If Julian thought he could intimidate me into staying away from her, he was wrong. I’d waited just as long as the rest of them, and unlike Rysten, who went to her because Allistair called on him behind our backs, I stuck to the plan and didn’t try to speak with her.

Until the plan changed.

I didn’t mean to touch her.

I just couldn’t think.

She was so close already, and she smelled so good. I’ve waited thousands of years to meet her, but the last twenty-three were the hardest.

The plan was to let Lola take her and not come back until it was time.

I waited. I paid my dues.

But she wanted nothing to do with us.

“Laran, you need to chill the fuck out, mate,” Rysten snapped. I looked up at him and snarled, but the bastard didn’t respond in kind. He rolled his eyes and continued sipping his wine, like he classy or some shit. Fucking mommy drink is what that was.

Humans were making him soft.

“She wants nothing to do with us. How can you be sitting there like a fucking—”

“You think I haven’t noticed? What did you expect, War? That we could come in here and usher her away? She doesn’t know who you are. Who I am. She doesn’t even know who she is. She only knows what earth has taught her.”

I turned my back on him, towards the fire. Maybe I couldn’t call the flames of Hell, but I could call on earth’s fire and wreak havoc like the world has never known.

“Why does it feel like they took her from us?” I asked softly into the flames, but they held no answers for me this night.

“Because she created a life,” Julian answered.

“This was what we wanted,” Rysten continued.

“No,” I said sharply. “This is what you three wanted. I wanted to keep her in Hell where—”

“Where she would have died with Lucifer,” Julian interrupted.

I bit my tongue from the denial that threatened to come pouring out. He was right, but that didn’t make this any easier.

“What are we supposed to do now?” I asked.

Silence spread between us, each lost to our own thoughts over the girl who was destined to be ours, but didn’t know it.

Rysten was the first to speak. “We give her time and get to know her.”

“I suggest we do this individually,” Allistair proposed.

“So you can fuck her?” I asked. My words were harsh, but I meant it.

“I wasn’t the one all over her tonight, War,” he snapped back.

“You don’t deny it.”

“Enough,” Julian declared. I turned away from the flames, toward my comrades. My brothers. We have stood together through everything. Fought and won for Hell itself. We have killed and laid destruction to so many in the name of the future. Of Ruby. Yet...this was different.

“Becoming her guards will be unlike any mission we have had before. It has already proven to have some challenges we hadn’t predicted, and I think I can speak for all of us when I say we already feel a sense of entitlement to her,” Julian said.

He wasn’t wrong, and none of us corrected him.

“That being said, her well-being comes before anything we may want or feel. She’s not comfortable with us yet, so we limit the time spent with her as a unit. At least until word from Hell reaches here. We can’t postpone the inevitable. She must come with us, but we can give her time to adjust.”

My gaze darted to Rysten. The fucker was practically smirking to himself at Julian’s decree. He’d spent more time on earth than any of us over the last two decades, and while we all knew why, no one ever thought it might make a difference. We assumed she would want to come with us. That she would be happy to leave earth behind. We didn’t take into account that she would grow up, have her own life, and become a woman in her own right, with sinful curves and a sultry mouth.

We didn’t take her into account.

Just the idea of her.

All of us, but Rysten. The fucker was probably real happy right now, but he wasn’t the only one with cards up his sleeve.

I am War, and no one plays better games than me.