Page 50 of Wicked Bonds

She snorted. “Pleasure is a human emotion. Seraphim don’t enjoy it.”

“And yet a male has to feel something to be able to empty his seed into the heart of a woman,” Balthazar replied.

“Exactly what I’ve been saying my entire life.” Leela set her bowl down and pulled her knee up onto the couch to face him. “Male Seraphim proclaim not to feel anything. They don’t even grunt when they come. However, I’m a fertility Seraphim. I can sense their pleasure. They can hide it all they want, but it’s there.”

“Of course it is. It’s only natural.”

“But not to a Seraphim. We’re not allowed to feel.” Her tone held a sardonic note to it. “That’s the problem. I know it’s a lie. I’ve always known it was a lie. They state it’s a biological response. Yet my abilities prove that’s a lie. So why hide it?”

He waited, aware from her thoughts and tone that she meant it as a rhetorical question.

“That’s where my deviation started. I didn’t understand the point of lying about a clear emotion just for the sake of hiding. And my curiosity spiraled from there. But the problem was, I still had to help orchestrate procreation activities between Seraphim. It was my job. Except it never felt right. Which is why I started seeking out human touch.” Her lips curled a little at that, her blue-green eyes alight with mischief and desire.

He smiled in response, very much enjoying that look on her.

Like a little sex nymph, he decided, amused. He’d met her type before. Yet Leela took it to a whole new level. One he very much wanted to explore.

“Mortals don’t shy away from what they feel. They embrace it. Their lives are so short that it’s the only way for them to live. And I found that to be intoxicating. So different from my kind. But the problem is, that leads to deviations in the thought process, which the council frowns upon.”

He nodded, following what she meant. “Seraphim are stoic by programming, not by nature.”

“To an extent, yes. We’re born without emotion. I see it in newborns all the time. Souls need time to grow and breathe and learn. My kind choose to embrace stoicism as a result. But I’ve often wondered if that’s a result of societal pressure or a desire to live without feeling.”

“Seems like a boring existence to me,” Balthazar admitted. “But it also makes a powerful species easy to control if they only think in terms of logic and not emotion.” As someone who could manipulate the emotions of others, he could definitely see the benefits of turning off those feelings.

“Yes,” Leela whispered. “Which is why reformation happens. They call it a fatal flaw that needs to be fixed, or sometimes refer to it as immortal insanity. But I think there’s more to it than that. Which, to answer your original question, is why I taught myself about protective runes.”

Hmm, that didn’t explain her thoughts about the trackers or the allusivehim. However, Balthazar suspected the two were related in some way.

He wouldn’t press it tonight, as his instincts told him she would shut down if he asked her about her fear of being caught by the trackers. Those were thoughts she hadn’t wanted him to hear. So he’d respect her by not mentioning them.

But that didn’t mean he would stop trying to understand them.

Whatever she feared was obviously important.

“So how do the alerts work?” he asked, bringing them back full circle. “How much time will it give us to escape?”

“Maybe ten minutes,” she replied. “They’ll have to disable the ward to enter, assuming they mean to cause harm, and that’ll buy us enough time to mist elsewhere.”

“All right. How long until they find us again?”

She shrugged. “It depends how much of my energy signature they pulled from the blood sample. It could take a few days, or a week, maybe? If we’re lucky, anyway. With a straight connection, they can mist to a source within hours. But they don’t have enough blood for that.”

“And this is just because they’re a tracker line, right?”

Her chin dipped in confirmation. “It’s their natural skill, similar to Ezekiel’s tracing.”

Right. He’d suspected as much. “Do Seraphim have dual lines of power, like Hydraians?”

“Yes and no. We’re born with a stronger side, such as my link to fertility. But many of us have dormant skills, such as Caro’s ability to heal.”

“What’s yours?”

She considered him for a moment and smiled. “Maybe I don’t have one.”

“That sounds like a discovery challenge.” One he would enjoy because it served as an invitation to delve even deeper into her mind.

Which intrigued him indeed.