Page 27

T he beginning of spring was always a doozy of a deception in New England. It either served up the ultimate omen of good things to come or plopped down the cruelest twist of climate trickery. Some years, several of the shops and restaurants in Aurora would offer special treats for tourists brave enough to bet their vacation dollars that the quaint little town would have been thawed out by then. Between the piles of unmelted snow and the curious crocuses, it wasn’t uncommon to find offerings of free ice cream cones or iced coffees during those early days of the season. Whether the springtime celebrations actually held any sway over Mother Nature was anyone’s guess, but it didn’t stop Anna from bundling up in her puffer coat and nabbing a free waffle cone with soft serve mint and chocolate sprinkles every time.

The only difference on this occasion was the angel holding her hand while he escorted her to a park bench where they could enjoy their ice cream.

The past several days had been a whirlwind of emotions Iron had forced Anna to dredge up from her sentiment basement, dust off, and wrap around her with all the luster of a new pair of patent-leather shoes and ultra-glossy lipstick. Under his very persuasive encouragement, he’d gotten her out of the house almost every single day for a lunch date. And on the days when the weather decided to show its ass, as it often did in the weeks leading up to spring, he was at her door, takeout in hand, and his metallic power humming its you power down or I’ll do it for you warning around the finer workings of her laptop. She’d learned the hard way early on that if she didn’t start enforcing her time limit boundaries with her clients and let those calls bleed into her lunch hour, she’d have an apology e-mail to send later that afternoon explaining how her laptop mysteriously shut down mid-call.

Yeah . . . it’d taken only two of those e-mails before she, and her clients, got the literal memo going forward.

One by one, Iron had begun breaking down walls Anna had never even realized she’d put up. Things like mostly nutritionally balanced freezer meals and granola bars had been replaced with home-cooked spreads and really damn good granola bars. Like, the soft and chewy kind made by one of the bakeries in town that loaded each bar up with just the right amount of maple syrup, nuts, and chocolate morsels.

The kind of food with an expiration date that wasn’t measured in months or years but days.

And her body freaking loved it.

At some point, Anna forgot to apologize for her pregnancy cravings, regardless of whether they were food or sex related. For a woman who had lived her entire life expressing regret for her natural inclinations, whether they be nonreciprocal kindness, her sweet tooth, or occasionally wanting sex anywhere other than the bedroom, it was a whole new world.

Iron, too, had been just as voracious and accommodating, to the point where she no longer had to ask, then justify what she wanted. The habit, which had been ingrained into her since she was young, had been scrubbed away with the sturdy strokes of Iron’s presence in her life. He was always there, feeding her, pleasuring her, supporting her in ways she didn’t know how to accept, and like being repeatedly exposed to any foreign custom, she was learning. And loving it.

She just wished the weight pressing down on her core wasn’t solely related to the baby.

“Your next OB appointment is on April fourteenth, right?” Iron settled them both on the bench and handed Anna her ice cream cone with an obscene number of napkins wrapped around the base to prevent leakage.

Oh, that man.

“Yup,” she said around a mouthful of soft mint. “It’s at nine thirty in the morning.”

“You taking the afternoon off again?”

“Not this time. My afternoon’s booked a bit too tightly, and two of my clients are going on spring break the following week, so it was the only time they could fit sessions in before they’re away for a bit. And trust me, when clients have impending vacations, they usually don’t skip sessions. Oftentimes, they’ll book extras.”

“Makes sense.” He sat back against the bench and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, staring out at the small pond that had finally thawed enough for the local mallards to sit up and take notice from time to time.

Anna waited for him to say something else, something beyond remarks about the weather, what she’d like for dinner, or whether there were any more packages of maternity clothes waiting at her P.O. box that he could pick up for her.

As dreamlike as his attention had been, it was all a distraction from the real storm circling off on the horizon. Sure, it had been wonderful to skirt around it and pretend that the honeymoon didn’t have to end, but he knew as well as she did that bullets weren’t meant to be dodged forever. Not to mention that the longer he put off testing out his full angel fire with his brothers and the relic, the more worried she got that her selfishness in wanting to keep what they had intact would soon spread resentment among his family. Would they see her as stealing him away from them, when he had a duty far more significant than making sure she and the baby were getting in their recommended dietary fiber intake each day? (They were, by the way. Annoyingly so.)

There was only so much guilt Anna could carry around before she toppled over, especially when she was already leaden with the weight of another life.

“Iron,” she said, shifting into his open embrace and leaning against his chest. Was it cowardly to avoid looking him in the eye while bringing up the topic of conversation they were both actively avoiding?

Some would say so, but she preferred to think of it as strategic. With her snuggled across his torso and holding a precariously balanced ice cream cone over his crotch, he was far less likely to bolt into the pond. Or so she hoped.

With a deep breath, using his powerful strength beneath her as a support, she tried again. “Titan called me this morning.”

His fingers tensed around her shoulder, but only slightly. Not angry, then, just . . . anticipatory. Good. She could work with that.

“He said he tried to talk to you before you left the den, but you ignored him.”

“Had somewhere to be.”

“Where?”

He gripped her more tightly. “Wherever you were.”

Anna handed him her ice cream cone—the good parts were already licked off anyway—so she could wrap both arms around his massive chest. To no one’s surprise, he took it and let her consume as much of him as she could given her growing belly and their shortening time together. “You can’t do that, Iron. They’re your family.”

“So are you,” he whispered into the crown of her head. “Which is why I’m okay telling you the truth of things.” Then he cast his pensive gaze out over the pond. “I’m a bit scared about the next steps. And worried.”

She had to smile at that, because any other reaction would have enlisted a wellspring of her tears into service, and neither of them had enough napkins to stem that tide.

“It’s okay to be scared, you know. There isn’t a height or weight requirement, or gender requirement for that matter, in order to feel the emotion.”

“If we test my full fire with that of my brothers’ against the relic’s shard, I’m worried about what it will reveal and the decisions we’ll all have to make depending on the results. I’ve been hammering that damn nail since the moment Titan first bonded with Rose several years ago, but it wasn’t anything my brothers were willing to face back then. They were all too happy and relieved, hopeful, and like hell I was going to be the asshole to highlight the fact that love didn’t remove the expiration date on our situations. All it did was push it back a bit.”

“Then do it afraid. Do it anyway, despite your fear. And you’re not allowed to not believe me here. I’ve got far too much experience in this department to be talking out of my ass. My entire adult life has been me learning to plow through the scary things despite the fear. I wish I could say it gets easier, but it doesn’t, only more necessary.”

“There is no going back from whatever is revealed, Anna. I need you to know that. If we can return to the Empyrean, we must. And if we can’t, then . . .”

He didn’t need to say the rest. She knew. They all did. If they couldn’t return to the Empyrean, there was no way to stop Cyro for good. If he’d finally managed to find a way to go after the Empyrean and break through its gates, there was nothing the sentinels could do about it while they were trapped in the mortal realm. It didn’t matter who they were trapped with.

“You need to know,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice from quivering. “Either way, you need to know.”

“Will you be there with me? When we do the test again?”

That warming power within her chest that connected the two of them fluttered a form of hope. “Of course. We should all be there. I think we need to be.”

“You’re all I need.”

She swallowed hard and burrowed her face farther into the protection of his body. “My heart’s breaking, you know.” It was a quiet confession, one she hoped wouldn’t influence the turn of events, but also one she couldn’t keep in any longer.

Her revelation was gobbled up by the wind and carried off to who knew where. Then Iron stood, tossed the remaining bit of ice cream cone and napkins into the garbage can near their bench, and settled her onto his lap with her head tucked beneath his chin.

“I don’t think I can stop that,” he breathed out, a dark anguish tarnishing his words. She gripped him tighter at the sound of his desperation. “But I sure as hell can protect every single one of the shards that do fall. I’ll collect them, cherish them, and combine them with the broken pieces of my own so your soul will always be cared for. No matter what happens.”

There wasn’t any more either of them could say. Anna’s throat had tightened to the point of pain, and after the declaration that Iron had just sent on the wind, she didn’t think he had it in him to argue the point any further.

So, they sat there in silence, both realizing what Iron’s full power would likely mean for the angels’ ability to return home and defeat Cyro, and weighing that against the possibility of a world devoid of such power but which none of them would be around to see.