I can see the guys on the other end of the room, workin’ out and probably tryin’ to one-up each other. I’m lost to thoughts of all the bedtimes I begged my mama to tell me about the angel again. I recall all the moments she and my daddy spent explainin’ how special I was, what a gift I’d been.
“I really only thought about Heaven when it came to explainin’ who I was, and then I had my first tribulation.” I pause for a moment and try to sort through the best way to explain what I’m feelin’ and thinkin’. “I don’t remember much other than what my parents told me about it, but the older I got, the more I started to accept that with Heaven, there’s always a Hell, and when the blackness took me over, it wasn’t an angel that came out to play.”
Delta nods and sets her water down, her eyes lost in thought. “I get that. I always had a darkness that seemed to underlie all my intense emotions too. My mom called it impulse control issues and simple naughtiness, but now looking back, I see it. Something must have happened to your blocks, since you were tapping into the other side of yourself that Nefta tried to hide.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured too,” I agree. “Anyway, my point is, I’d already embraced my light and dark, my differences. Alder and Flint didn’t drop a bomb so much as they gave me a name for somethin’ that I’d been dealin’ with my whole life. Well, aside from seein’ actual demons. That I didn’t do so well with. I tore up their bar like I was on one of those business renovation shows, and everythin’ just had to go.”
Delta laughs and looks at me with a warm gaze. “It’s so weird that we’re strangers but alike in so many ways. I did a little home renovating myself before I could finally start to come to terms with what I was and what that meant.”
I laugh at that, recallin’ the story she told me about how she got such a beautiful kitchen.
“Did the mate thing bother you?” I ask her as we both watch our demons workin’ out and gettin’ ready to spar with one another.
A thrill goes through me at the thought of watchin’ such seasoned fighters do their best to take each other out. I should take notes as they do their thing. Is that nerdy? I shrug. Who cares?
“I took a minute to come to terms with that too,” Delta confesses with an incredulous snort. “I was attracted to them, of course. I didn’t quite understand it since they are all so different from what I was raised to see as beautiful, but the draw was definitely there.”
I nod in understandin’, thinkin’ back to how I felt about Flint and Alder in the beginnin’. Even before I could see through their wards, I was strangely comfortable in Alder’s office the day I lost my job. I never really gave it much thought, but now I can see that for what it was.
“And then I thought I lost them,” she tells me, her voice layered with so much emotion that my throat feels tight as she speaks. “I thought they were gone, and all I could think was how stupid I had been for not seeing what they were to me. It went against what I was raised to think, you know, one person out there for you and all that,” she tells me, and I hum a noise of undertsandin’.
“But I just didn’t care anymore. I had the wings, the scythe, the Abdicated sperm donor and the angel womb, plus the need for revenge burning through my veins. So when I saw them again, when I realized they weren’t dead like I thought, that was the moment I truly accepted what I was. I didn’t care about anything else other than the fact that they were alive and they were going to be mine. Fuck my human concerns and hang-ups about it. I was a demon-angel hybrid, and I was going to take what I wanted.”
She gives me a wide smile, and I return it. “Hell yeah,” I tell her, puttin’ my knuckles out for her to pound.
“Fuck yeah,” she answers back happily, touchin’ her fist to mine.
We both turn and watch as Flint and Jerif step on the mats, facin’ each other. I guess the show’s about to start.
“My guys brought me to meet your mates, back when I was struggling to accept things,” she tells me. “They wanted me to hear Flint’s story and how he came around to accepting the role he was called to.”
I look over at Delta with surprise in my eyes. He mentioned before that he didn’t want the Guardian job, but he never went into detail about how he came to terms with it.
“I never did hear his story though. There was an attack, and then we left to go back to our own gate to make sure it was okay.”
I look back to Flint and make a note to ask him about what happened. Rafferty counts down, and then as fast as a viper, Jerif and Flint go at each other. Jerif’s body language seems to indicate that they’re gonna wrestle, but Flint has his elbow cocked back, and then his fist smashes into Jerif’s face so fast that I don’t even have time to squeak out a warnin’.
“What the fuck was that?” Jerif bellows, a hand swipin’ over his cheek.
“Oops,” Flint says casually, obviously not in the least bit sorry.
Delta and I shoot up from our seats as both groups start to merge, shouts and accusations flingin’ this way and that all over the trainin’ area.
“If you want to really go, Nacre, then let’s go!” Jerif challenges, callin’ Flint by the type of demon he is.
“My fault,” Flint half-ass apologizes. “I just thought you
