Finally Damien spoke. “Are my scribes ready to return to their house?” he asked. “The brothers from Cappadocia have kept our fire burning, but Svarog’s sons still live, and we have work to do.”

Malachi was ready. So ready. Ready to hide away with Ava. Ready to rid his mind of the nightmares that met him every time he closed his eyes. For the first time since he’d returned, Malachi wanted to forget. But he knew the memories of the tiny lives he’d snuffed out would live with him for the rest of his days. He wanted to flee the city and never return, but he wasn’t the only one who mattered. He looked at Ava, and she nodded.

“Ready, Watcher,” Rhys said.

“Ready.” Leo and Max joined him.

Damien looked at Malachi. He took Ava’s hand and nodded.

“We’re ready,” Ava said. “Very ready to go home.”

“And my mate?” Damien asked Sari with a smile.

“I can’t leave Ava all alone with you males, can I?” Sari said. “Let’s go home, Watcher. As you said, we have work to do.”

Ava pressed her face into Malachi’s shoulder, and he brought his hand up to cup her head, holding her close.

He wanted to return to Istanbul. But no matter where they were, with Ava, he was home.

Chapter Thirty

“HOPE AND PURPOSE,” he said quietly as they lay in bed.

It was early and the first call of the muezzin snuck in through the open window. Winter had passed. Istanbul hovered on the edge of summer. They woke every morning together, and Malachi never failed to ask Ava her plans for the day.

She had never been in Istanbul in the spring. It was beautiful. It felt like home.

He brushed the hair from her face, and Ava forced herself to open her eyes. She was lying nestled in the crook of his arm, one hand resting on his chest. She could feel his stubble catch in her hair and the warm, solid beat of his heart under her hand.

“What about hope and purpose?”

“It’s what we were missing. What we got back when the Irina returned. And what will make us better as we look for the kareshta.”

Things were changing. Maybe not as fast as Ava liked, but change was coming. Damien and Sari were regularly in Vienna, though Malachi refused to go back. The watcher and his singer had returned the night before with more news about debates in the council and a new air of vitality in a city that had once lost its passion for anything more than the status quo. Irina were visible again.

There were even a few reports of what Rhys called the Irin baby boom. Families were reuniting. Young scribes and singers meeting and mating. With all the changes, a new generation had begun. Ava hoped it was a safer and healthier generation that what had passed.

For Malachi, the ghosts still lingered. She saw the slight flinch when he spotted a group of children in the street. The shadows when he remembered what he’d been forced to do. The well of grief he carried seemed endless some nights. It pained her far more than any scar he wore on his body.

“The Irin needed hope,” she said.

“Everyone needs hope.”

Ava said, “And purpose? Protecting humans—”

“Is important. But empty. The Irin lived for a race we could never be a part of.”

“Do you have hope?” She would battle an angel for this man. Walk through the darkest forest of grief. Give up her own life if she had to.

But she could not force his eyes to see the hope she kept wrapped in her heart if he didn’t want to see.

“Talk to me,” she said. “Please.”

“I have hope, reshon.”

“I’m scared sometimes,” she confessed. “You scare me.”

She pressed on even when she felt his body tense. “Not because of what you might do to others. I trust you more than anything. But what you might do to punish yourself for things you couldn’t prevent.”

“Ava—”

“It wasn’t your fault, Malachi.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

He paused and in the silence, she felt his body begin to relax.

“You told me once that a wound doesn’t heal just because it stops bleeding.” She lifted her head and propped her chin on his chest. “And you gave me time.”

“You needed it.”

“And you need it now.”

Malachi nodded.

“Okay,” she said. “But here’s the rule. Only one of us gets to be messed up at a time. Otherwise, we’re seriously screwed.”

The slow smile she loved spread across his face.

“Deal.”

Yunan Province, China

“STOP it.”

“No.” She grinned when she said it, clicking the camera when she snapped the picture.

Malachi had on his sunglasses, his face grim. He was in full bodyguard mode, every inch the overprotective mate, and he was trying hard not to smile.

“You’re supposed to be working, Mrs. Sakarya.”

“I told you, you’re too handsome to pass by.”

She laughed as they followed the crew farther into the village. Dogs ran around their feet, and curious Chinese tourists watched them as the models and makeup artists arranged a small studio in the square.

The fashion shoot was not the kind of job she would normally take, but it was a favor for one of the few editors who’d continued to give Ava work after the eighteen-month break in her schedule. Conveniently, she was from LA. An explanation like “nervous breakdown followed by rehab” was hardly the strangest thing anyone had heard.