Page 69 of Underworld
“It’s fine,” I said, surprising all three of us. That strangetugstill resonated inside me, pulling at me.
I was welcome here…wanted.
And it wasn’t the Dean I sensed.
Quickening my pace, I strode down the corridor to the vertical tunnel. Hendrik lifted us to the top and we made our way to the Dean’s office. We found her door standing open.
Inside, the tableau caught me off-guard, but almost instantly, the surprise faded.
Some part of me had known.
A knot inside me unraveled as the beautiful woman speaking with the Dean turned to me.
“Lily,” she murmured.
“Mother.”
Sonya, the Queen of Hell, stood with regal elegance in her full glory.
Horns. A crown. And bat-like wings rising from her shoulders as a tail that whipped at her feet.
Damn, she was kind of scary in her bad-ass form.
She hadn’t come alone. A couple of her mates stood at her side. I recalled them from our last meeting. Nate, my human half-brother from our father’s side, and Luke, another angel hybrid like me.
Both of them looked at me with envy, Nate more especially, given that my mother had mated the literal seven sins—his being the sin of envy. With the incubi and succubi gene only coming from the mother’s side, none of my father’s children with Silvia had been born as a supernatural. Nate envied my gifts, even if they could sometimes be a curse.
Luke, on the other hand, envied my wings, evident in the way his gaze slid to them. He had a type of wings of his own, but he could only summon them in special circumstances, from my understanding.
My mother winced as she worked around her chair. An angry, cracked wound marred its way down her torso, starting from her shoulder and ending at her hip. I didn’t even know that the Queen of Hell could sustain an injury and the sight shook me. “Who did that?” I asked, even though I already suspected the answer.
Nate offered her his jacket and she took it with her thanks, wrapping it over herself to cover the worst of the burn. “Don’t worry about it, Lily. It’ll heal soon.” She smiled at me, her pride beaming through. “I knew you would return. I apologize it took me so long to come to you, but Lucifer has been a bit of a handful, lately.” She frowned. “More so than I had expected, if I’ll be honest.”
“Having Calamity on his side has that effect,” Luke offered, his tone dry. “You should have killed the bastard when you had the chance.”
She waved her mate’s complaints away just as the Dean entered the room with a glass of sparkling red liquid. “Oh, Lily. I’m so glad you’re here,” she said handing the glass to my mother.
I nodded in acknowledgment.
Sonya sipped from the glass, the contents giving off a faint glow as she emptied it. A slight shudder went through her body, then she smiled at the Dean. “Your tonics have improved, Guinevere.”
“You flatter me. I doubt you even need it.” The Dean flushed, looking pleased with the compliment.
I cut between them, not caring how rude I looked. “Mom. Whathappened?”
“Lily.” She sighed and after another sip from the glowing tonic in the wine glass, she put it aside and focused on me. “I’ll explain. But first, please sit down.” She hesitated, her gaze searching mine. “Are you well?”
Her concern wasn’t about my physical well-being, but my mental one.
Somehow, she knew that I’d learned the truth about my past. As if I needed more mental baggage to weigh me down.
The worry in her gaze, mixed with relief, hit me square in the chest and I nodded, forcing myself to speak around the knot in my throat. “I’m fine. Mostly.” Stretching the tight muscles in my back, I forced my wings to open, then close. “A few upgrades and all, plus a lot of questions, but I’m not feeling all that bad, considering I just came back from the dead.”
My dry recitation made her smile.
“Lovely.” She glanced at Dante and Hendrik, hovering just a few feet away before meeting my gaze again. “As to… this…” She gestured to the injury that would have had me whimpering like a child.
It wasn’t until then that I looked at it again, a longer look this time, because it was…healing. Slowly, yes, but before my eyes, I could see healthy, pink skin stretching over the blackened scabs.
