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T he quaint red-brick office building at the edge of Aurora proper had a lot of things going for it, except for its unfortunate proximity to the town’s looming courthouse. Whether that was by design, Anna didn’t know, but it increased the intimidation factor by ten thousand percent. It was the epitome of psychological manipulation for anyone who’d found themselves regrettably yanked into the mire that was the justice system.

A pleasant sign announcing that she’d arrived at the family law offices of Rogers and Wahl, Esq., stood out among the small well-manicured lawn. The neatly dotted rows of pansies that bracketed the signposts and walkway leading to the front entrance might as well have been emergency lights on a runway ramp signaling danger for any misstep, whether sure-footed or otherwise.

She sooo did not want to be here, and yet like the recurring theme of her thirties, she found herself with no choice.

Anna adjusted the file folder of notes tucked beneath her arm and eyed the courthouse that stood stories above the little law office. With its prominent bell tower and cold authoritarian block lettering, there was no hiding what it truly meant.

There be dragons.

She immediately marked it as the Bad Place. The place she’d have to go to convince total strangers that, despite not having the shiniest or most abundant stack of pennies in her piggy bank, her handful of dingy copper-crusted pennies still mattered and she’d somehow turn them into whatever she could to support her baby.

But first, she’d likely have to turn over a sizable portion of those pennies to an attorney in order to represent herself before said dragons.

Anna met the receptionist with a cheerful smile she didn’t feel. “Hi, I’m Anna Malone. I have an appointment with Ms. Wahl at ten thirty.”

“Malone, yes. Perfect. Please have a seat. We’ll be right with you. Would you like anything while you wait?”

Oh, let’s see . . . The ability to take what I’m about to pay you guys and redirect it back toward my budgeted hospital costs for when I actually have this kid.

A refund of the only available time I’ve had to myself instead of spending it pulling every document, bank statement, and pseudo-tangible proof that I won’t be a terrible mother for your perusal.

A Diet Coke and happy dreams.

And the man I can’t stop thinking about.

“Nope. I’m good.”

Her terseness followed her as she took a seat in the waiting room, clutching her manila folder to her chest as though its meager confines were a plate of armor capable of shielding her from anything Travis could throw her way.

It had been a solid week and a half since that terrible phone call, which had provided the perfect amount of time for her to downward spiral into an abyss she was pretty sure she’d never be able to surface from again if she sank much deeper.

Rose had been the dutiful friend Anna needed, allowing her to at least unburden some of her anxiety onto someone else’s shoulders regarding the whole Travis nightmare. But even that came with a reciprocal weight that had been inadvertently tossed back onto Anna’s plate.

She couldn’t escape the gnawing feeling that she was, in essence, an abandoned baby on someone else’s doorstep. Before Iron left, he’d neatly deposited her among a family that was so freaking heartwarming and aligned, it made Anna feel like a donated secondhand jigsaw puzzle who was expected to be enjoyed and cared for despite her missing pieces.

There was heartache, and then there was heart break . Neither made for a lovable human for very long, and Anna feared she was quickly reaching the end of her rope as far as palatable social consumption was concerned.

Fuck, she missed him. So damn much.

A door opened. “Ms. Malone, come on in.”

Francesca Wahl, Esq., was all serious kindness as she shook Anna’s hand and welcomed her into her office. “Now, I’ve read your intake form about your former partner Travis O’Neil. You say he’s located out in California now. Is that correct?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“And he’s seeking joint custody of your child once it’s born.”

“That’s what he said over the phone.”

“How often have you spoken with him since that initial phone call?”

“I haven’t. It was just the one time. But he’s not the type of person to make empty threats, and I’d rather have my ducks in a row and be ready.”

“I understand, and I support that entirely. If you can’t be proactive, being reactive is the next best thing.”

Anna clenched her back teeth and wondered what the cost differential was between proactivity and reactivity in the family law circuit. She couldn’t say for certain, but she’d bet her Subaru’s three good cylinders that it came with a price tag well north of equitable, given her circumstances.

But again, unfortunately, she was not spoiled for choice.

Ms. Wahl set her glasses down on the desk and steepled her fingers, and Anna tried not to be jealous over the fact that the woman’s glasses were clearly optional. “As I’m sure you’d been made aware when you booked this consultation, our firm tries to do everything we can to mediate and reach an agreement with both parties first. Family court is not a fun place, Ms. Malone, and we do our best to stay out of it whenever possible.”

Is that why you require a method of payment to be placed on file for a freaking complimentary consultation?

“I can imagine.”

“Before we discuss things further, do you think Mr. O’Neil would be open to mediation?”

“I think he would be open to whatever earns him the most money.”

God, she was tired, as evidenced by her snarky insistence showing up to play in lieu of her common sense. In every possible way a pregnant woman could be tired, Anna was tired. Mentally, her mind was a fog of client appointments, missed grocery orders, and painful memories of Iron that refused to release their grip. Physically, the baby had pretty much taken over any vital functions and was now running the show. That meant extreme exhaustion at random hours of the day—usually during client calls—and a frustrating discomfort doing everything else, from fitting in a car’s passenger seat to standing up from the toilet.

It was taking everything in her not to pick herself up out of that chair, find a horizontal surface, and hope that sleep would finally steal her away from reality and deliver her back into the dream world where there was only her and Iron.

Anna handed over her file and let the attorney peruse the prospects of what amounted to a meager defense against Travis once he no doubt armed himself with whatever heavy legal ammunition California could provide.

And the bitch didn’t even put her definitely optional glasses back on to do it.

Anna was going through the motions, mm-hmming and nodding where appropriate as Ms. Wahl tapped out the stake of Anna’s future into her computer, when the room fell silent.

“Is this the same Travis O’Neil you’ve cited in your complaint?” Ms. Wahl swung her computer screen around to show Anna, and the floor nearly fell away from the room.

A formal portrait of Travis’s smug face accompanied no fewer than a dozen media articles all with titles featuring podcast host , MLM company , and consumer fraud in various arrangements.

“What the hell?” Anna scooted as close as her belly would allow to make sense of the words staring back at her. While Anna read on, Ms. Wahl quietly closed the notes and slid Anna’s files back across the desk.

“It seems the umbrella company under which he’s been operating his podcast and other business ventures has been charged with running an illegal pyramid scheme. It says here that, ‘Travis O’Neil, host of Bros, Babies, and Nixing Those Maybes, a podcast designed to help expectant families and those with young children optimize all of the must-dos to cut out all those might-dos and simplify the early baby years, is one of several people being indicted for consumer fraud. O’Neil, along with many others named in the lawsuit, is accused of recruiting people to sell courses and lectures aimed at helping young families. However, those recruited by O’Neil have claimed in the filing that they were made to buy egregious quantities of course materials at regular intervals, regardless of how many they sold, with the promise of receiving bonuses or certain compensation once they’d reached eligibility. At the time of this filing, claimants have yet to receive any payment, with some having gone into severe debt in order to meet the distribution requirements for payout.’”

“Holy shit.” Anna’s mind was reeling, just straight up spinning like a toy top with no guardrails. Had that asshole really done all that?

“Ms. Malone, I think it’s fair to say that, given the current charges against him, any lawsuit he might bring forth wouldn’t hold much water with a judge.” Then she stood and held out her hand. Anna accepted it gladly. “But do call if things change and he gets in touch with you, though I can’t imagine that happening.” She wrinkled her nose. “An MLM? Really? I thought all those went out of style when we turned over a new century. Guess I was wrong. Anyway, good luck.”

On lighter feet, Anna walked out of the law office, not knowing what to do or where to go. Technically, she’d won, but without any of the logic or actual defenses usually employed in such legal battles.

She kept waiting for the joy to hit her, but all that kept swimming to the surface was the lingering malaise of her circumstances.

Nothing had changed. Anna was right back where she started. Alone. Lost. And now even more confused.

“Anna.”

A voice she thought she’d never hear again pulled her thoughts from their murky depths. A pickup truck she hadn’t seen in over a month sat in the parking lot. Iron stood in front of it, his bicolored eyes gleaming and his body braced against the vehicle in all its proud strength, like the monolith of her memories that could never be torn down.

He was here. In front of her. Alive.

Iron.

Not caring whether or not he was real, she ran to him as fast as her ballet flats would carry her. Like no time had passed at all, he swept her into his arms, confirming her hope. It’s really him.

Gangly limbs, nonaerodynamic belly, ugly tears. Whatever she had, he held in an embrace that infused strength into a body that hadn’t known how to hold its own since he’d taken himself away from her.

“How are you back? What? Why?” Anna’s sniffles were less than ladylike, but they were met in kind by the sweet murmurings he whispered into her ear. Each word took on a twinge of desperation and longing, pulling out the most unattractive sigh from her ragged lungs.

“My Anna. My love. Mages, I never thought I’d see you again.” The confession was deliciously gruff and grizzly as he cupped the back of her head and carried her, dangling feet and all, over to the passenger side of his truck where there was less risk of an audience.

“You need to start talking because I am having a freaking day, and the last thing I need is to be sent into early labor when I’ve still got four months to go.” Tears stung her eyes as she looked upon a face she feared would only ever live in her memories. “Is this real? Are you really back?”

He smiled and kissed her softly. Every frazzled nerve that had been going haywire since the moment she’d seen him finally sank in relief.

Once he’d tucked her securely into the passenger seat of his truck—with the seat blessedly already pushed all the way back—he knelt before her in the open doorway and anchored his palms against her thighs, as if he needed just as much support from her as she did from him. “It’s done. It’s all done. Cyro’s gone. I killed him, and the moment I did, the rest of the charmers followed suit.” Then a lightness she’d never seen before brightened his beautiful brown and hazel eyes. “I opened the gates.”

Anna stilled, knowing full well what that meant. Iron and the other sentinels could finally go home.

“Stop,” he said forcefully, squeezing her thighs again. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“How do you know what I’m thinking?”

“Because I know you. My entire being knows you. It was the reason I was able to come back at all, instead of offering myself up on a gruesome battlefield.”

“What do you mean?”

“Cyro fucking tricked me, and I fell for it. He made me think you were dead so I wouldn’t have anything to fight for. It almost worked, too, until it didn’t.” The corner of his mouth ticked up, and some of that cocky charm she’d missed so much touched his lips. “I remembered the glasses I gave you, how I insisted you needed to see your life clearly because everything I saw in you was the one home I had to make damn sure I came back to. I remembered how beautiful you looked clutching your ultrasound photo and how there were some connections not even Cyro was strong enough to sever. It helped me finally see through the mirage of his bullshit and remember what I was really fighting for.”

Anna sifted her fingers through his thick hair, smiling at the way the sun lifted the bits of red to greet her. God, she’d forgotten about this. His hair, the color. The sharpness of this detail had already faded from her memory, and she was so grateful to have it back. “You were gone for so long.”

He leaned into her touch. “Time works differently outside the mortal realm. It felt like an hour to me. And then, when I came back, I had some errands to run before I could see you.”

Her back stiffened. She was unsure whether to be curious or offended that she wasn’t his first stop while she was going mad with grief over him. “Errands?”

A bit of mischief flashed in his eyes. And mirth. “I took Titan and Chrome on a little trip out to California after Titan shared what you’d told Rose about a certain phone call with Travis.”

“Oh no. What did you do?”

“Nothing I didn’t mind handling in person. Turns out, when you shake a palm tree, all sorts of shit falls out of it, including evidence of undocumented earnings and below-board investment dealings under the guise of infotainment and being a newspreneur , whatever the fuck that means, as if that didn’t require one to be held accountable for their shady business practices. After that, we left a few choice tips with the right people, and I came back to find you as fast as I could.”

“I told Rose about Travis’s phone call only because it seemed like the right thing to do after she’d spent so much time chauffeuring me around and making sure I saw the sun regularly. I never meant for it to turn into a huge thing.”

Iron lifted his hands to the sides of her ribs and pulled her as close as the tight space would allow. “You’re family. You’re my family, and that’s what this family does. Secrets go out the window when it comes to taking care of each other.” His fingers drifted over her rounded abdomen. “This is my family. My home. My heart. Not the Empyrean. When I was up there, after I pried open the gates, I didn’t even enter, because I no longer recognized myself as having a home base that didn’t include you at the center of it. I love you, Anna. My soul, my body, all of it is nothing if I don’t have you to return to each day.” Then a startling blush crept up his cheeks, and he looked away quickly before returning his soft gaze to hers. “I want to care for you, to keep your heart . . . and your child, if you’ll let me.”

A tender pang tapped out a wonderful rhythm beneath her breast. She thought about letting this man dangle on the hook a bit longer while she ran some errands of her own, but she was just as powerless to stop the onslaught of her feelings as he was.

She kissed him fully, tenderly. “Then I guess you have us both, because I love you, too.” Eager happiness chased away the last vestiges of the morning’s fear and trepidation, but one final thought still managed to dig its heels in. “Wait! What about Titan and everyone else? Are they all returning to the Empyrean?”

Iron scoffed. “Are you kidding? And miss out on the opportunity to become aunts and uncles?” He shook his head as if Anna had just swallowed a boatload of crazy pills. And maybe she had, because she wasn’t hating any of it, even though the result had been the exact opposite of what the angels had been fighting for all along. Then he explained further. “I thought they might have had a harder decision to make originally, but turns out, it was a no-brainer. Our lives and loves are here. Plus, the moment I showed Rhode and the others the larger property plans I’d been working on for the homestead, it was unanimously decided.”

She laughed and settled her arms around his shoulders. “A celestial compound?”

“Damn right. Bronze is already looking at what’s involved in getting a water slide installed for one of the pools.”

“ One of the pools? How many are you planning on having?”

“As many as we want. Zoning kind of goes out the window when you’ve got a team of angels who can move metal and earth around to ensure there’s no water table or preserved wetlands issues.”

“You’re absolutely?—”

“Crazy?”

“I was going to say mine. And I can’t wait for me and my little bell pepper to go home with you. To your family.”

“Sounds fucking perfect.”