Dragon's Storm (Legion Of Angels #4)(36)

“Hey, love birds,” Alec said. “Are you in or not?”

Sometime during the last few rounds, Nerissa had relocated to Soren’s chair, and they were now making out like there was no tomorrow.

Nerissa slid off Soren’s lap with a coy smile and returned to the chair she’d been sharing with me.

“Good move,” Alec told Soren with an approving nod. His gaze slid down to the card Soren had played this round. “Unlike that move. That was a very stupid move.”

Nerissa leaned in closer to me. “So, rumor has it you’ve been having clandestine meets with our favorite angel Nero Windstriker,” she whispered. “And that Colonel Fireswift marked you. What an idiot.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“I eavesdropped when you and the Colonel were chatting outside my lab.”

“You heard that?”

“Sure. I can wallow in self-pity and eavesdrop at the same time.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Nerissa was the gossip queen of New York.

“Colonel Windstriker marked you too, didn’t he? That’s how you got rid of Colonel Fireswift’s mark.” She sniffed me. “So why don’t I smell him on you?”

“Nero marked me without asking. I made him remove it.”

“You convinced an angel to remove his mark?” she gasped in shock.

“I told him I refused to be stuck in the middle of this pissing contest between him and Colonel Fireswift.”

“What did he say?”

“He brooded a little, then he removed his mark. But not before giving me a lecture about the ways of angels and how I needed to get used to them because this is my life now. He thinks I can’t accept him for what he is.”

“Can you?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. The ways of angels are so cruel. They think they know what’s best for everyone, and they don’t hesitate to enforce their will over you. I’m not sure I can accept that.”

“Angels are cruel, yes,” she said. “But that’s not all there is to them. Colonel Windstriker removed his mark. He gave you a choice. He’s a good man. But a wicked angel.” She licked her lips. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“He cares about you. If he just wanted to screw you and leave, he wouldn’t be doing this.”

“That doesn’t make this easier,” I said. “It makes it harder. He marked me, Nerissa. It’s just so… crazy.”

“He’s an angel. Those are their ways. And, for the rest of us at the Legion, they are to a lesser extent our ways as well. Your ways. A bit of a culture shock, isn’t it?”

“You could say that. I didn’t expect this to be the hardest thing about the Legion,” I admitted.

“No one ever expects that. They think the hard part is the fighting or gaining new magic. But it’s the same story for everyone who joins the Legion. We change. Or we die.”

“And marking your territory?”

“That one is just the angels. They are very competitive. And territorial. It might seem they are acting impulsively, out of anger, but every move they make is calculated to achieve their desired result. It’s a big game of strategy.” She waved her hand at the table. “Like this card game, except the stakes are much, much higher.”

“It sounds like an exhausting way to live.”

Nerissa’s brows lifted. “Angels have a lot of stamina.”

I groaned at her joke. She was almost as bad as Alec.

“I’ve heard angels can have sex like twenty times in a row,” said Darren, one of the Los Angeles candidates.

Oh, great. My private conversation with Nerissa had an audience.

“Twenty times in a row?” Alec looked at Jace. “Is that true?”

“How would I know?”

“Your father is an angel,” Alec pointed out.

Jace looked ill. “We’ve never discussed his libido. And I would appreciate if you didn’t either.”

Alec’s gaze shifted to me. His expression was one of pure innocence—or his version of it anyway.

“No,” I said firmly.

“No what?”

“No, I don’t know the answer. So don’t bother asking me.”

“I’ve done studies in angel fertility and sexuality,” Nerissa said, taking a swig from the bottle. “It’s a fascinating subject. The Nectar the soldiers of the Legion drink is a poison, the strongest on Earth. Because we’ve survived the strongest poison, it’s hard to poison us. We hardly ever get sick either. Even when we do fall ill, we typically fight off diseases quite quickly.”

Alec swallowed a yawn.

Nerissa wasn’t deterred. “But the same poison that made us immune to most illnesses and poisons also has a downside. Legion soldiers are notoriously infertile. The more Nectar you’ve had, the more magic you have, the less fertile you are. Naturally, that means angels, who have consumed the most Nectar, are the least fertile of us all. But they are also the ones the Legion pushes hardest to procreate. Because the child of an angel has a significantly higher magic potential, a higher chance of becoming an angel.”

Her eyes lit up, the scientist shining through. Alec was resting his weight on one of his elbows. He looked like he just wanted her to get to the ‘sex’ part of this sexuality lecture.