Lucifer fluttered his hand against his chest. “Witches aren’t evil, Cora, you know this. In today’s world, people actually revere them. Long gone are the threats of stakes and drowning. It’s honestly alarming how society has evolved to embrace the dark arts.”
Alarming? Ha. I’m sure that was the reaction the Devil had at being worshiped.
“Well, thank you,” I called out, making sure not to upset the angel of death.
“It’s from me, not father of the year over there,” Lucifer muttered. “He wanted to get you a Diego plushie.”
“Because I’m mated to a shifter? How original.”
“I heard that,” Abaddon shouted as he pulled out the chair at the head of the dining table and folded himself into it opposite Hudson. Rebecca sat in her normal seat on the left of Hudson, and I took my place on his other side. Her lips twitched as my mate and my father stared each other down. Save me now. All this male posturing was making me itch.
Aunt Liz floated down the stairs, followed by Dangerous Dave, the pack’s head of security, and my aunt’s lover. Dave froze as he took in the double angel assault before taking a seat next to Liz.
Sebastian was the last supernatural to join us, while Harry hovered at the edge of the room. My father spared him a glance before dismissing him.
“Did I miss the memo?” Sebastian asked.
Ugh. Don’t antagonize the scary heavenly being.
“What memo?” Abaddon answered.
I shot Sebastian a scathing look.Don’t do it.
“The ‘wear a silly T-shirt to the meeting’ memo. Or is it Wednesday?”
Rebecca chuckled at theMean Girlsreference.
My father’s brows drew together. “It’s Friday. What has that got to do with it?”
“Snacks will be out shortly,” Maggie called from the kitchen, effectively ending the conversation. Never thought I’d see the day I considered Maggie’s snacks a saving grace, but these were strange times.
“Tell me it’s not true,” Lucifer grumbled. “You live to torture us, Cora.”
I snorted. He ruled over a realm specializing in torture, yet feared a teenage bobcat’s homemade snacks.
“Why is your hair like that?” my father asked as we waited for Maggie. I couldn’t throw up the ward protecting our conversation until she delivered the food, so we had to endure small talk for now.
I lifted my hand and found a fuzzy cloud on my crown. My eyes shot to Hudson, whose hair was in equal disarray. He threw me a smug look, making my cheeks heat.
“Because she was getting her freak on,” Lucifer deduced. “That’s why they kept us waiting on the porch.”
“That’s incredibly rude, daughter,” Abaddon declared. “We had a set meeting time. It’s not like we called on you unannounced.”
My mouth opened, but Hudson cut me off. “Unannounced, no, but uninvited, yes. My mate needed to blow off a little steam before dealing with your angel squabbling.”
“I don’t need an invitation; I’m the most powerful being in this room,” my father snapped as he allowed a little of his icy-hot power to flash. The supernaturals surrounding me froze for a beat, their senses warning them of the imminent danger.
“Hey. You know the rules—no fighting in my house. Take it outside,” I told them.
Somehow, Summer Grove House had become the unofficial supernatural meeting place. It’s not something I asked for, but given I am dating the lord of the shifters, my father was an archangel, my best friends were vampire royalty, and my uncle ruled the underworld, it seemed I was the common thread which could bring the factions together to devise a plan to deal with our common enemy. My grandmother.
Eloise Roberts was currently the worst person to inhabit Earth. She had tried to unite the factions and become theirde factoruler while orchestrating plans to reveal our existence to humanity. When that failed, she moved on to stealing power from demons to fuel a spell designed to turn humans into elementals to build herself a loyal army. Again, that was a bust, but she had pissed off Lucifer and made a formidable enemy.
Humanity might have an obsession with fantasy worlds and the unnatural, but they believed it to be fictional. They feared the unexplainable, and the second they felt threatened, the moment they realized they were no longer at the top of the food chain, the world would dissolve into chaos. It didn’t matter that we’d coexisted for millennia and had no designs to enslave or destroy them—it would be war.
Eloise wanted to force us out into the open. My grandmother had always been a larger-than-life entity during my childhood. I had both feared and been in awe of her. Then I grew up, and she put her ambitions above the welfare of her only grandchild. She kidnapped and tortured me once she understood I wasn’t just another elemental to be manipulated. I was a Nephilim, and archangel blood ran hot in my veins. She wanted that power for herself. She wouldn’t need elaborate plans to grow the elemental population if she had me at her side, as my power would be at her fingertips, which she could siphon again and again as needed.
She was counting on Hudson taking the packs and disappearing, something they’d done before, but not under his rule. During the witch trials, the shifters hid out in the less hospitable areas of the planet, while the humans got over their aversion to the unexplainable. And in the 90s, during a resurgence of Satan worshiping, they again laid low. Unfortunately for her, Hudson was made of sterner stuff, andnow that he took me as his mate, tucking tail and running wasn’t an option.
