"Are you sure you’re alright??"

"Ma, I swear I love you, but if you ask me that again, I’m going to scream."

Malachi exits the prison with two very anxious women directly on his heels.

Opal boldly grabs his tail before he can get too far away from her.

"Well, entertain me then. Why did you just suddenly drop like that with no warning?"

Malachi sighs. "Demon stuff."

""Demon stuff?!""

Malachi curses his thoughtless choice of words. Mentioning demons had only made his mother more worried, not less.

Even Hemera’s eyes had a minor, concerned glimmer to them.

"It’s nothing for everybody to look so concerned about." Mal stares up into the morning sky for a moment before pulling out his shades. "Just another thing I gotta handle."

He turns to Hemera before Opal or his mother can try to interrogate him again.

"Wherever he is, Arias is probably being held in the same place as Morgan. Tiamat and Aubrey are already working on a way to cheat out the location using a little bit of magic."

Hemera nods as she approaches Malachi. Her feet glide over the concrete soundlessly, as if they are too sacred to be sullied.

Malachi is surprised when she reaches to touch his head. He raises his brow at her.

"...I’ll be in touch, brother."

Hemera vanishes in an arc of light.

Watching her leave, Malachi couldn’t help but have a subtle smirk on his lips. He turns to his mother.

"She seemed a little different just now, no?"

Nyx was many things, but easily distracted wasn’t one of them. She grabs her son by his pointed ear, her voice impatient.

"What did you mean by ’demon stuff’, son?"

Malachi looks toward Opal for aid. In response, she gave hima flirty wave and began walking back to her plane.

-

Malachi stepped through his portal back onto the ship, his ears ringing.

His mother is hot on his heels, her shrill voice naturally darkening the room around her.

"No, no, no! Absolutely not! You are not going to hell!"

Malachi groans. "It didn’t sound like I had much of a choice, ma."

"Life is nothing but choices, Malachi! Especially for ones such as ourselves!"

Malachi pauses in the living room and turns to face his mother. "So you mean to tell me absolutely nothing bad is going to happen if I just leave those legions unattended?"

Nyx starts to speak, but bites back her words at the last second.

What she says next seems different from what she was going to tell her son a few moments ago.

"...I am going to kill Lucifer."

Malachi smiles as he kisses his mother on the cheek. "Don’t go starting any holy wars on my account, Ma."

Nyx can only roll her eyes, slightly less irritated than she had been a couple of moments ago.

Malachi and Nyx finally turned to the kitchen, where an almost full house was watching them.

Kenji, Sota, Emilia, and Crystal are all mid-chew. They stare at Malachi as if they are unsure how to react.

Sitting at the kids’ table, Reken looks up, his cheeks stuffed with pancakes and his lips nearly glued together with syrup.

"Hi, Grammy!"

Nyx beams. "Hello, my sweet boy!"

The goddess shoves past her actual son in favor of the children at the table.

Kenji puts his fork down and stares at his daughter. "This... Um..."

"O-Oh, they’re not crazy, Dad, they’re just..." Sei had her arms full as she tried in vain to get Janelle to drink her milk. She turned to the rest of her family for help. "Would one of the godly people in this house help the others see we aren’t crazy??"

Aisha goes around tapping people on the forehead while Malachi cozies up to two of his wives.

"Everything looks nice... who made it?"

Luna glances at Nadine, who sticks her chest out a bit more proudly.

Malachi is visibly stunned. "No way... for real?"

"It turns out you can do anything with the power of YouTube."

"And a trash can." Joanne flips up the trash can lid and reveals a mound of burned pancakes.

Nadine rushes around the kitchen to smash the lid back down, the smile she gave contained an intense feeling of danger.

"Let’s just applaud my efforts and not focus on the negatives, okay, darling?"

Joanne nods slowly, mildly afraid and aroused.

"Tiamat still not back yet?"

Claire nods. "Yes, your sister is with her now. Buy it might still take her a couple of hours to learn the spell to find them."

A wave of relief settled into Malachi’s heart.

"Uncle Mal! Are you gonna eat breakfast with us?!" Askari waves a sausage in the air and his brother’s eyes instinctively follow it.

If Mal was honest, he wasn’t planning on it. There was still a lot to do today, including the procurement of the refugees from Japan.

"Come on, Daddy!"

"Sit with us, please!"

"Sit! Sit!"

Soon, Malachi’s own children began egging him on to join them, which in turn, led to his wives staring at him with expectant little smiles.

"Okay, okay, I give..." Malachi held up his hands.

Instead of sitting at the bar with the rest of the adults, Malachi crosses the kitchen and sits down on the floor at the children’s table.

The brothers stared at him with big, starry eyes.

"...What?"

"Do the thing, please!" Reken begs.

Malachi looks around in embarrassment. "Ah, I dunno..."

Askari tosses his half-eaten pancake into the air.

A large horned tiger lifts its head to catch it, making the children go wild.

"Hey! No throwing food, kids!" Aisha scolds. "And Malachi, stop eating thrown food!"

"""Yes..."""

The dragon mother’s wrath didn’t stop her children from hand-feeding Malachi like he was an oversized dog.

A large dog that, naturally terrified Kenji and his son. They had difficulty understanding how everyone continued eating as if it were a normal occurrence.

Janelle seemed to become more excited by Malachi’s appearance. She lunges out of Sei’s arms and runs toward her father.

She crawls all the way up his back and comes to a stop between his horns; an air of superiority written all over her muzzle.

Suddenly, Malachi sniffs the air, his eyes darting towards the hallway adjacent to the kitchen.

Bianca and Celeste entered the room, hand in hand.

On the surface, they seemed perfectly ordinary, but there was a lingering air of tension between them that was barely noticeable.

Malachi stands up on his four legs and walks over to the girls. Even in his current form, he is tall enough to be at eye level with both women.

"Morning."

"Morning, my little animal kingdom darlings!" Bianca scratches underneath the chins of Janelle and Malachi.

From up close, Malachi is even more sure of his nose’s senses. He gives Celeste an inquisitive look.

"Is there... any reason why you kinda smell like a gas station?"

Celeste’s cheeks turn bright red as she looks towards Bianca.

Malachi sits on his hind legs waiting for an answer, while B smiles nervously at him.

"Well... you know how sometimes we have these ’we absolutely cannot let this secret get out’ family moments?"

"Yeah."

"A-And, sometimes we have little developments that make Jo want to drink again, or go lie down in the bath for two hours at a time?"

"Uh-huh."

"Yeaahhh... this is kinda both of those rolled into one."