“Benjamin! How did you get here? Did the JE summon you for another quest? I should tell the invisible bastard to pick on someone his own size. I can pay back my own debts, thank you very much. He needs to leave you out of it.”
“Umm…”
Ben didn’t know what to say.
It was as if the past weeks hadn’t happened on Earth.
As if Sorin hadn’t disappeared and Ere hadn’t transformed into a monstrous form of himself and wrecked his way through the Celestial Realm in search of his lost Mate and demanding retribution.
ThisEre was practically glowing with joy, lighting up in a way that Ben had never witnessed before.
There were always shadows in Ere’s eyes. There was always Darkness. It wasn’t that long ago, after all, that he’d been the Machiavellian henchman of the demoness, Medusa.
As Ben looked closer, peering deeply into his sire’s eyes, he could still see the lingering Darkness, but it was as if it existed only to magnify Ere’s Light.
“You’re…you’re okay,” he murmured when Ere stood directly before him, the other man’s attention focused solely on Ben.
“Of course!” Ere crowed. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
He bounced on the balls of his feet like an excited little boy, confusing the hell out of Ben, who had never seen him act this way.
Notever.
“I found Sorin!” Ere whispered loudly with reverence and awe.
Ben’s eyebrows lifted in surprise.
“You did?”
Ere nodded like a greedy child who’d snuck down the night before Christmas and opened all the presents.
“He was just sleeping up there on one of those mountain peaks. Just…sleeping. He opened his eyes the moment I kissed him. As if we were in a fairytale. As if I was the prince who kissed awake Sleeping Beauty. Or the cuckoo who kissed awake a phoenix. I’ll never let him live it down!”
“You should also tell Ben how I smacked your face to the side like swatting an annoying gnat,” came the familiar deep rumble of Ere’s Mate.
Ben’s mouth fell open with shock and disbelief as he watched Sorin walk out from the shadows of the garden, carrying a large bucket of the biggest golden peaches Ben had ever seen.
“Are you sure we’re allowed to pick these?” Sorin asked his Mate, side-eyeing him in doubt.
“There were no signs to say we can’t,” Ere pointed out.
“But Cloud said—”
Ere rolled his eyes and interjected, “Cloud has always been a stickler for rules. Don’t touch this, don’t do that. But rules are meant to be broken.”
He winked at Ben and smirked.
“Aren’t they, Benjamin?”
Ben ignored the byplay; he simply couldn’t process what was happening. He focused instead on Sorin’s body, his eyes zeroing in on the warrior’s left arm, which was bare and on display, given the sleeveless shirt he wore.
There was no tattoo, no ancient runes running up his left side from the back of his hand to his hairline.
What did it mean? Ben didn’t know—
He gasped when Seventh Sister’s cool fingers wrapped around his wrist, her touch making his entire body vibrate like a tuning fork.
When he turned to look at her, staring into those swirling eyes whose color he had yet to discern, he saw bits and pieces of the past like flashbacks in a movie: