For a moment, she seemed to hang there in the balance, waiting, before she floated free, dispersing into the ether.
Ruadan suddenly let go of me, and all at once collapsed to his knees. “Rue!” I shouted, dropping down in front of him and taking his face in my hands. “Rue, sweetheart, come back to me. Together, remember?”
His eyes were glazed over, jaw slack, but as I watched, he slowly came back into himself. His gaze cleared, right before he began to shake—his hands, then his arms, working its way up until his whole body was wracked with shivers, and it was all I could do to hold on. He reached out and grabbed me, his grip nearly bruising with its intensity, his sheer desperation washing over me in waves. Rue gasped like he was breaking through the surface after an eternity of drowning. “Uly? Are you really here? Please tell meyou’re real.”
I let out a hiccupping sigh of relief. “Yeah, I’m real. We won. She’s gone. We did it!” A black tarlike residue was smeared across his lips and chin, but I paid no mind before I claimed him in a kiss, tears dripping off my jaw.
When he pulled back, his eyes went straight to the lines of blood down my neck, and he tilted my jaw to check how deep they were. “She hurt you?”
“I’m fine, I promise.” Words I was really sick of repeating, but I hoped that with Apate dealt with, I would never have to say them again.
With his forehead resting on mine, we shared a hard-earned moment of rest. Could it really be over? A goddess as old as sin itself, simply goingpoof? It seemed hard to believe. A thick dread settled into my gut, and I leaned back slowly to look up at Rue.
“But… now that her soul is free, what’s to stop her from simply floating back over to her body, waiting back for her at the cave?”
“My turn,” he said with a shaky smirk. He pulled out his phone and dialed a number, before he put it on speaker phone.
Lagamal’s voice came down the line. “Is it done?”
“Yeah. Can you go—”
“Consider it done.” There was a click as he hung up.
I opened my mouth to ask, but Rue was one step ahead of me, already explaining. “With her body left unattended, it should be easy enough for him to dispose of it. And with no body, her soul will be left drifting for eternity.”
A sad, lonely existence, but it seemed a fitting way to contain an immortal goddess after all she’d done.
Lacing my fingers through Rue’s, I stood, helping him up on shaky legs, then wrapped an arm around his waist and let him lean on me. “Let’s go home.”
“Together. All three of us,” he said, placing his warm palm over my abdomen.
Chapter 24
Ruadan
Accordingtomycalculation,I’d been possessed by the dark goddess Apate for about 12 hours. Months later, I still had no idea what she’d done in that time, what evil deeds she might have committed while behind the wheel. I’d checked street camera footage and crime reports, but there was no record of any wrongdoing, so I had to trust that she’d simply been waiting for Uly, to wrap up what she viewed as her part of the bargain.
As far as what I remembered of the experience? In the moment, it had felt like a lifetime of pain and horror, where I was forced to relive my worst memories. After I woke up, though, everything got kind of blurry, hard to grasp on to. It was almost like a nightmare that had plagued me all night, leaving behind vague flashes of images that would pop up randomly when I was in the middle of some everyday task. Like while I was making Uly a sandwich. One minute I was spreading peanut butter, the next I was suddenly besieged by a slash of remembered pain, a warped memory of being stabbed by theblacksmith over and over, my mother’s keening over the loss of her son still ringing in my ears. Or there I was painting the nursery that very specific color of green that Uly had insisted was perfect, and the next moment, I had dropped the paint roller, splattering green paint across the floor.
“Uly!” I had cried out, in very real anguish.
He’d come waddling in as quickly as he could, his belly swaying ahead of him, scanning me frantically for injury. “What is it? What’s wrong?” The mere sight of him had stolen the breath from my lungs. He’d taken my face between his warm palms, but it wasn’t until he was wiping tears from my cheeks that I even realized I was crying.
“You… You were gone,” I gasped.
“I’m right here,” he’d promised me. “I’ll always be right here.” He never made me feel bad about my relapses. He simply held me steady, his unwavering love reminding me that any price was worth paying when it came to protecting my family.
Today, though, my trauma was nowhere to be found. Today was about us. I refused to take life for granted—especially when our life together as a family was just getting started.
“Fuuuuuuuuck!” Uly groaned, his voice pitched low and guttural as he bore down, working hard to push out our baby. I shifted my hands to be like cold gel packs, rubbing his lower back in circles to help ease the pain. Eventually, the contraction ebbed, leaving him gasping for breath. “Next time, it’s your turn.Youcan carry the baby for nine months.Youcan push them out.”
I chuckled. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“Like hell,” he cussed, leaning back against my chest. “You’re a shapeshifter, you told me you can shift into anything. So make yourself an omega.”
Iblinked a few times as I thought it over. That was an interesting theory. “Huh. I’ve never considered that one before. Although, unless you’re suddenly able to shift into an alpha to impregnate me, then—” That thought was interrupted by Uly crushing my hand as he was hit by another contraction. I helped him sit forward, bracing as he pushed.
“Hooooooooly shiiiiiiit,” he moaned in the back of his throat. “You and your big stupid genes, this is all your fault.”
