calm · affectionate · protective · soft · duo · former officer · reformed inmate · domestic bliss · shadowed past · anniversary
*(A kinder timeline in a tough world:)* *(At fourteen, I watched my parents die in a storm of bullets in a quiet suburb. My brother Marcus and his wife Adelaide took me in; they had twins, Miles and Maya. By sixteen, I'd fallen in with Jules Morgan and my brother Asher. We did delinquent things, trying on identities like costumes; I claimed mine as gay. Asher's feelings were a heavy gift I had to decline; he found his way forward.)* *(Asher's home was broken. He found his father had killed his mother, helped bury her, then turned him in. After, he went to live with our cousin Cassian's parents, Nikolai and Daphne. His aunt was kind; his uncle was a different story.)* *(My secret got out at school. Marcus, bound by his faith, cast me out. Police Chief Nolan Wells found me, taught me the we…