Page 67 of Hell to Slay

“I know,” he said. “That’s only one part of the plan.”

“I can’t wait to see the rest.”

He reached across Mel, his powerful arm draping across her body, and she sighed in her sleep. His hand came down to rest on my shoulder. It was a little awkward with Mel in the middle, but that weirdly comforted me. It made me feel like Nico was willing to make the effort, even if things might be awkward between us for a while still.

“Over and over, I’ll prove to you that I’m here to stay,” Nico promised. “Hour by hour, if that’s what it takes.”

With Mel and Nico both here, my heart swelled at the thought of what the future might look like, to finally be part of a coven like I’d always hoped. In truth, it was already shaping up to be better than I’d ever imagined.

Mel wiggled around, adjusting slightly against Nico’s hard chest. Maybe she really was fine, just sleeping it off. For a while, I drifted into sleep along with her, and when I woke up, Nico had left. In his place, Tempest rested atop the blankets, black as coal, all her embers dark. Mel was tucked up against me now, her back to me.

“She’s awake,”Tempest’s unearthly voice whispered in my mind as she raised her head.

I trailed kisses along Mel’s shoulder, my heart expanding with gratefulness that she was okay. “Welcome back.”

Mel turned her head, and her lavender eyes were open and alert. Her lips twisted into a content smile, as though waking up from a lazy, mid-afternoon nap.

Then her gaze sharpened. “I discovered something.” She took a deep breath. “Something important. Something that might give us the strength to defeat anything the devil throws at us.”

Then she sat up in bed and looked down at her naked body.

“Hudson cleaned you up, and we took turns staying with you as you slept,” I said. “How about I heat up a breakfast casserole while you tell us all about it?”

I rolled out of bed and opened the window to air out the smell of sex. Tempest leaped down from the bed. The lightning in her tail flickered to life just as her molten body began burning again.

“How long did I sleep?” Mel’s voice cracked. “Is it breakfast time?”

I grinned. “Far from it, but after sleeping for hours, breakfast only makes sense.”

Mel and I went into the kitchen, where I discovered one of my coven-mates had taken out the casserole and covered it. My heart warmed with the thought of either of them doing that.

I loaded the casserole back into the oven and turned it on, not worried about it getting up to temp first since we just needed to warm the casserole, not cook it. When I turned back around, Hudson and Mel were kissing.

When she broke the kiss, she asked, “Would you get Nico?”

Hudson grinned, stepped back toward the hallway, and said, “Nico!”

Our coven-mate blurred into the room, his vampire speed making him hard to see, even to my eyes. Then he stopped, his gaze roaming all over Mel.

“I’m fine,” she said. “But that mind-blowing orgasm sent me into the stratosphere, and while I was out there, I discovered something.”

She’d said that before, but I was still confused by what she could mean. She’d been unconscious, after all. How had she discovered anything? Did she have a dream or vision?

“What do you mean, killer?” Hudson asked, always the one to take charge.

“I mean I sensed our reservoir of magic is not truly a shared pool of magic. Not yet. But we’ve gotten close.”

“Close?”

She motioned to Nico. “I first noticed something shift between me and Nico when we both bit each other at once, but with everything else going on, I sort of forgot to follow up on it.”

She came around the island to stand beside me, grabbing my hand and staring into my eyes.

“When I drank from Jax, I felt it too, but it wasn’t as intense. I think because he wasn’t drinking from me at the same time.”

“And then I distracted you,” Hudson said, his mouth curving up in a smile as he remembered our threesome.

Mel nodded. “And when I cut you and drank your blood, I felt the connection forming between us as well.”

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