Page 106 of Malice
There was dead silence as my three brothers stared at me in shock.
In a move that surprised no one, Sin broke the silence first. He whistled, long and low. “Wow. Somebody made Grandpa angry.”
“Wouldn’t you be if she was clearly distressed and refused to tell you why?” I snapped.
As soon as I reached the library, I stalked to the wall of shelves and began pacing. I didn’t do well with uncertainty. Death was the one certain thing in life. I was inevitable. I had no room for what-ifs. Death came for every mortal creature without contest.
Not knowing what she was going to tell us had my heart in a vise, and it kept squeezing until I was sure it would be crushed to dust.
It was exactly sixteen steps in one direction before I was forced to spin on my heel and stalk back the other way. My focus was inward, but I felt the stares from the others. Malice appeared the most outwardly calm as he sipped his tea. Chaos was a bit harder to read with his furrowed brow, but I would bet he was just as unsettled as I was. Sin, as always, was an eager little puppy. He couldn’t keep himself still.
“What do you think she’s going to tell us? Do you think it’s about Lucifer?” Sin blurted.
“Oh my God, it’s not about Lucifer!” Merri shouted, exasperation clear in every word as she stood in the doorway.
Of course she looked like an angel sent from heaven. Hair falling down her back in long crimson waves, body clothed in a simple pair of sweatpants and one of her favorite well-worn T-shirts.
“Then what is it?” Chaos demanded.
“You guys need to settle down. Sheesh. I told Grim it’s not about Lucifer.” Her smile was soft and sweet as she approached us. “It’s a good thing.”
“Why didn’t you think to mention that?” Malice asked me.
“She never said.” Then I glared accusingly at Merri. “You never told me that bit.”
“You were too busy jumping to conclusions to bother.”
Something loosened in my chest, and I inclined my head in assent. “You’re right.”
Her eyes widened, but Sin interrupted any response she might have been about to toss my way.
“Well, what is it? We’re all ears, kitten.”
Nervous energy zinged through the room, most of it from me. I didn’t have a wealth of experience when it came to good news. Things in my life could rarely be classified as good. I was actually more anxious waiting for Merri to share something she was clearly excited about than I was if she was about to drop something dire on us.
Dire I could handle. Had handled countless times before.
What the hell was I supposed to do with happy?
“I realized something while I was sleeping. It was the final piece of the puzzle I’d been missing since Lilith sent me to you.”
“Go on,” Chaos murmured.
She all but bounced on her toes, her eyes darting around the room to land on each of us as she spoke. “You four are mine.Not just my protectors or my bodyguards. You’re my destiny. My mates.”
The floor dropped out from underneath me. Of everything she could have said, nothing could have shocked me more.
Or garnered a more extreme reaction.
“Impossible,” I spat before anyone else had a chance to so much as blink.
Merri’s mouth dropped open, her face going pale. “I thought so too, but then I realized how everything just fi?—”
“You’re wrong.”
Everything she was saying was so wrong. Merri wasn’t my mate. She wasn’t. I knew that as surely as I knew myself. The horsemen didn’t have mates. We barely had anything that constituted a soul. Our kind weren’t made for happily ever after. We were the antithesis of happily ever after. That’s simply how it’s always been and how it would always be. Period. The end. It didn’t matter if one or all of us might wish differently.
“I’m not,” she said, but her voice had lost all of its fire.
