Chapter Seventeen
It took almost an hour to get everyone settled and off on their individual errands, and it was getting close to sunset by the time Gray and I started for the gardens. He’d changed from that superhot suit to jeans and a T-shirt and he was still sexy as hell, and I was still somewhat irritated.
“I didn’t mean to cause trouble,” Gray said quietly as he moved alongside me. “I really was trying to reconnect with Fenrir. And I do promise the jerky isn’t someone who pissed me off. It’s made from cattle.”
“Demonic cattle.” Even I could hear the stubbornness in my tone.
“I won’t do it…” He sighed, a heavy sound, and stopped. “No. I’m not going to tell you I won’t do it again because Fen enjoys it and there’s nothing wrong with him having a snack he likes. It’s not going to turn him into something. It doesn’t control anyone’s mind. It’s just tasty. Kelsey, I’m confused, and I need you to tell me what I’m doing wrong. Not about signing the contract in order to protect your family. You won’t convince me there was another way. I’m talking about now. I’m genuinely trying to be okay with my demonic side. Being around Lucifer is unsettling, but I’m going to be honest, I gather some strength and energy from being at the house my ancestors built. I think I know why my father didn’t want me to go there until I was older. I think I would have been more powerful had I spent any time at all in that house.”
“Are you planning on taking this child to Hell?” I couldn’t help the fact that my hand drifted to my belly.
His jaw tightened. “I would never do anything you would be uncomfortable with, but he will have a demonic side. Are you planning on pretending he’s human?”
“He might be human.” You never could tell. Lee had a human mother and a Fae father and…he was somehow a latent vampire.
“He won’t be and you know it. He’ll be part demon, part Hunter—whatever that means in a boy—and none of us knows what to expect yet. What I do know is he’ll be very much like his mother, and that means he’ll be stubborn and he’ll want answers. He’ll be part me, and that means feeling an enormous amount of shame when it comes to being part demon. You’re the one who made me see that I didn’t have to be ashamed. You showed me I could embrace the good part that comes from the circumstances of my birth.”
“I meant I thought you should be okay being kinky when we have sex, Gray. I did not mean for you to become one of the thirteen princes of Hell,” I shot back.
He growled, a low sound that came from the back of his throat, and his eyes went the slightest bit red.
And I was not afraid of him at all. “That demon can track our child, Gray. You are the one who taught me never to trust a full-breed demon.”
“I’m not a damn full breed and don’t trust Tix with secrets, but I think he can probably handle shopping for a dog crate,” Gray replied. “And you seemed okay with the idea of me getting Evan a hellhound puppy the last time we were together.”
“Yes. That was sometime in the future when the queen could handle everything. Not in the middle of my murder investigation.”
“Well, I wasn’t sure how long it had been, and I wasn’t even totally sure where I was going to show up,” Gray admitted. “I thought I might be going to Frelsi.”
“You didn’t know where you were going?” I wasn’t sure how this new power of his worked. When I’d left the Earth plane, he’d been like the rest of us. He’d either caught an airplane, drove a car, or walked on his own two feet.
“I track you and Trent in a similar fashion to Tix, though for different reasons. My wolf can find…well, my wolves. And if you think it’s a nasty demonic…”
I moved close, letting my hand find the side where that magnificent, sentient tattoo lived. There was nothing wrong with that tat. It was proof that Gray did belong to a demonic royal house, but that tat wasn’t good or evil. It was a piece of Gray’s soul, and it could find the ones he loved. “I wish you’d been able to track me through time.”
His expression softened, and he brushed back my hair. “Who says I didn’t? I felt it when you were coming back. When you were coming through the painting again, I knew when you would be here. But you have to understand I couldn’t interfere.”
“You couldn’t tell Trent what day it would be.” I did understand that. It was frustrating to be Gray sometimes. He had all the knowledge and no way to act on it.
“Technically I’m not allowed to interfere in anything having to do with my prophecies or with the coming war between the royals and Myrddin,” he explained. “But I didn’t see a problem borrowing Arkan Sonney from the Unseelie and perhaps releasing him in a place that a certain Fae prince might see him and decide it was a sign that he should go and pick up his parents.”
Rhys Donovan-Quinn had disobeyed orders because he’d seen a small white pig viewed as a sign of good fortune by the Fae. If he hadn’t, we would have been trapped in the Council building with no way out. “You stole a pig?”
“I borrowed a pig who is really a hedgehog but who looks like a pig when the little guy becomes a portent of good fortune for superstitious Fae. That society is weird.” One side of his mouth curled up in the sexiest smirk. “And then I politely took him back to his sithein. Then I was called into session with Lucifer and I missed you coming home altogether.” His hands held my shoulders, squeezing lightly. “Kelsey, I’ve only got six more weeks of service to him and then my contract is over and we’ll be out. If you don’t want me to descend again, I won’t. I’ll give the house title to whoever is next in line after our son and we’ll be through.”
But we wouldn’t. We would never be through. I’d been fooling myself. “Who’s next in line?”
His jaw tightened, and I knew what was about to come out of his mouth. “Well, I could have handed it to my brother if he wasn’t dead.”
That was a fight I was so over. “Sure. It would be better for me to be dead because that would have been the outcome of Trent not acting.”
He groaned and turned away from me. “Damn it. All I’m saying is I wouldn’t have to hand it over to my father if Nemcox was still alive. I know you hated him, but he would have left us alone. I can’t say the same for my father. He’s been working his way back up, and I think if I have to step down at this point, they would hand it over to him. The House of Sloane produces a lot of the food eaten on the Hell plane.”
“Yes, like Meat of My Enemies jerky.”
“We have agriculture.” Gray paced along the stone path that led down to the gardens, his hands on his hips. “What are you going to tell our son when he wants to understand that part of his nature? Are you going to tell him what people told me? Are you going to tell him the part I gave him is corrupt and vile and he should pretend it doesn’t exist?”
That knocked the wind out of my sails. I wasn’t about to be the one to make my son feel shame over something he couldn’t control. “I don’t know what I’ll tell him. I never thought about him being part demon. I thought about him being part you.”