by Lan Chan
“Good for him.” I could imagine Basil driving a hard bargain for his services. I hoped he’d taken them for all they were worth.
“There is one other thing,” Nanna said. She placed a rolled-up parchment halfway between us. “That’s the Council favour. Only there is no Council at the moment.”
I swallowed. “What about the blood vow?”
This time, all three of them grinned. “Actually,” Jacqueline said, “the contract for the games were never redrawn after you and Kai had that big fight. The nymphs still had possession of it, and since they quarantined the Grove after the attack on the Academies, nobody remembered to update the terms. As soon as Chanelle was ruled out of the games, the contract dissolved.”
The expectation on their faces made it difficult to breathe. My nose clogged. I drew in a breath from my mouth. Sophie reached out for my hand. “Kai was never bonded to Chanelle,” she said. “It turns out she healed by suppressing the rest of her mage-born powers.”
I bit my tongue so hard to keep from bursting into tears. I tasted blood. Since the moment I’d woken up, I’d been able to feel his presence. It was a complete surprise that I didn’t turn around to find him right there with me. I knew without anyone telling me that right now he was with Angus and the other elite guards chasing down the fugitive criminals.
“Lex?” Nanna frowned.
“Lucifer was there while I was technically dead,” I told them. This band-aid needed to come off quickly. “He hurt me with a weapon forged in Hell. He said that he wouldn’t allow any more Nephilim from the Pendragon line to be born.” I looked at my hands. “I’ll never be able to have kids.”
There was a moment of agonised silence. I couldn’t stand it. I actually wished that a portal would open up and spit demons out so I didn’t have to deal with their stunned emotions or the pity. Something even worse than that happened. The bond screamed at me that Kai was close. I swiped the unshed tears from my eyes a second before the tell-tale spark of green.
Nanna almost jumped out of her skin when Kai appeared beside me. “I’m still not quite used to that,” I heard her say just before Kai’s broad chest blocked her, and everything else, out.
“Hey there,” he said. A second later, I was being crushed against a very sweaty, very masculine chest. I heard the click of the door closing. They’d left me alone with him. I felt both grateful and abandoned.
Kai reached under my top to lay his hand against the pulse point on my back. It was the exact spot he had placed his hand that night he initiated the bond. Irritation spiked through me. But it was tempered by the unrepentant itch to crawl all over him. Just for a moment, I allowed myself to indulge in the pleasure of having him so close.
Kai cupped my cheek in one hand. His thumb traced the imaginary line where the axe had almost severed my head. An inch farther and I would have been a goner. They had kept my head attached for a reason though. It was hard to destroy this much power. There had been a necromancer in the room when I died. No doubt they would have raised me to be their puppet. I would have preferred to die.
“I’m never letting you out of my sight again,” he said.
Proof of his words flared in the possessive tug of the bond. I looked up at him. There was a smudge of ash across his left cheek. An artwork of blood dotted along the column of his neck. His T-shirt was torn across his left shoulder. Something with serrated claws had scratched him deep enough to disrupt the elegant lines of his tattoo. I didn’t need to ask him how long it had been since he last slept. The bond told me it was over twenty-four hours ago. He’d come back as soon as he’d felt me regain consciousness.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. Right then I remembered the bond worked both ways. I swear I felt the spike in his heart rate as he clasped my hand. “I shouldn’t have left you.”
I tried to push him aside. “Stop it,” I said. “Please.”
His breath evened out. “Blue?”
I knew I had to tell him. But there was a plug in my throat. Once it was out there, I couldn’t take it back. Part of me still hoped it wasn’t real. “Why do you keep clutching your abdomen?” Kai asked.
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 deta
ch, 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 me broke.
For the longest time, Raphael stroked my hair while I cried my heart out. Why did doing the right thing always feel like shit? I knew the answer to that. It was because I was never meant to live in the first place.
60
Even though I begged, screamed, and negotiated, none of the Nephilim would tell me how to undo the bond. Either they were terrified of Kai, or they were so ashamed that Tiberius tried to kill me, that it made them all mute.
Not even Chanelle would breathe a word. She had a lot of other words for me, but when I asked her to help me break the bond already, she stormed off.
As a result, my mood was erratic. Most people kept as far away from me as possible. It was the strangest three weeks as the supernatural world tried to recover from the betrayal of their Councils. The elite guard investigation into the Supernatural Council ended two days before Christmas. They were all cleared except Jonah, but Kai had already taken care of him a week after the attack on the prison. The Nephilim Council were still being scrutinized.
I was in the Reserve the day Durin was released. A sigh went through every shifter within earshot. The air felt like it shimmered with a sudden taut anticipation. All around me, shifters burst into their animal forms.
They all disappeared towards Durin’s house. I sat down heavily on the fence of Basil’s place. “Thank goodness,” Sophie said.
I raised a brow at her. “Did you think he was guilty?”
She snorted. “As if. I’m just glad he’s back. Max was getting unbearable to be around.”
I’ll say. Charles had been snapping at everything in sight. He made Cassie cry and then spent the next week following her around grovelling.
Best of all, as soon as Jonah died, the hex that made me forsaken completely lifted. I no longer needed the seal. The flex of magic was comforting. It meant I could go back to Bloodline when the new year started. It just didn’t do all that much to dampen the effects of the stupid bond.
I may have screamed and yelled at Raphael for a while. “There’s nothing I can do, little one,” he’d said.
“I’m getting very tired of hearing that,” I snapped. Then I turned on Michael as well.
“You all did this to begin with! Help me fix it!”
Michael opened his mouth, his eyes soft around the edges. I balled my fists. “If the next words out of your mouth are ‘free will,’ I am going to have a coronary.”
I swear most of Seraphina heard me shrieking. Maybe that was part of the reason why the Nephilim all tried to avoid me.
Andrei and I came to an agreement. We would build up to raising his family and we would find the truth. But only if he helped Sophie and me locate the ingredients from Hilary’s diary.
Nanna insisted that she would host Christmas the first year out of her coma. “How is this any different to last year?” Sophie observed. We were in the kitchen being slaves while the adults were outside enjoying their mulled wine and the food poor Sophie was sweating to get ready. Every once in a while, Nanna would waltz into the kitchen to “check on us.”
The front door banged open. An almighty bellow of good humour filled the whole house. “Happy holidays!” Aedan Pierce yelled before he burped so loudly I thought the ceiling was going to come down on our heads.
“That’s disgusting, Da!” Diana laughed.
“Yours is louder than mine,” her da shot back. She ran into the kitchen with us to get away from him. Unfortunately, he followed. Diana and Roland’s dad was about two inches taller than me. When he hugged me, it felt like being squeezed by a barrel. He kissed the top of my head. His breath could sterilise metal.
“How much have you already drunk?” I asked.
He slapped my back. “You sound just like my Jessa.” Then he winked at me. “Gotta get a wee bit in me in preparation for the night’s festivities.” The way he pumped his brows made me think he didn’t mean Nanna’s party.
“Oh my god, Da!” Diana screamed. “Can you not.”
He bellowed. “Come now, lass. Did you think you just popped out of a hole in the ground?”
Sophie was biting her bottom lip so hard to keep from laughing. Jessa Pierce kicked open the swinging kitchen door. She had two packages in her arms.
“There she is!” Aedan said. He grabbed his wife and planted a kiss on her lips. Twenty years from now, Diana would look just like her mum.
Jessa handed a package to Sophie and gave the other to me. “What’s this?” I asked.
“It’s Christmas, ya daft chit.”
“I know. But we said no presents.”
Jessa rolled her eyes. They sparkled as I unwrapped the gift. I pulled out a thin piece of mithril chainmail that was lighter than actual material. It shone a lustrous silver. There was a small lock on one side. The thing was, it was kind of small. The triangular shape of it wouldn’t fit over my head at all and…I turned it around so the tip of the triangular part pointed to the floor. Diana’s jaw dropped. She covered her face with her hands and groaned.
Basil walked into the kitchen. He took one look at the thing in my hands and guffawed. “Is that a chastity belt?”
I gave Diana’s parents my most impassive look. They hooted and slapped each other on the back. “Just in case Pendragon gets any ideas.” Aedan winked at me. Their mirth was so infectious, I found myself smiling despite it all.
“I’m so sorry,” Diana said when they left to join the adults. “I had no idea.”
“It’s okay.”
She grabbed my arm and studied my face. “Is it?”
I felt myself unclenching. When I nodded at her, it wasn’t a complete lie.
Just before dinner, Jacqueline and Cassie’s mum, Joanna arrived to pick up Cassie. For obvious reasons nobody would speak about, they wouldn’t be spending Christmas with us. I was glad. I’d miss them, but at the same time, I didn’t want Kai to be alone.
The hug Cassie gave me almost snapped my spine. She looked up at Jacqueline who nodded at her. From her backpack, Cassie pulled out a palm-sized present wrapped in emerald green paper. There was an envelope stuck to it with the word Blue written on it in Kai’s handwriting.
My hands laced behind my back. Jacqueline cleared her throat.
“I don’t want it,” I said.
“Too bad!” Cassie said. She grabbed my hand and shoved the present into it. “I’ve been carrying it around for a week. It’s eating me alive to know what’s in there.�
��
I just stood there in the middle of the living room with everyone staring at me. My body turned towards the fireplace. It was hotter than sin right now in Australia, but Basil had spelled the house to be wintry cold so we could have the fire going.
Diana latched onto my shoulder when I made a move towards the fire. “Don’t you dare!”
“I can’t do this,” I said.
“I’ll do it for you.”
Sophie stopped her from snatching the present from me. “Stop it,” Sophie said. “She doesn’t want to do this.”
A low growl built in Max’s chest. Here we go. With everything that was happening, I had managed to avoid Max as much as possible. The fourth year students had their graduation while I was still recuperating. It would be strange to go back to school without him there. “Never figured you for a chicken,” he said. Then again, sometimes distance wasn’t bad.
“Shut up!” Charles said. “She doesn’t want to open it. Mind your own business.”
My little knight in furry armour. Not so little anymore. In my head, I kept thinking if I had a kid, I would want him to be just like Charles. My airways started closing.
Charles took a swipe at Max. “Now look what you’ve done!” He lunged at his older brother only to be caught in the golden circle of Shayla’s magic.
“Both of you will be the death of me one day,” she sighed.
I looked around the room. Every one of them stared back at me. When all was said and done, Kai and I were too closely intertwined. If I wanted to extricate him from my life, I would have to carve all of them out too. Was I prepared to do that?
A voice in my head said it would more likely be the other way around. Eugenia was right. For a while now, I had felt something pressing down on me. Lucifer was making preparations. I wouldn’t likely survive them. So what was I so scared of right now?
Ripping off the wrapping paper revealed what I had dreaded. Another ring box. “Open it,” I told Cassie as I handed it back to her. She glanced at me dumbfounded.
