Page 56 of Angel's Smoke

Iron, too, had been just as voracious and accommodating, to the point where she no longer had to ask, then justify what she wanted. The habit, which had been ingrained into her since she was young, had been scrubbed away with the sturdy strokes of Iron’s presence in her life. He was always there, feeding her, pleasuring her, supporting her in ways she didn’t know how to accept, and like being repeatedly exposed to any foreign custom, she was learning. And loving it.

She just wished the weight pressing down on her core wasn’t solely related to the baby.

“Your next OB appointment is on April fourteenth, right?” Iron settled them both on the bench and handed Anna her ice cream cone with an obscene number of napkins wrapped around the base to prevent leakage.

Oh, that man.

“Yup,” she said around a mouthful of soft mint. “It’s at nine thirty in the morning.”

“You taking the afternoon off again?”

“Not this time. My afternoon’s booked a bit too tightly, and two of my clients are going on spring break the following week, so it was the only time they could fit sessions in before they’re away for a bit. And trust me, when clients have impending vacations, they usually don’t skip sessions. Oftentimes, they’ll book extras.”

“Makes sense.” He sat back against the bench and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, staring out at the small pond that had finally thawed enough for the local mallards to sit up and take notice from time to time.

Anna waited for him to say something else, something beyond remarks about the weather, what she’d like for dinner, or whether there were any more packages of maternity clothes waiting at her P.O. box that he could pick up for her.

As dreamlike as his attention had been, it was all a distraction from the real storm circling off on the horizon. Sure, it had been wonderful to skirt around it and pretend that the honeymoon didn’t have to end, but he knew as well as she did that bullets weren’t meant to be dodged forever. Not to mention that the longer he put off testing out his full angel fire with his brothers and the relic, the more worried she got that her selfishness in wanting to keep what they had intact would soon spread resentment among his family. Would they see her as stealing him away from them, when he had a duty far more significant than making sure she and the baby were getting in their recommended dietary fiber intake each day? (They were, by the way. Annoyingly so.)

There was only so much guilt Anna could carry around before she toppled over, especially when she was already leaden with the weight of another life.

“Iron,” she said, shifting into his open embrace and leaning against his chest. Was it cowardly to avoid looking him in the eye while bringing up the topic of conversation they were both actively avoiding?

Some would say so, but she preferred to think of it as strategic. With her snuggled across his torso and holding a precariously balanced ice cream cone over his crotch, he was far less likely to bolt into the pond. Or so she hoped.

With a deep breath, using his powerful strength beneath her as a support, she tried again. “Titan called me this morning.”

His fingers tensed around her shoulder, but only slightly. Not angry, then, just . . . anticipatory. Good. She could work with that.

“He said he tried to talk to you before you left the den, but you ignored him.”

“Had somewhere to be.”

“Where?”

He gripped her more tightly. “Wherever you were.”

Anna handed him her ice cream cone—the good parts were already licked off anyway—so she could wrap both arms around his massive chest. To no one’s surprise, he took it and let her consume as much of him as she could given her growing belly and their shortening time together. “You can’t do that, Iron. They’re your family.”

“So are you,” he whispered into the crown of her head. “Which is why I’m okay telling you the truth of things.” Then he cast his pensive gaze out over the pond. “I’m a bit scared about the next steps. And worried.”

She had to smile at that, because any other reaction would have enlisted a wellspring of her tears into service, and neither of them had enough napkins to stem that tide.

“It’s okay to be scared, you know. There isn’t a height or weight requirement, or gender requirement for that matter, in order to feel the emotion.”

“If we test my full fire with that of my brothers’ against the relic’s shard, I’m worried about what it will reveal and the decisions we’ll all have to make depending on the results. I’ve been hammering that damn nail since the moment Titan first bonded with Rose several years ago, but it wasn’t anything my brothers were willing to face back then. They were all too happy and relieved, hopeful, and like hell I was going to be the asshole to highlight the fact that love didn’t remove the expiration date on our situations. All it did was push it back a bit.”

“Then do it afraid. Do it anyway, despite your fear. And you’re not allowed tonotbelieve me here. I’ve got far too much experience in this department to be talking out of my ass. My entire adult life has been me learning to plow through the scary things despite the fear. I wish I could say it gets easier, but it doesn’t, only more necessary.”

“There is no going back from whatever is revealed, Anna. I need you to know that. If we can return to the Empyrean, we must. And if we can’t, then . . .”

He didn’t need to say the rest. She knew. They all did. If they couldn’t return to the Empyrean, there was no way to stop Cyro for good. If he’d finally managed to find a way to go after the Empyrean and break through its gates, there was nothing the sentinels could do about it while they were trapped in the mortal realm. It didn’t matter who they were trapped with.

“You need to know,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice from quivering. “Either way, you need to know.”

“Will you be there with me? When we do the test again?”

That warming power within her chest that connected the two of them fluttered a form of hope. “Of course. We should all be there. I think we need to be.”

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