Heat blazed on Nicolas’s face. He couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. “No, it wasn’t.”
“Ashmedai, do you understand why?”
“No. Just know. Mine.”
“Our best guess,” Talon said, rolling his eyes at whatever he was about to say next, “is that it’s some kind of divine intervention.”
Nicolas’s thoughts screeched to a halt. Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. “What?”
“This has happened far too many times to be coincidence,” Nathan added. “Each one of the demons here felt the same way about us as Ashmedai feels about you.”
“Which is what exactly? How do they feel?” Nicolas asked, needing more of an explanation than Ashmedai could easily give him right now.
“It’s all-consuming,” the one with the long blond hair said, looking fondly at Ira. “All we can think about, all the time. Wanting them, wanting to be with them.”
Jesus, that was…a lot. He just met this demon two nights ago. Sex was one thing, butbelongingto someone else freaked him out a little bit.
To Ashmedai, Shadrach said, “You want to touch him, taste him, fuck him, protect him, bite him, hear his laugh and make him scream and make him smell like you so everydemon for miles around knows who he belongs to, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Ashmedai rasped. His gaze caressed Nicolas’s profile, heat blazing across his skin.
“Welcome to the club,” Storm said. “It’s very exclusive.”
“You’re sayingGodis bringing us all together,” Nicolas blurted. He couldn’t wrap his head around it. It was one thing to know Ashmedai thought of him as his, butdivine intervention? That was something else entirely. Did they have no say in this?
“I had visions about all of this for months before it happened,” Ira said. “I knew I would meet Wolf before I did. I knew Alex would wind up with Talon. I don’t knoweverything, but I’ve seen enough, I think, to map out the trajectory.”
“Which is what?” Nicolas asked.
Ira smiled.
“He won’t say,” Talon said lightly. “We’ve all asked. Multiple times. In multiple ways.”
Ira cast Talon an exasperated smile, then told Nicolas, “There are some things I don’t feel comfortable sharing. The future feels tenuous.”
“You always say you’ve never had a vision thatdidn’tcome to pass,” Talon argued, and Nicolas got the feeling this was an argument they’d had many times, “so it’s not so tenuous at all, is it?”
“I don’t want to risk anything,” Ira said firmly. “That future-you doesn’t know what’s going to happen until it happens. Which means I can’t tell younow.”
Talon’s head fell back with a frustrated sigh.
“So, you’re telling me Ashmedai and I were… fated to be together?” Ashmedai’s orange eyes softened. Nicolas couldn’t explain how he could tell. It was in the minute dip of his hooded head, the curve of his neck, the wideness of his eyes. There were certainly worse people to be fated to, even if the idea of being fated toanyonegave him the willies. They were supposed to have free will, weren’t they? He didn’t really know anything about the sin eater—except that he wanted him. Felt safe with him.
“As far as we can tell, yes,” Julian said. “You can feel it, too, right? I could. Something about Valac set me at ease right away. It barely occurred to me that he was a demon I might not ought to trust.”
Valac beamed at that.
“Trying to deny that connection is awful,” Alex said. “I had horrible nightmares when I tried.”
“Being away from each other is hell,” Shadrach agreed, tugging Isaac closer.
Nicolas scrubbed his hands over his face. He couldn’t think about all of this right now. Everything they said soundedright, deep down, but it didn’t matter. He had to focus on finding the Alvarez siblings, and that meant he needed to put this budding thing between him and Ashmedai on the back burner for a little while.
Besides, he needed a little time to come to terms with all of this. It was too much.
“I can’t—okay, I need to go back to HQ today,” he said, and Julian shot him a sympathetic smile, like he knew Nicolas was really changing the subject because he was too overwhelmed to hear any more.
“Take one of our burner phones,” Talon said. “Program all of our numbers into it. Leave it at home when you go into HQ so there’s no risk of them finding it, and contact us the minute you findanything.”
