Samael

Luka and I head down to the archives in silence. I had not been expecting that. Mom and Dad are seldomly home, and I hadn't expected today to be the exception. While I knew I'd eventually have to tell them about my second mate bond, I didn't imagine breaking the news to them this way. I'd honestly forgotten that the potion wouldn't work down here. Deception has no place in the underworld. Dad's reaction was to be expected. Hell, I'd felt the same way when I first felt the pull toward Luka. I didn't understand my attraction to another man. It made me physically ill at first, but now I can't imagine not being with the man by my side. Mom's reaction was unexpected. I would've never seen it coming. My parents rarely argue, let alone fight, and to see my mom, that fierce and passionate, about my dad's reaction to my bond warmed my heart while also breaking it. I don't want to get in the way of my parents' relationship. Their love is the purest form. Sure, Dad kidnapped Mom, and some people will say it's just a case of Stockholm syndrome, but they don't see the way my parents look at each other. They don't see the way my father bends over backward to give my mom whatever she wants or the small touches of affection they share. While we won't ever know if the stars fated my parents together, their souls are still merged, and I know they must both be hurting.

"You okay?" Luka asks as we enter the archives.

"Eh," I shrug, not really knowing how I'm feeling, "I will be."

He grabs me, wrapping me into his arms and kissing the top of my head. "I love you," He whispers into my hair, "And things will work out as they should."

"No need to get all sentimental on me." I joke, pulling myself out of his embrace and giving him a quick kiss, knowing that we'd be chastising this room if I let my lips linger on his too long. "and I love you too."

When he releases me from his hold, I can't help but smile at the look on his face. That look makes all the controversy we will face worth it.

"Alright," He clears his throat, getting back into Professor mode, "I'll take this half, you take that half, and we will meet in the middle. Anything we find that mentions Lilith, we will put on the table in the middle and look through afterward."

Fuck, this is going to be a tedious job. Why hadn't we converted to electronic records yet? Not bothering to acknowledge Luka's plan, I head over to my assigned side and start rifling through the files. The archives in the underworld are mostly full of demonology, with the one book on Angels, mainly the archangels and their descendants- the descendants that were at least half angel, any other descendant belonged to Braham. With so many demons occupying the underworld, it'll take a while for Luka and me to search through the files. As I sort through the files, I realize my dad, or whoever he's assigned, has been meticulous with their fillings; everything is sorted by demon type and then in Alphabetical order. It doesn't take long until I find a file on Lilith. Except there's only one paper-thin file under her name, and with how much we know about the former Queen of Demons, there should be a multitude of thick, hefty files on her. Peaking into the file I notice the only pages it contains are brief outlines of her life. Fallen Angel, Married to Lucifer, Suspected Mother of Women, Succubus, Queen of Demons, a possible relationship with Loki. The only thing here that isn't common knowledge is Lilith being the suspected Mother of women, and it is something that I'll have to look into or ask the others if they have any knowledge about.

As I walk to the table to drop off the disappointing file I've found, Luka shouts for me to come here. Folder in hand, I bypass the table and hurry to the other end of the Archives to see what is so urgent. Luka's pried open one of the air vents, and he has a fat stack of papers surrounding him on the floor and an even larger stack in his hands.

"Care to explain?" I ask eyebrow raised, chin pointing toward the open vent.

"I kept hearing this strange fluttering noise while I was searching through these books. I tried to ignore the noise at first, but it was impossible to ignore. The sound was beyond irritating and kept breaking my conversation, so I went to investigate where the sound was coming from. The closer I got to this vent, the louder the sound was. Thinking maybe a leaf had gotten into it, I decided to pry the vent open and clean it out. And low and behold, I found these." He states, gesturing to the papers in his hand and those surrounding him.

Some of the papers looked old and withered, coated in dust, the color fading to a dull yellow, and then others were crisp and white, the ink on them so bold I could see some of the print standing at a distance. There were also a few glossy pages in there, making me wonder if they contained photographs.

"Every single page in here is about Lilith." Luka states, a worried expression on his face.

"What's the date range?" I ask, grabbing some of the papers off the floor so I can glance at them.

The first paper I picked up happens to be a binding certificate signed by Lilith and Lucifer, except it looks like somehow Lilith's name has been scratched out, which should be impossible. Once this certificate is signed, the two parties are bound together for life, not in a life-and-death sense, but in a power sense. When one grows in power, so does the other, and when one's power decreases, so does their partner's. Everyone always wondered how Lilith got the upper hand on Lucifer; maybe this was it.

"It looks like the furthest dates back to when she first fell. The writings are from Lilith, at least they appear to be. It looks like someone's copied images straight from her journal. That entry," He indicates to a lone paper," is from one of her diaries in Tartarus. I've read a handful of the writings she left in her prison, and I recognize that one because she wrote about Loki."

"Why would these files be hidden?" I ask, noticing that the papers I've grabbed aren't particularly interesting most of them track records of when she left the underworld and the days she returned.


"Because someone was stalking Lilith. Up until right before Katrina was born. There's pictures of Lilith pregnant in here. Pictures of her walking down the streets in the human world. Pictures of her laying in the grass talking to Loki. Notes about how they suspect the father is Loki."

"Whoever this is, knew about Lilith's pregnancy?" I ask, concerned that there's someone not in our group who knows there's a half-fallen angel, dark angel offspring out in the world.

"Yeah. They photographed her entire pregnancy, up until possibly the eighth month, it looks like, given the dates on the back of the photograph, and then there's nothing. It's like either Lilith vanished or the stalker did."

"Have you seen anything about her association with Michael?" I ask, nibbling on my bottom lip.

Luka places the papers in his hand into a neat pile on the floor and then walks closer to me, closing the gap, "You really need to stop biting your poor lip," he chastises, using his index finger to gently pull my lip from my mouth, "You're going to end up splitting it." He frowns, rubbing my lip gently before stepping back, "and no, I haven't read a single thing about Michael. Maybe we got Katrina's parentage wrong. Maybe she is an offspring of Loki."

"Yeah, first off, that's gross. You'd be fucking one of your relatives. And Katrina has the gift of Divine Light. If Loki was her father, she would not have an angelic side to her. I also ran the tests using her gift; Michael is her father."