Chapter 38
The problem with Angel’s studio apartment was the lack of privacy. Even the bathroom gave us no pretense of reprieve, and I really didn’t want to kick Ivan out. My kid brother deserved to feel safe and at home.
Angel wanted to snuggle and nap, even while I browsed the grimoire until I could barely hold my eyes open. Rest and recharge, sure, but I thought maybe Angel and I needed more than a nap. And kissing him stupid in front of my little brother wasn’t an option.
A knock on the door jolted me awake. My heart raced in my throat as Ivan answered it. The guy on the other side was one I didn’t recognize. Young, maybe early twenties, with dark hair and a genuine smile.
“Can I bring Peanut Butter?” Ivan asked. Whatever else was said between them, I’d lost in my doze. Angel, a warm, solid weight against my back, didn’t tense.
“It’s Luca,” Angel murmured in my ear. “Xavier’s PA.”
“Oh.” I’d heard the name before.
Ivan popped over to the bed, staring down at me with a hopeful expression. “Can I take Peanut Butter upstairs with me to Xavier’s office?”
“Yeah, sure. It’s safe, right?”
“Perfectly safe,” Luca promised, still carefully standing just inside the doorway. “Lots of wards and guards. But we have a lounge area with a gaming system and a comfortable place for Ivan to work on homework or read if he wants.”
“You guys can rest until your thing tonight,” Ivan offered carefully. “Without me in your hair.”
A pang of guilt shot through me. I never wanted him to feel like a burden. He must have seen it on my face because his expression softened.
“It’s okay,” he said, lowering his voice. “This place is a little small for all of us. Solve this case, and we can go home, yeah?”
Home. The word hung in the air, a promise and a goal, as he scooped up the cat and slipped out, granting us the one thing the apartment couldn’t provide, a moment alone. Luca left a key on the counter and closed the door behind them.
The silence that followed settled over me like a thick, warm blanket.
I began to doze, lulled not by tiredness but by a profound sense of comfort and safety.
Angel breathed against the back of my neck, wrapped around me like a weighted blanket, soaking me in his scent and adoration.
I could have died in that moment and found myself in heaven, wanting to return to the perfection of his embrace.
Was it too soon? Would he run away? The words were at the tip of my tongue, a truth too big to contain.
“Angel?” I whispered, heart in my throat, worried, but desperate to tell him even if it meant we shattered. I had to know.
“Hmm?” He hummed into the back of my neck.
“I love you,” the confession left me in a rush.
“I know it’s soon, and a lot, and I’m… well, me.
” Fuck, should I apologize? He mated with me, which he knew meant he’d be stuck with me.
But love was more, right? Emotions carried a lot of baggage, and I’d been shoving mine in a dark corner for a long time, trying not to trip over them. “I’m sorry.”
The silence stretched for a few seconds, though his embrace remained solid. “You’re sorry for loving me?” he asked.
“Sorry you’re stuck with me,” I corrected.
He huffed out a half laugh and kissed my ear. “You get that we are in this together, right? It’s not all about you or me. It’s about us.”
“But I’m a lot.”
“Sometimes, sure. But aren’t we all?”
I rolled over to meet his gaze and stare into that beautiful face of his. “I love you. Just fair warning, I’m pretty sure I’m doing it wrong, so you'll have to tell me when I fuck it up.”
Angel’s smile was soft. He leaned in and kissed me, a slow, deep kiss that tasted like promise and forgiveness for mistakes I hadn’t even made yet. When he broke the kiss, he rested his forehead against mine and let me breathe him in.
“Why are you like this?” I murmured, the question escaping before I could cage it.
“Like what?”
“Accepting of my chaos. You hated me on sight.”
“I hated the idea of you,” he corrected, his voice a low rumble. “Some random human variant added to our team. And then I saw you…” He let out a long sigh, his thumb stroking my jaw. “Like a puppy who’d been kicked too many times, but was still trying to wag its tail.”
I snorted and shoved at his shoulder. “Jerk. I’m not a damn puppy.”
“Seriously, though. I never expected my new partner to be my mate. I knew that first day in the SED lobby.”
“Is that good or bad?”
He looked thoughtful. “I never expected to find my mate at all.”
“And then you got stuck with a necromancer.”
“You’re more than your magic, Jude. Do you think I’m just a cat?”
“Ha. No. I mean, I love snuggling with Peanut Butter, but I haven’t spent the last few hours trying to figure out how to get him alone for some action.”
Angel barked out a laugh, the sound rich and unguarded. “I sure hope not.”
He slid off the bed in one fluid, shifter like motion and held his hand out to me. “But for the record, that particular problem is already solved. Luca left us the key to the roof deck.”
“There’s a roof deck?” My mind instantly went to the wild, pulsing colors of the Veil’s night sky. Seeing that chaotic beauty from an open, high place, with Angel, felt less like a retreat and more like a claim.
“It’s limited access. Which means we’ll have it all to ourselves.”
His words hung in the air; a quiet promise that made my breath catch.
A few long seconds stretched between us as he waited for me to take his hand.
I reached for it, leaving the book on the bed, and with it all the struggles of the last few weeks.
Was it too much to want to focus on him, and this new thing between us? Even if it was only for a few minutes.
I slid my hand into his, slotting my fingers in his grasp; his grip firm and steady.
He didn’t drag me away, simply led me to the door to slip on my shoes, not caring that neither of us were fit for company.
The threads between us pulsed in time to our heartbeats, faint but willing to clarify if I stared at them a breath too long.
“How private is it?” I wondered, hoping to have him completely naked in a few minutes so I could study his divine body.
“It will be just us,” Angel promised. “Warded and all.”
“Sounds amazing,” I said as I let him lead me out the door. The long, wide hall stretched silent and empty, though with his hand in mine, I couldn’t have cared if anyone saw us darting through the remodeled shopping mall to a hidden side door that led up a set of stairs.
As he pulled the door open, a cool draft carried the faint, electric scent of the Veil’s magic; part static, part wild energy.
I took a deep breath, feeling like I could finally breathe.
A few weeks ago, I’d have been terrified to step out into the pulsing energy of the Veil’s night sky, but now it almost felt like home. Or maybe that was the company.
He paused on the threshold, the electric starlight catching gold flecks in his eyes. “If I repeat your words back to you,” he asked, his voice low and steady, “will you freak out?”
My mind reeled, parsing through what he could mean in a thousand ways, but landing only on the fact that he meant I love you. “It’s not too soon?” I whispered, the words fragile.
“I’ve already said it in a dozen small ways,” he said.
He had, and I’d been replaying them in my mind, denying he meant it. “Because we’re mated? This bond thing?” I asked, waving vaguely at the threads that tied us together.
“A single strand brought us together,” Angel agreed. “But there’s more now, right?”
I nodded. The gold thread had thickened, and easily a dozen others just like it had woven themselves into a small pattern that had yet to be defined.
He pressed my palm over his heart. The steady, strong beat of it grounded my frantic pulse. “I love you, Jude.”
The words settled deep, a warmth spreading through my chest. “It still feels new. Like the pattern isn’t finished.” Fragile.
“It’s not,” he said, his thumb stroking the back of my hand.
“And it might never be complete. A perfect, finished tapestry is a dead thing, locked in a museum. Ours?” He glanced down at the space between us, as if he could see the same shimmering web I could.
“Ours is alive and messy. We’ll add new threads, we’ll snag on old hurts, and we’ll weave them in, too.
That’s the point. It’s not about being perfect.
It’s about being ours. Every moment we spend together adds more dimension and strengthens the bond. ”
I swallowed hard, the truth of it hitting me square in the chest with a hope strong enough to nearly blind me. “What you’re saying is, you’re stuck with my ugly emotional baggage and I’m stuck with yours, and we’re just going to knit a really weird cuddle cardigan out of it?”
Angel didn’t miss a beat. “Is that another PBS thing? Muppets or whatever?”
“Something like that,” I said, a real smile finally breaking through. “Think less Miss Piggy’s dramatic evening wear and more of something Oscar the Grouch would wear.”
The sound he made was half laugh, half sigh, all affection. “You mean fuzzy and green?”
I couldn’t help my grin. “You do know the Muppets!”
He tugged me out onto the roof. “Yeah, well. Even a grouch needs a place to belong.” The door clicked shut behind us, sealing us in a world of swirling, impossible colors.
The Veil’s sky churned above, a breathtaking canvas of amethyst and emerald light on a midnight canvas.
“And for the record,” he added, his voice dropping as he pulled me close, “I’ve always had a soft spot for the weird ones. ”
His lips found mine under the electric stars, and as I kissed him back, I thought that maybe our weird, patchy, Oscar the Grouch cardigan of a bond was the most beautiful thing I’d ever hope to weave.