Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DAKOTA
“Could you get me pregnant?” I asked Mason as he sat me on Micah’s kitchen table. I’d been thinking of Ivan and Katya recently, thinking of the decision they had to make.
“No,” Mason answered, his hands falling to my hips to pull my shorts down. I squirmed.
“No, as in it’s unlikely? Or not at all?”
“It’s not possible for an angel and a human to procreate. There needs to be a supernatural element in both.”
“That’s why angels and demons could work,” I surmised. “But not angels and humans.”
“Why the fuck are you asking?” Mason snapped, anger flickering in his eyes. His hands clenched into fists around my waistband. “I’m not the only man who comes inside of you.”
“I’m asking,” I started, gritting my teeth, “because I wanted to know. To know if it’s at all possible. You were the one who made a big deal about my birth control when we first had sex.”
“Yeah, that was to fuck with your head. You’re safe from babies.”
“I honestly don’t know why I—”
I cut myself off when I heard the garage door opening. My pulse spiked and regret speared through me sharply. Mason glared down at me.
“Do you still want to show him what a slut you are for me?”
“No, Mason—”
I barely got the word out before Mason was shoving his cock inside of me.
I tried pointlessly to get away from him, hating everything.
He held me down on the table, not allowing me to back out now.
I gritted my teeth, an angry noise tearing out of me as he ripped my shirt off my body, fingers holding me hard enough to leave bruises.
“Mason—”
It was stupid, childish plan to make Micah jealous, and I was regretting it already.
Sadness tugged on my heart along with the regret.
Mason made me want to do terrible things, things Micah probably didn’t deserve.
This would get me nowhere except in more trouble, but it was too late to go back now, seeing as Micah was walking into the house.
I turned my head away from him, shame making my face warm, fingernails scraping the table as my fingers curled. I could feel him staring at my naked body, and it made me flush all over.
Mason didn’t stop fucking me.
I regret this.
He was so nice to me about my failures, and look how I’m thanking him…
There was the sound of a drawer opening in the kitchen, and I managed to peek over at Micah through squinted eyes, feeling nervous and stupid and kind of sad—until I saw what he was holding and my fear took over completely.
Micah walked straight up to us, zero hesitation in his movements as he flipped a knife in his palm, then stabbed it straight through the back of Mason’s hand. The tip was jammed into the wood of the table, keeping Mason’s hand pinned down.
I screamed at the top of my lungs, eyes flying wide open as I tried to scramble away, palms pressing over my tits to cover them.
Mason ripped the knife out of his hand, then threw it across the kitchen at a speed that seemed impossible. The blade buried itself deep in Micah’s shoulder, but he didn’t react other than to reach around and pull it out of his flesh.
I slammed my hand over my mouth to stop myself from screaming again, horror encroaching on my thoughts, all notions of modesty disappearing. My pulse was getting really uneven, my breathing becoming shallow, my body temperature no longer regulating itself correctly.
Oh no.
Micah turned on the faucet and started rinsing the knife while I stared at the deep wound next to his shoulder blade through torn fabric, the blood and ichor soaking his white shirt.
A cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck while heat pulsed in my face.
My fingers trembled. I looked over to see Mason, his bloody hand, thick red liquid dripping all over the table next to me.
And then I passed out.
━━━━━
I opened my eyes slowly, everything blurry above me. My head hurt and my pulse was shaky. I was lying on the floor of Micah’s kitchen, flat on my back with my feet propped on a chair. There was a cold rag on my forehead.
Mason and Micah were both leaning over me with concerned expressions on their faces. It felt like I was in Heaven.
“Are you okay?” Micah asked.
“I don’t know. What—” My eyes caught on the bundle of black fabric wrapped around Mason’s hand and all my memories came rushing back. I swallowed hard, trying to erase the image of the knife going through clean through his hand. “Oh. I’m sorry?”
“Why are you sorry?” Mason asked. “He should be sorry. I knew you didn’t like seeing so much blood like that.” He jerked his head at Micah and my eyebrows pulled together in annoyance.
“If memory serves, both of you stabbed each other.”
“He started it.”
“You started it by fucking her in my kitchen.” Micah turned to glare at Mason.
“Can I have something to wear?” I asked, cutting into their petty argument. I covered my chest with my palms, keeping my legs shut tight.
“No,” both of them answered simultaneously.
My mouth popped open.
Even though they’d said the same fucking thing, neither of them seemed happy that the other one had answered. As if each of them believed they were the only one allowed to talk to me like that. Stupid.
“Yes,” I insisted. “Give me some clothes.”
My head spun when I tried to sit up, so I quickly laid back down, feeling the heaviness in my skull pressing me into the floor. The shaky beat of my pulse went all throughout me. I adjusted the rag on my forehead, one arm crossed over my bare chest.
“Please,” I added.
Micah finally relented and disappeared, returning after only a minute with one of his t-shirts.
I was glad he had so many, since I seemed to always be stealing them, and Mason always seemed to be shredding them.
He helped me slip it over my head, then tugged it down, lifting my body enough to cover me.
Once the soft cotton settled over my skin, I felt like I could think better.
“Are you going to kill Aamon soon?” I questioned. Somehow, I still knew next to nothing about the situation, the plan, the history, Aamon himself—despite my life being the one supposedly at risk now.
Mason sighed loudly.
I knew it was a random question at an inopportune time, but was my life in danger, or not?
Micah went to the freezer and got an ice pop for me, which I gratefully opened and started to suck on, tongue swirling around the coldness. Grape.
“Yes,” Mason said. “Understand that time is slightly different for immortal creatures. He doesn’t feel like he’s been waiting that long since he first saw you.”
“That doesn’t reassure me at all, because I simply don’t believe that. Why would he wait?” I shook my head, licking sweet juice off the purple ice, my lips shining with it.
“He needs an opportunity, just like we need an opportunity. This isn’t a test of firepower, but of opportunity. He knows we’d win if Micah and I were together. He’s trying to avoid encountering us like that.”
“But you let me stay with just one—”
“Okay,” Micah cut me off. He was clearly annoyed at me fucking Mason on his table, but had been trying to ignore his irritation since I passed out.
I did feel remorseful. “We’re not doing this.
The details don’t need to matter to you, nor do they need to be understood.
I can’t explain to you how the demon psyche works because I’m not one.
But I guarantee you he doesn’t view the world the same way you do.
You’re always safer with an angel. Aamon doesn’t want to risk trying to hurt you with one of us there when he could just wait for you to be alone. ”
“And why don’t you kill him first?”
Once I asked the question, I wished I could force the words back into my mouth. I already knew the essential core of that answer, and I was making myself sound dumb. They couldn’t find him. Which was on purpose on Aamon’s part. Finding him and getting him in position was half the battle.
Opportunity.
“Because it’s not that simple. If it was, he’d have been dead a long time ago. Both of us are needed to ensure he’s correctly killed, and it’d be ideal if we didn’t have to do it in the middle of a neighborhood.”
“Mason could do it on his own, though.”
“Yeah, and I’d probably die afterwards. Is that what you want, baby?” Mason stroked the side of my face.
“No…” My eyes slid back and forth between both men. I was becoming less shaky as I ate the ice pop, artificially-flavored sweetness melting over my cold tongue. “Okay never mind. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“We’ll talk about it once we have a plan,” Mason reassured me.