Reaver(94)

Reaver sat up so fast she fell into the water. He fetched her, sputtering and spitting, and pulled her onto the sandy bank with him. “Consort? As in… mate?” He brushed her wet hair back from her face. “Harvester? Look at me.”

She didn’t want to. “He wants a ceremony and shit.”

“Why? What the hell—”

Raising her gaze to his, she silenced him with a finger on his lips. “It was a deal to keep you alive.”

“Fuck.” Reaver fell back into the sand and stared up at the canopy of tree branches and clear blue sky beyond them. “Don’t do it. Please don’t do it.”

“I can’t go back on my word,” she choked out. “He’ll kill you.”

“I don’t care.” He twined his fingers with hers. His hand was shaking. “Don’t chain yourself to him for eternity.”

He didn’t care? He seriously would give up his life to make sure she was happy? Dear God, she’d been so wrong about him for so long.

But she wasn’t going to let him die for any reason. She’d put up with far worse than being chained to Raphael if it meant keeping Reaver safe. “There’s more.”

“More? How can there possibly be more?”

“It’s not entirely bad,” she said.

“About time,” he muttered. “But I don’t like the ‘entirely’ part.”

Neither did she. “I’m the Horsemen’s new Watcher. This time on the good side.” She smiled, letting herself forget Raphael’s bargain for a moment. “And it gets better. Brace yourself. I have Limos’s baby.”

He sat straight up. “You… wait… say that again?”

Still smiling, because it was rare to see the usually stoic Reaver flustered, Harvester told him the rest. “Lorelia took the baby to exchange it with Lucifer in Gethel’s womb. But when—”

“She was going to what?” Reaver’s roar sent birds exploding out of the trees. His eyes blazed, promising murder, and nope, Harvester wouldn’t want to be in Lorelia’s shoes right now.

“Reaver.” Harvester lowered her voice, shooting for a tone she hadn’t used in thousands of years, the tone that had always soothed Yenrieth. Well, almost always. Nothing had calmed him after he learned that she’d kept the existence of his children from him. “They didn’t do it. Something went wrong. The exchange won’t work. But now only a Watcher can return Limos’s baby to the womb, and there’s not much time left. If I don’t do it within twenty-four hours, the child’s soul returns to Heaven and she won’t be born.”

“She?” Reaver sucked in a sharp breath. “I’m going to have a granddaughter?”

Feminine appreciation shimmered through her, a primitive, basic response she hadn’t felt in, well… not since before she’d fallen. She’d thought all her tender instincts had been destroyed by her time in Sheoul, but they’d merely been shoved into storage and were now emerging, dusty and unused and utterly foreign.

“You are,” she said. “I promise.”

“Then do it.” Reaver leaped to his feet, his bronzed body gloriously naked, his skin glistening with water droplets she wanted to lick. “Why are you waiting?”

“Because I’m not powerful enough by myself. I need an archangel.”

“Let me guess.” Reaver’s hands clenched at his sides. “Raphael is holding it over your head.”

“I agreed to be his consort to save your life. But he didn’t specifically say I had to sleep with him.” She shoved to her feet and snatched up her clothes. “So he’s using the child as leverage. If I screw him, he’ll help me give Limos her baby back. I also have to help the archangels locate Lucifer. I’d have done that anyway, but Raphael felt the need to tack it onto our agreement.”

“That bastard.”

She wasn’t going to argue that. “I have to do it.” She reached out and took his hand. “I’ll do anything to keep you alive and give Limos the child she always wanted.”

“I know.” Reaver wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, holding her as if he were afraid to let go. “But I don’t want you to have to. Somehow I’ll fix this, Harvester.”

He couldn’t fix it. Even he had to know that. Raphael had proven he was willing to stop short of nothing to get what he wanted, and right now, what he wanted was Harvester.

She couldn’t put Reaver at risk again. He’d already given up his wings to rescue her. She wouldn’t see him give up his life as well.