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Chapter 12

Iawoke early in the morning, as the first rays of the sun hit the house.

I sat up on the sofa and looked at Nero. "You were supposed to take the first watch, not stay up the whole night while I slept."

"I like watching you sleep." He leaned over me and tucked a wayward strand of hair away from my face. "You snore so contently."

"Angels don't snore, remember?" I kissed his hand. "I even read it in one of my textbooks."

Nero pulled me up and drew me in close to him. He kissed the top of my head.

I glanced behind us and saw Calli's bedroom door was open. So were Zane's, Tessa's, and Gin's.

"The four of them left early to go shopping for a potion Bella said would help her heal and calm her nerves," Nero told me.

Purgatory's potions market opened early.

"So it's only Harker and Bella here in the house with us?" I asked him.

"Yes."

"How are they doing?"

"Bella has been asleep all night. And an hour ago, I ordered Harker to take a nap because he looked like shit."

I laughed.

"Harker tried to argue with me, but he backed down when I told him he won't be able to protect Bella properly in that sorry state. He fell asleep immediately."

"Yeah, I can hear him snoring," I chuckled.

Nero's brows arched. "I thought angels don't snore."

"You tell me. You've read every book in the Legion's extensive library."

"Perhaps not every book."

"But most of them."

"Yes," he said, a bit smugly. "I had considerably more time on my hands before you came around."

I winked at him. "But considerably less fun too."

"True."

"We're effectively alone in the house." I gave him my best rendition of bedroom eyes.

"I know that look."

"What look?"

"The look on your face, Leda. It means trouble."

I fluttered my eyelashes at him. "Me? Trouble? Never."

"It runs in your whole family," Nero told me. "Your sister Tessa blew me a kiss as they all headed out of the house this morning."

"Oh, was my sister flirting with you?" Butterfly laughter fluttered in my stomach—or maybe that was just last night's dinner.

"Your sister always flirts with me, except when she can flirt with Damiel."

"Then I'll make sure to invite your father the next time we come over here. And your mother too. It wouldn't be a real family dinner without some drama."

"Leda, you enjoy stoking the fire far too much," Nero said, wrapping his arms around me.

"Was that an invitation to stoke your fire, General?"

He snorted. "I hope your jokes improve as the day progresses."

"I doubt it. I wasted all my weekly snark on Colonel Fireswift yesterday. And he didn't even flinch. Ok, maybe he did flinch once or twice. In horror."

"Fireswift will survive. And suffering builds character."

"More words of wisdom from your father?" I teased.

"Damiel isn't wrong about everything."

That was high praise among angels.

"Nice to hear you two are getting along better," I said.

"We haven't tried to kill each other yet this month."

"Oh, come now. Don't be so melodramatic." I leaned in and kissed him. "Even though I know melodrama is very befitting of an angel. Especially the male angels. You're such drama queens. That's why Tessa loves you all so much."

Nero's face was as hard as granite. "You don't say."

"But I think my sister is just messing with you and Damiel to get a reaction out of you."

"I wonder where she could have learned that," Nero said drily.

My smile was pure innocence. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"The first time we met, you propositioned me."

"I did no such thing!" I protested.

"You did," he replied with a smooth smile. "When I asked why you wanted to join the Legion, you said, and I quote, ‘I hear angels are great in the sack'."

"That was not a proposition. It was my aggravation shining through at being asked that question twenty million times."

Nero pressed on, undaunted. "And then you offered to tell me your bra size."

"That was a joke!"

"Later you made mention to me of a ‘second date'."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "You know, for someone with such a picture-perfect memory, you sure have a talent for rearranging reality to suit your purpose."

"Those are hardly mutually-exclusive skills. In fact, they are quite complementary. As I've told you many times, Pandora, you have to know the rules inside-out in order to bend them to your needs."

"Or outright break them."

He nodded. "If necessary."

"Necessary." I chuckled. "While we're on the topic of the sins of our first encounter, my love, was it truly necessary for you to interview me by sending me after three vampires? What do the Legion's regulations say about that?"

"An angel is given great leeway when it comes to commanding his territory and everyone in it." His words were possessive, his eyes glowing with magic.

"I wasn't yours yet," I told him.

"Oh, that's where you're wrong, Pandora." He tucked my hair behind my ears, his touch featherlight. "You were mine from the moment we met."

He was so close, only a sliver of space separated our bodies. If I drew in a deep breath, I'd brush against him.

"And I was yours from the moment I saw you in my dreams, the night before we met." His voice was melodic, drawing me in. "Something reached out to me across time and space and drew me to you."

"Grace."

"No, not Grace. She only sent me the dreams. There are forces greater than gods or demons at work here, Leda."

"Don't allow the gods and demons to hear you say that."

"We were always meant to be, Leda. The song-and-dance between us that started the moment we met was only a formality."

I wet my lips. "A very fun formality."

"Yes."

I finally dared to breathe—and brushed against the hard wall of his chest. His hands were on my hips, gripping me to him. My fingers scraped down his back. His tongue ravaged my mouth.

"Nero, I want you so much," I muttered.

I hadn't had him inside of me since we'd found out I was pregnant. And I couldn't take it anymore.

"Climbing onto his lap, every moment without you is agony." I ground myself against him in desperate anticipation.

"Stop it, Leda," he whispered.

But he wasn't stopping. His kisses had grown fiercer, his hands savage.

"Yes," I moaned. "Like that."

"We can't," he said, his voice rough. "You know that."

"I don't care about the rules, Nero. And neither do you."

"No, right now I don't care about any rules." He kissed me. "But I do care about you. I love you." He slid lower to kiss my belly. "And I love you," he said, speaking directly to our daughter.

He slid up and kissed me once more on my lips. Then he pulled me into an embrace.

"I knew I should have thrown my panties at you," I grumbled.

Magic flashed in Nero's eyes. "Don't make me handcuff you to the desk, Pandora."

Then we both had a good laugh over that particular memory.

"How scandalous of you to make out in Callista's living room," a voice echoed off the walls.

I knew that voice. I glanced over the back of the sofa and met Damiel's amused eyes. Cadence stood beside him, her hands folded in front of her, looking very serene.

"What do you want, Damiel?" Nero demanded.

"You don't look very happy to see me," Damiel said.

"How observant of you."

Damiel wasn't fazed. His smile persisted. "Being observant goes with the job," he said lightly. "I was the Legion's first Master Interrogator, after all. And, honestly, I'm surprised Nyx hasn't offered me the job again."

"The position is already filled," I told him.

Damiel gave his hand a dismissive wave. "By a brute. Xerxes Fireswift has all the subtlety of a bloody spiked mace."

I couldn't argue with that.

"The fact that Nyx hasn't offered you the job has nothing to do with Fireswift—and everything to do with you," Nero told his father.

Damiel laughed softly. "Indeed. I'm not very popular with the other angels. Perhaps I should join Leda in taking remedial angel lessons." His eyes twinkled. He looked very amused—at my expense.

"Yes, you should join me," I shot back. "I'm sure Colonel Fireswift would enjoy telling you how a proper angel must behave."

Damiel laughed out loud. I thought the walls might tumble down from his amusement.

"Shush," I chided him. "You're going to wake up the sleeping angel."

"Sunstorm could sleep through an earthquake." But Damiel gave me a graceful bow; the walls stopped trembling.

"What are you doing here anyway?" Nero's eyes hardened. "And how did you make it past the defenses I set up?"

"The magic defenses guarding this house are very impressive, but you need to rethink your strategy, Nero," Damiel replied. "The alarms go off when someone or something physically crosses the perimeter. Your mother and I never crossed the perimeter because we teleported right inside of it."

Nero seemed to be mulling that over. He was likely already trying to think up a workaround to the inconvenience caused by teleportation magic.

"As to your other question," Cadence said. "We're here because we need to tell you something important."

Nero looked concerned, like he was expecting another disaster. Honestly, at this point, I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised.

"What's happened?" Nero said it like he was asking who'd died.

"Oh, it's nothing like that, Nero. Nothing tragic. It's good news actually." Cadence's gaze flickered to Damiel. She took his hand. Then she looked at Nero again. "I'm pregnant."

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