Archangel’s Ascension (The Guild Hunter Series)

Yesterday

Illium was in Dmitri’s office talking to him about a security upgrade when Dmitri’s entire system flashed red with an urgent message from a priority sender. “Shit.” Dmitri’s heart kicked as he opened it. “Bluebell, Operation Cubs is in progress. Initiate the agreed protocol.”

He barely heard Illium’s “Whoop!” as he raced out of his office. Honor!

I’m just picking up a crossbow, she said. Heading out to assist on a hunt for a vampire who’s given in to bloodlust.noveldrama

Pounding straight into the weapons locker at the end of the hallway, he picked her up and spun her around. The leather of her hunting gear soft and pliable under his palms, her muscles fluid and strong, she placed her hands on his shoulders and laughed. A tattoo of translucent green wove over her right cheekbone, the semi-permanent art that altered patterns throughout the day one of the few things Honor liked about this century’s fashions.

“What’s got into you?” she said when he stopped spinning and put her down.

“Healers have told Andromeda to prepare.”

Honor thrust the crossbow in her hand straight back into its holder. “I’ll ask Ellie to cover for me while you drive.”

“I have it under control!” Illium called out as they exited the weapons locker. “I’ll brief Venom when he gets back, and I’ll tell Ellie she’s needed by the Guild!”

Dmitri shot the other man a wave of thanks before he and Honor sprinted onto the platform for the elevator. The protective gravity rings spun up around them in a split second, the trip down to the garage so fast that they barely felt it.

Their bags were already in the vehicle, had been since the day Andromeda and Naasir had reached out to ask them to be there for the birth. The jet had also been on standby for the past week, even though they were a month out from the birth.

“Keir did say it could happen early,” Honor said as their vehicle raced out of the city in silence, Dmitri having put it in auto mode for maximum speed. “They’re prepared.” Her tone was jittery.

Dmitri’s hand squeezed the steering wheel, even though he’d willingly given up a measure of control of the sleek red vehicle. Still a Ferrari, one born in this century, complete with technology so advanced that it wouldn’t even have been a dream to the farmer Dmitri had once been.

“They’re prepared,” he echoed. “We’ll get there in time.” He knew the couple needed them—and they needed to be there for the two.

Naasir had been in Dmitri’s heart since the day Raphael brought the feral little boy to the Refuge, and in the time since Andromeda had become Naasir’s, she’d also become an integral part of Dmitri and Honor’s family.

Though Andromeda’s relationship with Lailah and Cato was far better than it had been during Charisemnon’s reign, some wounds while healed, couldn’t be forgotten. Andromeda might never be at a place where she wanted the two by her side at such a vulnerable moment in her life—though she’d made it clear that once she’d given birth, her parents were not just welcome, but lovingly invited to visit.

Lailah and Cato, meanwhile, treasured their daughter’s willingness to allow them to be a part of their grandchildren’s lives. The two were yet on their own journey toward true peace, but had seemed genuinely happy the last time Dmitri had seen them.

“What if it happens before we reach them?” he found himself saying, remembering the second time Ingrede had given birth—how fast it had been, too fast for the midwife to get there. It was Dmitri who’d caught the slippery body of his newborn daughter in his arms, his heart thunder and tears running down his face.

She’d been so small, their Caterina, such a fragile life that had never had a chance to bloom.

“Hey.” Honor’s hand on his, his wife seeing right through to his soul. “Remember what we said.”

If I got a second chance, don’t you think our babies must have, too?

Swallowing hard, he squeezed her hand, his lover who had fought death itself to come back to him. “Yeah.”

“As for Andi, she’s got Keir and Jessamy with her,” Honor reminded him. “Neither she nor Naasir wanted us there too early.” A scowl in her voice. “Andi said our hovering added to Naasir’s might make her homicidal.”

Dmitri grunted. “I don’t hover.”

“Neither do I,” Honor said right before she laughed. “It’s possible we’re a wee bit protective, but who wouldn’t be? No one even knew if they’d be able to have children together.”

Nobody had been able to predict what might happen when the only known chimera in the world mated with an angel, but Dmitri had hoped, knowing how much Naasir ached for “cubs.” Keir had also been hopeful, because while Naasir did drink blood, he was no vampire. He was a whole different species, a true immortal akin to angelkind…and he had once been a feral boy who’d ingested the heart of an Ancient.

“I ate my enemy and it made me strong,” a young Naasir had told Dmitri once, his teeth bared. “I’m not sorry.”

Dmitri had shrugged. “Me either. Good job.”

Wings of blue in his peripheral vision, a sparkle of light from the other side of the vehicle that was going at speeds that turned the world into a blur. Two more warriors he’d known as children, grown until he could no longer see them as children. Funny how that had never happened with Naasir. Dmitri saw the warrior, but he also saw the boy who’d liked to linger on high shelves, just waiting to pounce on his unsuspecting prey, the boy who’d once eaten the school’s bunny.

And the boy who’d run out to greet him, shouting, “Dmitri! Dmitri!” until Dmitri’s heart broke from the memories of another boy who’d run into his arms. But catching Naasir’s pelting form, holding this living, breathing child close, it had healed him as much as it had healed Naasir.

“We have an escort.”

Said escort kept them company all the way to the airport that housed the high-speed jet. The flat, triangular vehicle with no apparent seams and no wheels was as different from the planes of yesteryear as those planes had been from blimps, but the verbiage stuck.

Getting out of the car after the system inside brought it to a smooth stop, he pointed at Illium. “Look after her. One scratch and I’ll pluck your feathers.”

“You better send us photos!” Raphael’s first general yelled as Dmitri and Honor ran onto the tarmac to enter the jet.

Once inside, Dmitri looked out through the sleek windows that appeared black from the outside to see Aodhan leaning on the other side of the red bullet of the car, the light of him dazzling as he waved…and his happiness even brighter.

Their Sparkle had come back piece by piece.

He wasn’t who he’d once been, wasn’t the boy who’d sketched a shirtless Dmitri eating an apple one lazy afternoon, but that was all right. Dmitri was no longer the farmer who’d courted Ingrede, either, but he was no less for it.

The flight felt endless no matter its speed, their nerves taut. It was at times like this that he almost wished the scholars who insisted that transportation by teleportation was a viable future goal weren’t as deluded as the alchemists of the past.

He’d have loved to jump onto a platform, only to reappear in the Refuge.

Too bad the experiments had never managed to progress beyond fresh vegetables. Which had come out black and dead on the other side no matter what, until only a rare few scholars continued to pursue the goal. Privately, Dmitri believed they were doomed to failure—because they were working with incomplete information. No one had ever been able to explain the energies that created archangels and forced Cascades after all.

Their world was no easy calculation, its mysteries fathoms deep.

Today, he kept himself busy by communicating with Venom on issues about which he hadn’t had the chance to give his second-in-command a briefing.

Honor, in contrast, read books that she’d downloaded onto her phone. A small and transparent sheet, it folded up to fit even the most miserly pocket, but many people had gone even further a century ago and begun to embed the phones into their palms.

When a few angels attempted the same, their bodies had thoroughly rejected the idea. Their healing ability meant the embed became uncomfortable as scar tissue built up around it—and for angels on the more powerful end of the spectrum, their body extruded the intrusion after a matter of days at most.

Vampires had the same problem, though to a lesser extent. As a result, the physical phone would never die, whether worn on the wrist or carried in a pocket. Even mortals were switching back. A genius inventor had created a brain implant phone that connected to the eyes—and, contrary to all predictions, caused a mass exodus away from embedded tech.

Turned out brain embeds were a step too far.

“Take my flesh, take my blood,” a poet had written, “but do not seek to take my last refuge, my final quietness.”

When Dmitri glanced over to see what Honor was reading, he spotted imagery from a book about baby angels.

He knew she’d already read that book at least five times, but his heart aching, he let her be.

The trip took an eternity and they weren’t done even once the jet landed. Because there were no suitable landing areas in the Refuge itself.

Which was why Dmitri had stored his silent phantom of a motorcycle in a warehouse at the landing strip.

Neither one of them breathed easy until Dmitri stopped the motorcycle on the edge of the Refuge. When they glanced up, it was to see a grinning Naasir crouched on a large boulder above them.

The chimera pounced.

“How is she?” Dmitri asked after hugging the wild child become a man who was such a huge part of his heart.

“In the Medica, growling at everyone.” Naasir beamed.

Releasing Dmitri, he lifted Honor off her feet with his embrace, then nuzzled against her as he always did. With the affection of a child, though in strict terms, Naasir was older and stronger. When Honor petted his hair, Naasir leaned into it, turning his head so she could press a kiss to his cheek.

“Andi says she feels as big as a house,” he told them afterward, “and that everyone is annoying, and she wants to bite their heads off.”

Dmitri couldn’t imagine sweet, warm Andi doing anything of the sort—but then again, she was mated to Naasir. There was definitely mischief in her bloodstream, and more than a streak of the primal.

“Come!” Naasir led them to the gentle beauty of the building that housed the Medica. Rebuilt after the quakes that had shaken the Refuge to ensure it remained solid from the foundations up, it was a single-story structure that hugged the rugged landscape, full of windows and skylights that let in the mountain light and allowed patients sweeping views, but that could be blacked out by curtains and technology should the light make sleep difficult.

Andromeda was in the wing for birthing mothers. In effect, it was a wing for any one birthing mother at a time. With angelic fertility so low, it was rare for there to be more than one woman in there at a time. Even after the Cascade, pregnancies had rarely coincided so closely. But the wing still had four separate rooms, just in case of a baby boom.

Andromeda’s was on the very edge, and featured huge wraparound doors that allowed the light to pour in—and crucially, could be opened so that an angel didn’t feel pinned inside. Or so a wild creature like Naasir wouldn’t feel trapped.

It also faced the part of the Refuge where it was understood that no one was to fly without permission. The area was private to the Medica, with Refuge residents giving it a wide berth, so that any angel who wished to give birth under the piercing mountain sky could do so in privacy.

Even the youngest of them capable of flight knew of the no-fly zone. Those same young ones would often be the first visitors after Keir announced the restriction lifted for a period. They’d fly in and peer from beyond the glass, all unwieldy wings and excitement.

Today, the doors were wide open to the biting spring air. Andromeda stood framed in them looking not out at the view, but at the door from the main part of the Medica…as if waiting for something or someone.

Her face both lit up and wobbled the instant she saw Honor.

She went to move toward her, but Honor was already there, her arms around the other woman. Andromeda was far older than Honor in years, but age didn’t work the same in those who had once been mortal as it did in those born immortal. And Honor, while she’d stopped aging when she became a vampire at twenty-nine, held an inner age Dmitri alone truly understood. Her maturity was that of a woman far beyond her years.

She cupped Andromeda’s shaky face. “Look at you, you gorgeous glowing creature.”

“I’m huge,” Andromeda whispered on a sobbing cry, her emotions all on the surface and her curls wild. She clung to Dmitri’s hand when he reached it out to her, while Naasir rubbed her back. “And now I’m crying. Again!”

Nuzzling her, Naasir murmured something Dmitri didn’t hear, but that made Andromeda sniffle back her tears and turn her face into his chest. After she was steadier, Dmitri caught Naasir’s eye, and the two of them stepped out onto the rocks, so that Andromeda could talk to Honor.

Because sometimes, a woman needed a mother’s advice and comfort, and for Andi in this moment, Honor held that role. At first, their bond had been through Naasir, but over the years, Dmitri and Honor had both formed their own relationship with her. How could they do anything but love the woman who loved Naasir with all her fierce heart?

“How are you doing?” Dmitri asked Naasir when they were distant enough that they couldn’t overhear the two women.

Naasir walked to stand on the far edge of a cliff, the wind blowing back the thick silver of his hair. “Scared.” A single rough word as he glanced back at Dmitri. “She…they…” His throat moved.

“I know. They’re everything.” He hugged his arm around the younger male, tugged him close. “It’ll be fine. She’s too tough for anything else.”

“Yes,” Naasir said, a growl in his tone—but he didn’t pull away. “Will I be a good father, Dmitri?”

Memory crashed into Dmitri, of Naasir asking him another question that had destroyed him: Am I a person, Dmitri? Will you be sad if I die?

“You’ll be the best,” Dmitri said, his voice raw. “Trust me. I know exactly who you are.”

Naasir shuddered, sighed. “I didn’t know I could be this happy-scared.”

“It’s wild, isn’t it?”

Naasir knew about Misha, about Caterina, about Ingrede. He’d come upon Dmitri as a youth, while Dmitri held a painting of his lost family, his tears locked hard and painful in his chest, and somehow, even though Naasir had still been more feral than not, he’d known that all Dmitri needed at that moment was to be loved. So he—the boy who was ever in motion—had sat nestled against Dmitri’s side until Dmitri was ready to speak.

When he was, he’d told Naasir stories of his little boy and little girl, and of the wife who had been his soulmate. Even so young, Naasir had understood loss. Naasir, too, had been wounded by grief. He hadn’t been afraid or scared or uncomfortable at hearing of Dmitri’s own loss.

Rather, he’d seemed fascinated that Dmitri had sired a baby girl, his eyes going wide when Dmitri explained how Caterina had fit into his hands and how she’d cried for her papa to rock her to sleep. “Only Papa could get her down,” he’d said, the precious moments spent with the little girl he’d intended to spoil and cherish spilling over into words.

Naasir had smiled at the stories of Misha’s mischief, asked for more, and for the first time in eternity, Dmitri had found joy in speaking of his boy, who’d always run pell-mell toward him when Dmitri returned home from the markets, and who’d once tried to hide in the cart with the vegetables so he could go to the market with his papa.

Now, the boy who’d listened to his stories of his family needed him to stand as his father, and Dmitri would do so with pride. His job here today was to be whatever Naasir needed him to be, while Honor’s was to be the same for Andromeda.

Which was why Dmitri stood guard outside when the contractions turned urgent, while Naasir and Honor stayed in the birthing chamber with Andromeda and the healers. They might be in the safe haven of the Refuge, but Naasir’s primal heart needed to know that Dmitri, dangerous and deadly, watched his family’s back at this vulnerable time.

Only then could Naasir let down his guard and just be in the moment.

The first shocked cry came far faster than Dmitri had expected, with angelic birthing often taking well over a day or more. That cry was thin but strong. It was followed by a second…then a third.

All different tones. All different children.

Because Naasir, their primal chimera, had managed to do the impossible—he’d sired not a single child, but three at once. Triplets were so rare in angelkind that this birth would go down in history, talked about for centuries if not longer.

That wasn’t the only thing that made this birth momentous, of course. These were the only children ever born of a chimera and an angel. Not even Keir had any idea of the form the babes would take. Winged chimera? Born vampires who needed blood but could also process food and weren’t prey to bloodlust? Beings unique?

It was all an unknown.

The only certainty was that Naasir would love his cubs with primal joy. As would Dmitri.

“Dmitri.” A crying Naasir opened the door…and against his bare chest, he held three tiny babes with skin as brown as his own and wings so fine, they were translucent.

Dmitri touched a gentle finger to the head of each before Naasir handed the children over to the healers, for they had been born too young and would need a little extra care. They would, however, remain in the room with the new parents.

Naasir watched them like a hawk, while an exhausted Andromeda beamed from the bed, where Honor had already helped her become more comfortable, and the healers buzzed around, as excited for the births as the entirety of the Refuge.

Later, after things had settled, and Andromeda and the babies were sleeping, while Honor spoke with Jessamy and Keir in the corridor outside, Naasir turned from his babies to Dmitri and whispered, “I’m not a one-being anymore, Dmitri.” A rough tremor in his voice. “I have cubs like me.”

Dmitri looked down at the children, saw the faint ripple of stripes under the skin of one before it settled back to a smooth deep brown. “Not just one, but three.” He squeezed the other man’s nape. “At this rate, you’ll have a whole squadron by the time you’re done.”

Naasir looked down at his boys. All three of them. “Do you think they’ll fly?” he asked, curious and unworried. “I never flew and didn’t mind, but they have things that look like wings. Maybe they’ll want to fly and be sad they can’t.”

“They’ll fly,” Dmitri confirmed. “Their wings look so fragile because they were born early. I’ve seen it before.”

Naasir prowled to gently nuzzle his sleeping mate. Smiling in her rest, Andi turned toward him.

“They’re like both of us,” Naasir whispered proudly even as he stroked Andi’s hair, petting her in that way of his. “We made them together. Our cubs.”