Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 139178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
“I didn’t know you’d started to work in metal.” She was astonished at the level of detail he’d put in this, down to the buckles on her boots, and the tiny dots of the loops in her belt.
“I gave my first one to Ma, and to the leader of our pack.” The last he said with a grin, but when it came down to it, their family did function that way—it had been the only way to control three untamed little boys.
Naasir had spent a lot of their childhood growling and grinning at the same time.
“I’m honored to have the second,” she said, and let Izar put it in the box for her.
“The sire will like it, too,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. “Because it’s you.”
The simple absoluteness of the statement made her glow. Because he was right: to the archangel who sparred high in the sky above, she was his heart. As he was her own. And now, they’d created a shared little piece of their heart.
Her stomach rumbled just then. “Izar, can you get me a snack from the table inside?” she began, but he was already back by her side by then, a glass of milk in one hand and a plate of savories in the other.
“Thanks, Tiger Wings.”
Izar’s grin was a slash in his face at her usage of the childhood moniker he’d demanded everyone call him. Opening his mouth, he did an excellent approximation of a tiger’s snarl.
Her own grin cutting her cheeks, she said, “Grab a plate of your own and keep me company.”
He did exactly that, eating savory pastries—one in each hand—while he crouched on the balcony wall commenting on the Galen-Raphael session high above. He’d been taught by Galen, as were all the children in the Refuge, and—though not a warrior by inclination—he’d kept up his training because it was a good outlet for the primal side of his nature.
Like his brothers, he was also brutally fast. In battle, the triplets were lethal.
Content to be here with another part of her sprawling family, Elena just sat in the sunshine on this heated balcony and let happiness fill her veins. Inside her, the baby stretched, as if they, too, were lazy in the warmth.
42
I’m not a one-being anymore, Dmitri. I have cubs like me.
—A Chimera on the Birth of his Children (Once, on a Joyous day in the Refuge)
Raphael came in to land to find Izar on the balcony wall, a finger lifted to his lips.
Hovering on the other side of the man he really needed to stop thinking of as the wild boy he’d hauled out of many an attempted swan dive off the Tower, he saw his consort fast asleep under a shade cloth that Izar must’ve set up.
He’d also covered her with a thick but soft throw.
Raphael landed in silence, then, smiling, hugged the boy become a man. He held on for long enough that the chimera in Izar was content. Because to Naasir and his boys, Raphael was the ultimate head of their pack. “It’s good to see you,” he murmured in a low tone that wouldn’t disturb his consort.
To this day, he couldn’t believe that all three of Naasir and Andromeda’s cubs had made it to adulthood alive—but then, he thought the same of Illium. He still laughed whenever he remembered the scene some time before Illium’s ascension when the other man had volunteered to babysit the then-toddlers, only to call Raphael in a panic four hours into it.
“I’ve lost one!” he’d yelled, his hair sticking up and several feathers on his shoulders, as if he was molting. “Oh fuck, shit. He’s up there!”
In the end, babysitter and boys had all made it through safe and sound, though Illium had probably lost a few years of his immortal life.
“Was I like that?” the blue-winged angel had asked Raphael over a bottle of mead some months later.
“Worse.”
“How am I alive?”
“A question for the ages.”
Now, he and Izar talked in hushed voices in one corner of the balcony.
“I spoke to the Primary,” Izar told him. “He likes to play chess. He played with Misha in New York.”
Raphael raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know that.”
“It isn’t a secret thing,” Izar clarified, “but they played at night, while Misha was working alone in the Tower. The Legion and I talk about what it must be like to be a one-being. Papa knows, but we don’t.”
Raphael would’ve never made that connection, but now that Izar had pointed it out, he couldn’t not see it. Not only were the triplets identical, they had a point of view unlike that of any other people in the world but for their father. And, it seemed, the Legion—at least on some matters.
“How is Nasien? I haven’t seen him this past year.”
“He told me he hunted and ate a crocodile.” Izar rolled his eyes. “It was probably a baby one.”