It was a step too far when he started to tug my pyjama pants down. “Excuse me!” I slapped him in the chest. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“You’re not saying anything. I’m investigating.”
“You’re being a creep!”
“Then talk to me!”
“I...” Speaking became a monumental effort. It was just like when I struggled in Dead Languages. I heard the words. I understood them. But when I went to speak them, everything jumbled in my brain. The only way I could do this was to show him.
“Your stupid bond should come with a manual,” I told him.
“Half the fun is in figuring it out,” he said. A single, mutinous tear slid down my cheek. Kai’s arms enveloped me. Angelfire licked across my skin. “Please don’t cry. We’ll figure–”
When his magic touched mine, a transfer was made. The memories of what had happened to me in that deathly limbo sank into him. His heartbeat turned glacial. Though his physical body was like an inferno around me, the touch of his magic was bitterly cold.
After torturous minutes, Kai pulled away. He held me by my shoulders. Every scrap of softness in his expression had disappeared. “I’ll kill him.”
His angel blade materialised on the bed. Its edges were still dripping blood and pus from his last hunt.
My head hung low. “You can’t,” I said, even though I’d been trying to figure out a way to do just that. “You know what would happen if he was destroyed.”
“Watch me.”
I grabbed his arm. The fact that I had anticipated his movements was proof enough of the bond that now bound us together. The flare of rage in his eyes stabbed me in the heart.
“Stop. Please.”
He clutched my hand. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “We’ll figure out a way around it.”
I smiled softly. If I left him to his own devices, he would search forever for something that didn’t have an answer. I’d been in enough contact with Lucifer now to discern truth from lie. This was not a lie. I felt the certainty of it in the very depths of my soul. The bone magic kept brushing over my abdomen, searching for a hint of life. There was none.
Locked deep away in a part of me that I wouldn’t allow Kai to access was the awful secret Lucifer had imparted on me at the last minute. That if Raphael’s line ended, so would Raphael. The guilt of that knowledge would kill Kai. It would change how he behaved. Kai couldn’t be allowed to face Lucifer. Because now I knew for certain Lucifer would try to kill him. Kai had to have children. Kai wanted to have children. I didn’t need the bond to figure that out. When he wasn’t being an overprotective idiot, something inside me had always ached when I watched him with Cassie.
There was always a cub or pup hanging off him when we were in the Reserve. Something punched me in the gut to know that when it did happen for him, it wouldn’t be with me.
I made an involuntary whimpering sound. It was too much like the start of a sob. Pulling at every inch of willpower I had, I locked it all away. My great-grandmother had watched her granddaughter jump off a cliff. I could survive this.
“There isn’t a way around this,” I told him. My voice was flat. “Can you rescind your side of the bond?”
His eyes darkened. “No.”
I nodded. It wasn’t a no because it wasn’t possible. It was a no because he didn’t want to. “Okay.”
Kai shook me. “Don’t you dare give up on us! I don’t care if you can’t have children.”
That deathly resolve was in his eyes again. For some reason, I heard Chanelle’s voice in my head.
“He’s too stubborn to back down. Even if he realises his mistake a decade from now, he’ll remain loyal out of a sense of obligation. Is that what you want? For him to be with you because he refuses to admit he was wrong?”
There was only one way to get him to detach, and it wasn’t being logical and mature. “That’s what you said about me and my powers but look how that turned out. You tried to kidnap me and wouldn’t let me leave. I don’t want to turn around ten years from now and realise we made the biggest mistake of our lives.”
It would kill me to watch the resentment eat at him.
“It doesn’t matter!”
“Stop saying that!” I screamed. “It matters to me!”
“Blue.” The nickname, in his husky voice, set me off.
“I don’t want to be the reason why you’ll be secretly miserable for the rest of your life. We keep going back and forth with this. First it was the Council, then your bloody bloodline, and now I literally can’t physically do this. I think the universe is trying to tell us something. Never mind the fact that it’s been ten minutes and I’m screaming at the top of my lungs. Get it through your thick head!”
His nostrils flared. So did the temper fraying at the bond. But with that precise Malachi Pendragon discipline, he kept it under wraps. My blood turned cold. He had just proven my point. It didn’t feel like a victory. The part of him that made him a survivor was also the part that would trap him in his duty when this all went wrong. One day, we would turn around and it would all be terrible, but he’d grit his teeth and live through it.
“We’re done, Kai. I can’t do this anymore.”
He searched my face for the longest minute, picked up his angel blade, and stormed out the door. He was gone barely two seconds when Raphael appeared. I took one look at the sorrowful expression on his face and the dam inside
