Page 18

B rass’s tense expression was what finally had Iron wrenching his power away from the shard, extinguishing his flames, and doubling over onto his knees. Around him, his brothers had all adopted the same stance, with a few rolling out their necks or cracking their jaws to soothe whatever the hell they had all just lived through. Once the thrum of his power had passed, Iron shook off the rest of his fatigue and forced his legs into the jog that carried him toward the relic’s shard. The thing was glowing brighter, its curved stem pulsing with the ethereal light of their combined angel fire. But when Iron went to pick it up, the thing shivered out of his grip, dancing and spinning along the flat slab of concrete, until it finally puttered out and seemed to power down.

Titan joined him at his elbow, crouching down to examine the lifeless relic. “Huh. Not sure what I was expecting exactly, but I was hoping for something . . .”

“Exciting? Productive? Something along the lines of a fireworks show that could pump out enough magic to power up one or two galaxies, instead of the alarm clock’s worth of wattage this thing gave off?” Chrome picked up the lone dingy arm of a mannequin that was getting far too handsy near his foot and drop-kicked it into a not-so-nearby junk pile.

More of the angels joined Iron as he lifted the shard and snuck it back into its test tube. He wasn’t usually one for letting his emotions show, but certain levels of disappointment were impossible to hide, even for him. Iron’s shoulders fell. “It was barely warm. I can’t believe that didn’t do anything. We’re all almost back to full power. And the thing was clearly resonating with that! Shit, I was hoping?—”

“It did do something.”

Brass stepped forward, his stature having mostly recovered from whatever effects dispelling his fire had on him. His long black trench coat painted his form in its usual quiet lethality, except something in his posture belied the casualness of his composure. A lingering tension, the one Iron had noticed a moment ago, still held sway over his brother, and that shit had bad news written all over it.

Iron tucked the shard into his flannel pocket and bobbed his chin at Brass. “Talk to me.”

“I need to know what everyone’s feeling. Right now, tune into your celestial senses and tell me if you notice anything different.”

The demolition site grew eerily quiet for several heartbeats as each of the angels closed their eyes and did exactly that. Steel, Rhode, and Bronze were the first to return their attention to the group, with a whole lot of headshaking happening. Chrome, Tungsten, and Titan, however, came away with a more solemn look, and Iron’s insides twisted into a knot. All three of them wore an expression that had been . . . triggered. Whatever they’d finally picked up on wasn’t enough to notice outright, nor was it enough to ignore entirely once it’d been made known to them.

Iron, on the other hand, sensed absolutely bupkis.

Chrome massaged the center of his chest. “What the hell is that?”

“Do you remember what it felt like to move through the realms?” Brass asked.

There were headshakes, thinned lips, and a boatload of disappointment as every one of them tried to recall a behavior that had once been as natural as breathing.

“My flames were the last to hit the relic,” Brass added. “When they did, I got sort of a kickback of energy. It was like a returning ripple after you’ve floated your arm through the water. A sympathetic bump against my power. Almost like an acknowledgment.”

Iron scratched at his beard along his jawline. “The magic was calling to you?”

Brass shook his head. “I’m not entirely certain what to make of it, but it damn sure reminded me of what it felt like when I used to move through the realms. When I’d pulse my celestial power out and hear the energetic reverberations from each of the different worlds. That was how the tracks were laid down, if you remember. It was a magical call-and-answer sort of system.”

“Holy shit. Yeah, I remember. Man, I haven’t thought about that in so long.” Steel ran his fingers through his short blond hair and let a smile of bygone fondness break free.

“I felt it,” Brass said, punching at his chest. “It was the echo of that magic, the magic we used to use to travel to the Empyrean and other realms. Don’t get me wrong, that stuff was faint, but it was there. Like the hum of a car battery that needs just a bit more juice before it can fire up fully.”

A torrent of shock had punched all the air from Iron’s chest. He threw his hand out, grabbed the first thing he could find—a graffitied jersey barrier—and plopped his ass in front of it, more than happy to let the steel-reinforced hunk of concrete support him for the moment.

The ramifications spiraled out of control from there, with every one of his brothers running through the very likely scenario that they could, one day soon, actually make it back home.

A soft relief tickled the inside of his chest as every single sentinel and seraph around him let the weight of the discovery bring them to the ground in one form or another.

“We can finally go home,” Titan breathed, leaning his athletic bulk against the side of a dumpster.

Damn. He’d gone and said it. The five words that had eaten away at them for eons. The main thing that ruled their actions in a world that could barely rule itself. Each one of his brothers had found sparks of the Empyrean’s guiding light on Earth. Each one of them had not only regained their long-lost powers but found their soul’s bond and purpose.

Each one of them had finally found a means to return to their home and deliver the might of the Empyrean down on Cyro’s head once and for all.

All of them except him. He was the broken axle holding the caravan back, and the reason had just been illuminated for all to see.

“I need my full fire,” he whispered, knowing everyone could still hear him. “Once my powers are free, we’ll all be able to hit the relic with the full force of our celestial magic. There won’t be anything to hold it back, no restrictions or breaks in the resonance between realms.” He swallowed around the enormity of it all. “We’ll be able to return to the Empyrean.”

A sad awareness passed from one brother to another, until their combined realization settled heavily on Iron’s thick shoulders once again.

If he wanted to make sure his brothers finally made it home, he needed Anna to help them get there.

And for the life of him, he couldn’t see a way around it.

Anna smiled into the screen and settled for adjusting her glasses, instead of rubbing her palms into her eyes like she wanted. The morning was off to a banger of a start. It was only her first nutrition counseling session of the day and already she was fighting off the eye twitches.

She’d somehow misplaced her low-grade glasses, the ones she wasn’t worried about accidentally dropping in the toilet or sending skittering under the bed, as she’d been known to do when pregnancy coordination hit her hard during her three a.m. bathroom visits. That pair had been her default when she wasn’t working, and the frames were the most comfortable, unlike her work glasses, which still felt too stiff on her face, even after months of owning them. The result was her having to finally adapt to her proper prescription and muddle through the visual transition that came with it. Likewise, the coffee had been a mistake, but there was no going back from that. She’d broken the seal on the habit the second that bag of ground beans had found its way into her cabin on the heels of a snowstorm and a reluctant angel savior.

She’d have to cut it with decaf tomorrow.

“And that’s why I had to buy a new food scale. As you know, I have no love for the imperial system, and the scale I have doesn’t do grams. That’s why I overindulged in those twenty-five-percent-less-sugar brownies, I think. You know, the ones with the added fiber? I even put black beans in them like my neighbor who’s in that weekly walking group recommended. Not sure why she wanted to bite down on beans in her brownies, but once you get past the texture, they weren’t bad.” The sallow face of the man in front of her was only heightened by his balding pate and equally shiny mustache.

Martin Belknap, a sixty-year-old with an eye toward retirement and a sudden penchant to reverse decades of damage caused by the Sad American Diet, was always her first appointment on Wednesdays. Ever the punctual client, Marty usually sat in her virtual waiting room for a good fifteen minutes before she opened up the call each session. No matter how many times she reminded him he didn’t need to be so early, he always responded the same way: “If someone’s carving time out of their day to spend it with me, the least I can do is show up. I never want to have someone waiting on me. Besides, life’s too short to owe anyone what you could easily give for free.”

She used to think it was cute, that it was some sort of wisdom he was saving to pass down to his progeny when he finally became a grandpa.

Now, that adage rang like a record scratch on repeat.

“I hate owing people. That’s how ghosts are made.”

Her own words, the ones that had carried through a pre-storm maze of cellular towers to a pseudo-stranger’s phone once upon a time, seemed like forever ago, and despite what had happened between her and Iron, she couldn’t help but think she was still stuck around waiting.

Anna tapped a pen on her notebook, making sure to keep it out of the camera’s view. “I think you’re supposed to usually blend the beans up with some water first, then add them to the brownie batter,” she responded as helpfully as she could. “Next time, when you have a sweet urge like that, it’s perfectly fine to portion out a regular brownie. Not everything needs to be about fiber and sugar. A treat is a treat, and we all need those in our lives. Problems arise when we rely too heavily on them in our diets or, conversely, neglect them to the point where they occupy the majority of our focus. It’s all about balance, and that’s the hardest lesson to learn.”

“Don’t I know it,” he said, patting the top half of a stomach that greedily took up more than its fair share of the camera frame.

From across the hall in her bedroom, her phone rang. Good thing that part of her virtual office policy mandated that she leave the thing in a different room. Fortunately, she had time to take the call, as she’d already gone fifteen minutes over with Marty and her next client wasn’t for another forty-five minutes.

“I think we’ll end there for today. A new scale sounds like it might be a good fit, if it’ll create habits that promote consistency. I know data accuracy is important to you, so try it out for a week and we’ll go from there.”

Anna said her goodbyes and, after hanging up her headset, went to grab her phone. Her stomach lurched.

Two missed calls. From Iron.

Just seeing his name on her screen was enough to send her into a tailspin. The hurt that clogged her throat was still there, pressing reminders into her trachea of how they’d ended their last conversation, with her defending not only her judgment and decisions but her desire to know more about a man who was clearly running scared. And people said some fucked-up shit when they were scared. She should know. But after three days of trying to process that which couldn’t be processed without more information, she was left with nothing to do except wait and hope he’d keep his word and call.

Now he was doing exactly that, apparently. Then why was she so uneasy about it?

The phone started chirping in her hand again, and she answered it.

He was in her ear before she even had a chance to dole out her greeting. “Anna.”

“Hi.”

She was wrong if she said his voice didn’t still affect her. Oh, it did, and she hadn’t realized how warm her small cabin felt when his baritone words were drifting around her, bouncing off the rafters with their soothing vibrations.

“You doing okay?”

Could there be a more loaded question?

Her mind drifted to the half-demolished box of Fruit Loops on her kitchen counter and the fruit bowl she’d left untouched since he’d last arranged it days ago.

“Yeah. Just fine.” If you count thinking less and less of yourself because you, once again, make questionable decisions when it comes to men. And even though you’re so good at it, you hate waiting. Like, a lot.

The phone fell silent for a beat, then Iron’s heavy exhale forced her to take a seat on the bed. “I’m sorry,” he said. The phrase was quick but not clipped. “I need to address a shitload of misunderstandings.”

“Well, it’s always best to start at the top.”

“The top.” He scoffed. “How about we start at the core? I left something unsaid, and I need to correct that.”

“Oh?”

“To me, you and your baby are a package deal, and yeah, at first, I didn’t know what to make of it.”

“You didn’t know what to make of a pregnant woman?”

“No! I didn’t know what to make of . . . Fuck, I didn’t know why the prime mages, if they even existed at all, put you and your baby in my path to care for. I couldn’t parse out that sort of responsibility or how to nurture what I desperately wanted to without putting you both at risk. And I realized recently that I can’t.”

Outside her window, there was no wind. No angry snarling weather. No torrential rain or drifting snow. There was nothing to portend the Doom 2.0 that was coming for her when Iron finally let the other shoe drop. Already, her nose began to twitch with the increased blood funneling to her cheeks and tear ducts.

“I realized,” he continued, “that I can’t be willing to play high stakes without high risk as well.”

Her eyes had just begun to mist over when her brain stalled out. “I’m sorry. What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, if you’re up for it, I’m willing to try. I’m happy to bring you and your baby into my world, meet my family, their mates, hear all the stupid theories that come out of Chrome’s mouth whenever he gets a few microbrews in him. All of it. I’m willing to hold your hand, guide you through the very messy and, to be clear, really fucking dangerous shit show that can be my life, if you’re willing to spend some more time with me. Time where we’re not waiting out a storm or battling over word scores.”

Anna sniffed. Shit! She didn’t mean to let him hear that. “It wasn’t really a battle, I don’t think. The game just ended early. I would have won eventually.”

He chuckled softly. “There’s no doubt in my mind about that.”

A dark flutter kicked at her insides, and she grinned behind the back of her hand. “But also, you need to know something.”

“Shoot.”

“From here on out, when it comes to what I want, I will absolutely one hundred percent not wait around for anything or anyone a single minute more.” Her mind spun around a thought, and she fired it out before she could summon the courage to corral it back. “And I want to kiss you again. I want you to want to kiss me again.”

Iron’s breaths grew heavy in the receiver, and for a second, Anna worried she’d said too much. But then his voice was in her ear once more, laced with an edge that was far more foreboding than she’d ever heard. “You can’t say that stuff to me.”

“Why not?”

“Because there hasn’t been a single minute of the last three days where I have not stroked myself to the memory of your taste.”

Holy fucking shit balls!

The heat in Anna’s cheeks rocketed up to volcanic levels. Then her unhelpful sex-starved pregnancy brain took over the controls. “I’d like to see that sometime.”

She clamped a hand over her mouth. Whoever this woman was who’d hijacked Anna and replaced her with a creature who cheerfully spoke her mind without regard for consequences either deserved an all-expenses-paid vacation to the Tropics or a prison sentence. Jury was still out on that one.

“Deal.”

“I, uh, haven’t accepted your apology yet, you know.”

“I’ve noticed. Tell me what to do to change that. I can be very accommodating and open to persuasion under the right circumstances.”

Do not think of him stroking himself. Do not think of him stroking himself. “You need to do something for me, something that’ll make you as uncomfortable and anxious as I’ve been.”

Regret heightened his tone. “I can’t apologize enough for what I’ve done. My actions were beyond shameful. But if it’s my discomfort you’re after, I may have the perfect thing.”

“Oh? That’s what?”

“Fuck. I can’t believe I’m going to even bring this up.”

“The horse has left the barn now. No use trying to call it back.”

“Fine. Tomorrow night, I’m picking you up at six.”

“Where are we going?”

“A bar.”

Any excitement that had previously flushed her body red-hot quickly began evaporating. Bars and pregnant women didn’t usually mix. “Oh.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“I don’t exactly know what to think, because you haven’t told me.”

“Do you really have a response for everything?”

“No. Sometimes I sleep.”

The boisterous laugh that bellowed through the phone was like air rushing into the lungs of a drowning woman. The happiness chasing it at hearing his joy was enough to erase every gloomy thought from the past three days.

“There’s a bar me and my brothers go to every now and then on Thursday nights.”

“Your . . . brothers?”

“Yup. All seven of them, plus their mates. It’s about as socially grueling for someone like me as you can expect, and not because I don’t love my family.”

Anna gripped the phone tighter. “What am I missing? What happens on Thursday nights?”

Iron groaned into the phone, and for the first time, she began to question the bargain she’d just struck with him.

“Trivia.”