Chapter 15
We wake to what sounds like the beginning of a coup.
“Mayari, open up!”
My eyes snap open and I bolt upright so fast I almost pull something in my neck.
The pounding that follows is a seismic event that rattles my teeth. My front door does not deserve this level of aggression. It sounds like someone is testing whether reinforced wood can be pulverized into a fine dust.
“That’s Gabriel,” I whisper, horrified.
“Hello?!” Leo bellows.
“Mayari!” my mother’s voice cuts through the door like a blade.
Oh. Oh no.
Beside me, Jonah groans and pushes up on his elbows, blanket sliding dangerously low. “What the fuck is happening?” he rasps.
I take half a second (just half!) to admire the most unfairly beautiful half-demon in existence, all tousled and mine and naked in my bed. His hair is a chaotic curl explosion; his mouth is sleep-soft. This is wildly inconvenient timing.
“Mayari! Let us in!” That’s Raf. Shit. They are fully assembled.
“Um—” I launch myself out of bed and immediately trip on the duvet. “I think my entire family is outside.”
Jonah goes very still. His eyes flash silver for half a heartbeat before he vaults out of bed with supernatural efficiency.
“What the fuck, Mayari?” he hisses, scrambling for clothes. “I’m meeting your family? I don’t even know who’s in your family!”
I yank on the first sweatshirt I can find.
“Well, we didn’t quite have the time,” I snap, “between the whole ‘planning for battle’ thing and the ‘sharing the worst things we’ve ever done’ and the ‘being impaled on your dick while you asked me what my hobbies were.’ And I don’t know anything about your family either! ”
“Okay, fine,” he fires back, grabbing his jeans, eyes widening when he realizes they are absolutely destroyed with very identifiable stains.
“Both my parents are dead, and I have no siblings. My wife died forty years ago, and we never had kids. The soup kitchen is my family, and Betty is like my grandma, even if I’m almost twenty years older than her. Your turn.”
I throw him the sweatpants I stole from his dresser. “Well…” I stand up straight and clear my throat. “Okay, fine. So, uh. Minor detail.”
Jonah’s head tilts.
“My family is slayer royalty?” I say.
He freezes mid-step into his pants.
“We oversee Manhattan,” I continue rapidly. “And my parents are the strongest slayers in New York City? And my four older brothers are… the next strongest? In New York City.”
Jonah slowly turns his head toward me, eyebrows lifted comically high. “You have,” he enunciates, “Four. Older. Brothers.”
The door rattles so violently the walls tremble.
“Yeah,” I whisper.
To his credit, he does not immediately attempt to launch himself out the window. He calmly pulls on his shirt and shoes and asks, “Is there another way out of this apartment that’s not through the strongest royal hunters of my kind, four of whom are your older brothers?”
“No!” I growl, hopping into my boots. “You’re mine! They get to meet you!”
“Mayari,” he says evenly, “may I remind you how our first meeting went?”
I fling my hands into the air. “That was different!”
“How?”
“I was wrong!” I yell.
“Mayari!” my father calls from outside. “We brought food!”
I stride up to Jonah and grab his face between my hands. “This has to start somewhere,” I whisper fiercely. “Demons can choose to do good or do harm, and my forte can sense the difference in their intent. I’m going to tell them. Today.”
He nods slowly, already inching toward the window. “That’s so wonderful. I support you. Wholeheartedly. I would simply prefer to support you from… not here.”
“Oh,” Gabriel’s voice rings through the door. “I forgot I have a spare key.”
We lock eyes.
“Shit,” we breathe.
The door flies open.
And then it is, in fact, a war zone.