Page 135 of The Cruelest Chaos

Only Sid can do that, and I’m not so sure she wants to.

The letters she wrote Maverick, echoing the pain she felt at cutting off Jeremiah, the boy she thought was her brother…they’re heartbreaking to read.

Mainly because I know how the story ends.

For now.

She hadn’t made up her mind in those letters. But when the 6 came for us, pawns in their strange rituals, she made a decision. She was paranoid enough about the taunts the 6 made to Lucifer of how she became his wife. Of how Lucifer forced their hand to accept her.

So when her worst fears came true and the 6 wanted to use her in their mind games, she chose.

She chose for herself, and for her and Lucifer’s baby.

I swallow down the lump in my throat and pull the sliding glass door open to go outside.

The words echo in my head, that one conversation where Lucifer brought her up:

“Is she still going to keep it?” he asked Maverick, his eyes on the floor, a beer in his hand. A week after Noctem.

I had been pulling cookies from the oven, and I forced myself to keep moving. To not make this harder than it might already be.

Maverick had cleared his throat. “I don’t know.”

“She didn’t say?” Lucifer pressed, his tone desperate for something. For any scrap of information. “Nothing at all?”

Maverick had sighed. “If she had, either way, I would’ve told you, Luce.”

Lucifer had been quiet a moment, and then he asked, in a voice so low I could barely hear him as I turned the oven off, “Will he hurt her?”

Maverick didn’t hesitate. “No.”

And that had been the end of it.

Outside in the warm air of March, I sit beside Maverick.

He wraps his arm around me, tugging me close and kissing my forehead. He smells like leather and I breathe him in.

“You ready?” he asks, his lips moving against my hair.

Dread coils in my stomach, but I nod anyway. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

“It’ll be okay, baby,” he assures me, pulling me into his lap, turning me to face him, his hands on my waist. “And afterward, we’ll go shopping and—”

I slap his chest playfully, shaking my head, my hair tumbling down around my shoulders. “I don’t want you to spend all your money on my wardrobe, Mavy.”

His baby blue eyes narrow and it thrills me a little, to see him look angry, but I know he doesn’t mean it. Not like he might have before. “I’m insulted you think your clothes would drainall of my money.”He bites his lip, eyeing the white t-shirt of his I’m wearing. “Although you look damn good in my clothes, so maybe we’ll skip the fucking shopping.”

He leans down, closes his mouth around my breast, over my shirt. My hands grip his shoulders as I throw my head back, letting his hands roam under my shirt. My nipples harden, and he groans, tugging on them with his teeth, using his hand to knead the other.

“Let’s go inside,” I say breathlessly, swatting his shoulders. “Your brothers are asleep right—”

“As if they haven’t seen two people fuck before,” he growls, his mouth still around my breast.

I laugh, shoving his chest and reluctantly, he pulls away, looking back up at me.

I trail my finger down the side of his face, over his tattoo.

He smiles up at me, and it’s real. It’s soft, just his lips tugging up at the corners, but it’sreal.For me.