The spiral of emotions made me completely unreasonable. I wasn’t able to process it all at once. Tears of fear, of relief, of joy dampened his shirt.
“Shhh,” he said, holding me close. “Don’t cry, Sophie darling. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”
That was good, because right that very second, I promptly lost all my energy and fainted. The last thing I saw wasn’t Max’s face but that of the malachim who dusted a kiss to my forehead. See you soon, Sophie.
I woke to the scent of Max all around me. His thigh was shoved between my legs, his arm a protective cage around me. Like the accomplished predator he was, Max knew it the second I was awake.
“Hi,” he said in my ear.
“Hey. What happened?”
His hand came to rest on my bare stomach. I lifted the sheet, confirmed that I was buck naked, and squealed. “Like I said,” he rasped in my ear. “Clothing is pointless.”
“You’re a bloody creep!”
But he stroked his hand up over my ribs and down to my lower back. Surely I could be forgiven for the moaning a little.
“The malachim sucked all of your energy. I’m this close to telling Kai to just end them all.”
I swatted at him. “I’ll help them when I’m a bit better.”
A bit better turned out to take too long for Max’s liking. Despite the fact that Kai had effectively come back to life after six months, Max dragged him home the next day and presented him to me like a prize.
“Heal her,” Max said.
“Do I look like a submissive to you?” Kai snapped back.
I left the living room for a minute to talk to Jeremiah and some of the mages who were supervising the rebuild of the kitchen and came back to find them wrestling on the floor.
Max had Kai in a choke hold and Kai was trying to brain Max with a shoe. You would never have been able to tell that Max had been alpha of the whole Reserve not long ago. It was like they turned into nine-year-olds in each other’s presence. As detrimental as it could be to the furniture, I was glad for them both. There was so much pressure in their lives. To have someone they could be completely unguarded with was rare. It did not excuse all the ruckus, though.
“If you break this room too,” I told them, “you’re both going to regret it.”
“He started it!” Kai said, attempting to teleport. He started it. The war cry of a man-child.
Max grabbed him by the arm and did that strange magic disruption thing of his. “You’re just sooking because Lex didn’t talk to you!”
Kai’s green eyes flashed murder. His jaw set hard and his aura thrummed with rage. When Max released him, he stormed out of the house and slammed the door.
“Now you’ve gone and done it,” I told Max. He stretched into a languid pose on the ground.
“He can’t go into a rage every time someone mentions her. He’ll go crazy if he doesn’t let it out.”
He knew Kai better than I did, so I let it slide. “I don’t need to be healed anyway. My strength will eventually return.”
“Eventually is too long.”
“Well, Kai doesn’t look like he’s coming back anytime soon.”
“Give it a second.”
Ten of them passed. Max smirked. A few seconds later I heard the thumping of angry footsteps, and then the door opened again. “Come on,” Kai said to me. I flicked Max in the nose on my way out. He snapped his teeth at me and joined us a second later. I should have known he would never let me out of his sight for something like this.
Kai teleported us to Seraphina. It was still a shock to my system to see the Nephilim city in disarray. The courtyard outside the ballrooms was still off limits, which meant the ballrooms themselves weren’t to be used.
Patricia was not a happy camper. She tried to chew Kai’s ear off the moment we arrived. It was like she was hiding in the wings of the ballroom waiting for him to pop up. “We need some normalcy,” she said.
“Trish,” Kai said, his nostrils flaring. “I’m going to say this once and once only. I don’t give a damn about a welcome-home party. I don’t give a damn about the Laurents wanting to reassure people we’re on good terms after the bonding ceremony, and I sure as hell don’t give a damn that Chanelle isn’t speaking to me. So the next person who mentions any of it is going to find themselves without their tongue.”
She huffed. Her mouth opened, but she saw the look in his eye and deflated. Then she stalked off muttering something about him being more fun while he was possessed.
Max left it for about five seconds before he asked, “So, no welcome-home party then?”
I stepped back because Kai was going to punch him for sure. Max’s grin was a mile wide.
“You’re so funny, Maximus,” Kai snarled. “So, so funny.”
He turned to me, his eyes flashing wickedly. “You’d never think of having a mating ceremony without Lex, would you?” he asked casually, knowing what my answer would be.
“There would be no ceremony without her,” I said truthfully.
The play of emotions over Max’s face was priceless. Kai threw the grin back at him. Max gave a frustrated roar, because there was no way he would make me have our mating ceremony without Lex there. Which would mean it would be put off indefinitely.
He was all brooding unhappiness as we approached the soul circle. Raphael met us there. The change in him was drastic. I gulped and surreptitiously glanced from Kai to Raphael and back again. The seraphim turned to me, his blue eyes solemn. I saw in them a question. When I shook my head imperceptibly, Raphael smiled at me.
No, I hadn’t told Kai
