by Heather Long
“I’m sorry,” she said again, rubbing a slow circle with her palm. The man’s agitation seemed to diminish, but that was an act. His eyes remained hostile and heated, his grip fierce, and no mistaking the faint grind of his teeth. “Seriously, Baby. What they’re doing sucks. They would be absolute jackasses to let you go.”
“Except, they’re probably joking with me, right? Having a laugh at my expense,” he snapped, then released her abruptly. If Judgment hadn’t been studying them so closely he might have missed her wince. The breath she released wasn’t one of relief.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, her voice pitched even lower. With each passing moment, she diminished herself. Her shoulders pulled in a little tighter, her chin went down, her eyes dipped. The fierce candle guttered in the gale, but it didn’t go out. No, her actions were a choice. The worthless piece of shit in front of her didn’t deserve the woman struggling against the dark rage consuming her… Hmm, he wouldn’t use the word partner.
“You will be,” the worthless piece of shit muttered, but the lack of reaction from Dahlia suggested she hadn’t heard the words.
Judgment’s brothers had.
They stared at the pair of them. Justice’s grayish-brown eyes grew more morose by the moment. Punishment, on the other hand, began to toy with a coin, fidgeting with it across his palm and then making it dance over his knuckles. The very contained action offering the first suggestion Judgment had seen of his brother’s true self in countless years. For the first time in millenia, Judgment could see their desire to intervene, to do what their grace demanded, but they didn’t act on it.
Dahlia folded her arms, hugged herself more, rubbing her palms against her biceps. The fierce red flush of the marks Alex had left on her biceps stained her pale skin like blood on snow.
“Let’s go,” Alex snapped as he tossed a couple of bills on the table. She didn’t argue even if her drink had barely been touched. Snagging her purse, she hesitated for one, endless moment. Her gaze not on Alex or even on Judgment’s irritatingly useless siblings, but on another man seated at the bar. A man she gave a swift, negative head shake to and then a faint tremulous smile.
Swinging his gaze, Judgment frowned. The tall man leaned against the bar, his attention—like Judgment’s brothers—focused on Dahlia. The russet, reddish-brown of his skin glowed under the lights from overhead. His eyes were almost tawny and his lips parted as the barest hint of a smile curved them.
He looked almost pleased.
Almost.
Judgment pivoted.
Dahlia was gone.
His brothers?
They lifted a drink to each other as if in a defeated toast, then knocked it back, but they looked far from happy.
Punishment even stole a glance toward the door.
That decided him and he moved. They couldn’t have gone far.
Whoever Dahlia was, Judgment had to know more.
Now.
Humid, sticky air assaulted him when he stepped out of Sinner’s. The sidewalk was mostly deserted, just a few passerbys here and there. He easily caught sight of the couple crossing the street at the next intersection. Even from a distance, Alex was nearly dragging Dahlia behind him, seemingly unaware or uncaring as she struggled to keep up with his fast pace.
Judgment jogged to catch up, careful to not alert them to his presence. It wasn’t hard for someone like him. Humans saw what they wanted to see, and if he put even the smallest amount of effort into it, they couldn’t see him at all.
He followed them for two blocks before they entered a moderately upscale apartment building. As if Dahlia sensed the night was only going to get worse, she tried to extract herself from his punishing grip. Just like in Sinner’s, she wasn’t strong enough to be a match for Alex as he pulled her to the stairwell instead of the elevator bay. The lobby was deserted, and chances were, no one would take the stairs at this time of night.
Where was the night guard? The front desk was empty but a steaming cup of coffee sat on the counter. Dahlia must have been on the bad side of Luck tonight.
“I have to stop by my mother’s, Alex. Let me go, she has a package for me and she’ll worry if I don’t show up to get it.” Her voice was strained, her face scrunched up in a pained grimace.
Alex shoved the door open and yanked her inside, distracted enough for Judgment to slip through undetected. He might be able to hide his presence, but he couldn’t walk through walls, or doors.
“What the fuck ever. Your mother hates me, and if she thinks she can keep you away from me, she will.”
“Let go of me, Alex!” Some sense of self preservation kicked in and she slammed one of her palms into his shoulder, but it only enraged him further. He did let go of her arm, only to grab a fistful of her beautiful hair.
A foreign feeling beat at Judgment as he watched the horribly sad scene unfold in front of him. He didn’t need any of his grace to know how tonight was going to end. He’d seen it too many times over the long history of humans. Still, he didn’t want to see anything bad happen to this beautiful woman because she had the misfortune to hook her star to a piece of human filth like Alex.
“Bitch, you think you’re so much better than me. You’ve always thought it. I’m fucking tired of trying to impress you, and give you the world when you don’t fucking appreciate it.” They were roughly the same in height if you counted the fact she had on rather high heels, but Alex had a good fifty or sixty pounds on Dahlia. He easily hauled her up several flights of stairs.
There was no reason for Judgment to follow after them, he simply shifted at the foot of the stairs so part of their bodies came into view. Were Justice and Punishment interested in her because they knew what was coming?
He knew, but it didn’t increase his interest in her. Humans acted on their baser instincts all the time, spreading evil into the world. She was just one more human who would experience injustice at the hands of a loved one.
“I’m sorry!” Dahlia cried as she fought to loosen his grip on her hair. “I didn’t mean it. I never wanted you to feel like I don’t appreciate you. Please! Just stop and we’ll talk about this!”
He stopped on a random platform and rammed her into the wall, the sound of her head cracking against the concrete reverberated around the enclosed stairwell.
“No more, Dahlia! I’m done.” He repeatedly slammed her into the unforgiving concrete, then scoffed in disgust right before he tossed her down the stairs.
The world stilled. More to the point, Judgment did. Grace afforded him many talents and in this, he looked for some possible solution before she continued pitching down the rough stairs. Each outcome cycled through the same.
No one deserved the fate awaiting Dahlia. Every blow of her soft body against the unforgiving concrete did damage. The human excrement watched her tumble down that flight. Not moving, Judgment waited. The sound of her breathing flowed to him along with the soft thud of her anxious heart.
Alive.
A look came over the male’s face and Judgment’s hackles raised. Until this moment, the filth had been fueled by pure, unreasonable fury. A madness that afflicted their kind. While deplorable, it often led to impulsive, if unforgivable, actions. The universe paused and Judgment with it until the male took the first step, then the next.
She had survived that first fall. Though hurt, she was alive.
When his foot connected with her and sent her tumbling down the next flight, her head struck another step and the distinct crunch of bone reverberated through Judgment. Malice aforethought.
Alex wanted her dead.
Bastard.
Murderer.
The fleeting thought slipped through his reserve a split second before the garbage turned on his heel and fled up the stairs leaving Dahlia’s broken body alone in the cold, empty stairwell.
No.
Not alone.
He climbed to where she lay and knelt down. Blood spilled onto the stone around her. The lighting washed her out, leaving her s
kin seemingly sallow and stripping the color even from her lips. They’d been a softer pink earlier.
A strange sensation wavered through him. This woman had done the impossible. She’d disturbed the malaise around his brothers. Now, as the result of one hateful, premeditated act, following a litany of violence, she would die.
Cold and alone.
Judgment glanced upward to where the culprit had fled. There remained a miniscule chance he would call for help. A sliver of baseless hope he might regret his haste and temper.
Not soon enough.
The stutter of her breath pulled him and her eyes fluttered open. The fierceness in them demanded acknowledgement. Broken, battered, and twisted, Dahlia continued to fight.
Her heart, beating for all its worth, could not sustain against the damage she’d taken. A single tear slid down her cheek and a raspy breath cut the silence as she whispered, “Help.”
Judgment tilted his head.
Dahlia’s gaze fixed on him.
Still crouched, he studied her.
“Please,” she whispered, then stretched out her fingers to him.
A foreign emotion flooded him. The injustice here was his brothers’ failure to act. They’d seen something and now this beautiful light suffered for it. To show them how they erred, he could do…
Judgment hesitated and then flexed his grace. Time slowed as her heart joined her breath in its agonized stumble. At a simple touch of his fingers to her temples, all of her desires and motives pummeled into him as an abstract knowing only he, as Judgment, could read.
“Make it stop?” The question revealed more of the asker than she might have realized.
“The pain?” He pressed his palm to her forehead. He was no healer, but he could allay some of it. Comfort eased the taut lines of her mouth.
“Thank you.”
“Do not thank me yet, Dahlia,” he said, intoning her name and testing each syllable for her worth. The woman lying there had not lived a happy life nor one of great comfort. But she had a good soul. A kind one. She sought to help others, even the trash who left her lying here. “You help people?”
“Sometimes,” she said, a faint smile curling her lips. “Not at the moment.”
Humor. She was delirious in the ghost of her pain, and still she found humor.
“I cannot save you,” he told her and understanding kindled in her glazed over eyes. “This you must accept from the beginning of our bargain.” She watched him, but made no move or attempt to answer him, slipping far too fast, even as time slowed for him.
“This should not have happened to you and while I can’t undo it, I think we can help each other.” Even as he made the offer a small piece of himself took a step back and looked at him askance. This flew in the face of all the rules. While not strictly forbidden, this was not an action to be undertaken lightly and there were rules. For him.
For her.
“How?” Barely a whisper on her lips. Holding them in that moment between her next and last breath required great skill and effort.
“I can share my grace,” he told her quickly. “But it will only buy you time. Time for you to help me punish my brothers for abandoning you and I will punish the one who did this to you.”
Understanding kindled in her gaze right before her lids fell shut. “How long?” She coughed.
“A month, maybe a little longer.” If his calculations were right. “But that passing will not be this. The pain and the injuries, they will be gone. You will simply—stop.”
Another tear trembled on her lashes, and she gasped her next words. “I can’t kill your brothers.”
No, she really couldn’t. “There are more ways to punish someone than to kill them, Dahlia. The punishment, after all, should match the crime.”
“Will you tell me their crime?”
He allowed himself a smile. “Perhaps. But you must agree to this now, or I’m afraid your life ends, here.” Her kindness and nature should have been rewarded. Instead…
Dahlia swallowed, and somehow she managed to open her eyes. “What’s your name?”
“You can call me Seth,” Judgment told her as he threaded fingers through the blood slickened hair at her temple. For a moment, her lucidity returned with a bit of her strength.
“Okay, Seth,” she whispered, lips quirking like this was all a joke. “If this isn’t one of those light at the end of the tunnel moments where I’m experiencing a hallucination because of oxygen deprivation to the brain… I accept. I’ll get retribution for you. You take care of Alex. I was wrong to want to fix him. You can’t fix evil.”
Judgment considered her for a moment. “You are not asking for mercy for him?” He had to be sure.
Dahlia’s gaze hardened. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
No. He really didn’t.
“Then you have my word,” his voice softened and he slid his hand deeper into her hair, carefully palming her damaged skull as he lifted her. “And my grace,” he whispered before he released time and caught her last breath with his, closing his mouth over hers and exhaling it back into her body and igniting that stubborn spark that fought on even as it guttered in the darkness.
Light flashed. Authority resounded through him and her heart thundered as he gave her what she would need. Not much, it couldn’t be too much. Her human body wouldn’t be able to take it. But life flooded her and then her hand clasped his nape, fisting around his braid and she slid her tongue against his.
Lightning sizzled through his system as something shifted and changed. Then he lifted his head and met Dahlia’s dazzled gaze. “Wow…” she whispered, then her eyes rolled back and she collapsed. He caught her easily and rose. Her body used his grace and was already working hard to repair itself.
Sleep was what she needed most for now. Climbing the stairs, he exited on the roof. The hot, humid air rushed against him as he unfurled his wings and shot into the sky. First he would settle her.
Then he would take out the trash.
A deal was a deal.
Dahlia’s tale continues in Kiss of Fate, a standalone reverse harem by Heather Long and Blake Blessing.
About Heather Long
USA Today bestselling author, Heather Long, likes long walks in the park, science fiction, superheroes, Marines, and men who aren’t douche bags. Her books are filled with heroes and heroines tangled in romance as hot as Texas summertime. From paranormal historical westerns to contemporary military romance, Heather might switch genres, but one thing is true in all of her stories—her characters drive the books. When she’s not wrangling her menagerie of animals, she devotes her time to family and friends she considers family. She believes if you like your heroes so real you could lick the grit off their chest, and your heroines so likable, you’re sure you’ve been friends with women just like them, you’ll enjoy her worlds as much as she does.
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