Rogue Rider

Thirty-one

Reaver stared at the sketch in his hand, his head spinning. He heard voices around him, but everything was jumbled together and he couldn’t pick out anything specific. Finally, he looked up. Reseph was glaring at him in anger, and the others in confusion.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Reseph demanded. “You’ve been our Watcher for what, three years now, and not once did you chime in with, ‘Hey, I was your sperm donor.’ Where the fuck have you been for five thousand years? You let Lilith abandon us, and you let her corrupt the hell out of Limos.”

Reaver glanced back down at the drawing. “This has to be a mistake.”

“Are you denying that’s you?”

Reaver looked up from the parchment at Reseph and everyone else who had crowded around.

“Obviously, the drawing is of me.” He cleared his throat. “But I didn’t… I don’t think I would have slept with Lilith.”

“What do you mean you don’t think you would have?” Limos asked. “Isn’t that something you’d know?”

Reaver blew out a long breath. There were things he “knew,” but this wasn’t one of them. “I told you my memory was taken away from me almost thirty years ago. No one else remembers me, either. I doubt Lilith would have remembered if she hadn’t drawn a picture.”

“So you could have slept with her, then.”

“No. Impossible.” Reaver’s throat squeezed shut, the protest sounding hollow. He couldn’t imagine getting intimate with someone as vile as Lilith, but he also knew he had a rebellious streak, and if someone had said not to bed the succubus, he might have out of spite.

“I can prove it.” Reseph’s tone had softened now that he realized Reaver hadn’t been keeping this massive secret. “I have a birthmark in the shape of a single wing on the inside of my left thigh. Lilith said our father, the angel in that drawing, has a matching one.”

Reaver froze. Locked up so hard he couldn’t even hyperventilate.

“Well?” Anticipation radiated from Ares, who rarely got worked up about anything. “Do you have this mark, Reaver?”

A mixture of terror and joy tripped through him as he looked each Horseman in the eye. And then he nodded. Now he knew why he’d felt such a close connection with these four. Why he’d risked spending an eternity trapped in Sheoul-gra when he’d cast Reseph out of there. And why, right now, his eyes stung.

“Yes. It…” He cleared his throat of its hoarseness. “It appears that I’m… your father.”

Limos threw herself at him, wrapping herself around him and squeezing so hard he could barely breathe. “I knew it,” she whispered. “I knew there was a reason I loved you from the beginning.”

“Damn, Reaver,” Eidolon said. “You’re full of surprises.”

Shade, one of Eidolon’s brothers, snorted. “The only way you can top this one is to tell us you’re a Shadow Angel.”

It was Reaver’s turn to snort. Only one Shadow Angel, a being who had access to both Sheoul and Heaven and could utilize the powers of both, had ever existed at any given time, and there hadn’t been one alive in centuries.

Wraith, blond brother to Shade and Eidolon, clapped Reaver on the back. “Be glad you missed the potty-training stage.” He gestured to the Horsemen. “I’ll bet these assholes could blow out diapers made of Kevlar.”

Thanatos beaned Wraith with a corn chip. Thanatos… Reaver’s son.

Reaver was a father.

But how? And who in Heaven knew? Had he been given Watcher duty by someone who was aware that the Horsemen were his offspring?

Reaver suddenly had a lot of questions… and an uncomfortable feeling that he wasn’t going to like the answers.