<span class="fixed-color" style="color:#99ffcc">Alexi leaned into Lucian’s gentle caress, his eyes half closed. </span><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#4dffa6">“It was a… a sudden thing. A whirlwind romance. My father had married her when he found out she was pregnant… he’d tried to do the right thing. But the last thing he’d wanted was to be left a widower with two kids from a woman he barely knew…”</span><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#99ffcc"> he looked back up for a moment, into Lucian’s amber eyes, finding some measure of comfort there. </span><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#4dffa6">“She’d left us a chest…. A box with a few trinkets… some letters. A box enchanted in such a way that only a blood relative could open it.</span><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#99ffcc">” he sighed. </span><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#4dffa6">“And all the books. Everything on that bookshelf Ayla asked you to bring us.”</span>