"You're immortal," she said, chewing her lower lip.
"Yes," I agreed.
"I'm mortal," she finished.
"Yes, you are."
"So, what, you would choose me and care about me and protect me even when I am white-haired and hunched over and smelling of arthritis cream?"
"Yes, Josephine, even then. It isn't about your looks. It's you. The whole package."
"What if... what happens when I die?" she asked, looking over at me, eyes sad.
"You've seen Minos," I told her. "Something like that. Something would always feel like it was missing if you weren't here."
Her eyes looked a bit glassy at that.
Not for herself.
For the pain a future version of myself might feel.
"What if... what if I didn't want to die?"
"You can't make that decision."
"It's my life. Mortal or not," she insisted, those tears vanishing. Her chin lifted; her spine straightened. I liked her soft and sweet, but her headstrong and defiant was sexy as fuck.
"Fine," I said, giving her a small smile, trailing a finger down her tight jaw. "You can't make that decision right now," I told her. "We can revisit it in a while if you decide your feelings aren't going to change."
I could tell she didn't like that answer, but the rational part of her had to admit there was merit to my suggestion.
"I guess I can live with that," she agreed.
"And me?" I asked. "At least for now?" I qualified.
"I think that can be arranged," she said, giving me a smile before climbing on my lap, sealing her lips over mine.
True, I might one day have to confront the idea of her no longer choosing me.
But right then, right that moment, she was choosing me.
And that was all that mattered.
Epilogue
Jo - 1 Day
He had wings.
I mean, objectively, I'd known that.
Changed fully into his True Form, he had wings. But from what I could tell, it almost never happened on the human plane. Except, of course, when you Claimed someone. Like Ly and done with Lenore.
But Ace had wings.
They were the loveliest and most incredible things I had ever seen.
I thought maybe they were all the same. Black and bat-like. Mostly because that was what Ly's were like and I had no other frame of reference.
But Ace's wings were different. Yes, they were bat-like. And, yes, they were predominantly black. But there was another color dotted in, almost like glitter. A brilliant, lovely golden color that I couldn't stop staring at, so I was glad that Ace seemed to have trouble tucking them back away now that they were out.
They were all kinds of sexy and soothing when they brushed over my bare skin, too, which added an interesting new element to sex later the night of the Claiming. And the next morning.
I guess it shouldn't have been so fascinating, so charming.
I probably should have run screaming.
They were evil.
He was evil.
And yet... and yet, somehow, I'd seen more kindness in him than I had in many humans with their supposed souls.
He was fiercely loyal to his club, his people. He had worried himself sick over Red. He'd sat up with her every night to read to her.
When he'd taken me out for the day, I don't think he realized I noticed his very sly handoff of a handful of cash to a homeless man sitting out front of the convenience store beside the pizza place we'd gone to.
Not just his spare change or a dollar or something.
When I'd glanced back, the bill that was wrapped around several other bills was a fifty.
He might have shown outright derision for humans at times, but there was no denying he'd developed a certain softness toward some of us. The downtrodden, the ones our society never looked twice at, the souls that likely would ascend, not end up down in hell getting tormented for eternity.
When we talked about things he'd seen and experienced since coming to Earth, he'd raged about how humans set themselves apart in groups, about how their fear and petty prejudices were the dark marks on their souls that would send them down instead of up.
He didn't like Earth-side suffering.
He didn't like seeing division based on race and sexuality and politics.
He'd waxed poetic about how, as a whole, humans had evolved immensely with terms of technology, but almost not at all about things that really mattered.
You didn't even want to get him started on religion. Because at the end of the day, in his words, 'Good is good and evil is evil and everyone knows what is good and what is evil, but pretend that only they know, so they can hate each other, and start wars, and do the exact opposite of what is good.'
For an immortal being, he was surprisingly "up on the times." Or "woke," if you will.
And for a creature that was, well, evil, he liked to see people being good, people ascending. Even though he whispered in the ears of others to bring out their evil.