She stood at the doorway, all red leather and black blood, her shaking hands holding two very different swords.
She looked fragile and steely and cruel at the same time.
Hell had changed our mate. Re-forged her.
The god and devil had tortured her for months. I tore my rage from my thoughts and my face. We shouldn’t show her our fury, or she would think we aimed it at her.
She thought we hated her for her demon blood.
Surprise flashed by her green eyes, which burned with a cold flame. She was used to seeing only that lucky bastard Héctor in the dreamscape. Joy and hope lit her gaze as it caressed and enticed us. But it dimmed the next second.
My heart broke for her all over again.
Shame, dismay, and self-loathing morphed her beautiful face until it seemed as cold and unyielding as ice.
She turned halfway back. She wanted us, yet she wanted to hide from us.
I wouldn’t allow it.
Before I could lunge toward her, before all three of us lunged at her, Héctor threw us back with his death light and a warning look.
“Lamb, come to us,” he ordered her.
The fucker should not order her around. He should learn how to charm a woman.
He was going to scare her away.
“Rosebud.”
“Cookie!”
“Buttercup.”
We all called her at once, using our urgent, gentle voices to beckon her to us.
“I said I’d do the talking!” Héctor hissed at us, then softened his tone when he turned to her again. “Won’t you come to your mates, lamb?”
“But,” she said, her eyes darting between us, “I’m a demon princess. I told you that the last time. They call me Celeste here. I—I’m not exactly like those demons. I killed a lot of them today.”
That must’ve been another of Lucifer’s and Ares’s sick games. They must have dropped a demon horde on her like a hornets’ nest to make her fight for her life.
And we hadn’t been there to protect her.
“We know you’re the daughter of Lilith, the Queen of Hell,” Axel said. “It makes no difference to us, Cookie.” His voice choked with thick emotion. “I miss you.”
“You do?” she asked, surprise lighting her eyes and making them brilliant green.
“Of course, Buttercup,” I answered. “We all miss you terribly. You’re our mate. No matter what you are, baby, our love for you will never change.”
She swallowed, sighed in sadness and fury, then murmured to herself, “Only in my dreams do they not hate me. And Paxton would never call me baby.”
“That’s not true. I would—” I said.
“Don’t contradict my lamb,” Héctor warned before I could explain myself to my Buttercup.
Then we all started talking to her at once, and she stared at us with a half-amused and half-broken look. She glanced behind her as if pondering if she should stay or leave or possibly checking to see if she’d brought us danger.
If she left, we might not see her in the dreamscape again.