If it took all the time in the world for her to trust him further, he would gladly wait. Seeing her growing bolder, coming out of her shell more each time they met, and how colour would stain her cheeks sometimes when she looked at him, or dared a smile in his direction, was enough for him.
He would bide his time, would learn to master the emotions she roused in him, the deep and wicked needs she stirred, and hopefully, one day, she would take the next step.
Although he wasn’t sure what he would do then.
He only knew it would be explosive and wild.
And it would change them both.
CHAPTER 12
Wolf strode through the grand foyer of the elegant white marble building, passing the gold-accented columns that supported the enormous dome. Resembling numerous stately buildings in the human world, the headquarters of the angels who ran the realm known to the mortals as Heaven was an exercise in opulence, designed to show the wealth and power of those who called it home.
He had no time for this, but ignoring his superiors’ summons before had ended with a rap on the knuckles. Refusing to attend the meeting they had set up this time, and had sent several messengers to him to ensure he couldn’t deny knowing of it, would result in a far worse punishment.
His white boots were loud on the faintly veined marble floor, his dress uniform drawing glances from several females and some males who passed through the foyer with him or were working in the area behind the many desks that lined the open-plan rooms of the wings of the building that flowed outwards from the dome.
He adjusted the hem of the thick white jacket, conscious of the eyes on him. This was the reason he hated having to wear his best clothing. He preferred to remain unnoticed, blending in with everyone else so he could move unhindered through the crowds of the city whenever he had to visit it.
But being called before his superiors meant wearing the appropriate uniform.
Which meant drawing slack-jawed stares and whispered comments from all around him.
He flashed a glare at one pair of twittering females.
They stiffened, paling a little, and scurried away. A satisfying reaction.
He made a game of it as he took the stairs up through the building and walked with purpose down the wide corridor that would lead him to his superiors, pinning every male and female who dared to gawp with a black look and cataloguing their reaction.
His reputation always preceded him. Only the Echelon had single-coloured irises, and only he among them had silver ones. Murmured words about his temper, his victories, and his strength passed between the angels as he neared them.
A slight compression of his jaw, a lowering of his black eyebrows over his eyes as they narrowed on the offenders, was enough to have them falling silent. Very satisfying. Flexing his power was always pleasing.
It certainly took his mind off the meeting ahead of him, providing a nice distraction from mulling over the reasons his superiors might have called him.
He didn’t need another mission right now.
He had been a breath away from forming the bridge between Heaven and Hell and teleporting there to begin his reconnaissance and acclimatisation to the dark realm.
He knew what he had promised Emelia, but he couldn’t stand idly by and let the dragon continue to breathe, not anymore. Seeing the scar on Emelia’s shoulder that was still pink, still fresh, and how she had struggled at times to relax in the bath, even when she hadn’t been aware he was watching her, had sparked his anger, igniting his rage and the need to do something.
She had been brave to show herself to him, but it had taken a lot out of her. Even though she had been covered entirely by the bubbles, no more exposed to his eyes than she was in clothes, it had still stirred feelings inside her, ones she had struggled with before he had finally turned his gaze away from her for good.
Knowing that she suffered still, that the pain of her captivity and Zephyr’s abuse was still raw inside her, affecting her deeply and hindering her ability to live the life she wanted, was enough to have his mood blackening and the air around him darkening.
He dragged down a deep, stuttering breath and reined in his temper before anyone noticed. It refused to calm, and he had to pause in a quiet spot in the corridor to lean against the wall and brace himself against his turbulent emotions. Almost a thousand years of feeling little other than the hunger to do his duty, the fury born of a desire to eradicate demons to cleanse the world of their filth, had left him ill prepared for feeling other emotions.
The rage was still there, but emotions fuelled it now, not dark needs and desires, but feelings he had always expected to be light, to provide a sense of warmth and goodness.
Like love.
He was slowly beginning to suspect that love was the fuel for his rage this time.
He cared about Emelia, so much so that the sight of her in pain, the sight of her scars, was enough to have a black need to bloody his sword blasting through him.
Anger born of love?
He had been led to believe that love was the opposite of hate, that it bred only positive effects, made couples coo over each other and brightened the world.
The love that burned inside him was powerful, controlled him far more easily than the natural darkness he held within him ever had. His temper had nothing on this new emotion. Love had him seething with a desire to destroy, to hunt and kill, to slay the dragon in cold blood. He would fight without honour for the sake of love, would drag the bastard kicking and screaming to the mortal world to shackle him with the curse, and would take pleasure in tormenting him before he finally ended him.
Love made him dark.
Not light.
“Fourth Commander?” A male voice shook him from his twisting, dangerous thoughts.
He blinked and lifted his head, reeling for a moment as darkness washed from the air, warmth rushing in to swiftly replace it as his mind cleared.
The angel standing before him cocked his right eyebrow, his short blond hair matching the golden wings furled against the plates of his equally as gold armour.
Amber-to-silver eyes narrowed on him as the male’s expression shifted to curiosity tinged with cautiousness.
Wolf pushed away from the wall. “My apologies. I was…”
He wasn’t sure what to say in order to explain his behaviour. The Second Archangel had an annoying gift for being able to see through lies.
“Come, come.” The male ushered him towards the white double doors of the office at the end of the hall, one of which was ajar.
The Second Archangel must have come out when he had sensed Wolf going off the rails. Wolf glanced over his shoulder, past his white wings to the surprised faces of several males and females who had stopped a distance away. Another rumour to add to the pool. By tonight, angels across the city would be discussing how the Fourth Commander of the Echelon had lost his temper in public.
He sighed and followed his superior, relief washing over him when he entered the office and closed the door behind him.
It was short-lived.
The moment he turned and realised that only the Second Archangel occupied the office today, the three other males who were normally present at any meeting startlingly absent, cold snaked down his spine.
“What is this about?” Wolf edged into the room, remaining near the door as he scanned his surroundings.
Tall windows on either side of the long white room allowed light to flood in and revealed the garden of the building, and the city that crept up the hill towards it. At the far end, bookshelves held multicoloured tomes, some so ancient that only magic was holding them together. Records of the previous Archangels and the slain Powers.
Rumour had it that Echelon had been born of the Powers, angels who had been the first order to protect the world from demons.
Archangels had mounted a war against the Powers to take control of the realm.
Now, only four Archangels were in existence.
Five if you counted the one t
hat had been banished to Hell.
Satan had fomented the rebellion, and the fathers of the four current Archangels had sided with him. Satan had been banished and all Archangels executed.
And four young Archangel offspring had been spared and ordained as the ruling house.
Wolf had always found that little titbit interesting.
Did he suspect the current Archangels of being behind what had happened in some way? If he did, he wouldn’t be the only one. The underground of the realm often whispered rumours of what had really happened, that it had all been the plot of four young angels hungry for power.
He stared across the room at the Second Archangel where he leaned with his backside against the enormous white circular table in the centre of it, his furled golden wings brushing his greaves and his arms folded across his chest.
“I asked what this was about.”
The male unfolded his arms and stood. “We need you to relay a message to the Fifth Commander.”
His reason for being summoned didn’t surprise him. He was the direct contact for the Fifth Commander. The male sent reports to him, and he passed them on to the Archangels. He had little contact with the male other than issuing orders to him and receiving reports, wasn’t sure what the Fifth Commander was doing, but he knew the mission was deemed important.
“In person,” the Second Archangel added.
That was concerning.
He had never been asked to personally deliver a message to the male before. Was something wrong?
“You will find him in the fae town near London.” The male paused, his sandy eyebrows drawing down. “I think it will do you good to get out. It has been noted that you have been struggling with something recently.”
“I am not struggling with anything.” He wasn’t struggling, so it wasn’t a lie. He was drowning. Doomed already. He had no more fight to give.
But he still tilted his chin up and straightened his spine, stared the male down and waited because he didn’t want his superior to see it.
The last thing he needed was them meddling just as he was about to go completely off the rails. They wouldn’t condone what he was going to do, he knew that, but if they suspected he was up to something, they were liable to invoke a barrier to prevent him from travelling anywhere. He couldn’t let that happen.
“It was raised by several angels. Most notably, the Second and Third Commanders brought it up in their reports several days apart.” The angel’s gold-to-silver eyes dared him to deny it.
Damn it.
“The Third Commander is simply annoyed with me because I argued with him about how inappropriate it was to wear his dress uniform when seeking female company in the city.” Deflecting? A low tactic, but one that might save his neck.
The Second Archangel didn’t look pleased to hear that.
Wolf jumped on that. “The Second Commander was in on the plan with him, and they tried to convince me to do the same. I refused, of course.”
“Because when have you been interested in female company?” the angel drawled, a teasing note to his deep voice that had Wolf frowning at him.
He was interested in female company. Very interested. He just wasn’t interested in whatever wares the city females might attempt to peddle to him.
There was only one female for him.
“You have been distracted recently.” The male pulled Wolf back to him the instant his mind started wandering, thoughts and images of Emelia filling it. “Ever since we sent you to retrieve the female half-breed.”
Wolf leaped on that too, because what better excuse was there?
He sighed wearily for effect. “I admit, I am irritated that I failed to apprehend her before her… demon… placed her beyond my reach. I do not like to fail in my missions, as you know. She was more troublesome than I had anticipated, and I lost my temper, and my chance to bring her in with it.”
All the truth.
It still annoyed him that he hadn’t been able to bring Sable to Heaven to serve as the Sixth Commander, a replacement for her sire the Echelon badly needed.
“We will surely get another chance.” The male approached him and placed a heavy hand on Wolf’s shoulder.
“If I were to go to Hell, I could—”
“I will not hear of that,” the angel interjected, and Wolf mentally cursed him.
Retrieving Sable was a viable excuse for heading into that realm, one he had failed to see before but shone at him like a beacon now, luring him to it.
“The Echelon need her strength. She has gone to ground. It would only take—”
“It would only take you running into a strong demon, one like her apparent mate, or worse, a fallen angel, and we would be down two Echelon,” the Second Archangel countered, his expression darkening as his eyes brightened.
Wolf couldn’t dispute that.
A strong demon would be enough to kill him if he was new to the effects of Hell. Running into a fallen angel didn’t bear thinking about. He wouldn’t stand a chance against one. Angels could renounce their realm and their kind without any ill effect, becoming what mortals thought of as a fallen, with black wings that looked the part.
A true fallen was something else.
Something evil.
Everything good in an angel was extinguished when they fell, the darkness that caused the fall consuming them to eradicate their softer feelings, leaving them as vicious and twisted and as power hungry as the Devil. It was rare for a fallen angel to retain any shred of good. Angels had tried to study fallen angels in the mortal realm to discover how some had survived the transition with their personality intact. So far, none of them had been able to figure it out.
Probably because a lot of them had ended up paying for their curiosity with their lives.
While a fallen angel was weakened in the mortal world, they were still extremely powerful.
“I will not hear another word about this. Understood?” The male gripped his shoulder so hard, Wolf almost flinched, his bones aching under the pressure.
A flex of the angel’s strength and power to put him in his place.
He bowed his head and nodded, playing the meek Echelon as the male desired. The Second Archangel might be stronger than he was, but it wasn’t going to stop him.
He would go to Hell.
He just hoped he would come back again.
CHAPTER 13
Wolf despised fae towns and avoided them as much as possible. The number of demons who either inhabited or frequented them had the rank-and-file angels staying away from them, let alone the Echelon. Whenever he had reason to enter one of the secret marketplaces that were home to a myriad of immortals, from witches to shifters to lesser-known fae, his Echelon mark always felt as if it was on fire, the sheer number of demons present stirring it into a frenzy that had him constantly wanting to call his blade and cut them all down.
Regardless of whether or not they were deemed dangerous to the humans.
All demons in the mortal realm were monitored, their behaviour recorded by a specialist team of angels. Many of them were no more a threat to humans than other humans were, so they were allowed to live.
His Echelon mark didn’t distinguish between ‘good’ demons and the ones he needed to eradicate. It fired up whenever he was near one, burned beneath his white-and-gold armour like a brand, making him itch to summon his sword and rousing the black need to spill blood.
It probably didn’t help that he viewed all demons as something to be wiped from the face of the Earth.
Which was why he was so surprised when he landed quietly on the roof of a low square white building in the witches’ district and found the Fifth Commander facing off against a demoness in the street below.
And looking for all the world as if he didn’t want to kill her.
The heat in the Fifth Commander’s eyes changed to vast coldness as Wolf stepped closer and bright golden light burst from the cross emblazoned on the inside of the Fifth Commander’s right wrist, Wolf’s presence in
the sprawling town that occupied a cavern in the English countryside triggering it. Their gifts fed off each other, easily sparked to life when they were in close proximity, even when demons were a long distance away.
With the demoness, one of the Devil’s spawn judging by her gender since the wretch had destroyed all females of the mutinous demon breeds when they had turned against him, so close to him and the Fifth Commander, the hunger to hunt and destroy her was ruthless and relentless.
Wolf was tempted to call his sword and end the female, but the way the Fifth Commander reacted to his mark triggering had Wolf stalling.
Fascinated.
“Get away from me.” The blond angel gripped his right wrist, clutching it hard and visibly straining against the black urge to do battle that ran through Wolf too.
The Fifth Commander’s shoulders shook beneath his mortal clothing of a tight black T-shirt paired with equally as dark jeans and heavy soled boots.
He loosed a low growl of frustration as he wrestled with the mark and the urge, and Wolf canted his head, curiosity running as rampant in him as the hunger to kill.
The demoness leaped back a few feet, her blue eyes wide with shock that showed on her face.
Why was she surprised that an angel of the Echelon was reacting badly to her presence?
Why hadn’t the Fifth Commander ended her the moment he had crossed paths with her?
“What’s wrong?” she murmured, voice throaty with the fear Wolf could feel in her.
Fear she had every right to feel. She had set foot in the mortal world and was in the presence of the Echelon. While demons from the numbered realms were tolerated if they weren’t a danger to the mortals, no demon of the Devil’s spawn was allowed to live if it entered this realm.
She nervously brushed a gold-to-red stripe down the right side of her long black hair, her fingers shaking as she studied the Fifth Commander.
For a heartbeat, she looked as if she was going to move towards him rather than opting to run away.
And then the angel’s huge white wings burst from his back as his fight against the urges boiling inside him faltered.
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