[Carmen] When Spencer finished his drink, he looked at the cup as if it had betrayed him. Stephanie took her hand back and reached into her purse. She pulled out a little notepad with a fluffy-tailed pen attached to it.After she wrote her name and number on a piece of paper, she pulled it from the book and handed it to him. Spencer took the paper and looked at it as if it were the most sacred of treasures. Stephanie stood up and got close to him, bending down next to his ear. Spencer stiffened.“I’ll be waiting to hear from you, Spencer Santos,” she murmured softly, then kissed his cheek.Spencer was so stunned all he could do was watch her leave. His work had never called for him to romance women. He had never flirted, kissed, or been intimate. When he had to blend in with other men, he talked about his fake high school sweetheart and told them she was the only woman he had been with. If they teased him, he gave them a deadly glare, and they stopped.He stared at the phone number in his hand and put his other hand up to his cheek. It was as if that interaction showed him a whole new world. He got up and left, heading back to the room he was renting.When he got there, he took off his shoes and knelt in front of the crucifix on his wall, then started praying. It wasn’t in English, but I could feel how desperate he was. Spencer was asking his god for guidance. He showed a lack of complete dedication to his work for the first time..A couple of weeks passed. He didn’t call Stephanie. Instead, she found him again, this time while he was working. It was the whole reason he was in that city. He was hunting another monster.Stephanie tracked him down and saw him in the middle of the fight with the creature. She didn’t even question it she immediately started casting spells on the thing. Spencer was shocked, but so was the monster. Vines and roots grew from the monster’s mouth and the slits where its nose should be.Spencer didn’t waste any time. He started up his prayer again as he fought the creature. The creature was not targeting him with its strikes anymore. Instead, it was dealing with the more pressing need of getting the plants out of its airway. It was enough to help him win the fight against the monster quickly.Once it was dead, Spencer put away his sword and ran to Stephanie. Her eyes widened, and she started shaking. She must have finally realized what was happening and thought he was some sort of hunter.“Are you alright?” Spencer asked. “You did that, didn’t you? You used plants to make the demon stop.”“Please don’t kill me, Spencer,” she whispered as she backed up.“What are you?”“I’m… I’m a plant witch. Please. Don’t hurt me.”His eyes softened, and he put his hand out, frowning when she winced. He waited with his hand out until she took it hesitantly. Spencer knelt on one knee and kissed her hand. He looked like a knight with his lady.“I am not a hunter of supernaturals. I am a warrior selected by God to fight demons and those who would do evil acts using the power of darkness.”“Oh… I don’t know a lot about human religion, but I do know they have something against witches.”He smiled at her. “Not those of us who know the truth of the world. There are many good and pure witches in the world. I know you are one of them. If you weren’t, I would feel it. This isn’t a safe place for you, though. You should never have followed me here.”Spencer stood and started guiding her out of the warehouse they were in. He had already killed the humans who summoned the demon, so there was no one to see him with her. Stephanie looked at him as if he were amazing. He sure seemed that way. Her knight in human street clothes.From there, I watched their romance bloom. They dated cautiously and chastely for a year. He would come back to the city where she lived in between work for his masters. When he told them about meeting her and falling in love, they smiled warmly at him and congratulated him.The men who had raised him told him this was never meant to be forever for him. They told him their god wanted him to be happy and if it was meant to be, they would give him fewer missions. They encouraged him to marry her and start a family. It surprised me. I thought they would fight it more.“Even if she is a child of the goddess?” Spencer asked.At that, they faltered for a moment. “Is she a shapeshifter or a vampire?” the leader asked.“She’s a plant witch,” he answered.They visibly relaxed. “That is fine. They are more human than the others. We do not harm the children of the goddess as long as they do not harm us, but we also don’t condone the warriors we raise being involved with the less human ones.”Spencer nodded. I practically growled at being called less human. I’m more human than some humans I’d met.“Before you alter your role in our organization, we need you to go work for a few months in our sister organization. While you are gone, we’ll work something out that will be conducive to raising your family.”He thanked them and left the room. I didn’t follow him. Instead, staying with the older men in the room. They continued their meeting in the English they had been speaking. “So it is decided. Will we release him to the goddess and her children?” one man asked.“Yes, but before we do, we’ll make sure he kills as many demons as possible,” the leader said.“Will we remove his mark?” another asked.“No. He is still one of us. That magic will help him. The persecution of witches is forever ongoing. If he is to protect his family, then he needs the power we granted him when he entered the order. May God watch over him.”The other men nodded and muttered the same words. On some level, it seemed like they were using him, but on another, it seemed like they cared for him. I knew they raised him and paid him well for what he was doing.It appeared they always figured their charges would one day retire and needed funds to live their lives. I couldn’t dislike them. They didn’t look like they were planning to make him train his children to do the same work or anything like that.I was pulled back to Spencer. From there, time went by fast again. I wondered how long I had been sitting there, holding his hand. Was I going to be here until the timelines met up?Stephanie and Spencer got married. The leader and several of the men who helped raise him came to the wedding. They were polite to the witches and looked like a bunch of fathers watching their son get married. They were totally normal.After a year, Spencer and Stephanie had a son. They named him Gideon. Not even a whole year later, they had a daughter they named Marcia. That seemed like all they wanted, because there was never another pregnancy. I watched as Spencer split his time between his family and his work.I thought a man with nothing to live for was deadly, but, now I saw that a man with everything to live for was just as deadly, if not more. He would do everything in his power to get home to his family.He doted on his family, and they loved him with all their hearts. As time went on, he and Stephanie fell even deeper in love. She worried about him when he was gone and, once both kids started school, Stephanie asked him if he would quit his job.She wanted to move the family to Utah, to the coven town they lived in. She told him they would have a lot more family around and it was good for the kids to get to know their cousins. Plus, they would need to have training for their magic.Spencer agreed with her. When he called in to tell them he was quitting, they offered him one last job with twice as much pay as usual. It was too tempting. Spencer convinced Stephanie that he should do it. It was only three weeks.A few days before he finished, he got a call from his masters. They told him that Stephanie and the children had been in an accident. They told him none of them had survived. His face drained of color.Instead of handing the job off, he went after the demon and those who were responsible for it before he planned to. Normally, Spencer carefully and thoughtfully handled everything to eliminate the threat once everything was known. The way he fought hurt my heart. He was more bloodthirsty than he had ever been.When they were dead, he went straight to his hotel to get his things and left to go home. It took him a day or two to get there. He went to the morgue to identify their bodies with a stoic expression on his face. His eyes were hollow as he looked at them.Stephanie’s family came to help and had the bodies shipped to their coven town in Utah to be taken care of. Spencer packed a bag with some essentials and two pictures of his family. He disappeared into the night, leaving Stephanie’s family to deal with their home and possessions.That was when he stopped praying to his god. Part of him died when he lost his family. He never really cried. Sometimes tears tried to come, but I could see him push it all down. I watched him get a final tattoo. Their names on his chest in a teardrop dangling from the date they died.After that, he wrote a check and sent it to Stephanie’s family, giving them all the money he had, and never touched the accounts again. He also never reached out to the men who had raised him. For all intents and purposes, Spencer was dead as well.He floated around the western US, avoiding Utah, and ended up in Oregon. He had been here for a little over a year. A few vampires tried to force him to feed them, but learned the hard way that he was not the one to fuсk with. He’d gotten into some fights with rogues, but always won.Spencer would not let himself die. I could see it in his eyes. Living without them was his penance for not being there for them. It was how he fed the guilt.The night the creature attacked him, he picked a safe enough place. He didn’t try to be where the creature was attacking. It attacked him anyway. He never woke up, not even when it bit him.I saw Dennis and Sybil save him, and I was more grateful to them than before. Now that I knew his story, I didn’t want him to die. He needed to heal. It wasn’t his fault his family died.Darkness clouded my vision again. It was nice to see, but I was actually happy to be in the dark again. I didn’t want to see the painful emptiness in Spencer’s eyes again.“Well,” he asked. “How am I?”“Your injuries aren’t something that can be healed with medicine or magic. They are older than the one on your neck. Stay here for a few more days and have some time resting in a safe place. I’m sure Echo and Victor would love to have you here until you are healthy enough to continue on your journey,” I said.“You don’t look so good, Carmen,” Harmony whispered.“I’m not feeling great. Sorry, I’m still new to using this magic. Austin, can you take me to another room so I can lie down?” I asked.“Sure.”He was at my side in a few moments. I released Spencer’s hand and let Austin help me up and guide me out of the room. He helped me to another guest room and laid me down on the bed there.“What else do you need?” Austin asked.“Can you lie down with me? I don’t want to be alone,” I replied.I heard him walk over to the other side of the bed and crawl in with me. Austin pulled me over to rest my head on his chest, and he wrapped his arms around me. It wasn’t my mate, but the feeling of being comforted by my pack was almost as good.“Was it really terrible?” he whispered.“It was interesting, but ended badly. I’ll talk about it later. Just give me time to process,” I told him.Austin didn’t say anything else. He just held me and let me exist with him. I was grateful for that.