“He lives.” Draevus breathed a sigh of relief so deep that he lost several inches of height. “He’s weak.”
“I have summoned his essence back to his corpse. In a way, I think, he’ll always know. Part of him, maybe. A deity claimed his soul, in any case.” I turned his palm over to stare at the lines. What deity would claim a nefalem of dubious mixture didn’t come to me, but as I thought to check, it surprised me to feel through his spirit that both my gods had blessed our union, claiming him to me. Diana and Bast. The female goddesses owned my soul, and with that, a daeva with his shadow.
“What?” Draevus didn’t take his gaze off Esmeray.
“My soul is claimed already. They put their mark on him, too. Our union is solid.” Saying the words made them feel too real.
“Well, shit. This is going to be hard to explain to Satan when the apocalypse comes.” The admission didn’t seem to dampen his mood. “But he’s with us. Part of my mate lives on. The daeva has survived, and my son will persist.”
I swallowed down the urge to smack his hand away when he caressed the side of Esmeray’s face. “My beautiful son. I almost lost everything. Thank you, mage.”
“You’re welcome. This is…going to take some getting used to.” The unnatural urge to have Esmeray untouched, alone with me, protected from others made me swallow bile that quietly rose in my throat. The sneaking feeling clawed its way through me.
“That stunt you pulled. It could have cost my son his life. You, your soul.” Draevus clenched a fist and released it. “Why?”
I gestured to Esmeray’s chest, to my spell map. “This one here is for a single breath to choose. It’s for goodbyes. It gives you life to say whatever one breath gives you. And I used it to obtain his consent or refute. If he’d wasted his breath, he’d have died truly. If he chose me, he’d be tethered to me as mate… My initial spellwork called to him as a familiar, but Ausmius tuned the magic quite efficiently.”
“Ausmius shares you with him now.” Draevus glanced at me and then away, as if he found distaste in it. “Esmeray despises Ausmius. He’s had him so young that they never learned to coexist, only fight.”
I said nothing, as Draevus was doing his best to come to terms with something enormous, something even I would need time to understand.
“What do you desire of him?” Draevus traced pointed nails over Esmeray’s cheek.
“I desire what all men do. Happiness. If I he can be happy, and I can be happy, I can ask for nothing more.”
“Are you happy, now?” Draevus drew his hand back.
“I think I’m too stunned to answer you truthfully. You are a demon and would sense a lie and either yes or no is a lie. I am not happy, nor am I upset. I am in a limbo, and I can only hope that Esmeray and I can find our happiness in time. My true concern is if I was the cause of his situation, and why he had that in his neck,” I said, gesturing behind me to the discarded sigil of The Church.
Draevus turned to stare at it and swore. Demonic swearing twisted reality at times, and the way it buzzed in my ears made me flinch as time went pink for a second.Don’t ask me how. Please, it’s difficult enough to just experience it.
Though, the fact I didn’t vomit blood was a good sign, a show that my bond with Esmeray settled in.Demonic immunity. Some bright side to the dark side, then. I have a mate, didn’t think that was possible.But no demon or omega of Esmeray’s status would want a mongrim.
Either Draevus could read minds, or I said it aloud, because his hand clasped to my wrist. “You called upon my name for that spell. You had faith in me. Your goddesses have faith in you. Hybrid or not, I must accept you as family.”
“Thank you.”
“Now, someone get my son some pants. I need to make sure he goes home with his mate this night.” Draevus sneered, a pained expression twisting his face. “Their binding needs consummation soon. Do not call upon my name for that, if you would please. There are some lines even dukes of hell do not cross.”
I said nothing, but I thought many things while also thinkinglalalalalalaat the same time, just in case he could indeed read minds.
He swore again. Half the tiles in the room peeled up at the corners with dry cracks. “Ask.”
“How soon does this need to happen and how far must we go, minimum, to call it united?” I flinched, hoping he didn’t use demon swearing again.
“Within forty-eight hours and your seed must enter his body and his must… His must enter yours.” The flat-lipped moue of disgust twisted his face into something sinister.
“I hate to ask. He’s lovely, but I would hate to push any boundaries.” I swallowed hard, and something in me remembered the swallow of my mid-form, where my giraffe neck would carry a bolus down to my stomach in a slow ride. A gulp could be quite the spectacle.
“So, instead, you’re pushing mine?” He shook his head. “It’s simple enough. His life is anchored to yours, and if he so much as frowns in your presence, I will end you.”
“Understood.” I nodded once and tried to imagine Esmeray’s glowing orange eyes like embers flaring with desire, a body shaking with pleasure, and quickly buried the thought under Christmas music.Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an—
“Are you certain you’re no part demon?” Draevus turned his head to stare at me with a long question in his gaze.
“Could be. I am to understand my alpha father was giraffe, and my omega pater was a human omega, but—”
“That doesn’t make sense, entirely. Especially with how well you wield magic and how easily you called on my power.” Draevus drew his attention to his son as someone pressed a pair of scrub trousers into my hands.
