why you can’t take her home now.”
“Thanks,” he said, rising to shake her hand. “I’m sorry about this.”
“She’s a good girl,” Smith returned with a smile as their hands broke apart. “Smart as a whip and pretty as they come. It’s just a rough patch.”
“I hope so.”
With that, he strode from the office and pointed at his daughter.
“You. Up. Follow. Now.”
His daughter was well aware that when her father spoke in monosyllabic sentences, she was in deep, deep trouble. Without a whimper, without cutting her glance to where Timmy sat across the office, she jumped out of her seat and followed her father out of the school.
~**~
Watching as an angry father slammed the car door after a visibly intimidated young woman slid into the truck seat, she grinned from her place across the street.
Still the same old Wolverine, she thought viciously. Still the same animal.
But the girl, she was interesting. All defiance and rebellion, hating the world as her teenage glands demanded it was against her. She was already powerful, already controlled.
He’d been right, after all, her darling mentor. Storm and Wolverine birthed powerful children. They had no right to these brilliant specimens of mutation, to this sedate and easy life here in the North. Nothing was supposed to be easy for a pair of murderers.
Standing motionless as any statue, she waited as the hours dragged by, her ritual of two weeks down to a science now. When the two tall, handsome young men exited the building, flanked by a crew of auburn-haired youths, she smiled once more.
Oh, they were beautiful, she mused. He had been right about everything. Powerful. Beautiful. His.
As the boys piled their friends into the black Firebird, she turned away. There would be time to meet them soon, time to get to know them.
Soon, very soon, Storm and Wolverine would pay for their crimes.
