Tears stung her eyes. “I love you, too,” she said, her voice breaking with the force of her emotion. “You let me in when no one else could. Yes, I’ll mate you. I’ll so mate you.”
Sliding his hand around the nape of her neck, he drew her down for a kiss so full of promise that the tears let loose. “I want you. Here. Now.”
Through her tear-blurred vision, she saw the evidence of that pushing the sheet into a tent. “As your doctor, I would be remiss if I didn’t say you should rest and avoid sex.”
His eyes shot wide in horror. “For how long?”
With a sly smile, she burrowed her hand under the sheet. “Until I say otherwise.” Her palm found him, thick and hard. “For now, I promise you’re in good hands.”
He groaned. “Who am I to go against doctor’s orders?”
Smart male. And as his doctor, she was prepared to give him a lot of orders.
Thirty-Three
An hour after being released from the hospital, Revenant strolled along a deserted tropical beach, face raised to the heavens as he watched seabirds sail across the blue sky. He’d sent out a mental summons to Metatron, and while he hoped the archangel would show up, he’d learned to temper his hopes.
“Hello, Revenant.”
Rev almost smiled. Almost. He turned. “You finally deigned to see me, huh?”
Metatron’s silver-blue eyes flashed, matching the seizure-inducing, color-shifting robe that reached all the way to the leather sandals on his feet. “I would have responded to your other summons, but —”
“But you were busy,” Revenant said with a dismissive wave.
“But you weren’t ready,” Metatron corrected.
Revenant scowled. “Ready for what?”
“Everything that’s happened.” Metatron gazed out at the sunset, his face glowing as the sun’s golden rays kissed it.
Fucking archangels and their shimmery shit.
“What you and Reaver did… it was something no one else could have done. All of the angels in Heaven combined couldn’t have done that.”
Revenant snorted. “Yeah, well, it was dumb luck. Reaver and I shouldn’t have been able to do what we did. We both should have died.”
Metatron turned back to him. “Did you ever wonder why your mother named you Revenant?”
Well, technically she’d named him the Sheoulic equivalent, which was unpronounceable to almost anyone with a tongue.
“I guess.” He’d wondered a lot. Mainly because she hadn’t given him an angel name.
“Mariel sometimes had clairvoyant episodes,” Metatron said softly. “I believe she foresaw your return from the dead, and she gave you a prophetic name to subconsciously guide you. To keep your soul on track to that destiny.”
As much as Rev would like to believe Uncle Met, he couldn’t see his mother putting that much thought into a fallen angel name when she hadn’t put any at all into an angelic one.
“Whatever, Obi-Wan,” he muttered. “What does my name have to do with Reaver and I locking Satan away?”
“It has a lot to do with it.” Metatron’s eerily intense gaze seemed to penetrate all the way to Rev’s brain, and he had to wonder if the mighty archangel could tap into all of Revenant’s shameful deeds. “You see, your mother was just as clairvoyant with your other name.”
For being an archangel, his uncle was kind of clueless. “I don’t have another name.”
“Of course you do. She smuggled it out of Sheoul, written in blood on the inside of Reaver’s swaddling cloth,” he said. “And I find it interesting that during your time in Sheoul you were often called The Destroyer, because that’s what your angelic name means.”
Revenant shook his head to clear it of whatever was affecting his hearing, because Metatron couldn’t have just said what he thought he’d said. But the archangel was looking at him expectantly, so maybe Rev had heard right.
“What name?” he croaked.
“Abaddon.” Metatron’s voice sang with resonance so powerful Rev felt it all the way to his marrow. “The dark angel destined to lock Satan away for a thousand years. You were the key, Revenant. When Satan finally breaks out of his prison, Reaver will break the Horsemen’s Seals, and the End of Days will kick off. But until then, you and Reaver have given the realms ten hundred years of peace, just as you were prophesied to do.”
“What?” He sounded like he was being strangled. “Prophesied? By who?”
Metatron stared. “Haven’t you ever read the Bible in any of its forms and translations? You and Reaver have been central to the Apocalypse since the first waters streamed into the Nile. The signs were there from the beginning. You two thick-skulled dopes just kept missing them. Honestly, there were many times I didn’t think either one of you would find your path.”