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"Just you, Mina. I'm here for you. I love you. Believe it, and stop doubting. What is it that you want?"
"Oh, Goddess, please..."
"Come for me."
He released at the same moment, sending her over, their bodies moving together in sinuous rhythm. She put her mouth on his flesh, then her teeth into his shoulder, holding her grip there, drawing blood, until they slowly came to a stop.
"That's the real question, isn't it, Mina?" He spoke when he had breath again, but continued to hold her close, her head pressed down on his shoulder. He brushed his lips over her hair. "What is it you want?"
"I was thinking about Anna." She traced the area in between the shoulder blades where his wings used to be. "Her baby. Is it a symbol of hope or of sacrifice? I mean, she wanted to have the baby. So, if she does die because of the curse, Jonah will have a daughter to love, for however long he's given. But I think she's also having the baby in order to say to that curse, 'You have no hold on me. On what I want to do or be.'"
Raising her head, she looked at him. "You do take care of me, David. You always will, because you told me so. But you're also a soldier. You fight the Dark Ones in a different way."
She put her hand on his heart. "Give this back to yourself. You can be more than one thing. I'm not afraid of losing you that way, not anymore."
David stared at her, felt the energy gathering under her fingertips. His energy. She was summoning energy from him, calling it forth, twining it with her own. "Mina, how did you-"
But in the next moment it was gone, the words ripped away as he caught hold of her body with both hands to keep from toppling her. The wings surged forth from his back, the architecture of vertebrae and skeleton altering in a smooth transition that nevertheless rocked him forward as they stretched, spread out to dry their afterbirth in the sun. He looked at one, blanched, then looked at the other.
Until he was fifty, the wings would have been the wings of a fledgling, white with tips of brown. But apparently, his timetable had been accelerated, for he was looking at a solid black wing on his left, a solid white on his right, a wholly unique pattern he'd never seen before.
Mina reached over his shoulders, stroked through them with both hands with childlike delight. Coming away with one small feather of each color, she pinned them into the comb pulling her waist-length hair from her face. "I think they're holding afternoon drills if you want to go join them."
At his look of indecision, she cradled his face in her hands this time. "I'm right here. I'm yours. You can be at my side in moments. What I need is help to protect the world from me, and you help me do that, David. By loving me. But you need to keep being the warrior you are. We can't keep growing together if we aren't growing separately. The nature of all things is to change," she reminded him. "And so we will change. Always growing stronger."
"Okay," he said at last. "Okay." He kissed her fingertips, one by one, then pressed his forehead to her hands, the significance of what she'd just done sweeping over him. "Thank you."
"I knew you missed them. I missed them, too. I'd been working on it, and I'm glad it worked." She shot him an arch look. "Would have been terrible if I'd gotten mixed up and you ended up with bat wings. Marcellus would have been so jealous."
He snorted as she slid down next to him on the porch step. After he watched her rearrange her clothes, making her feel warm under his regard, he retrieved his coffee once more. He restored his own clothes as well, though Mina thought she might have liked it if he'd kept that top button carelessly undone, as he did sometimes when he first pulled the jeans on.
"I'll think about the drills," he said. "Don't nag. Let me just sit with you here for a while."
She accepted that, though plucked a feather for the nagging comment and earned a tug on her hair in return. They sat together for the next few minutes, looking out at the desert, one of his wings pulled around her so she could enjoy stroking her fingers through the feathers again. "I've been thinking about Dante," she said at last.
"Really."
She gave him a curious look. "What?"
"I didn't much care for how he looked at you."
"You were jealous?"
"You're a powerful, beautiful Dark Spawn. He's Dark Spawn. I suspect he would find you very intriguing, if you're the only other one he's met that's reached maturity."
She tilted her head. "I don't think you have to worry so much. He's a little psychotic for me."
"Oh, sure, that's what girls always say. Then they go for the bad boy. Look at me, I'm an angel. Harps and haloes, purity and goodness. What chance do I have?"
"Good point," she agreed. "You did have the Dark One blood in you, though. If you remember how, you could cultivate a sexy kind of broodiness. Jonah broods on occasion. Anna says she finds it very stimulating."
"On that note," he observed, amusing her by ignoring that topic, "your shielding has improved. And you said the Schism buffers you as well. We could test it out by spending time with Anna and Jonah, if you'd like to see Anna more. Maybe start by having them to dinner one night. We've been working on our cooking. She'd probably like to try some of the things you've made."
Have Anna and the Prime Legion Commander for dinner? "You are a frightening man," she responded, when she could make her tongue work. But as disconcerting as the domestic picture was, what was more disturbing was it had some appeal. Despite the glint in his eye which suggested he'd also brought it up to shock her. However, she also knew it was likely his continued attempt to prove that the more they strengthened the positive reasons she had to fight the Darkness, the easier the balance might become.
Easy had never been a word she'd applied to any part of her life. But only a couple of days ago, she'd dropped ice cubes down David's shirt and he'd chased her around the yard and the swing. As she ran, she'd felt the absolute glory of it. Running without pain in her muscles or joints, such that she'd forgotten the teasing and just run. He'd picked up on her needs as always, so that he'd abandoned the game and simply matched her pace and let her run until she ran herself into exhaustion.
Mina.
Surprised to hear the object of their discussion in her head, Mina's head jerked up. At the same moment, apparently getting the same alert from Jonah, David surged to his feet. A second or two later, Jonah landed in the yard in a skidding dust cloud, carrying his pregnant wife in his arms. "She's gone into labor," Jonah said unnecessarily. "And she said she had to have the babe here
, with Mina."
DESPITE the alarm that announcement caused, Mina managed to mask it. "Raphael's on his way," Jonah added, giving her a surge of relief.
As her attention shifted to Anna, Mina thought that, while David's healing had given her what could be considered beauty beyond what any woman would long to possess, Anna's beauty was simple goodness, and being pregnant had made her more radiant.
Those violet eyes could soften the heart of a demon. But her soft, loving nature was persistent and courageous, such that it was impossible to get her to back down from her intentions, whether it was to save a Prime Legion Commander from an army of Dark Ones, or refusing to consider a seawitch with the ability to destroy the world anything less than her best friend. Or deciding at the spur of the moment that she wanted her as a midwife.
Right now, she was in mermaid form, for of course during her pregnancy she could not shift. Purple and blue tattooing swirled in intricate patterns along her biceps. The gleaming purple and deep blue scales of her tail shimmered down to tinier pieces until reaching the delicate pink, pearlescent edges of her featherlike tail fin. She was still wet from the ocean, her golden brown hair dark and slicked back on her skull, and she smelled of the salt air.
While mermaid was only one of four forms Anna could take, Mina knew it was still the best choice, for a mermaid pregnancy and birth were much shorter and easier than a human experienced.
Now Anna's eyes fastened on her as she reached out, grabbing Mina's hand. "I'm so sorry. I should have told you," she blurted out. "But I was afraid you'd say no. Ah, heavens, here comes another." The rush of words expired on a gasp as her belly contracted before their gazes.
"Come inside," David said, looking a little pale.
Anna's hands had clutched Mina's fingers and Jonah's muscular shoulder, her face tightening, eyes turning inward to concentrate on what was happening inside of her body.
"We'll take her in the cellar, to the spring," Mina said, and instead of taking her hand away, she let it be held, moved inside as the commander carried his mate and David followed, guiding Mina's body so she wouldn't trip on the stairs.
