Prologue:

~ September 1721, A.D. Jamaica ~

      Rowing into Kingston in the middle of the night without a lantern is not recommended to anyone without the heightened senses of an immortal and a good sense of direction. I had both. I can see for nearly a league, hear for nearly twice that, and smell trails that were near on three months old in lightly trafficked areas. This was a suicide run. For her, I would travel into Valkarah[1] itself if I had to.

      As I rowed my way around the edge of the Palisadoes into the mouth of the harbour, I caught sight of the gibbet where a few bodies still hung and wondered if one of them was Jack. I pushed that from my mind and focused on the mission.

      I stole this boat, that was no more than a dinghy, from the Royal Fortune, or the latest Royal Fortune. Black Bart had a habit of naming his command vessel the same name. I suspect it was to confuse his enemies or he just liked the name. Bart did not want me coming to her rescue, but he had sailed close enough that I could get here on my own. His parting words still rang in my ears.

      “If you want to risk it, you are on your own. I will remain here for the night. I will not delay my travels in the morning…” It was unlike him to say anything at all. He cared about her, as much as one of their kind cares for another. It mattered not to me. She saved my life not once, but twice. I owed her.

      Our last shootout in Jamaica, was at Port Royal nearly thirty years ago in June of sixteen ninety-two the day half of it fell into the sea, which was partly our fault and not the first time we had caused a natural disaster. I pushed that aside as I rowed further on away from the ports to the open land that lay between me and Spanish Town where the prison was, or at least that is where it was last time I was here.

      My plan was to run to the prison in my shifted form. They would never expect a beast, though there were several legends of roaming wild boars. I would find her, spring her, and return to the boat where we would row back to the Fortune. There was just one problem. If the rumours were true and it was more than a ruse to stay her execution, she was pregnant and due to be executed the day after she gave birth.

      It had been near on nine months since the execution of Rackham. If she was burdened, that would make this harder, but not impossible. When the water grew too shallow to row, I jumped out and dragged the boat onto the beach. I put it near where the tide would come in and tied it to a nearby tree. I removed my bandolier, brace of flint lock pistols, my cutlass, and my clothes. I left them at the bottom of the boat, rolled my shoulders, and from one step to the next I shyfted into my bestial form, going from two legs to four.

      I ran through the trees and brush of the wilds of Jamaica toward the church, cemetery, and prison. It was not even an hour for me in this form, but it would be nearly three back if she were weakened or near delivery. I came to a stop near the two-story brick wall of the prison and sniffed the air for cedar wood, amber, and the dragon’s ambrosia she loved to drink.

      It was not her scent that attracted me though. Her aura pulsed, ebbing, and flowing like the tide. I moved to the ground below her window and chuffed loudly, hoping she would hear it. I do not know why I did it, but something whispered that would be enough. There was a clatter of a bottle then a swathe of dark curls poked out from the bars.

      “Maolanaithe! By the Maker’s might, what are you doing?” she called, using my birth name, and her sweet voice stirred something low in me. I stayed in my bestial form, looking up at her knowing that she could see my face and more importantly hear my thoughts as if I spoke to her. “Do not give me that. What life debt is worth coming to rescue a woman about to be hanged for piracy? You and Rackham… Why does everyone think I need saving?”

      I started to think something back to her about how unlike her former husband I was, and that she was still here nearly nine months after being tried, but she ducked back between the bars. There was only the sound of shuffling feet for a few moments. I waited, wondering how I could get to her, and convince her to come with me without causing a quake and sending the entire south end of the island into the sea this time.

      At that thought, the shuffling stopped and there was a mighty groan of metal. I stepped back enough to see the entire window as she bowed the bars. When she stuck her legs through, I shifted back into a man and opened my arms for her.

      A shout sounded from inside the prison on her level as someone saw her, and she turned back to blow a kiss before she jumped. I caught her, and she wrapped an arm around my shoulders helping me adjust to the weight of her. It was not significantly more than I remembered, but there was enough to prove the rumours.

      “Thanks for the assist. Let’s try not to make a habit of you rescuing me. I am your Guardian Angel, remember?” She kissed my cheek before I set her down.

      “I thought it should be my turn this once,” I said before I shifted back into bestial form, and she looked at me for a moment then rolled her eyes and climbed on.

      “I hope you know I do not like doing this, and you dare not think anything about my weight,” she said sounding much more like a mortal than she ever had before. I tossed a look at her over my shoulder, but someone shouted at us in Spanish as they looked out from the window she’d escaped through. The moment they locked eyes with me they fainted, and I took off toward the beach with her hands in my dark fur.

      No one would believe the pirate queen escaped on the back of a beast. We were nearing the halfway mark when her fists clenched, and I slowed.

      “Do not stop. We do not have time,” she said, leaning toward my spine as much as the babe would allow. “Faster if you can, he will not wait much longer.”

      I obeyed, even as she whimpered, but she was right. We did not have time to stop. The moon was nearing the crest and if we did not make it to the beach soon, we would never make it to The Fortune by daybreak.

      As luck would have it, we cleared the trees onto the beach as the tide was nearly in. She slid off, at the side of the boat, but stopped, and grabbed my pelt as she cried out.

      “Damn Rackham males, and their ill timing,” she groaned, and I licked the sweat from her face. “Maolanaithe, you…” She bit her lip then to keep from crying out and my eyes glowed green against her skin. “Calm, Mairtin. We cannot have them finding us now. I will not have three in my charge die to save me.”

      The last came from her mind not her lips and my gut said I was not meant to hear it. The fact that she had called me by my new name also struck me, but I was too worried to comment. When her pain eased, she moved her hand from my pelt to the side of the boat and leaned over it, breathing as if she was the one to run the whole way. I shifted back to my mortal guise and set my hand to her back.

      “What can I do?” I asked as her head shot up. Her eyes glowed violet, and she looked back the way we came.

      “Fuck. They loosed the Hell hound. We have to go, now! Get in,” she said, as she started to lift herself in but stopped with one leg over the side and groaned. “For Fuck’s sake. Jack, stay in there until we are out at sea.”

      “Áine[2], what Hell hound? Why would a mortal prison have a Hell hound?” I asked, watching her face. She met my eyes, and in them, I saw the answer. They found out she was immortal, and the Hell hound was going to take her once the babe was born.

      “Why do you think I was still there? I could not outrun a Hell hound, not while burdened,” she groaned through clenched teeth and instead of stepping into it, she rolled over the side of the boat and lay in the bottom propped against the far seat. “Get in, and I’ll open my wings. We can use them to catch the wind and you can move the oars to guide it.”

      “Can you do that while labouring?” I asked, astounded by her sheer will if she could. She glared at me, and I fought not to cringe as pain stabbed my head before she looked back to the trees.

      “If you do not hurry, we shall never know,” she said, eyes flashing again as her large leathery wings burst from her back. The yellow membrane gleamed in the moonlight, and I was about to cut the rope when a massive black shape burst from the trees.

      “Maolanaithe, I heard rumour that you were away from the mighty court of Lucifer, but I did not think it true that you had become a petty pirate,” a deep voice came from the creature’s maw. Áine grabbed my arm and shook her head.

      “He is taunting you. Get in, Maolanaithe. Now!” she shouted. Instead, I pulled away from her, grabbed my cutlass, the only silver thing that would hurt the bastard, and ran at him. “Maolanaithe!”

      The creature charged, but it was no match for me. I got in under it as it lunged and managed to shove the blade up into his throat then slice him clean down the middle before throwing him into the sea. I turned back to find the line cut and the boat drifting away. I put the sword in my mouth and waded through the water, running to reach it.

      “That was reckless,” she called to me as I jumped for the bow. I would have made it too, had the boat not bucked on a wave and caught me halfway over. The sword bit into my cheeks and I cursed, dropping it to the bottom of the boat as I hauled myself in.

      “Maolanaithe,” she groaned and reached her hand to me. I went to her, not caring about the pain, and grabbed her hand. She squeezed and red, white, and bright blue energy buzzed around my face. “You need to pay more attention when handling your weapon. You were taught better than that.”

      I did not speak, thinking it unwise as she just might mend my entire mouth closed instead of just the edges. The healing stopped before it could finish, and she squeezed my hand.

      “Jack is coming. He has given his mother hell, and he is not even out,” she groaned through the pain. She lifted her legs and set her feet to the other seat. “Damn it, Maolanaithe, I wish this was not the first time you saw me this—”

      “I watched you dance naked in Pompei,” I reminded her, and she grinned up at me. We had nearly known each other that night, but we were found out, then there was the eruption.

      “You are right,” she chuckled at the memory then set her elbows on the seat behind her, letting go of my hand. “He will come on the next wave. I need you to catch him.”

      I carefully moved between her upraised legs and noticed her wings move ever so slightly guiding us on a breeze that seemed to come from nowhere. I crouched and grabbed my shirt from the boards just in time for her to groan. I reached my hands under her, and the babe emerged with a rush of blood and fluids. I pulled him to my naked chest and smiled as he loosed a mighty cry.

      “Jack is here, Áine. Whole and perfect,” I said, as she grinned up at me.

      “Now that he’s here, you need to dress,” she noted, as I handed Jack to her. “Where is Bart’s ship?”

      “Around the West end, in his favourite spot,” I said as her wings retracted. Her eyes flashed and we disappeared from one spot in the ocean to another with the Royal Fortune in the distance. It was calm and all the lanterns were doused, save for one in the window of Robert’s cabin. He waited up to see if I would succeed.

      “Come here and let me finish healing your wounds,” she said, reaching for my face. I moved to her side, and she set one hand on my face as the embarrassment of it settled in now that we were all safe.

      “We will never speak of this again,” I said, and she smirked.

[1] Demoki: Hell (literally the innermost circle)

[2]Irish: radiance

Chapter One:

~ Nearly five thousand years before ~

      “You cannot hide forever, Aeshma!” Ornias shouted after me, as I ran through the forest away from his fortress. I didn’t turn around. I couldn’t. I had to keep going, had to get away, had to escape him.

      I would not stay there bound to his fantasies and lust fuelled lifestyle. Yes, we were soulmates, but I was pregnant now, and I refused to let our child grow up influenced by his father’s cruelty and corruption. The cry of a dragon broke the too quiet stillness, and I ducked behind a tree with an internal curse. How had he found me so fast?

      “Aeshma!” he screeched my name as he flew overhead. I shoved my powers down and cloaked my metaphysical signature. He flapped once and hovered directly over me. I stayed deathly still. “You will not hide from me. There is no place that you can run where I will not follow. I claimed you!”

      I bit my lip to stop the argument that threatened to give me away. Yes, he claimed me, but the Maker had ordained it to keep him from corruption. His fall was gradual, but after I caught him in bed with the Temptress, I knew he was corrupted, and I would not stay with a Fœmoræ.[1]

      If we weren’t soulmates, I would have run for the highlands and never looked back. Soulmates were complicated. I had tried for weeks to escape, to run, but every time he would catch me, and the punishment would be worse. Then the Maker blessed us with a child, enhancing and changing my power so I could fight Ornias’s pull on me.

      Now, with the baby inside me, and my sister, Asariel calling for me, I found the will to escape him. Asariel’s presence had pulled at my mind for the last two weeks begging me for help. Ornias refused to let me leave, but when my second sister, Jennielle’s call joined Asariel’s, the same day I felt the babe, I could no longer stay. I had to leave, no matter what he would do to me when he caught me.

      A thud shook the ground, and I grabbed the tree as my feet slipped on the dewy grass. I held my breath and waited to see if he had caught me. I would not move until he proved it. He was the only being that ever truly scared me, the only one that got under my skin, which said more about him than I would ever admit. I had battled, drank with, and fucked Norseman rougher looking and larger than him in both height and muscle, but this Fœmoræ was the first to truly scare me.

      “You can mask your power, hold your breath, and try to cloak, but I still hear your heartbeat,” he growled the last word, breath hot on my right shoulder. I dropped as his arm swung around the tree. Red scales gleamed in the light as his black talons sunk into the bark above my head. “Focáil[2]!”

      I jumped up and opened my wings. Their yellow membrane glittered in the sunlight as I launched myself through a break in the trees. I flew as fast and as hard as I could away from him. Another roar tore the air, but he was at least a league behind me. We were almost free.

      The whizz of something flew passed my ear and a sharp pain pierced my right wing a moment later. I cried out and glanced at my wing with a curse on my lips. There was an arrow lodged in my left wing and a tear in the right. Only black iron would hurt this badly. Damn him! It would heal almost human slow.

      Hellfire and Brimstone, this day was going from bad to worse. The wounds forced me to land, and I yanked the second arrow from the flesh of the muscle at my shoulder.

      Who shot me? It was impossible for Ornias to fire an arrow in his dragon form, or even his half dragon form for that matter. Brush crashed behind me, and I swung around. Grækrœ[3], the Mort who served him stopped with a crossbow to his shoulder ready to shoot me again. My wings returned to the tattoo like marking on my back, and I stared at his cold, dead, brown eyes.

      “Please, stop. Let me leave,” I pleaded, setting a hand to my slightly distended abdomen over the babe. “Let us leave… please.”

      Something passed through his eyes, and he dropped the crossbow from his shoulder. He dipped his head, and I stared at him for a moment. I was shocked that worked, and I questioned the ease of it for a second before I darted off through the trees.

      When I was far enough away to teleport without Ornias following, I reached out to Jennielle, but something was blocking me from her, so I teleported to Asariel instead. I landed on a bed strewn with empty glass bottles and a dish of ashes. As I sat up, I pushed one of the bottles off the bed and it clattered to the floor.

      I leaned over the bowl of ashes and sniffed then pulled back as the sweet smell stung my nose and my eyes watered. Salventra and Phobos. Relaxing, power dampening, and mind numbing preter herbs.

      What the—? The sound of heaving pulled me from the thought before it could fully form. I slid off the bed and paused with my clawed, scaled dragon’s foot on the broken glass. I lifted my foot and shifted into mortal form as I opened my Angelic sight. The room was still dim, but I could see a shattered bottle and splotches of red liquid. The bottle hadn’t been empty. Where was she?

      “Asariel?” I tentatively called and the retching paused. Fumbling footsteps approached a sliding wooden door to my left. I looked up as she clumsily pushed it open, and her green eyes stared at me, but she wasn’t seeing me. My eyes went wide as they searched her body. It was covered with cuts, dried blood, and bruises.

      “She wasn’t hurt when I found her, was she?” I thought and realizing this was a memory ejected me from the recognitive vision.

⁂

~ Present Day ~

      I sat bolt upright and looked around the nearly empty room. The bed moved beside me, and I backpedalled, landing unceremoniously sprawled on the floor as I untangled from the duvet. I cursed under my breath as my body protested. A deep, rumbling moan came from the bed, and I slowly rose to my knees, peering over the side of the bed at the other occupant as I reached for my glasses that sat on the bedside table.

      When I slipped them on, I inspected the body structure. It was too bulky and square to be female, though the last thing I remember was going to see one of my sisters. He was also large enough to make me look small, which wasn’t easy because I was six-three and had more muscle mass than the average male walking the streets. Surprisingly though, he was clothed or at least he was wearing a tight shirt.

      It wasn’t like me to sleep in the same bed as someone and not have sex with them. That was more because I didn’t trust anyone to sleep in bed with me except the five people that I had sex with semi-regularly.

      Maybe we’d only partially undressed…? I couldn’t be sure because his lower body was still covered by the duvet that I’d been tangled in. My fall uncovered his torso, but the duvet was tucked between his muscular legs, and I couldn’t see anything else through my bleary eyes. When I thought he’d drifted back to sleep, I heaved a sigh and sat back on my calves as I pushed my hip length crimson curls over my shoulders.

      “Áine, did you fall out of bed?” a deep, all too familiar voice rumbled. I looked back up as he rolled over, and my eyes went wide. No, I had to be dreaming. It couldn’t be Max.

      Max was my ‘one that got away.’ Last time we were together, he left me a heart wrenching Dear Jane note and vanished. That was twenty years ago and seeing his scarred face still stung. I slowly stood, using the nightstand for support, and cleared my throat.

      “Yes, I did… Now explain to me what you are doing in my bed,” I said. He lifted his head slowly, eyes, searching me as if I had a brain injury. I stared at his chartreuse eyes which were halfway between the green of his father’s eyes and the orange of his mother’s, both of whom I knew and spoke with recently, but they didn’t know he was alive. He tilted his head, staring at me from under thick blonde lashes as strands of his shoulder length blonde hair fell free from a sleep tossed bun.

      “Did you hit your head when you fell off the bed?” he asked, as I combed my hands through my curls and cringed. My head was a bit sore. “Anne, you look pale… I mean, paler than normal, and a bit green. Come back to bed, and I’ll rub your back.”

      I looked at my face in the mirror on the back of the door to check. He was right. I was ghostly white save for my many freckles and the green tinge. My stomach did feel a bit off… He pulled his shirt up over his head and my mouth watered as my eyes slid to his reflection before something glinted in the light.

      I whipped my head around and stared at the hoop in his left nipple. That wasn’t there the last time I saw him shirtless. What was my mind trying to tell me? Was this a vision?

“Anne,” he said, throwing back the covers to come to me. He was nude now, and when I saw his already hard cock, I backed up, ignoring the primal part of me that begged me to fuck him. I wanted him, craved him, but he wasn’t mine anymore.

      “What harm can sex in a dream do?” My subconscious reasoned with me, but it didn’t sound quite right. I took a trepidatious step toward him, and he held out one hand beckoning me to join him.

      I was suddenly on his lap, naked and ready for him. That wasn’t normal even for my sex dreams. It was like I’d lost time, but I was too wrapped up in Max to think about it. I always got this way around him. I rocked my hips, stroking him with my dripping wet pussy.

      “You don’t have to worry. Here, we can be together forever,” he purred before capturing my lips with his, but his kiss tasted wrong. This wasn’t Max, and it certainly wasn’t a dream of my own making.

      I shoved him down to the bed and teleported across the room, glaring at the imposter. There was only one Angel that could crawl inside my head and manipulate my dreams without my permission while I was in one of my warded apartments.

      “Morpheus, by the realms! I’ve told you not to mess with my dreams, especially not parading as my old flame,” I shouted. I was ejected from that dream into reality, or what I hoped was reality. When someone messed with my head, I could never know for sure.

⁂

      I sat up, chest heaving, and looked around the room. It was the living room in one of my twenty-four apartments. It was days like this that I wished I had decorated each one differently, but I had an eclectic aesthetic, and it took so long to pick everything out that it was easier to order multiple of the same thing than spend the time to pick out new pieces for each apartment.

      I shoved that thought aside and focused on the facts: I’d fallen asleep on the pull-out bed of the sofa. Sure, it was comfy, but it wasn’t as comfy as the memory foam mattress in the bedroom. My body told me that as I looked down at my fluffy robe. I usually slept in the nude unless I was too tired or had company. What happened last night?

      “You’re a kill joy,” Morpheus called from the kitchenette behind the couch. I growled, threw off the duvet, and stood, tossing it to the bowl-shaped chair in the corner.

      “I told you not to do that,” I growled. I looked at the square Angelic brand smartwatch on my wrist and groaned. It was barely seven a.m. I combed my fingers through my curls and secured the robe before I turned around. I glared at the tall, dark-skinned angel with white, blonde hair who reminded me of his son and our sister, Aeronwen’s soulmate Bríon, who’d died over seven thousand years ago.

      “I’m sorry, but your sex dreams are far too tempting to ignore… I couldn’t help fuelling it,” he half whined, half purred as he sat back. I stopped in the archway where I was close enough to see him without my glasses. He was nude, and fully erect. He wasn’t just in my dreams; he’d been using them as his own personal pornography… again.

      “Morph, how many times do we have to have this conversation?” I asked, and he smirked making things low in my body tighten.

      “Just once more, Dis,” he said, using the nickname he always did when I shortened his name. I tossed my red, white, and electric blue hair over my shoulders and put on my best seductive smirk. Morpheus was one of the five preters I had sex with, and this was the norm for him. He was drawn to some pheromone or other that I let off in my dreams. I still didn’t quite know how that worked, but I shoved it aside too, pulling the tie to my robe.

      “If you want someone naked and riding you, all you have to do is ask,” I said, dropping the robe. His eyes bugged and slid from my face to my H-cup breasts. It was the only thing I enjoyed about them being so large. Men and women alike would stare at them and miss little details, like a gun at my side or a knife disguised as a necklace in my cleavage.

      “You’re serious?” he asked, cock twitching. Something about that seemed wrong, but at this point, I was too horny to care. I caressed down the centre of my torso over the black widow spider tattoo on my ribs toward the tribal design around my belly button as I stepped into the kitchen and offered my best seductive smirk.

      “Why would I tease? I’m sexually frustrated, aroused, and need release,” I said, sashaying to him. I set my hand on his bare shoulder, and he slowly looked up my body to my face. The lust was clear in his sky-blue eyes, but there was something else too, something that tasted like sweets and fine nectar on my tongue. That wasn’t like him, but I wanted to taste it.

      “You’re not teasing me,” he said as if in a trance. I shook my head as I straddled him and the chair. His breath caught as I captured his lips with mine. Our powers danced as I ate at his mouth draining his energy to make up for my lack of sleep. When I pulled back, he gasped a well meant, “Fuck—”

      “Soon,” I purred. I lowered myself onto his lap, rocked my hips over his, and coated his cock with my dripping pussy. On the fifth stroke, I took his cock deep into my body without pausing my rhythm and he inhaled sharply. I grinned as more energy poured into me, my skin warmed, and power burned in my chest. “This is what you wanted… Right, Morpheus?”

      He nodded, not catching that I knew he wasn’t the Angel of Dreams. I just didn’t know who he was yet. His power tasted and felt familiar, but it was too tainted to tell me who it was. He wrapped his arms around me and latched onto my left nipple. I moaned at the ceiling as patches of purple scales slid out onto my skin. I threw my head back and rode him faster, harder, release so close that my entire body burned with it.

      He flicked my nipple with his tongue and sucked it between his teeth. I careened over the edge of bliss. My fingernails grew to claws, and I dug them into his shoulders as scales covered my hands. He pulled back, taking my nipple with him until it was pulled taught, on the edge of pain.

      He looked up at me, and I gasped as I saw his eye colour. They were no longer blue, but the pink-orange fade of sunsets and sunrises. My fight or flight instinct snapped me out of the afterglow of orgasm as I remembered Lucifer’s phone call yesterday afternoon. This wasn’t Morpheus; This was Ornias, the Fœmoræ I’d run from in the first dream, and I had just fucked him… again.

      “Ornias, let go of me,” I demanded. He did, but the pain and anger in his face said that was the last thing he wanted to do. I hadn’t given him a choice. I used his Angelic name, so he couldn’t refuse. It was a fail safe for Angels on the edge of corrupting but was abused and overused, so we’d stopped using our Angelic names until they were all but forgotten. I stood and backed up until I bumped into the counter. I grabbed onto the lip of the sink behind me and stared as he shifted into his true form.

      Gone was the dark skin and white hair of the Angel I’d willingly bed. In his place was the olive-skinned Fœmoræ with long, luscious black curls and a manscaped beard that was downy soft. This was my soulmate. The one I’d been running from for so long… Would it be so wrong to give in to him?

      I shoved that last thought away as he stood, his cock soaked in my juices. It was still hard and throbbing. By the looks of it, he’d been mere seconds from true release. Thank the Maker I had noticed in time. I did not need a third child from his loins.

      The first was an unforeseen blessing that helped me escape him, the second was a mistake when I got black out drunk the night after Max left me the first time, about twenty-six years ago. Ornias always seemed to find me at my most vulnerable. It was the reason I no longer drank myself into oblivion.

      Again, I tried to remember what happened last night. I’d come to see Ronnie and Lucifer. To help them find him and make him pay for what he’d done to Ronnie’s daughter, Badb.

      “You certainly seem to have missed me, Esca Fraskæ[4],” he said, closing the distance between us. That was his favourite nickname for me and once, I’d enjoyed it, but now… Anger burned like fire in my chest. The Majora’s Mask tattoo on my sternum glowed as if someone held a flashlight to my skin. His eyes drifted to it, and he froze a step away.

      I had to hand it to him, he’d gotten smarter over the years. Not too long ago, he would’ve closed the gap, and let me attack him. I narrowed my eyes and let my Angelic scales slide out from under my skin again, covering me from head to now clawed foot as I grew to my seven-foot-five form, towering over him.

      “Don’t even think about taking that step. I don’t care what we were just doing. You manipulated me, lied to me, and essentially raped me. Just like every other fucking time you’ve caught me, plus you nearly killed Badb yesterday,” I growled through my dragon’s muzzle. The sheer force of my voice sent him flying backward.

      He knocked the table over, and gracefully turned it into a backwards roll. He landed on his feet crouched, his arms raised to guard himself, and a shield of kinetic energy rose between us for good measure. He opened his mouth to speak and defend himself, but I heard his thoughts before he could take a breath.

      “We’re soulmates, Aesh. I will always be drawn to you.” I shoved him against the wall with a burst of telekinesis as my eyes glowed enough to throw red, blue, and white light around the room in front of me. I pinned him to the wall and glared into his eyes.

      “We may have been soulmates, but we are not a couple. We were joined to keep you from corrupting, but that didn’t work. Instead, you manipulated me into thinking that you were on the straight and narrow. I had to find out from one of the girls you were whoring around with that you were sleeping with that Scubaid[5]. Even then I didn’t believe it, but then I saw you together and you helped her take me.”

      Tears burned my eyes and choked the rest. I’d been hunting the Scubaid for thousands of years after finding out that she was no longer an Angeles[6]. I shoved that aside and blinked back the tears.

      “I don’t want to ever see your face again; you sack of Dragon shit. Get out of my house and if I see you again, come death or insanity, I will gut you!”

      I teleported him from my kitchen to the Himalayas and dropped his naked ass in the snow. That would cool him down.

      How had he even gotten inside? I warded all my apartments against that Nev’ca Ak'Nævêh[7]. I shifted back to my mortal form, summoned my glasses to my face, and stepped to the door. I inspected the jamb for the runes and symbols that were nearly invisible to anyone who didn’t know where to look. They’d been smudged. Someone had been in my apartment.

      I touched the mark and saw two hazy figures, but the more I tried to see, the less I saw. Even without the wards, the apartment was always locked and the only people with a key were family. They’d have known not to touch the ward or to redraw it if they smudged it this badly.

      It was probably me, coming in late last night. I usually double checked it before I went to sleep. Had I brought someone home with me or were the intruders already gone? I summoned the plush robe to my body and tied it tight at my natural waist emphasizing my hourglass shape before I stalked to the bedroom. The door was shut, and I paused with my fist up to knock. I tried for a solid ten minutes to retrace my steps, but I couldn’t think. Had I met Ronnie last night or not?

      I came to New Orleans to find Jack, and because of Ronnie’s call… Jack was the main priority though. He was my current problematic middle child, even though he was the oldest one alive. Neither of his brothers had heard from him in weeks, and he was constantly bothering one of them.

      Nicholas, Ornias’ son and the second oldest, said that Jack’s last known location was in the south-eastern United States. I knew he was here, but his brothers didn’t know that he had a sort of home base in New Orleans. What had I done last night that I couldn’t remember if I met with Ronnie or not?

      I looked at my smart watch and sighed. I was in the right time zone, and one thing was clear about the individual I brought home: They were a sound sleeper, which eliminated my youngest son, Xedrix who slept like his father and woke at the drop of a feather. I set my hand to the doorknob and took a deep breath, readying the speech I kept for random preters I accidentally brought home who’d been too drunk to sleep with.

[1]Demoki: Corrupted Angel

[2] Old Irish: Fuck

[3] Demoki for “Until Now,” also the name of the most trusted servant of the dragon.

[4] Demoki: Sweet flower

[5] Irish: n. Vulgar, Bitch.

[6] Demoki: A pure Angel

[7] Demoki: Fucking Attacker, Abuser, Rapist.

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