He set everything on the coffee table, and Jono gestured for Eloise and the others to serve themselves first as guests.
“Hospitality?” Madelyn asked.
Jono shook his head. “It’s fine.”
He wasn’t going to stand on ceremony, not with them. Madelyn nodded and set about making tea for herself and her mother while Grant did his own. Marek made a mug for himself and Sage, and there was just enough water left in the kettle for Jono’s.
“You’ll need to refill the kettle for your tea,” Sage said, passing it back to Wade.
“That’s what the microwave is for,” Wade said.
Jono took a sip of his tea and refused to rise to the bait. “Go eat your Pop-Tarts.”
“You don’t need to tell me twice.”
“And put the kettle back on the hob.”
Jono could hear Wade puttering about the kitchen as the rest of them enjoyed their tea during a quiet that wasn’t as awkward as he expected it to be. Eloise was of a generation where manners were paramount, and she wasn’t one to pry into hurts they were all feeling.
“Where are you staying?” Jono asked after the tea was finished and small talk run through.
“At a hotel on the Upper West Side. We were advised to stay clear of Midtown,” Grant said.
“It stinks,” Wade said from his spot on the floor by the coffee table.
“So we discovered when driving over from the airport.”
“It’s getting better,” Jono said.
Eloise looked at him, mouth curving in a soft smile. “One can only hope.”
Jono thought about the promise Marek had made him all those years ago in London. How he’d never have found his pack if he hadn’t taken a chance and hoped it was the right choice at the time. He couldn’t have known then what was in store for him. He couldn’t have known what he’d find or what he’d become.
He wouldn’t change it for anything though, and he’d keep waiting until Patrick came home.
“Yeah,” Jono said softly, gaze straying to what remained of his pack, finding them looking back at him with love in their eyes. “One can hope.”
32
Patrick had forgottenwhat it felt like to be warm as he followed Hermes through the veil. “How much further?”
“We’re almost there,” Hermes said.
“I feel like you said that hours ago.”
Hermes hummed in response, never slowing down as he strode through the fog that wanted to cling to them. “Ethan tried to cleave a new world out of the veil, and he failed. The damage wrought makes passing through it more difficult.”
“Great.”
He bit back everything else he wanted to say, knowing it wouldn’t make Hermes go any faster. Patrick knew the longer he spent past the veil, the more time would pass back on Earth. He also knew Hermes didn’t care. When Patrick had chosen to take Hermes’ hand, he’d known what he risked. That didn’t mean he wanted to lose months just because Hermes took the long way around.
Patrick sighed and shifted the newborn in his arms, careful to support Macaria’s head. He winced at the throbbing pain in his left arm but didn’t let the wound there stop him from keeping her close.
He looked down at the baby wrapped up in his leather jacket, tucked away from the chill of the veil. She stared up at him with gold-brown eyes full of personality and intelligence, her focus eerie in its intensity. He couldn’t look at her for long, cognizant of every choice that had resulted in the goddess taking up residence in his niece’s body.
He wondered if his niece’s soul had ever had a chance to form or if Macaria’s godhead had pushed it out how she’d tried to push out Hannah’s. A baby was a blank slate, with no personality, and had stood no chance against a goddess who remembered who she was but had no body to call her own. Not until Hannah became pregnant against her will.
Patrick hadn’t been around kids very often, babies even less, but he knew no baby was ever this quiet. Macaria wasn’t crying, wasn’t even squirming all that much, was just a silent presence in his arms with a godhead bleeding through her aura. Ozone lingered in the air around her, growing ever stronger as they traveled through the veil, and Patrick knew he needed to stop thinking of the baby as his niece, because she’d never had a chance to truly exist.
