“They don’t need to. I’m an angel.” I grinned at her and let my wings vanish.
“You’ve done well, Marigold,” Jasper said, pride beaming in his eyes. He was another one of my former wards. The wolf shifter had grown bigger with more hard muscles. While we were separated and shipped to different academies, he had found a new pack, and his alpha, Clayton, was Circe’s new crush.
Her eyes wandered between Clayton and my demigods, and she gazed at Axel with hunger. My mates mingled with our guests, and I also invited the shifter pack from the Other Academy. The Olympian descendants—the half-bloods— previously did not mix with other supernaturals, and the demigods did not entertain anyone, but things changed because of me.
Héctor poured drinks for Nat and the shifters with his gloved hand, and Zak nodded at their jokes. Axel said something and laughed at his own humor, and Paxton kept darting his gaze at the loft where my friends and me hung out.
I knew what he wanted, but what kind of friend was I if I ditched my old friends just to sneak out to fuck the Demigod of Sea?
“I can’t believe you landed four demigods. Four!” Circe cried. “Maybe you should give other girls a chance, Mari? And look at this place. It’s like a palace.” She waved a hand at the lavish Central Park view through the full windows. “Do you know how much the rent is for a suite like this? And you can crush here. You hit the jackpot, Marigold.”
I just smiled. If she knew I was actually a hybrid of Titan and archangel with a vast treasure stocked away in a galaxy, she would faint. I’d thought she would finally grow out of the idea that I was her competition and that she lived in my shadows. Time and distance hadn’t helped change her perception. She would just have to grow up on her own now. She and Jasper were no longer my responsibility, and I was no longer the Marigold who lived with them in the Crack.
Sometimes, you just had to let go and allow those you loved to grow apart from you.
“Mari isn’t in it for the money,” Yelena said. She and Nat were my first true friends in the Academy. They’d watched my back. “It’s true love, and the demigods went to Hell for her.”
“Icy Dagger saved my sister and me,” said Lisa L Kinsley, my witch friend from Hell. She never got tired of telling the tales of my fighting the demons in the pit.
Her little sister, a mousy-haired girl, sat quietly on a fluffy chair, eating cakes and watching us. I’d kept my promise to Lisa and brought the siblings to demigods-controlled Half-Earth.
“You watched my six,” I said. “Just like all my friends here.”
We drank a lot of wine and ate a lot of crème brûlée.
My friends left after midnight, and the demigods rushed to me like hard, warm waves.
Axel grabbed me before Paxton, despite the sea demigod eyeing me like candy all night. Axel carted me to the master bedroom. Héctor had redecorated this room to my liking and added a lovely vanity set for me. I had a walk-in closet of dresses and shoes and drawers full of lingerie. This was meant to be the bedroom for Héctor and me, but my other mates regarded it as a common room. Héctor was annoyed, but he hadn’t driven them out.
Yet he did put a foot down on some boundaries—he didn’t allow other demigods to put their stuff in this room. Their stuff went to the guest bedrooms, and he demanded they clean up after themselves. So much so that my other mates were planning to purchase another apartment in the same building.
Axel traced his eager lips down the column of my neck, eliciting a sigh and a moan out of me. He was about to put me down in the vast bed but changed his mind when he spotted my other mates striding into the room. Giving them a frantic glance, he scooped me up and headed toward the bathroom in a hurry.
I knew that he’d kick shut the door as soon as we got in, not considering the consequences; my other mates would simply blow off the door to reach me.
Before that happened, a blast of dark light and heat exploded around us, and all of my mates snarled in fury, ready to kill. Lightning from Zak struck at the dark light. Ice crystals from Paxton coated the ceiling while ice spears hovered in the air, seeking a target. Axel’s wild wind howled, and Héctor’s death light twirled around me in a solid shield.
We had an intruder, and I knew who it was.
The devil materialized in the center of our bed, his hands in the air in a surrender gesture, a lopsided smile hanging on his sensual, ironic lips.
“I’m unarmed,” Loki purred. “I’m coming to see my cousin. I missed Belle Marigold Celeste, and I bear a gift for her.”
The former Hell’s prince was practically family. He and I had come a long way to where we stood now. He’d tried to kidnap me, for the sake of my safety, and I’d misunderstood him as pure evil. When Lucifer and Ares dragged the near-dead me to Hell and tormented me, Loki had made sure I survived and freed me.
He was like a dark angel carved out of dark gold. He was half-archangel anyway, like me.
He wore a dark shirt and washed-out jeans. He still carried the vibe of a bored human billionaire instead of the King of Hell. But the potent Hell power rippling off him couldn’t fool any high-powered supernatural.
“Tune down your voltage and wipe that smile off your face, Loki,” I said. “There’s no one here for you to seduce, and your devil power doesn’t work on us. Why the hell waste your energy?”
Loki could rewrite the definition of seduction. But we weren’t his crowd, and he knew it.
The King of Hell laughed in delight. “I miss those fun days with you, Marigold.”
My mates growled, still eager to attack him, and Loki quirked a long, sharp brow at them, darkness that was destined to devour all light swirling in his eyes.
“He’s okay, guys.” I rubbed my chin and said to my mates in a hurry. “He’s kind of like my big bad brother, and he came here to talk.” I narrowed my eyes at Loki again. At this point, I’d wiggled out of Axel’s embrace and stood with my own feet. “Get off my bed, Loki. We changed the sheets just yesterday.”