Righteous’s voice stuttered. “Mate?” he muttered between verses, then glanced at Mikhail and dropped my hand like it was on fire. I shrugged. We finished out the song and fell silent. I felt the heat of Mikhail behind me, then his feathers as he folded his wings around me. The pressure of his torso against my closed wings felt like an intimate caress, and I might have whimpered slightly.
Righteous’s golden eyes were on Mikhail’s hand as he wrapped it around my chest from behind, letting one of his thumbs stroke back and forth on my ribcage just beneath my breast. Ry seemed slightly hypnotized by the movement. “I’ve been singing to the gate a bit,” he said at last. “I stopped when you came back through. I guess it’s not sealed anymore. It feels even weaker than it did when you left.”
Mikhail hummed, the sound vibrating like a lion’s purr through my torso. “Feather believes we need to sing to it to keep it from falling.”
“Where did she get that idea?” Hope asked, her voice sharp as she moved past us to examine the gate. “Where has she been? And what does ‘pushed back’ mean?”
“Um, well, I was unmade, and then sort of… remade. And now I’m home.” Mikhail nodded when I glanced up at him. “I’m not leaving again. So we’re going to have to figure out some way to fix the gate without melting me down.” I shuddered. “I don’t want to live through that twice.”
Righteous jolted. “Melting you down? It… It was painful then?”
I nodded. “At first, yeah. Like a thousand soul knives were all flaying me at once, but then when Rump—” I clamped my lips shut. Hope narrowed her eyes on me and moved back to the gate, as if she might find something. A door, or a flaw, maybe.
Then the floor began to tremble again, and Hope started singing in a rich alto. Righteous nodded his thanks and murmured to her, “I’ll find someone to take your place soon.”
Mikhail agreed. “We need a rotation. Someone here at all times. To sing, and report on the gate’s condition.” Hope nodded, still singing, and Righteous moved away from me, his gaze flickering again to Mikhail’s hand. Mikhail smirked and moved his right arm up against my chest, running his fingers down the feather I’d put there. Showing it off, as if he were taunting Righteous.
But he was touching my feather. “Growly!” I whimpered, as I felt the connection between us flare to life. Felt a lot of other things flare too, like the zone south of my equator was experiencing a sudden heat wave.
Mikhail leaned down and ran his stubbled jaw along the edge of my wings. I pressed my legs together as hard as I could, afraid I would start leaking slick like an omega in one of my smutty romance novels. If I’d been given panties in this realm, they would have been wrecked.
Righteous’s cheeks went a deeper gold as he realized what was happening. “I’ll leave you two here,” he said, and then shifted from foot to foot like he was adjusting himself. “I’m sure your duet will be lovely. I have to check on the Flight Hall. If you’ll excuse me.”
I sighed. I supposed it was too much to expect Righteous to turn his whole attitude around. He’d looked down on me before. I shook it off, and had just decided to hint broadly to Mikhail that his new mate needed tending, maybe a neck nibble or two—keeping with the theme of my shifter smut obsession—when a shout disrupted us.
“Head Protector Righteous! We need help!”
“Flappy?” Righteous called, or something like that, as he wheeled around to stare at the dark-haired Protector who was winging toward us faster than was advisable down a narrow corridor. In seconds, the Protector had landed, almost tumbling to his knees at our feet. He blinked as he saw who was assembled there, but shook it away. When he stood, I noticed his toga had smut stains all over it. His face and hands were practically filthy by Sanctuary’s standards.
“What happened?” Mikhail demanded.
The Protector closed his eyes in obvious relief. “High Angelus Mikhail! Thank the Great Creator you’re well. Something on Earth is terribly wrong. The Abyss… The creature must be from the Abyss.”
Mikhail frowned. “Creature?”
“Yes. A monster. Otherworldly. It could only have come from Hell.”
“Why would you think that?” I asked gently.
His eyes met mine, and I flinched at the grim certainty there. “It was covered in glitter.”
I nodded like that made sense. Mikhail took the Protector’s arm, helping him to stand. “Tell us what happened. Can we go to my Hall?”
“No time,” he panted, looking to Righteous. “You sent me to Houston for the short-term assignment, right? I was to convince the board of the livestock show to hold onto a significant sum they’d set aside for procuring underage prostitutes, and give it instead as scholarships to the children from—well, never mind. It didn’t happen. There was a…” He paused, taking a deep breath. “A demon at the rodeo.”
“A demon?” I asked. “Like… a bull named Demon, for the bull riders?”
He shook his head furiously. “It was the size of a small animal. A racoon, maybe. But humanoid, hairless. Glittering all over, and cackling. I can’t stop hearing it in my mind.” He grabbed at his hair.
“It could have been a child that fell into the cotton candy machine,” I offered. “That happened to me once. Or a really mean rabbit from the breeding rabbit pens? I had a rabbit a few decades back. Those things can tear the helter skelter out of you if they get their claws in.”
He waved off my helpful comments. “It was covered in a mixture of glitter and what looked to be smut. Smut so thick it was like paste. Everyone around it was entranced, almost mesmerized. But it kept… hurting people. I watched it tear a man away from the child whose hand he was holding, and then it… it ate the man’s…” He motioned toward his thighs, and turned away, vomiting on the white marble floor.
“It ate his dick?” I piped up, when no one else spoke. “A demon baby ate my dick. That’s a headline I saw once in a tabloid.”
The Protector wiped his mouth and grumbled, “The tabloids are having a field day with it. This time, there’s high-quality video evidence and thousands of witnesses.”
“To the dick biting?”
