Chapter 28
What a godsdamned mess, Nadja thought as she wiped flour from her cheek with the back of her hand.
The cabin didn’t have abundant counter space to begin with, but what little it had was covered with ingredients and mixing bowls.
She’d had to spread out onto the table, too, since there wasn’t enough space on the counter to place the baking sheets.
She knew that Robbie would be able to whip up a four-course gourmet meal with a hot plate and only ingredients he could buy at a gas station, but she wasn’t a cook.
She certainly wasn’t a baker, unless you counted cutting the end off of a tub of cookie dough and dropping spoonfuls of it onto a baking sheet.
Why had she decided to try to make cookies from scratch today?
She knew the answer to that question. Robbie had left about two hours ago to run with JJ, and she had rushed to the rec hall kitchen armed with a backpack and a recipe for snickerdoodles that she’d found scrawled on an old index card and taped to the inside of one of the upper cabinet doors.
It was cookies. How hard could it be, she’d cavalierly thought as she carried the ingredients back to the cabin.
But that was two-hours-ago Nadja. The Nadja of the present moment knew that trying a new to learn a new skill for the very first time on a day when she was already vibrating with nerves had not been her best move. Now she was anxious and covered in flour, sugar, and cinnamon.
She had wanted to do something nice for Robbie. For the pack. And bringing cookies felt like something people did. How many times had a client walked into her office with a foil-covered paper plate full of homemade baked goods?
Two things were certain, however. First, that Nadja was no more a baker than she was a cook, a fact confirmed by the lumpy, oddly-shaped cookies cooling on a rack, some of which were crispy while others were inexplicably barely cooked.
But the second and more poignant fact was that she was more confused than ever.
The night before, when they’d been at dinner with the pack, JJ had come over and sat on a backwards chair. He’d been wearing bright purple nail polish and had a fake lime green braid clipped to his long hair.
“I’m tired of hearing Rose complain about not being able to watch Bridgerton like ‘everyone else in the entire world,’” he said, making dramatic air quotes.
“Damn straight!” Rose called out from somewhere behind him.
JJ had rolled his eyes but turned to Nadja. “I don’t think you need the internet for everything you used to need it for, but you could do virtual sessions with your therapy clients. That’s a thing, right?”
Nadja had snorted a laugh. “Yes, that’s a thing.”
“I’ve got a guy coming on Monday to figure out what the best way to get the internet distributed across the property.
But it’s coming. I wanted you to know. Rose has been on me about making sure that all of our pack’s needs are met, even the ones that don’t seem obvious to my ‘pig-headed, Ebeneezer Scrooge ass.’” He did the air quotes even bigger that time.
“I said what I said!” Rose shouted over the din of the pack eating.
Nadja had laughed out loud at that.
“Welcome to the twenty-first century, JJ,” she said. “We’ve been expecting you.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’ll be nice to watch baseball again.”
He’d gotten up to circulate the pack that he insisted was not his to lead, leaving Nadja more confused than she’d been before.
After leaving Rose at the lake, Nadja had been certain that leaving was the right choice.
The kinder choice. But when Robbie had made love to her that morning, telling her that she was a gift and looking at her like she was the best thing he’d ever seen, the prospect of leaving hadn’t been nearly so convincing.
And now JJ was getting internet. She could see her clients.
She could work. She could be useful and fulfilled, and she could have Robbie.
She always cautioned her clients about jumping into permanent relationships too quickly, warning them that sometimes dopamine felt an awful lot like kismet.
It had been fast. Two weeks, to be exact.
And yet here she was, baking cookies for a pack to celebrate her fake mate’s first shift, after which he would become her real-life mate after only knowing him for less time than a human’s complete menstrual cycle.
If she stayed.
The oven timer was still counting down, showing one and a half minutes remaining for the batch in the oven, but she caught a whiff of burning and groaned.
Maybe she should set up a wooden crate by the lake instead with a poster that said, “I can’t bake for shit, but I can help you with that pesky anxiety disorder. Therapy: five cents.”
The burning smell grew stronger, and she wrenched the oven door open, tugging on the oven mitts and pulling out a sheet of cookies that were burnt on the outside edges and raw in the middle.
“Is it the oven?” she asked the empty kitchen as she dropped the pan on the stovetop.
She went to the sink and threw open the window there, hoping to coax some fresh air into the kitchen. There was still the acrid odor of burnt sugar, but now mixed with the scent of pines. And yet, over it all, she caught the faint hint of brimstone.
No.
With shaking hands, she turned off the oven and walked as calmly as she could into the living room. There, lounging on the couch like a pirate king, was Halphas.
She’d never seen him in human form. She wondered why he’d bothered with it today. In Hell, he was gigantic and imposing, a solid wall of deep red muscle with spear-sharp horns like gazelle.
As a human, he was longer, leaner. Deeply tanned with long, dark curls flowing over his shoulders.
He wore ripped black jeans and a black silk shirt that was unbuttoned to his navel.
He was barefoot, his long, elegant feet propped up on the opposite armrest of the small couch.
He looked completely different, and yet it was unmistakably Halphas.
The wide smirk and bright blue eyes were exactly the same.
“Nadja, you beautiful menace, what chemical warfare are you cooking up in there?”
“Cookies,” she said, still stunned nearly speechless to see him.
“How delightfully domestic,” he said, rising to his feet and towering over her.
He wrapped his arms around her, picking her up off the floor as he hugged her tightly.
With a choked sob, she relaxed against him, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding on tightly.
He was so warm. He smelled so familiar. He was so familiar.
And while she hadn’t missed Hell, she’d missed Halphas.
Her first friend. Her first protector. The only one who had ever worried after her, who had ever helped her.
“Oh, hey now. It’s okay. It’s okay, honey. I missed you, too,” he said, holding her while she cried.
Halphas was a demon of war, Earl of Stonewall, whose job was to build battle towers and fortifications, to supply munitions, to move troops.
There hadn’t been a need for his services in a long time, but Halphas had never let that stop him from keeping busy.
And yet, though a terrifying harbinger of war, he’d always been gentle with her.
“Don’t tell anyone I’m a secret softie,” he’d once said.
Several hundred years before, he’d been banished to Earth for a time.
He’d taken up with a woman there. Nadja didn’t know much about her other than the fact that Halphas had loved her.
But when he’d been recalled back to Hell, he’d left Marjorie and had been a surly prick for centuries after.
He once told Nadja that he’d only ever loved two creatures—Marjorie and her.
Nadja had missed him when he’d been banished, and she’d missed him during her own exile. Sixty-five years was a long time on Earth, a full lifetime for some, though it undoubtably had felt like a blink of an eye to him. But he was here, and she was so happy to see him. Except—
“I don’t want to go back,” she blurted against his neck.
He released his hold on her and she slid down to the floor. Halphas rested his hands on her shoulders and bent his knees to better look into her eyes.
“I’m sorry. My ears must not have fully popped yet after the trip here. Because it sounded to me like you just said you don’t want to go back.”
“I don’t,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, suddenly cold.
“But you have everything in Hell! Don’t tell me it’s been easy for you here. I know feeding must be hell for you. No dream-walking? Be serious, Nadja.”
It had been hell. For decades, feeding had been a punishment worse than anything.
But not anymore. She remembered the night before, when Robbie had come home from shutting down the kitchen, scooped her off the couch, plunked her onto the kitchen table, pulled up a chair, and licked her until she screamed so loud she was certain someone would come check to make sure she wasn’t in danger.
She’d been so full, so fed, for the last week that she had almost forgotten what being empty and starving felt like.
“Hellooo,” Halphas said, snapping a finger and bringing her back to the present.
“Sorry,” she said, knowing her blush was bright and obvious. “I don’t want to go back. I like it here. I like helping people.”
“Helping people,” Halphas repeated with a sad smile. “You always were a shitty demon.”
“I know,” she said, smiling through her tears. “I am a shitty demon. I don’t have the stomach for any of it. I never have. And here, I’ve got…” she trailed off, because where could she even begin?
“A boyfriend?” Halphas waggled his eyebrows. “Some delectable little morsel that you don’t mind dining on?”
“It’s not like that,” Nadja protested.
“I smell him on you,” Halphas said. “Don’t get me wrong, he smells damn good on you. But what’s the plan?”
The plan. What was the plan? If anyone else had asked her twenty minutes ago, she would have said that her plan was to let Robbie bite her and then ride him like Secretariat until sunrise. They’d figure the rest out as they went.
But now, with Halphas, she doubted herself. Again.
“I don’t know what’s gonna happen here,” she said. “But I don’t want to go back.”
“He’s a wolf.”
Nadja rolled her eyes. “I know that. I’m the one who smelled it on him first and brought him here so he didn’t go feral in a grocery store.”
“Are you his mate?”
“I—” She didn’t know how to answer that. She was his fake mate. But after tonight, she wouldn’t be fake anymore. It wouldn’t be a mating of convenience. It would be a mating. Period.
“What do you know about wolf mates?” Halphas asked, dropping back onto the couch.
Nadja groaned. “I know what they’ve told me,” she said.
“They’re fated.”
“Not always,” she protested.
“So are you his fated mate?”
She didn’t answer. Her stomach roiled.
“I don’t know.”
“You might not know, but he would know. He would have known the moment he saw you. So I’ll ask you again. What’s the plan?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not his fated mate, but what if he meets them? What if he finds them and—” Halphas snapped his fingers, and Nadja startled. “It’ll be over.”
“He wouldn’t,” she mumbled. “He—”
“Won’t be able to help it,” Halphas interrupted.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, a position so like how Robbie sometimes sat that Nadja felt as if her throat was closing up.
“Look, Nadja, I love you. You’re the only family I’ve got.
I’m just stating facts. You deserve more than to be tossed aside like that. Better to leave before you get hurt.”
But that was just it. It would hurt no matter what. There was never a time when it wouldn’t hurt because she loved him. She loved him. And when had such a terrible, wonderful, awful, awe-full thing happened?
“I—”
“I know, babe. I know you love him. And maybe he loves you, too. I don’t know. But this is beyond his control. It’s beyond your control. And I can’t let you get hurt like that.”
“I don’t want to go back,” she whispered, because anything, even a broken heart, was better than going back to Hell. She’d waste away to nothing if she returned. “I’m not going back.”
Halphas stood. “Okay. Fine. You’re not going back. So where are you going?”