“What are you doing?” she yelled, pushing her way into the room.

Ignoring her, Reyes shook off his misgivings about Mr. Wong, the sweetest man alive, or, well, dead, and stepped to me again. “Are you okay?” he asked, taking my arm and caressing it.

His touch liquefied my insides. “I’m fine.”

“A sledgehammer?” Denise howled. “What are you doing letting her lift a sledgehammer?”

“I’m calling Katherine,” Reyes continued, unfazed by Denise’s rant. “I think we need to be sure.”

“Katherine the Midwife,” I corrected. Since we couldn’t take me to a medical team to give birth, we’d brought a medical team here. We even had one of the downstairs rooms outfitted with everything a modern midwife would need.

Denise ripped the handle away from me. “Do you know what that could do to the baby?”

Was she kidding? “The baby is the safest person in this room, Denise.”

“Charley, you can’t lift something this heavy.”

“Yes, I can. Not very far, but—”

A slap echoed along the walls and I realized my face stung. The moment was so shocking, so surreal, everyone stood in complete silence. Even Denise. She seemed the most shocked of all.

Reyes reacted first. His heat exploded around me and I slowed time to watch a hand lift to Denise’s throat. He would snap her neck in a heartbeat, before he even knew what he was doing, his anger was so great. I stepped in front of him, put my hands on his wide chest, and pushed with all my might. Then I allowed time to bounce back with my hands still on his chest, my body braced for impact.

It crashed around me, and Reyes, not expecting my influence, took an involuntary step back. I’d hardly fazed him. He started for Denise again, but I put my hands on his face and drew his attention to me.

“Mom!” Gemma yelled, tackling the big guys blocking the doorway to get inside. She didn’t know what Reyes was, but she knew he was supernatural and she knew he was as deadly as they came. She got between Reyes and Denise and held up her hands to fend him off.

“I’m sorry,” Denise said, trying to calm him.

“Reyes,” I said, my voice soft, soothing. “It’s okay.”

His anger physically hurt, it was so hot.

“You have to calm down.” I smiled, trying to lighten the mood. “You’re boiling me alive.”

He sobered instantly, his eyes shimmering with emotion. A telltale wetness gathered between his thick lashes as he glared at me. Then, ever so slowly, he came to his senses.

I wiped at a tear that slipped past its glistening cage, but he turned from me, embarrassed and furious and, I suspected, afraid of what he would do.

“Are you okay?” I asked Denise.

Both hands were covering her mouth. “Charley, I’m so—!”

“Get her the fuck out of my house.” Reyes didn’t turn around when he spoke.

“Come on,” Gemma said, rushing Denise out of the room.

Garrett helped, ushering them out, and then he and Osh blocked the door in case Reyes changed his mind.

“I’m okay,” he said to them, but they didn’t move.

Cookie looked on the verge of tears herself.

“We’re okay, hon,” I promised her.

Even unconvinced, she took that as her cue to leave.

“Reyes,” I said, placing a hand on the small of his back. It scorched my skin. “What is going on? You’re so hot. Your temper is like a ticking time bomb. You leave and you’re gone for hours. And then when you do come back, you stay away from me for the rest of the night. I don’t understand.” I couldn’t even imagine how he’d react when I told him about the Loehrs. The very thought filled me with an all-encompassing dread.

“Tell her,” Osh said, leaning against the doorjamb.

“Is it—?” I lowered my head, so afraid of his answer. “Is it me? Is it … how I look?”

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.