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“Go to fucking Hell,” I yelled as a black abyss opened up in front of me.

Everyone took a step back to avoid its reach as Rilas’s soul was ripped out of me. Several others seemed to go with him, getting sucked up by the darkness. I caught his desperate face before he disappeared into the impenetrable void in the floor. The large hole closed behind him, and all my energy was sapped with it.

I collapsed.

31

Silas

“Read the notes she left again, lad. Use that impossibly clever mind of yours to figure out the code and translate what that wily old fox wrote in her bleeding journal,” I growled, dragging a hand through my hair in frustration. “There’s something, I know it.”

Lev stared at me with that pitying look of his while leaned against the doorframe. “There’s nothing. We’ll just have to—”

“Wait. I know, lad. You keep saying that like I haven’t heard you blabbering on and on about how what she did was a huge tax on her body and she’ll need time to recover,” I grumbled angrily, cradling the unconscious woman against my chest.

I’d barely left her side. The moments I had were either to shower or piss. Otherwise, I’d been serving as her resting place for nearly two weeks now, and it’d stay that way until she woke up. Even if it took a year or a decade to wake her.

The blonde wanker with a shameless grin and obnoxious energy peeked his head into the room. “Oh? Is he still grumbling about her being asleep? I keep telling you, scary assassin man, that it’s only expected she’d be comatose aftersending back a demon.”

“And I keep reminding you, mutt, if not for this generous goddess in my arms, you’d be a trophy on my wall,” I threatened.

“Noted,” was all the blonde wanker said.

He practically frolicked intomybedroom, the least worried of the bunch. At least that huge bastard had the decency to seem concerned the longer the beauty slumbered. He’d checked on her more than anyone else.

The two phantoms were no longer undead or invisible. In all the mess, they’d somehow become shapeshifters in that wolf bastard’s place. The lad thought it had something to do with Bear Claw crossing over. I couldn’t care less how it happened, only that it did.

I liked it better when I couldn’t hear or see them. Well, at least this blonde wanker. Had it not been for the fear of what my rebel might do to me, I would’ve thrown his arse to the curb the first day he mouthed off inmy home.

As it were, I was at the mercy of Nika’s kind heart. The last thing I wanted was for her to wake up with problems to fix. She shouldn’t have anything to worry about but what to do with the new life she’d share with her handsome rogue. Whatever she wanted, I’d give her.

So, I’d play nice for now.

The torture of having her right here in my arms but somewhere I couldn’t go was what kept me barely sleeping andeating. I didn’t dare leave her side. I’d be damned if I wasn’t the one she woke up to. But as the days went on and she stayed deathly still and terrifyingly unconscious, I grew less confident she’d ever wake.

Fate was a cruel bloody mistress if she took her from me after all we’d done, but I’d go to the After to collect her myself if that was what it took.

The big fucker strolled in and eyed the woman on my chest. “I’ll watch over her. You should—”

“If you’re going to come in here and natter at me about how I need to take care of myself because she’d never want to see me this way, don’t. Out with you lot,” I snarled, dangerously close to tossing these meddling gobshites out of the house altogether.

The numpties scattered with another glare, and I was finally alone to worry on my own. I peeked at the woman in my arms and brushed purple hair from her eyes. She was so bloody beautiful like this, and it killed me that all I could do was hold her close and pray that Lilith sent her back to me.

I’d lived more lifetimes in the last year than I had in all the centuries I’d been alive. We’d spent our entire relationship running from a demon with my brother’s face, and when he was gone, the world saved by my goddess, it felt odd. I never considered what it might look like to live together once everything had been resolved.

Of course, I’d never be that lucky.

I’d rushed to catch Nika when her eyes closed and she collapsed, the darkness in front of her disappearing from sight. I couldn’t wake her. I refused to let anyone touch her for days, trying everything to rouse the slumbering beauty. The lad used his cleverness on me though, and reminded me that my bird wouldn’t survive long without sustenance and care.

The lad had ways to nourish her. He kept Nika hydrated and fed with magical intervention he’d scored off one of his contacts,but the fear she’d never wake grew in me every day. The only reason I hadn’t lost it was that the lad didn’t seem worried at all. I expected him, more than most, to be losing his bloody mind, but he came in every few hours with a calm smile and tender hand.

To distract myself, I’d used all the time spent holding my unconscious goddess to plan our future together. It’d take some convincing, but I’d secure places for the others so we could have our own if I had to. I’d even consider living among Normies to find some semblance of peace. I didn’t plan to share her more than I already had. It was my turn to get her undivided attention.

I wanted to build a life with this woman the way I never imagined doing with anyone. I wanted the white picket fence dream those Normies always blathered on about. I wanted the little babes with her face and smile. I wanted the simple, mundane joys found in the days spent with the one you loved. For once, I considered a future where I wasn’t a mercenary; I was simply hers.

Nika’s arm moved and wrapped around me. A sigh escaped her mouth, and her head shifted a little on my chest. Like I’d been struck by a bolt of lightning, everything in my body contracted. It was the first she’d moved in two weeks. I waited, heart fluttering at the feel of her warm breath and squeezing arm.

I chanced a look at her, afraid to find my bird still slumbering, but a gorgeous pair of icy blues met my hopeful glance. Her lips were lifted in the most breathtakingly beautiful smile of my entire bloody fucking life, and I became the blubbering troll I’d always been.