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It lookslike I got to meet Kennedy Barnes, after all. Only, instead of finding her at Turn the Page, she lives in Sombra with a mate of her own—and, like Shannon, she’s currently pregnant.
No wonder she’s worried about the horns on her kid. I don’t plan on shacking up with Sammael on the gold moon anytime soon if that’s what I have to look forward to, but it looks like it’s too late for her.
Of course, considering how devoted she is to her mate, she doesn’t seem to mind…
I’m currently inside of her house. Inside of it, she has a couch made of shadows that looks like something you could get back home. When I mention that, she proudly tells me that her mate conjured it for her. The same thing for the two chairs that Shannon and me are currently sitting on, with Malphas standing with his hand on the back of his mate’s seat.
Kennedy is sitting on Loki’s lap, snuggling up against her demon mate. I get the idea it’s one part because she’s still in the honeymoon stage and doesn’t want to be separated from him, and the other part because her… well, her pet is used to sitting on the other side of the couch.
I say ‘pet’. That’s what that thing is, according to Kennedy. Its fur is shadows, its eyes are a blinding white, and whenever I look at it right, I can see features that make it look like a little bit of a squirrel—that’s the fluffy tail and pointed snout—and a cat—that’s the pointed ears and the long, narrow body. Loki calls it an ungez, Kennedy calls it Freya, and I just hope it doesn’t bite.
To be on the safe side, I avoid the critter.
I almost do the same to Kennedy’s mate.
At first, I do. I want to hate Loki just on principle since he was the one who put the chains on Sammael, but when I learn that he only did it because he respected Sammael—his former mentor—and wanted to help him if he could, I begrudgingly stop giving him the stink-eye.
He didn’t seem so surprised when Kennedy invited us into her house, either. Diplomatically ignoring the way I scowled when I first saw him, the demon actually snorts.
“I didn’t think Sammael could give up his mate so easily,” he said in a deep, rumbling voice. “The gods know I would never let my Kennedy go.”
Kennedy’s reaction was to murmur something about how she figured that out when he kidnapped her and brought her to Sombra.
That definitely caught my attention for a moment, and I admit Loki and his human mate living together in Sombra as a story I’d love to hear another day. For now?
I just want to find a way to get to find Sammael.
It isn’t long before I understand why Malphas’s portal brought us to Nuit. If the demon duke has my mate—and Loki confirms that that was where the green-eyed demon soldier took him—than he would be in the capital city of Sombra, a shimmering blue oasis known as Mavro that is the epicenter of this hellish realm.
As a clan artist, Malphas can only summon a portal between the human world where his human mate summoned him to and the village where she summoned him from. That’s where the hole in the veil between realms exists for him. In order to travel from Nuit to Mavro, I needed to be a Sombra demon myself who can travel vast distances in their shadow form—or I needed a demon mage who could conjure portals.
I needed Loki.
With Shannon’s help, I explain to Kennedy and Loki who I am and why I’m here. Having been the one to give me enough of a clue that I found my way to Sombra in the first place, Loki was impressed by my ingenuity and how quickly I was able to cross over to the demon realm in search of my mate.
And yet… when I ask him—and maybe it was more like Ibeggedhim to bring me to the infamous Duke Haures so that I could plead my case—the double-horned demon hesitates.
“Sammael deserves his mate,” he says after a moment. “And the gods know that this female is determined to claim him… but will you do so when facing Duke Haures? Because, if you do not, there might be a pair of chains in it for you.”
That’s the same thing that other demon tried to threaten me with. I’m not worried about that, though. I didn’t break any rules, and since there’s no denying that I’m Sammael’s mate, he didn’t, either. The first law says humans aren’t allowed to know about Sombra. He fixed Jo so that she didn’t, and then I bonded myself to him.
We should be in the clear, and I have no problem telling this Haures guy that.
Just like I have no problem telling Loki that, either.
I can tell he’s on the edge. He has a sense of loyalty to Sammael since he used to be his teacher centuries ago, but Duke Haures is the big guy in charge. Loki seems much happier staying with his pregnant mate in their tiny village as far from the capital that they can get…
Until Kennedy places her hand under his chin, guiding him to look at her.
“Will you help her, babe?” she murmurs just loud enough that I can hear her. “For me?”
He slides the edge of his thumb along the height of her cheek. “I will do anything for you, my heart.”
And that is exactly how, the same day he chained up my mate and stole him away from me, I find myself hitching a ride to Mavro with the other demon mage.
CHAPTER16
