by Lola StVil
THE NORU: BOOK IV
WHEN ANGELS BREAK
By-Lola StVil
© 2015, Lola St Vil
This book is dedicated to the readers. Thank you for waiting and spreading the word. You have changed my life and I am forever grateful.
Love,
Lola
Book I:
PRYOR REESE CANE
“To whom much is given, much will be required”
Luke 12:48
Chapter One:
Something Pretty
I never imagined anything could be as painful as the torture I faced in the Center. I was so wrong; the hurt I feel now surpasses that a thousand times over. This feels like the end of me. As it turns out, the end didn’t come by a sharp blade, a raging sea of flames or even by the hands of my malicious half brother. Instead, I am destroyed by mere words. That’s right; Pryor Reese Cane, the most powerful angel that ever lived, has been undone by six little words.
Silver is gonna be a father.
I stand in the doorway of Mrs. Maybelle’s kitchen. I am forced to come to terms with the cruelest reality: there is no life for Aaden and Pryor. We are destined to be happy for no more than a few hours, let alone all our lives. I replay the order of events, desperately trying to make sense of it all.
I had the best night of my life with Silver. He got in the shower and I headed downstairs towards the kitchen. That’s when I overheard Bex and Ruin having a conversation.
“I’m done with your pointless questions. I know you want me gone. Your leader tells me to go and I will. But until then, stay out of my business and out of my way,” she informed him.
“Okay, fair enough. But I have one last question,” Bex countered.
“What is it, Para?” Ruin asked rudely.
“Which one of us is going to tell Silver he’s gonna be a father?”
I can’t even begin to wrap my head around those words. I mean, seriously, a few hours ago I was upstairs making love for the very first time in my life. It was an amazing experience and I got to share it with the angel I have always wanted: Aaden.
The night was filled with intense passion and longing. We didn’t just have sex—it was love; we made love. And in the morning he vowed we would always be together and that nothing would come between us.
Ruin is pregnant with Silver’s baby?!
Pry, you can keep saying it over and over in your head, but that won’t change anything.
“Pry, Mrs. Maybelle wants us all in the main house for breakfast right now,” Swoop says as she comes down the steps.
I don’t respond; I just head back up to Silver’s room. Swoop calls after me and asks if I’m okay, but again I don’t reply. I enter Silver’s room and close the door behind me. I hear the shower running, so I sit and wait for him on the edge of the unmade bed. The bed we lay in just hours before. The bed where he told me he loved me. Suddenly his voice comes back to me.
“This moment is about you…I’ve been making love to you every day in my head my entire life…”
I place my hand on the sheets covering the bed and flashes appear in my head. I recall his hands on the small of my back. I can still feel his powerful kiss on my lips. He left a delicious trail of kisses on the nape of my neck, between my shoulder blades, and on my thighs.
I let him inside me and now…
The more I think about the night we spent together, the more rage wells up inside of me. Soon, there’s a ball of fury in the pit of my stomach. I leap off the bed, storm into the bathroom and bang on the glass.
“AADEN, YOU GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE, NOW!”
He steps out of the shower, dripping wet, and wraps the nearest towel around his waist. I march back into the bedroom and demand an explanation.
“Explain what? What the hell just happened?” he asks.
“How could you be so irresponsible?” I accuse.
“You said you were okay about last night.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about!”
“Well, then clue me in, Pry, because I’m lost.”
“I can’t believe that you would…and now she’s…ARGHHHHHHH!”
Without thinking, I pound my fists into him repeatedly, and while he doesn’t hit me back, he blocks the blows and tries to restrain me.
“How could you do this? How could you be so careless?” I beg.
“DAMN IT, PRYOR, CALM DOWN!” He binds both of my hands in his grip.
I could get out of his hold and attack him, but the way I’m feeling, I may actually kill him. Although a small part of me is okay with that right now, I allow him to restrain me. He orders me to sit down on the bed and I do. Not out of blind obedience, but out of sheer exhaustion.
While I compose myself, he puts his clothes on and then kneels before me like he did the night before.
“I don’t get it. Why would you do this? This is going to change everything,” I whisper.
“What the hell happened?”
I sigh loudly, get up from the bed, and start to walk away.
“Pry, talk to me,” he says, going after me as I open the door.
“I can’t…this is just so messed up. I don’t even…” I shake my head in disbelief.
“You can’t throw a fit and then walk out without talking to me. We’re together now. And whatever it is, we’ll fix it,” he assures me.
“Ruin is pregnant.”
He looks back at me in utter disbelief. He opens his mouth, but words fail him. When he finally finds his voice, he addresses me.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, I don’t want to be a jerk here, but Ruin and I haven’t been together in a long time.”
“Didn’t you just kiss her on Mercy Island?” I remind him.
“I was overwhelmed with the thought of what the Center could be doing to you, and she was going through a really rough time with some stuff that happened the day she died,” he explains.
“So that’s a yes on the kissing, right?” I snap.
“Yes, we kissed. I told you that. But that’s all we did, and the last time I checked, kissing doesn’t get you pregnant.”
“I guess the last time you two slept together, you guys were just too carried away to use a Tam.”
“I don’t have unprotected sex; I’m not a damn kid.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you, Aaden,” I counter.
“Diana is having my child. You’re sure about this?” he asks again, unable to comprehend it.
“That’s exactly what is happening,” someone in the doorway says.
Mrs. Maybelle enters and shakes her head in disapproval, her coffee-bean-colored skin glowing in the sunlight streaming from the window.
“You knew?” Aaden asks her.
“Since Lil’bit first walked up the road. It’s in the eyes. Demon or angel, when a woman is about to become a mother, she glows something pretty,” Mrs. Maybelle says in her usual charming Southern accent.
“And I’m the father?” Aaden asks.
“Judging by the way she looks at you, I’d say yes. But I also made her take off her sweater so I could see the markings on her arms. Markings only appear when one parent is an angel. And the kind of markings she has are the same kind your parents had with you all. It’s all written down and recorded. I checked. That girl out there is about to make you a father.”
Aaden rushes out of the house and into the backyard to find Ruin. By now the whole house has heard the news, and everyone on the team is following Aaden. He finds Ruin and takes her into a small shed, down by the bridge where we had met up the night before.
“So we’re
not going to follow them and see what happens?” Easton asks.
“No, they need their privacy,” I reply as I clear my throat.
“That’s true and very mature,” Bex says.
“Screw maturity, I need details!” Swoop says as she runs down towards the shed to spy on them.
We take off after her as if to stop her, but of course, we want to hear what’s taking place. We’re far enough away that they don’t know we’re there, but close enough to hear every word.
“I guess you know,” Ruin says softly.
“I’ve been told by a lot of people, but I want to hear it from you,” Aaden says.
“Yes, I am pregnant, and yes, you’re the father.”
Aaden is silent for what feels like forever.
“Silver, can you say something, anything?” Ruin pleads.
“I don’t remember us ever having sex without a Tam, not once.”
“I know,” she replies.
“Did I get really drunk and forget?” he asks.
“No.”
“Okay, then help me out here, Diana,” he snaps at her.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. One night you asked me if you should summon up a vial of Tam. But I told you that I had my own protection.”
“So you lied about having Tam?”
“No, I didn’t. I had a few vials with me.”
“Then what the hell happened?”
“I was going to drink the Tam and your dad called. You and he had been at odds for a while, and you hated him at the time. So you rejected his call. Then we started to talk and I told you how awful some of my relatives were to me when I was human. Then we started drinking and we had a rare moment where we both let our guard down. We talked about our dreams and desires. And how we’d be if we were ever parents.”
“I remember; we were in Aspen.”
“Yes, well, that was the night that I decided not to drink the Tam. I thought it wouldn’t be so bad if we had a kid because then both you and I could finally have the family we were denied.”
“You lied about taking the Tam?” he asks.
“I thought it would be a surprise. Something amazing that we could both take part in, something for us to have in common other than our hatred of the Angel world. When I found you, I was so excited to tell you, but that was the same day you told me that it was over…”
“You had no right to do this! This is seriously the stupidest thing I have ever heard!” he yells.
“I thought it would be a good thing,” she pleads.
“Argh! This is so like you. You just go off, do whatever the hell you want, and leave everyone else to deal with the fallout.”
“This wasn’t about me; it was about ‘us.’ Because as hard as you try to fight it, there was an ‘us,’” she scolds.
“You don’t just go off and have a kid without talking to the other person. That’s bullshit and you know it!”
“Stop looking at me like that!” she rages.
“Like what?”
“Like I did this as some well-thought-out scheme to manipulate you. That’s not what this is!” she swears.
“Then what the hell is it?”
“It’s a gift. Silver, what we had was—”
“Fuck what we had! Because if what we had mattered to you, you wouldn’t have gone off and made this major life decision without me.”
“I thought we were going to be together. I wanted this for the both of us!”
“ARGH! YOU REALLY DON’T FUCKING GET IT!” he says as he puts his fist through the wall of the shed.
“No, I get it. You hate me and you hate this kid. That’s fine, Silver. We will manage on our own.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he asks.
“I’m talking about the fact that you don’t want to be involved in this situation. And you know what, that’s okay. I’ll figure something out all on my own. I can be a single parent. Human women do it all the time, so screw you,” she says, more hurt than angry.
“You think I’m going to walk out on my kid?” he asks in disbelief.
“You said—”
“Yeah, I said it was stupid; deciding to have a kid without talking to the guy is stupid. But that doesn’t mean that I’m gonna walk away.”
“Well, what the hell am I supposed to think, Silver? You bring me out here and berate me for something we both took part in. I’m supposed to believe that you’re gonna stick around?”
“YOU’VE HAD MONTHS TO GET USED TO THE IDEA OF HAVING A KID. I HAVE HAD FOUR MINUTES!” he roars, hitting yet another spot on the wall.
He then rakes both hands through his hair and leans on the wall that remains. Ruin stays quiet, not sure what else to say. The tension crackles in the air and every moment it grows worse. The first one to break the silence is Aaden.
“How are you?” he asks softly as he faces away from her.
“What?”
“My dad said my mom felt weak sometimes when she was pregnant with me. And that she needed to rest more often. Is it the same for you? I mean…are you weak?” he asks.
“A little, but not too much.”
“Wait, you went to the Forest of Ash and Bone with us. You could have been hurt. Why did you do that?” he says.
“She wanted to be near her father.”
“That’s no reason to—what?” he replies, stupefied.
“We’re having a girl,” Ruin says with a nervous smile.
“How—how do you know?” he asks.
She takes off her sweater and shows him the intricate patterns spread across her hands and arms. Silver is engrossed in the markings and gently studies them with his fingers.
“The marking in the palm of my hand indicates gender.”
“I’m gonna have a daughter,” he says to himself as he turns away from her.
Ruin and the rest of us wait to see his reaction now that the news is starting to sink in. It feels like the world has stopped and everything hinges on this one moment. Worried, Ruin softly calls out his name.
He turns back towards her, takes her hand in his, and kisses the marking in the palm of her hand. He then pulls her close and holds her tightly against him.
“Just promise me I’m not alone in this. Please,” Ruin says as she lingers in his embrace.
“You are not alone. You have me. Both of you have me…”
The flight back home is made in complete silence. I steal glances at Aaden and look away quickly when he catches me. The team studies us closely, not sure how all of this will play out. Key is still out of the country, but Swoop texted her and told her the latest drama. She offered to return, but I told her she didn’t have to come back, as this is not a team issue—at least not as of now.
When we land, Randy looks at me; he’s got a million questions about angels and babies. However, I can’t answer them right now. Right now all I can do is put my energy on one thing: pretending I’m not completely freaked out. I think Aaden is working on the same thing. Ruin, on the other hand, is oddly calm and reflective.
“Okay, so real quick, would it be in bad taste if I popped some popcorn before the show?” East jokes.
Aaden warns him with an icy glare. Swoop places a calming hand on his shoulder. Bex has been watching me while I’ve been studying Aaden. Bex looks concerned and restless.
“Okay, I’ll start. Silver, what the hell were you thinking?” Bex snaps.
He doesn’t reply. His focus is on me and only me.
Bex tries again. “You can’t just mate with a demon and then drop this bomb on us!”
“Damn it! My father just texted me; he wants to see me about something. It’s like he can sense when I’m having a good time. Okay, Swoop, take notes. Better yet, record everything. I’ll see you guys back at school,” East says as he rushes out the door.
“Wait. Okay, go,” Swoop says as she takes out her cell to record us.
Bex shakes his head and decides to ignore Swoop and address Ruin instead. “You did this whole thing on pur
pose, didn’t you?” Bex demands of Ruin.
“Why is it your business who I do and don’t have sex with?” Ruin replies.
“I don’t care about that. What I care about is the fact that we have no idea what your real motivation is. Who knows how many angels you’ve actually been with? This could have been your plan all along, you manipulative little bitch.”
Silver moves with impossible speed, grabs Bex by his neck, slams him into the wall, and pins him there. Although his movements were impulsive and reckless, his voice is certain and deadly calm.
“Para, you watch how you speak to her, or it won’t end well for you,” Aaden warns.
I have no doubt in my mind Aaden means it. And judging from the looks on the faces of the rest of the team, they too believe Aaden. Bex angrily shoves Silver’s hand away and glares at him.
“You saved Key from the Center, and I will always be grateful to you for that. But ever since you’ve come back, the only thing you’ve brought with you is bullshit. Now we have a pregnant demon who may or may not still be working for Malakaro,” Bex scolds.
“What? Are you seriously doubting after everything?” Ruin snaps.
“I’m not saying you didn’t save our ass a few times. I’m just wondering what’s behind it. We have no idea what you do when we aren’t looking. How do we know you don’t go back to Malakaro every night and keep him updated? How do we know that this isn’t part of some scam to infiltrate the team?” Bex shouts.
“Argh, you ungrateful little troll! I risked my life and the life of my child to help you. I do it time and time again. And it’s not enough for you?” Ruin blares.
“You want something from us, and I’m tired of you pretending like you don’t. So out with it, demon, what the hell do you want?” Bex rages.
“ENOUGH!” I demand.
The room falls silent. Everyone looks at me, uncertain about what comes next. I address them in a no-nonsense tone, the tone of a leader who is in no mood for debate.
“What Aaden and Ruin do or don’t do on their own time is their business. However, since Ruin is carrying a Noru, she is to be protected and watched over, not judged and criticized. It’s a shock to us all, but at the end of the day, it’s done.
“I’m sure we all need time to process and that’s fine. But we need to go on with our day-to-day lives as well. Right now that means school. So, everyone get your things and get to your first period before the Face gives us yet more detention,” I order.
