His temper flared again as he faced me. “I can’t believe you just asked me that.”
“I’m pregnant, Reyes. I’m the size of a blimp.”
The incredulous look on his face stopped me. He was astounded. “You’re stunning. You’ve never been more beautiful. Don’t you understand what you are? You’re a god and I’m the son of your worst enemy.”
I got over the beautiful remark, and asked, “What does that have to do with anything?”
“If you don’t tell her, I will.” Osh was pushing him. Now was not the time. Or was it?
“What is he talking about?” I asked Reyes as he glared at the Daeva.
“Okay, fine,” Osh said. “I’ll tell her.”
The murderous expression he leveled on Osh made me wince.
He took a step closer to him, his movements dangerously smooth. “It will be the last thing to come out of your mouth.”
Osh nodded. “’Bout time you grew some balls.”
In the underworld, Osh had been a champion. Their best and fastest fighter. Even faster than Reyes, so my surly husband said. But he was not as big as Reyes. Not in human form. I wondered if that mattered, though.
Reyes took another step toward him. I stopped my husband with a hand on his chest, but only because he allowed me to.
Then I faced Osh. “Tell me.”
The grin Osh wore was completely unnecessary. He enjoyed antagonizing Reyes far too much for my comfort. “He hasn’t slept since the attack.”
“What?” I whirled around. “What attack? When were you attacked?”
“The one eight months ago,” Osh explained. “He would be useless in a fight now. If the Twelve somehow get across the border—”
“Eight months?” I asked, astonished beyond belief. “Is he kidding? You haven’t slept in eight months?”
We were supernatural, sure, but we had human bodies and human needs. No wonder he looked so tired and disheveled all the time. I’d once gone three weeks without sleep. It about killed me. But eight months?
“Why?” I asked him.
“Oh, but we haven’t gotten to the best part,” Osh continued.
Reyes’s jaw muscle leapt. “Don’t do this. I stopped. It didn’t work and I stopped.”
“What?” I asked, squelching a shudder of fear.
“You stopped after how many attempts? A dozen? More?”
“I stopped, Daeva. That’s all that matters.”
I dug my nails into Reyes’s biceps to remind him I was there. “Just tell me,” I ordered Osh.
“He thought he might have found a way to kill the hounds.” He glanced at me, his eyes twinkling with mirth. “He was wrong.”
“To kill them?” I looked from Osh to my husband then back again. “And what way was that?”
This time Garrett spoke, but he did it minus the smirk. “He dragged them onto holy ground, thinking it would kill them.”
The shock that jolted through my body was like sticking a fork into a light socket. I turned to Reyes, aghast and appalled and dumbstruck that he would even try such a thing. “You did what?” I whispered.
He didn’t answer at first, and when he did, his demeanor was that of a schoolboy being chastised after having been ratted out. “I only tried it a few times. It didn’t work, so I stopped.”
“Fifteen,” Garrett said. “He tried it fifteen times.”
The thought of Reyes not only fighting a hellhound, but dragging one onto the consecrated ground—on purpose!—and then fighting it, sent the world spinning beneath me. Before I knew it, the floor disappeared.
“Maybe if he’d had a little sleep, he wouldn’t have had his ass handed to him on a silver platter every time,” Osh said into the darkness surrounding me. “Those fuckers can fight.”
I sank to the ground as though in slow motion. The edges of my vision blurred, then three sets of hands landed on me until Reyes lifted me into his arms. Even though I weighed 1,014 pounds, he carried me with ease to the stairs and up to our room. Where Denise, Gemma, and Cookie were. This was not going to end well.
“She’s still here?” I asked Gemma, trying to shake the fog from my head. “Are you kidding me?”
“I had to apologize,” Denise said, both hands still covering her mouth. “Is she okay?”
The glare Reyes shot her would have shriveled a winter rose. But no one ever accused Denise of being a winter rose.
“I’m okay, hon,” I said, gesturing for him to put me down.
He did so slowly, then steadied me until I had my footing. “I’m not leaving you alone with her, so don’t even think about it.”
“Reyes, it’s okay. She didn’t mean to slap the living shit out of me.” I said the last bit while leveling my own glare on her.
She had the decency to look embarrassed.
“It’s not her I’m worried about. Is that what you were doing in the field with Angel?”
He hesitated, then said, “Yes.”
He was lying. I knew it, and he knew I knew it. I raised my chin and turned from him. After a moment, he left.
Then I turned on the woman who’d made my life hell growing up. “What are you still doing here?”
“I wanted to explain.”
“Charley,” Gemma said, “if you’ll just hear her out, I think it would be good for both of you.”