Page 62 of Tempted to Rebel

I join him at the window and nod toward the scarred willow tree. I watched as Ruin cut the branches off yesterday evening, but the morning light reveals that deep gouges have been scored in its trunk since then. Mist clings to its flesh, making the wounds look wet as they drip with condensation. I hold back a shiver and wonder if that’s what he sees—just anotherdismembered corpse. “It looks worse than it did yesterday. Did you?—”

“I stabbed it,” Ruin confirms. He taps the windowpane with his fingertips. “So you don’t cry anymore.”

An odd gesture, but it fills my heart with warmth. I take his hand and lace our fingers together. “Thank you.” Ruin’s trying to connect in his own way, so I’ll try, too.

He stares at our joined hands, finally squeezing mine back, and grunts.

Rebel whistles loudly and interrupts our conversation. “Alright, everybody, come get it!” Slapping a plate full of folded and torn pancakes onto the breakfast table, he grins. “Some of my finest work.”

The pancakes are pale and unappealing to look at, but I smile back anyway. He’s trying, too. “Thanks.” I head into the kitchen for the butter and syrup, but he wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me into his chest.

“Mmmm, good morning, beautiful. Go sit down and I’ll feed you.” He steers me toward the table and kisses my cheek. “Eat up so we can go for another drive today.” Smacking my ass with a smirk, he retreats to grab toppings and utensils. “Rage! Than! Get your asses in here before I feed Celia your breakfast!”

Wait, Thanatos is here, too?

I tell myself not to get nervous about it, but butterflies flutter in my stomach anyway, oblivious to my desires. I hadn’t expected a full family reunion so soon after I?—

Swallowing hard, I fight the flicker of sadness turning every fluttering butterfly into dead weight, dropping them like stones into the pit of my stomach.

So soon after learning I’m not pregnant.

I busy myself with breakfast instead of dwelling, sitting gingerly on my stinging buttcheek and making a plate for Ruin, then for myself. “I didn’t know you cooked, Rebel.” I slide thefirst plate across the table, and Ruin picks up a plain pancake and shoves it into his mouth. No butter. No syrup.Nothing.He swallows, but it looks difficult. Glancing over my shoulder, I watch as Rebel tries to balance every possible pancake topping from the fridge in his arms. “Let me help?—”

He rushes over and dumps everything onto the table. “I’ve got it.” Once he sits down beside me at the table, he takes my plate, slathers my pancakes in whipped butter and drowns them in syrup, then cuts off a bite with his fork. Holding it up to my lips, he smiles brightly. “Open wide, baby.”

Despite the dry pancake, the syrup makes the food edible. I let Rebel feed me two entire pancakes, licking sticky syrup from my lips while he grabs a third. His hair is still messy from last night, falling into his eyes and making him look boyishly charming. He rolls his snakebite between his teeth as he pours more syrup onto my plate. “Gotta fatten you up,” he murmurs, “so you’re ready for the baby.”

I choke on my glass of milk. “That’s not how it—” The wordworksdies on my lips as he turns back toward me with the goofiest smile on his face. He’shappy, thinking about our future with the baby.

I can’t take that away from him, no matter how adorably misguided he is about how pregnancy works.

As I chew on my third and final pancake, Rage and Thanatos appear from the garage. Both of them seem tense. “They’ve been strategizing,” Rebel explains, rolling his eyes. “On how to tell Ezra how bad it’s gotten.”

“How bad what’s gotten?”

“The bodies,” Ruin clarifies.

“They found another one last night, near the community college.”

I grab Rebel’s wrist to keep him from shoving another bite in my mouth. “Sara goes there! Is she okay?” I glance at my phoneon the kitchen island and wince. I haven’t kept in touch with her at all after Thanatos kidnapped me from my father’s safe house. I’m lucky if she’s still working at my boutique at all. “I need to call her right now?—”

“She’s fine,” Thanatos grouches, rubbing the back of his neck. “I gave her a gun to protect herself.”

My mouth falls open. “Youwhat?You can’t just give a girl a gun!”

He shrugs one shoulder, avoiding look my direction. “I showed her how to use it first.”

I stand from my chair and grab my cell phone. Two dozen missed calls and over one hundred messages. Wincing, I scroll through the phone calls, glad to know that most of them are my brother Mikhail. We haven’t spoken since he showed up at my shop and scared Rage off, but that doesn’t mean he’s let my silence go. If anything, he’s likelymoreworried that he hasn’t been able to get in touch with me.

“I need to make some calls.” First to Sara, then to my best friend Lilith to let her know I’m not dead in a ditch somewhere, then maybe… to Mikhail. He’s not going to be happy that I’m in a relationship with three men. At least Lilith should be ecstatic for me. She knows how miserable I’ve been since my divorce.

Dick every day keeps the doctor away!she used to say, laughing as she snagged another man to warm her bed at night.

Wait until I tell her that I’m trying for a baby again—that’ll prove her little theory wrong.

“Don’t break anything,” I tell the men, stepping into the living room to place my first call. “No stabbing or punching or shooting. And don’t steal any more of my stuff, Rebel!”

“Only your heart, baby, I promise!”

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