Positioned right where I needed to be, I pulled my lucky left arm back and thrust the blade into the apollyon’s chest, where I dearly hoped his heart was. The stub of my katana knocked into its chest bone for a quick second with a sharp crack, before he was throwing me back. I strained to hold on to the hilt in my hand around the vibrating that spread through my arm as the demon shook me off.
Shit.
“It’s deformed. Try lower,” Molly shouted.
The demon was sputtering pepper into my hair and trying to kick me with legs the size of tree trunks. I was leaping over its feet in a twisted game of jump rope in an effort not to get punted across the forest, all while working not to breathe in any remnants of the pepper spell.
“Shoot it in the head,” I shouted at Molly. She had a shotgun for fuck’s sake.
“Duck,” she screamed, cocking Gran’s gun.
I didn’t need any other motivation. At her warning, I hit the ground and Cass whizzed out of the way.
The loud bang of a shotgun rang out, and the beast, blinded by the pepper, went down—hard.
She’d gotten him right in the neck.
Gross. Sludge shot from the wound in his neck like a geyser.
He fell over like a tree, rattling the windows of Gran’s cabin when he landed. Thick greenish, black blood bubbled from the wound as he squirmed on the ground.
“It might have healing properties. Best to…” Cass let that sentence linger.
Right.
Straddling the giant beast as best I could, I rammed my blunt weapon into its chest again, lower than before, and slid it in all the way to the hilt.
It jerked, nearly bucking me off, before going completely still. Even the goop stopped pumping from its body, diminishing to a small trickle.
“There, I think we finally got—” Before I could finish my sentence, its body started to gurgle.
“It’s gonna blow,” Molly yelled. At once, everyone scrambled to escape the area.
How could I have forgotten what happened last time? Throwing my leg off the beast, I sprinted for the open space where Brock was waiting, his desperate amber eyes tracking my every move.
The apollyon’s body liquefied, and then exploded with a garbled pop. A wet, steaming thud hit me square in the back and I groaned.
Fucking shit from the underworld. Nasty.
I spun around, taking in the remnants of the beast. Clumps of … yuck … clung to the grass everywhere. Some of it even made it onto the walls and windows of Gran’s cabin.
Disgusting.
“You got the other one?” I asked Molly.
She nodded.
“I need to close that fucking gate.” Spotting Reo and Haru, I scanned the bodies of my two warrior protectors, ascertained they were well enough, and met their determined gazes. Never had I seen them so gung-ho to settle things.
I couldn’t bring a baby into this situation. I’d be sleeping next to Brock and our little one while some giant demon was running around our back yard. Hell to the fucking no.
Reo sighed. “It’s going to be hard to close the gate without your katana, considering every history book we have says you need the sword to achieve it.”
“Among other things,” Haru added, but I let that go. We’d get to all that after I got my sword fixed.
My gaze shifted to the broken sword and cursed. “How can we fix it?”
Were there any old-school Japanese blacksmiths hanging around Eugene, Oregon?
Haru and Reo shared a look. “There’s a way, but … you’re not going to like it,” Haru said.
Brock pressed his wolf body against my leg. I could sense an argument brewing.
“Just tell me,” I said with an exasperated sigh. Surely there shouldn’t be any more bad news.
Haru nodded. “There’s a magical cove in Washington, off a small island, that’s said to heal anything broken.”
I shrugged. “Sounds great. Let’s do it.” I was too tired to argue. I wiped the hair from my face, trying not to think about all the monster goop dripping down my back and onto my favorite kickass boots.
The warriors’ faces strained. “It’s rumored to be guarded by demonic selkies,” Haru said.
Fabulous. I threw my hands in the air. Demonic selkies—bring ‘em on.
16 Alpha Sex Is the Best Sex
“No.”
Brock stood with his arms crossed staring down at my broken sword, which now graced his dining room table after a good hose-down to rid it of all the monster bits. I’d gotten a bit of a hose-down of my own to hold me over until I could shower.
“I don’t want you to go,” Brock said.
I sighed. “You can come. It’ll be like a mini road trip. I’ll dip my sword in the magic water, it will heal, and we can come right back here, where I’ll close the gate … somehow, and all will be well.”
I grinned for good measure.
Brock pinned me with a glare, tightening his arms across his chest, making his biceps bulge. “You know it won’t be that easy.”
I sighed again. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy; things with me never were. “Well, I’m sure as hell not having a baby while the gate to the underworld is wide open in our back yard.”
He grinned. “Our back yard? Does that mean you’re moving in with me?”
Brock stalked toward me and I paled. Did I say our? Well … technically, it was our back yard. I mean, it was his land, but my house backed on to it too.
“Maybe.” I squirmed. Why the hell shouldn’t I move in with him? I could make his ass take half the night feedings with our new baby, and I could have sex with him anytime I wanted—hello, sexy times. Now that I thought about it, it seemed like the only reasonable thing to do, really.
He hooked a finger into my jeans and traced the length of the band that sat low on my waist, sending a zing of heat shooting between my legs. “I don’t like maybe,” he said in a deep, scratchy voice that made my insides tight and suddenly desperate.
I moaned, wishing I hadn’t revealed how easily he fired me up. “I’m not ready to say yes just yet.”
My house was overcrowded anyway with Molly and the warriors there, but living together was a big move. What if it messed things up between us? We’d gotten off to one hell of a rocky start. We shared a bun in the oven, some warm fuzzy feelings, and sizzling sex, but moving too fast might ruin things. I wanted this new relationship with Brock to last for the long haul.
His face became guarded, but not until after I’d registered a flash of his disappointment. I hurried to add, “However, it sounds nice so I’m going to think about it, but only if we go with the warriors and fix my blade.” I wasn’t beneath using bribery to get my way, especially not when the fate of the world depended on fusing my katana back into one piece.
He yanked his finger out of my jeans and growled, facing away from me. “No. It’s too dangerous.”
“Brock, I love you and all, and I respect your alpha dominance, but I’m only asking to be nice.”
He spun, eyes wide. “What the hell does that mean?”
I shrugged. “It means I’m going whether you agree or not.” His eyes became wild and I softened my tone. “I’d really like it if you were there with me though.”
This guy and I were going to spend the rest of our lives co-parenting; he’d better get used to the fact that I didn’t ask permission to do shit I wanted to do.
His chest heaved up and down a few times before the wild streak retreated from his gaze. “You’re not good at taking orders.”
I grinned, stepping closer and pressing my body flush with his. “Nope.”
Bringing my face closer, I traced a figure eight on his neck with my tongue and he moaned.
“Woman, you’re going to be the death of me.” His voice was husky and raw—my favorite.
“Does that mean we’re going to fix my katana?” I purred.
He wrapped his fingers into my hair and pulled on it playfully. “Does that mean you’ll move in with me?” He trailed kisses from my earlobe, along my neck, and down to my collarbone. I nearly melted in his arms.
“It will encourage me to think highly of the idea,” I breathed, my mind unable to come up with a single strong reason why I shouldn’t. Maybe I was just scared. Scared of getting hurt.
Dammit … I was head over heels for this man.
“As long as thinking highly of the idea eventually lands you in my bed on an everyday basis…” he whispered against my ear.
I was going to take that as his agreement and move on. Because if not, I feared I’d throw him to the floor and have at him right there, right then, in the middle of his dining room. I wouldn’t even care about the wolves swarming all over the place.
Oh … but I would care about getting it on while remnants of the apollyon lingered on me.
Wriggling free of Brock’s grasp, I grabbed the two pieces of my blade and then texted my crew that we would leave first thing in the morning.
“What do you know about selkies?” I asked Brock.
Blatantly adjusting himself, he looked annoyed that I’d cut off our kissing session to make plans for tomorrow. I willed my eyes not to drift below the belt, where it was obvious that he wouldn’t have minded if I’d jumped him in his dining room. I forced my brain to focus on the life-or-death situation we were dealing with … even though it was the last thing I felt like doing.
He finally answered my question. “Selkies can strip a man of his flesh, down to the bones, in under a minute—assuming they’re in their seal forms.”
He wasn’t wrong, though from what I’d heard they were just as bad in their human forms. But I didn’t need to add that particular fact right now.
“They’re also nocturnal and hunt at night,” I said. “We’ll have a better chance of getting in and out unbothered during the day when they’re sleeping.”
He nodded. “Great. That makes me feel so much better.”
I was about to laugh when a weird flippy thing twisted inside my stomach.
Gasping, I grabbed my belly, exposed beneath my crop top.
Brock’s eyes went wide. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
He fell to his knees in front of me, coming face to face with my stomach as if it would reveal its secrets.
I laughed. “The baby. It kicked, I think.”
It was as if a butterfly were fluttering around in my stomach.
Brock’s entire face lit up, and for the first time I pictured what he might be like as a father. “You felt ... our baby?” he asked. Never had I seen him so vulnerable. “Really?”
His face split into a contented smile as he pressed both hands to my slightly rounded belly. Shifter pregnancies progressed more quickly than ordinary human gestation. Sabine said I was nearly twelve weeks along, which by shifter standards was enough to make it difficult to snap my jeans, and I only managed it because of how low-slung I liked to wear them.