Ah, young love.
“Fee!” Cora waved at me from the bar. She was holding a pint glass. She grabbed another, then made her way over. “What took you so long? I got you a pint. It’s their version of ale. It’s super tasty, though, really fruity.”
She was taking her ability to drink and eat pretty seriously.
“Guess what?” she asked, but then continued before I could do any actual guessing. “We could have just booked a drake and carriage to get here.”
“The market delivery method?”
“Yeah, I was talking to Bartok, the owner, and he said the Dominus have the number for the service.”
So Mal could have called me a carriage? But instead, he’d forgone fellatio, left his bedmate, and delivered me here personally. Butterflies did a little jig inside my belly. He’d chosen me over a blow job.
Calm down, Fee. “Well, I’ll have to grab that number for next time.”
“Uh-huh.” Cora gave me a sly look. “How was the flight down?”
“Uneventful.”
She scanned my face. “Did you two get it on again?”
“No!”
“Liar.”
“Fine, I may have cupped his balls.”
She spat out her ale. “Fuck, Fee, you don’t mess about, do you?”
I took a gulp of my drink. “I am so fucked, Cora, but I don’t want to discuss it tonight. Tonight, I want to have fun and dance.”
“To this shite music?” Cora wrinkled her nose. “Give me a second, kay?” she sashayed over to the bar and leaned over it to speak to the owner—Bartok, I assumed. He frowned, then shrugged and nodded.
Cora joined Iza and the imp musicians on the podium and gathered them into a huddle.
What the fuck was she doing. Wait, where did she get a microphone from? The tune changed. I recognized this track. It sounded different with flutes and lutes, but it was recognizable, and then the drummer picked up the beat. Cora winked at me, held the mike to her lips, and began to sing.
* * *
“That was fucking awesome!” Cora said as we climbed back into the Dominus quarters via the pinnacle. Bartok had called us a drake when it was time to close up, and he’d even paid for it as a thank you for the epic concert Cora had put on. The place hadn’t rocked so hard in decades, and Cora now officially had a job as lead singer of the Imps. Her rebrand, of course. Iza had stayed behind with her lover, but we’d all planned to go back again next week for another girls’ night out.
I nudged her with my shoulder. “You didn’t tell me you could sing.”
“I didn’t know I could, to be honest, not until I decided I was going to, that I wanted to.” She yawned. “Whoa, I am shattered.”
I gave her a hug. “Go get some sleep.”
“Ha. Bet you never thought you’d be tucking me into bed, did you?”
“Tuck yourself in, you lazy cow.”
She blew me a kiss. “Don’t stay up too late, you sexy bitch.”
She headed off down the stairs to her room. But I dithered. I could go to Mal’s room. Speak to him. No. That was asking for trouble. I mean there was this thing between us, this game where we egged each other on, and it was all very well in public places where the fact anyone could come along was a nice pause button, but in his room, alone … Shit could happen. Not to mention he was probably buried under three female demons.
He needed sex, though.
It wasn’t his fault.
I turned away and made my way to the kitchen. A warm milky drink before bed was just the ticket. Maybe a quick game of Chaos Dimensions to top off an incredible night.
Voices drifted down the corridor as I neared the kitchen.
“We tell her as soon as she gets back,” Mal said.
“No, we don’t have the results back yet,” Conah argued.
“Yeah, sure,” Mal drawled sarcastically, “let’s wait, and then you can tell her how you invaded her privacy as well as hand over the results of said invasion.”
“If it comes back negative, then we don’t need to tell her,” Conah replied.
“Are you listening to yourself?” Mal asked. “You can’t help it, can you?”
“Mal’s right,” Azazel said. “You need to stop, Conah. You didn’t tell me what you suspected, and if I hadn’t come to you with my suspicions today, I have no doubt you would have kept me out of the loop too.”
“I was going to tell you.” Conah sounded weary. “I just need to protect her. I have to protect her.”
“No,” Azazel said. “Fee is mine to protect. You have Kiara.”
My heart lurched at the possessive tone.
“Mal, message Seraphina,” Azazel ordered.
The warm, happy feeling was gone, crushed under the weight of whatever the fuck was waiting to bite me in the ass now. Taking a fortifying breath, I stepped into the room.
“What is it?” I zeroed in on Conah. “What have you done?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You took a DNA sample from me?” I glared at Conah. “When? How?” And then it clicked.
“When you left the comm on my bed. You took the hair out of my brush.”
“All the hair?” Mal gave Con a funny look. “You do know a strand would have sufficed, right?”
Conah’s jaw ticked. “I’m sorry for not—”
I sliced my hand through the air. “No. Fuck your sorry. I don’t want it, and I don’t need it. I give up. Okay. You obviously can’t help yourself, so forget it. Just tell me what you needed it for.” I crossed my arms and waited.
“You healed Grayson with your scythe,” he said.
“Yeah, so?”
“You shouldn’t have been able to do that,” Conah said. “The scythe can only heal reapers, not outliers.”
“Well, that’s obviously bullshit because it worked.”
“The only explanation,” Azazel said, “is that it worked because you were the one doing the healing.”
“At least that’s what we think,” Mal added.
“You remember the way Grayson was attracted to you at the club when we were looking for Peiter’s contact?” Conah pressed.
I nodded, my mouth going dry.
“Well, Loup don’t like the way demons smell,” Conah continued. “But he seemed to like you. At the time, I didn’t think too much of it. I mean, you were a demon raised in the human realm, not pure blood as far as we knew at the time.”
“But then the scythe thing,” Mal said.
“And I saw the way you reacted around him,” Azazel said. “The way a Loup would act around an alpha.”
The penny dropped. “You think I’m a Loup?” I snorted. “Newsflash, I don’t sprout hair and howl at the moon.” My hairy legs did not count.
Azazel leveled his milky gaze on me. “We don’t know anything for certain. We won’t know until we get the results back.”
“I would know if I was Loup.”
“Just like you knew you were part demon?” Mal replied.
Fuck. Wait a second. My gaze flicked to Azazel. “You hid me. You hid my nature with an enchantment …”
Azazel nodded slowly. “My theory is that the same enchantment somehow rendered your Loup gene dormant.”
“But with the enchantment gone …” I was grasping his train of thought, and it was chilling.
“It’ll wake,” Conah said.
I shook my head. “No, this is bullshit.” I looked to Azazel. “You knew my parents. I mean, you spied on them, so you should know if one of them was a Loup.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Azazel said. “Loup males impregnate human women all the time. The man that raised you may not have been your biological father. You know the female population is low for the Loups, so they use human women to carry their cubs. However, the cubs are usually male. It’s very rare for a female to be born of a human-Loup union.”
“If your father was a Loup, he would have come back for you when you reached maturity,” Mal said.
“If he did, he�
The fire my biological mother had been killed in. The one everyone thought I’d died in as a baby.
“But nothing is certain,” Conah added quickly. “The sample is marked anonymous. No one will know if you are a Loup. We can keep it a secret.”
A secret? Another fucking secret. I stared at them. I wasn’t a Loup, I couldn’t be, but if I was, then I’d accept it. I’d accept it as a part of me.
“No. If I’m a Loup, then I need to own it.”
They all three exchanged glances, but it was Azazel that responded.
“And what do you think will happen to you then?” he asked. “You’d be a Loup female in an outlier world filled with males desperate for miasma and a ready womb.”
My stomach clenched. “I’m a Dominus. They can’t touch me.”
Azazel shook his head. “You’d be an outlier, too. A Loup bound by their laws. A Loup first. A Dominus second.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying if you are Loup, and if the Loup packs find out, then they will claim you, and there’ll be nothing we can do about it.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Everything they’d just said, coupled with my body’s reactions to Grayson, indicated the worst because I’d seen Larson from the Rising Pack, heard what he wanted from the female Loups. I didn’t want to be a female in that world. I didn’t want to be an outlier. Panic squeezed my chest with an iron fist.
“Oh, God. They’ll smell me. They’ll know.”
Azazel gripped my shoulders. “No. I won’t let them have you. I will protect you, Fee.”
He almost sounded like he meant it, like he wanted to, not like he had to. I scanned his harsh features, trailing my gaze down his scar and then back up to meet his cloudy eyes.
Even if he wanted to protect me … “What if you can’t?”
Conah made a strangled sound and then shoved his chair back. “There has to be a loophole somewhere.”
“The results aren’t back yet,” Mal reminded us, and the sharp edge of panic ebbed a little.
Who knew he could be the voice of reason?
“I’m not waiting to find out,” Conah said. “I’m going to the archives.” He swept from the room in a move that was deserving of a cape.
“He’s right, though,” Mal said softly. “We need to prepare for the worst.”
And my gut told me the worst would be horrific.
* * *
Fuck sleep. Instead, I settled for killing the huge mountain wolves in the Oriel dimension of Chaos Dimensions. I had several shards to recover, and the quest would keep my mind busy. In this virtual world, I was powerful and safe and super kick-ass.
The sofa dipped to my right and then my left. Did I want company? I was torn, but then Mal’s character joined me on screen.
“Looks like you could use a hand,” he said.
Pfft. I was kicking butt and taking hides, but whatever.
Azazel was silent, watchful to my left. I flicked a quick look at his face to find him focused intently on the screen.
“What is this?” he asked eventually.
“It’s a game, old man,” Mal said. “Technology, you know that thing they have in the human world and the progressive cities of the Underealm. If you ventured out of the dark ages once in a while, you’d know.”
“I prefer the old ways.”
I sliced off a wolf’s head and picked up a violet shard as a reward.
“Nice,” Mal said.
“You can be any avatar?” Azazel asked.
I nodded. “There are seven classes to choose from, and you customize from there.”
He was silent for a long beat. “Interesting.”
I slid another glance his way. He was watching the screen almost longingly. Had he played games in his life? How long since he’d been a child? He was Lilith’s son. Centuries-old. Had she cuddled him, rocked him, or had she handed him over to her blade to train into an assassin so that she could use him when the time came?”
I hit pause on the game.
He frowned and tore his gaze from the screen and fixed it on me. “You no longer wish to play?”
I smiled and accessed the new player screen. “Oh, I’m gonna play, and so are you. But first, we need to create you a character.”
Mal was still beside me. Was he holding his breath?
I raised a brow at Azazel. “Unless you’re too scared to try?”
Azazel’s beautiful lips curved in a smile that brought out his dimples and stalled my heart. “I’m much too old for your reverse psychology, Fee, but I’ll play because it looks amusing.”
Mal let out a slow breath. “Looks like we’re gonna need some snacks.”
I set up Azazel in the character customizing screen—he picked up the controls super quick—and I left him to fiddle while I went in search of Mal.
I found him in the kitchen, standing with his back to me, hands braced on the counter in front of him, head bowed. A soft red glow emanated from his right hand.
“Mal?” I took a step toward him.
He tucked his glowing hand into his pocket and turned to face me. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
I looked down at his pocket. “Why is your hand glowing?”
“Heh, I was hoping you missed that.” He pulled his glowing hand from his pocket and flexed his fingers. The glow slowly ebbed. “Souls that need a trip to purgatory.”
“Your staff has souls in it?”
He winced. “Please, Fee, no lectures, okay. I know I’m supposed to take the rippers and the malignant straight to purgatory when I collect them, but I fucking hate that place.”
So, he was avoiding.
He winced again. “Thing is, there’s only so long you can hold off on transferring the buggers before it gets … uncomfortable.”
His tone was light, matter-of-fact, but there was an edge of darkness in his emerald eyes. If I didn’t know better, I’d call it fear.
“Mal—”
His expression hardened, and so did his tone. “I don’t want to talk about it. The big P is an off-limits topic.”
I flinched.
He took a deep breath. “So, what about Az, eh? You know, I’ve asked him to play with me several times.” He smiled suggestively. “He always turns me down. He’d rather hunt outliers who break the laws, or putter around his chambers. You know he occupies most of the fourth floor? Momma’s favorite.” He was rambling. “But yeah, he never wants to just hang out. I didn’t think he knew how. But then you ask, and boom, he’s all dimples.”
He was covering. Diverting from the whole purgatory thing. To press or not to press. I decided to give him a pass this time. After all, he’d advocated telling me the truth when Conah wanted to hide it. Plus, there was no ignoring the underlying desperation in his tone, no ignoring the edge of fear, and that frightened me more than anything because Mal wasn’t afraid. Mal was cocky, sure, and confident.
“I guess he’d rather play with you,” Mal continued with a shrug. “Not that I blame him.”
I opted for taking his cue.
Injecting a teasing tone into my voice, I peered up at him through my lashes. “Well, I am prettier than you.” I wiggled my brows. His throat bobbed, and his brows pinched. “More charming, intelligent, better company, and—”
He fisted the front of my shirt, yanked me to him, and crushed his lips against mine. My mouth parted on instinct to accept his tongue, and then my hands were sliding into his hair, fingers sliding through silk, caressing his scalp as our tongues wrestled. Fuck, he had luscious lips, and his hair felt like heaven between my fingers. He tasted like sherbet—tart but compelling, and I wanted to eat him up.
He broke the kiss and pushed me away slightly, his eyes bright as they looked down on my warm face. Kissing him was like drowning but not giving a shit about air, but surfacing was painful. Seeing the agony on his face was torment.
“Fuck, Fee.” He raked my face with his gaze. “I like you. I really fucking do.” His mouth turned down in anguish, and then he stepped around me and opened the nearest cupboard. “Looks like we’re out of the crisps you like.” His voice shook a little.
I cracked my shields and bit back a gasp at a cacophony of feelings that washed over me. The most poignant of all, the sharpest of them all, was the cutting sorrow that sliced into my chest like an obsidian dagger.
“Popcorn okay?” This time his tone was light and cheery, even as his sorrow intensified.
Tears pricked my vision, and I slammed down my shields. Oh, God. How did he do that? How did he pretend? What was he hiding? I wanted to push, to ask, but instinct warned me to hold off. To wait until he was ready.
“Fee?”
“Uh-huh.” I nodded. “Popcorn is fine.”
He didn’t turn to look at me.
I was glad because I needed a minute. Just one minute.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mal
It’s the sweetest hour of my life and the most painful. Being that close to her and inhaling her unique scent. Watching her laugh as we pummel the fuck out of the enemy on screen and seeing Azazel relax for the first time in fucking forever, all the while knowing that it won’t last—not for me.
I close my bedroom door and strip off as I pad toward my bed. Her face fills my vision. Her big blue eyes so filled with compassion. Eyes that darken with desire when I touch her, and those lips, those fucking plump, pillowy lips that were made to be kissed. I touch my mouth with my fingertips then sweep my tongue over my bottom lip. I can still taste her. Sweet like the juice of a ripe pomegranate.
The bed dips beneath me as I lay down and close my eyes.
Fee is a breath of fresh air. A wake-up call for us all. We’ve been living by rote for so long, going slowly numb, and then she comes in—a beautiful rose with thorns that prick us into wakefulness, that make us feel again. I thought Conah was a fool at first. Mooning over her.
She’s nothing special, I told him. Lie. Big fat lie. Fee makes me feel more than the urge to fuck. She makes me want to connect, and that’s dangerous. Connections are dangerous because connections bring hope, and there can be no hope for the likes of me.
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