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“Listen to me,” Kildare muttered after they were far enough from the hut. “I don’t know how fast this monster will grow and what it’s going to do to her but we’ll both need to be ready to keep her alive. Remember what you did with her heart?”

“You mean what I didn’t do?” he barely said, the terror in his gaze poking at his fire.

“That’s why you’ll start training now. You’ll learn your powers, and together, we’ll keep her alive. Reuban will return to help, and hopefully, Raviel will get here and show us what needs to be done.”

Krave went to pacing before him, the shake of his head becoming all too familiar. “How will she survive delivering it? Nephilim are monsters, it’ll rip her in half!”

“We need to trust,” Kildare reminded him and himself.

“Trust who?” Krave bit, the storm in his gaze bright red. “Who is really trustworthy? The only beings I trust right now are you , Reuban and…”

“I trust him too,” Kildare said, knowing he meant Kaos. The dark being had decimated all forms of doubt when he gave himself for their Queen without hesitation. Even while having that evil in him. “And I trust Raviel, because he made him.”

“I’m not there yet,” Krave admitted without remorse. “And I trust our Little Saint to do exactly what we don’t want her to do in this,” he added. “Did you feel her power? Where did that come from? I don’t know about you but every cell in my body was gripped by her will and nothing else.”

“It’s growing just like ours. When she needs it, she seems to have it. Pray it’ll protect her when it comes time to delivering that demon.”

“And Kaos?” Krave wondered.

Kildare eyed him, curious. “What about him?”

Krave clasped hands behind his head as he returned to pacing. “How the fuck did I go from despising a being to wanting to save him?”

“The feeling is mutual and mutually astonishing.”

“Is there any way for us to help him?”

Kildare took a huge breath, his gaze scanning the multi-green forest around them. “This is all new, even to me. I wish I had an answer.” He leveled his gaze right at him. “We’ll do everything we can.”

Krave and Kildare flashed to the hut at the sudden increase in Josie’s pulse. While Kildare saw their Queen remained glued to Kaos’s body on the bed, Krave pinned the Bellatore’s giant servant to the wall by his neck. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

Kildare eyed the tiny possessive arm over Kaos’s chest, the sight stirring his passion for her.

“I was feeding her, she’ll need to eat,” the servant grit from beneath Krave’s chokehold reinforced by Kildare’s fire.

“I’m fine,” Josie said, looking over her shoulder at Kildare, then Krave who flashed over to them.

“How are you feeling?” Krave whispered.

She gave the barest smile. “I feel… a little tired. He’s growing so fast.”

The sight of pride in her eyes was the hardest thing Kildare had ever stomached. He watched as Krave lowered and kissed her forehead.

“Are you scared?”

“No,” she said, sounding curious. “I have no fear. Do you think… he’ll be okay?”

“Who?” Krave asked.

“Kaos? And… our baby?”

Fuck.

“I’m praying everything turns out the way it needs to,” Krave whispered.

Clever answer.

She studied him for a moment. “How do you want it to turn out?”

He slid his fingers along her cheek, adoring the silk. “I want it to turn out as amazing as you are.”

“You’re so good at avoiding the truth,” she said softly. “It’s sweet. But… I want this baby.”

“Little Saint,” he whispered or pled. “You realize Kaos did this to protect you.”

Kildare’s fire reached out and caressed her face, catching the tears that fell from her eyes.

“I know he did.” The deep pain in her voice brought heat to his flames.

“But… he’s wrong about our baby. And me.

And himself. I didn’t have time to show him.

I need to show him what he means to me. He needs to understand that…

I love him as much as I love you and Kildare, and I don’t even have guilt about it. ”

The emotion in her sweet voice nearly killed Kildare but he was relieved at least she had no guilt, much like he had no possessiveness when it came to the other two Kings. It was as if she’d splintered into three unique individuals, each created for them and only them.

“Our son will be good,” she assured.

Krave put his head on her shoulder and the Rider’s grief pummeled his fire. “Little Saint,” he croaked, broken. “Don’t do this.”

Her hand stroked his head. “Don’t be afraid,” she wept hotly. “There is nothing greater than the light of my three Kings. Our son will learn that.”

Her words brought Kildare to his knees next to her. He laid his head on her womb, willing all his angelic power into her words. Even while knowing what must happen, would happen. No matter what any of them wished or wanted or begged for.

****

By the time they made it to the city, the silence in the vehicle suffocated Reuban. Aside from barked directions every other minute, the gulf between them widened and filled with every manner of toxic substance. The last thing they needed in this prophetic storm was what brewed in their midst.

He realized she’d directed him to a mall. Great. Shopping to lighten the mood. He imagined her storming the department stores while he raced to keep up and treated him like a sexual predator hot on her heels.

She removed her seatbelt as he pulled into a parking spot like she might jump from the vehicle before he even stopped. “Before we go in, we need to talk.”

“I do not have time, Kollaborator,” she said, her voice cold with a restrained rage.

“Make time,” he said, not about to do a single thing till they talked.

She jerked her hand off the door handle and slammed it in her lap with an eternally frustrated breath. “Speak.”

“None of this can work if you’re pissed at me. I’m…” He found himself unable to apologize for what had happened. “I didn’t mean for any of that to happen.”

“Oh,” she said with a mocking calm, crossing her arms over her chest. “But you’re clearly not sorry.”

She seemed to know that for a fact. And it was a fact. He wasn’t one bit sorry aside from being interrupted. Wonder what she’d think of that?

“And your silence confirms it.”

“I’m not sorry,” he decided to admit. “I wanted every bit of what I did and a whole lot more.”

“That’s because you have no idea what’s at stake, what I do.”

He undid his seat belt and faced her more, his eyes on her heaving body. “Then show me what you do,” he said simply. “Help me understand.”

She kept her stone-cold face pointed at her window.

Just when he was ready to give up, her hand shot out to him, palm up.

He regarded the tiny thing with a keen awareness of all the painful things she could do with it right before his mind saw that same hand sliding along her body and gripping her tits in a hunger so potent it still rocked him.

“Take... my hand, Kollaborator. I will show you.”

There was no missing the utter warning in her quiet words, but he reached out and closed his fingers around it nevertheless. Their palms connected and the power inside him bucked.

She gasped, clutching him tight as her eyes closed. “Be still,” she whispered around labored breaths. She’d just begged his powers for permission, and it suddenly stepped aside, allowing her full control.

And she took it. Swiftly and without mercy.

Five seconds, five minutes, five days, weeks, years, he didn’t know how long the Bellatore soared him through centuries of her life with humanity.

From the desert days of old to the bustling cities of every major corner of the world, the Mother of Angels filled his molecules with the hope and innocence of a million girls till his soul was bursting with their lives.

Then she sailed him higher and higher till they rose above the earth and hung immobile in some balance.

“See.”

The command whispered through him as her hand clutched his tighter and they soared back down. This time she dragged him through those same lives now ravaged with pain and hopeless despair. Millions of these girls crucified by inconceivable evil until his entire soul bled out of him.

And then she showed him the complexity and burden of her job. The war was lost. The Mother of Angels was out of time. There would be no more nourishing women into a beautiful motherhood. There was only keeping them alive long enough to hopefully save their souls.

The scales had tipped in evil's favor.

The end of humanity was imminent.

“Release me.”

Reuban wanted to but he couldn’t. The agony of millenniums held him pinned in place.

He realized it was because she carried it.

She held all of it, used the pain as a sacrifice for more power .

To help those who could not help themselves.

To buy mercy and time while everything she loved burned around her.

He squeezed her hand tightly in his, listening to her lungs sucking in huge gulps of air and letting it go. “Now I see,” he said, forcing his hand to disengage.

Her breaths filled with flutters as if they’d grown wings to fly far away from him. “Then help me.”

The tiny words trembled with the rest of her body as pride and desperation battled inside her angelic heart.

It was a rare beseeching, he realized. “I will,” he assured, wanting to take her hand again and discover it with his.

She’d called him to help her with humanity.

But to do that required first helping her .

She would fight him, he knew. What he intended would go against everything she thought she believed to be right.

But she was altogether wrong. And he was more than happy to teach her all about the error of her beautiful ways.

****