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He wasn’t there the night Phoenix died. As close a couple as they were, she was fiercely independent while Micah was eager to give her her space if that’s what she needed. She had her life, he had his, and they each had responsibilities to their factions. With Sam missing more often than not, Raze needed Micah at the casino. Phoenix was devoted to becoming the head witch of her coven. Her fire magic was a rare gift, but at barely sixty, she was considered too young for the position.
Later, he’d realize that she wanted too much. Micah had been willing to give her everything she desired, but he couldn’t interfere when it came to her position in her faction. She had to earn the promotion.
She hadn’t. Instead, Phoenix attempted a spell she wasn’t ready for. He never got the details—he couldn’t bring himself to ask—but whatever went wrong, it triggered her fire magic. In the end, the flames turned on her, and they completely consumed his soulmate.
In his nightmares, Micah knew she was burning. He could smell the sulfur on the air, feel her flames licking at the edge of his wings. He would take to the sky, flying higher, flapping harder, desperate to get to Phoenix—but he never did. Her fire always destroyed his wings, sending Micah sprawling to the Earth below, while she died just out of his reach.
No nightmares that night. When the knock broke through his sleep, Micah was resting on a blanket beneath the stars, his wings outstretched behind him as he leaned back on his palms. Phoenix was sitting across from him, her long legs folded beneath her, a small flame flickering over the back of her hand. She was laughing, a husky sound that went straight to his cock.
As his eyes fluttered open, Micah woke up to his sheet tented over his erection. Phoenix’s laugh echoing in his ears, he exhaled roughly when he saw the power his lost soulmate still had on him.
He’d never claimed her. They’d explored each others’ bodies in the weeks they knew each other, but since any kind of penetration with his cock meant that they were tied together for eternity, he’d held back no matter how much Phoenix offered and his body craved. After her death, he refused to even consider finding another female.
Nope. It was just Micah and his hand.
For a moment, he forgot what had woken him up. Shoving the sheets away from his naked lower half, he gave his shaft a quick stroke, ready to fall into the familiar rhythm of jacking himself off to the memory of his missing mate.
He’d given his length two pumps before the last of his sleep-fueled daze cleared. The celestial aura on the other side of his door brushed up against him. Micah gritted his teeth in denied relief as he let go of his cock, then went searching for a pair of sweatpants to pull on.
That was Sam out there. And since Micah could sense another soul with him, it must be Polly Benson, Sam’s human soulmate.
What were they doing here?
Ignoring the renewed ache inside of him—from his heart, this time, not his dick—he stepped into his sweatpants, willing his erection to go down. Forgoing a shirt, he scratched his sandy brown hair, then shuffled toward the door.
Just like he thought, Sam and Polly were waiting out in the hall.
“Sam?” Micah blinked. “And Polly? What… what’s going on?”
It all came back to him at that moment. The reason he’d gone to bed so early, and how worried he was that his brother would suffer the same fate that he himself had. When Sam first proposed the idea of hiring the human thief to steal their talisman from Lucifer, Raze had hesitated before agreeing she was their best chance; after all, she’d made quick work of their faction patrons in the casino before she got snagged by a vampire. Desperate for a reason to keep her close, Sam was all in. But Micah… he couldn’t understand how his brother would risk his soulmate, even for their talisman.
Especially since it didn’t really matter. Sure, the key might be their return ticket home, but they would still suffer under Lucifer’s curse.
Forged in twilight, cursed by fire,
powers of each divided by my ire.
Sever them in three,
one to true love it will be…
To break it, they needed their talisman and for the three royal angels to find and claim their lifemates. Raze had. Based on the way his brother’s soul was now tied to Polly’s, humming through his aura, so had Sam.
Micah never did. He never could.
Suddenly awake, Micah lurched forward, clutching the doorjamb for support. “The talisman. What happened with the key?”
Sam turned to Polly. Their eyes met, and Micah knew that something was wrong. They were both there, which meant they’d survived whatever Lucifer threw at them, but the golden key was a tremendous source of power. Because Sam was still an angel of death—no matter how he tried to deny it—it wouldn’t affect him as much as it did Raze and Micah, but if he had it, Micah would know.
Sam nodded, then turned toward him. “Micah? Bro? We need to talk.”
“Talk? About what? The key?”
Micah had never met Polly. Not officially, at least. When Anthony, the werewolf head of their security team, detained her after she was caught picking pockets in House of Sin, Sam was the one who took care of it. His brother discovered she was his soulmate that night, and he was very careful to keep her away from Micah and Raze after that.
It made sense. Raze did the same with Becca, and even Micah remembered how irrational his jealousy was when it came to Phoenix. For a being who’d never wanted for anything since he’d been in Purgatory, his instincts had him keeping Phoenix all to himself—except for when Sam followed him and the middle prince earned a zap to the chest courtesy of Phoenix for his curiosity.
But though he hadn’t met the snarky thief, he’d heard more than enough about her from Sam. His brother had been smitten from the moment he released her from detention, and from the way he couldn’t keep his eyes off of her, his affection for the curvy human with the bright green eyes and bouncy blonde curls had only grown.
