Ezra’s eyes flitted towards the laundry. Heart in my throat, I raced in that direction.

“What the …?” My hand flew to my heart as I took in the scene.

“Apparently, Hell Hound … ferret … things have some wicked healing mojo when it comes to the ones they love,” Ezra explained, coming up behind me and resting his chin on my shoulder.

I gaped down at my white ferret, happy and healthy and healed, snuggled in her hammock, twined very intimately around a grinning black ferret with red eyes and a small white dot on his snout.

“I think they exhausted themselves trying to make baby Luci-Furs,” Ezra confessed in an undertone. A wet, manic giggle burst out of me.

“Good luck to them!” I said through a thick throat. “Luci’s desexed, so they can enjoy all the ferrety fornication risk-free!”

Ezra nudged my shoulder. “Speaking of fornication … is there a chance we’ll end up with half-human, half-devil toddlers terrorising us at some point? Maybe we need to think about desexing you.”

I knew he was trying to joke, trying to keep my mind off everything, but I turned away from him, heat filling my lungs, tears blurring my vision. I wanted that. Maybe not right away, but oh, I wanted a whole gaggle of little SJ’s.

I wanted everything with my heroic devil.

51. Not a Religious Celebrity

Chapter 51

Not a Religious Celebrity

SJ

“I really hope this works,” I muttered to the invisible man in my arms. “Because if it doesn’t, I might be consigning us both to a very nasty fate.”

I didn’t just hope it worked. I needed it to work. I needed to prove to Jemma that I could be the male she needed. The male who took action. The male who could make up for his mistakes.

But there were so many of them, stemming from that very first encounter outside the hospital.

So much to atone for.

She’d told me she loved me. My throat had closed over at the sound of that word, on her pretty lips … said about me.

I reminded myself vehemently that she had also just been rescued from a violent, horrific situation. One that many humans would simply not come back from. What had she seen inside her father’s torture chamber? I had a fair idea, and even that was enough to give me chills …

People said strange things that they might not really mean when in those sorts of situations.

And then there was the issue of my future. And the future of two Soul Realms and all the eternal souls yet to be assigned to them. I felt the weight of that responsibility on my back; my entire reason for existence in the first place was because of that very responsibility.

The golden light at the end of my portal grew closer, and I steeled myself. Get Jemma’s father safe. Confront my … mother.