The words hit harder than he realized, because I was still wrestling with the real reason for the Serpents and what I meant to this world. The weight of decisions in my palm when I couldn’t even decide what freaking cake to have at my wedding.
Silence crackled between us like ice underfoot. I needed him with me. Now that I’d known what having his love felt like and having the protection of his arms around me at night, I didn’t like to think about how losing him would destroy me. How I’d break if that was torn away from me.
I swallowed. “Hudson?—”
“No. You want the truth? Fine. You want every secret? Fine.” He turned and stalked into the clearing. “Let’s do this, Cora,” he said over his shoulder. “Bare bones.”
A chill swept over me. He sounded resigned and a little nervous. I followed him into the moonlit clearing. Hudson planted his feet, shoulders rising and falling in uneven breaths, but he kept his back to me.
“I didn’t make a deal with Lucifer,” he said.
“Bullshit.”
“I didn’t.” He spun on me, eyes blazing. “Ididn’t,Cora. I never asked him for power. I didn’t bargain. I didn’t sign away anything. I—” He dragged a hand through his hair, frustrated. “I ingested the essence of an angel.”
My brain stuttered. “You didwhat?”
Gold fire unfurled under his skin. His spine arched. His shoulder blades bulged, and wings exploded outward in a violent snap of shimmering, feathered force.
Not a demon. Not an angel. Something… hybrid. Massive. Lethal. Beautiful. Wrong.
Silver-gold light rippled across them, the feathers edged like blades, the wingspan enormous enough to swallow the moon.
“What did you do?” I whispered.
Fear crossed his features. “I did it to be strong enough to protect you.”
The wings shuddered, shedding motes of molten gold. Not bargain-born. Not gifted.Consumed. Like a shifter absorbs strength from prey, except the prey had clearly been a heavenly being made of pure celestial power.
I stepped toward him, heart pounding. “This could have killed you.”
“It didn’t.”
“It could have corrupted you.”
“It didn’t.”
I squeezed my eyes closed. “You don’t know that.”
He roared, his wings flaring high enough to shake the branches. “And you don’t know what it was like to watch you diein front of me.” His voice cracked. “To feel you slipping every time you use your gift, to sense Indigo taking pieces of you. I won’t lose you. I will never lose you.”
I stared at him, speechless. “I could have lost you. Did you stop to think about that for a beat before you did this?”
He took a shaky breath. “Survival is all I was thinking about, Cora. Yours, mine, ours.”
My throat tightened. “And what about my right to survive my way?”
He clenched his fists. “Your way gets you killed.”
“You don’t get to choose for me. You don’t get to rewrite destiny by swallowing divine power like it’s protein powder.”
His jaw flexed. “If it keeps you alive, I’ll swallow the whole damn pantheon.”
I stepped close enough that the heat from his wings brushed my skin. “That’s the problem. You think love looks like sacrifice.”
What had he become? Because I could face the truth now. He was still my mate at heart, but he was also something other, and that was a problem—one I needed to unravel before I spilled all my secrets. I needed to understand the consequences of this transformation.
“Who did you ingest?” I asked, dreading and knowing the answer as a familiar power brushed against my own.
