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Ares winced at the not-so-subtle spanking as everyone turned to Limos, who had gone bright red. Glancing down at the snow, she nibbled her lip. “I… oh, shit. I might have… fibbed a little about the divorce.”

“So we’re still married?” When Limos nodded, still not looking him in the eyes, Arik let out a long, ragged breath. “Thank God.” He reached out and took Limos’s hand. “We’ll talk about this later. What the hell happened?”

“You almost died, human.” Gethel stood, and to no one in particular, she said, “Take care of him,” and then she was gone.

Arik looked over at Ares’s motionless brother. “Hellhound?”

Ares nodded. “Yeah. We need to keep him like this for a while.”

“How long?” Arik asked, and Ares wished he knew the answer.

“As long as it takes.” Ares lifted Than into his arms. “But I suspect that he’s going to have a nice, long rest.”

Damage control. Shit… damage control.

Kynan repeated those words in his head as he sat with Regan, Val, Malik, Decker, and Lance at Aegis Headquarters, where he’d brought Regan immediately after getting the hell away from Thanatos. Just a minute ago, they’d gotten news of a massive disaster in Greenland.

“We’re responsible for the deaths of all those people,” Decker said numbly, his eyes glued to the laptop on the meeting room’s table.

Val shook his head, but he looked just as shell-shocked as Decker. “There’s no way we could have predicted how the Horseman would react.”

“Overreact.” Lance snorted in disgust. “He went insane over getting laid. What the hell is that about? What kind of asshole freaks out about losing his virginity to a hot chick? Regan, you must have been a shitty lay.”

Regan lunged across the table with a snarl. Val and Kynan caught her before she could hurt herself or the new life she now carried, but they didn’t bother stopping Decker, who slammed his fist into Lance’s face and knocked the guy out of his chair and into the wall.

Decker planted his big booted foot on Lance’s chest as he lay moaning on the carpet. “You ever speak about Regan like that again, and I’ll shove this boot so far up your ass you’ll be flossing with the laces.”

“And don’t talk about Thanatos that way.” Regan wrenched free of Val and Kynan, but she sat back down instead of going for Lance. “He didn’t ask for any of this.”

Decker let Lance up, and the guy glared sullenly as he grabbed a paper towel from the coffee counter and held it to his bloody nose.

“So what now?” Malik eyed Regan as if she had an answer, but she just swallowed sickly.

“Damage control,” Kynan said. “The Horsemen are going to view this as a betrayal, and rightly so, given the circumstances.”

Damn. This should not have been this complicated. Their intel had indicated that the Horsemen, with the exception of Limos, were sexually active, so they’d as-sumed an easy fling for Regan, a quick and in and out with no complications.

Still, Kynan hadn’t been comfortable with the pregnancy thing, and he’d hoped to be able to tell Thanatos about it after they determined how the child would save the world.

Now… they were all fucked.

Why the hell had Thanatos been a virgin? Religious beliefs? A personal vow? Shy penis? Shit!

“So how do we spin this with them?” Decker asked.

Kynan f >Kylopped back in the chair and stared blindly at the huge painting of a demon-angel battle on the far wall. “I’ll go talk to them.”

“I’ll go with you,” Decker said.

“No,” Regan whispered. “You can’t. Thanatos is…” She shuddered. “Just don’t.”

“She’s right,” Kynan said. “I’ll go alone. It’s not going to be fun, but at least they can’t kill me.”

“We’ll stay here and pray,” Val said. “Because they might not be able to kill you, but I looked up the records of what Limos and Reseph did to the Elders last time we betrayed them, and trust me, they’re quite capable of killing the rest of us.”

Thirty-five

They all went back to Ares’s place. Thanatos was carried, and Arik was propped between Limos and Reaver, though Arik figured Reaver could have used the help more than Arik.