“Oh, fuck.”
The demon collided with him.
All hell broke loose.
CHAPTER 24
The Fourth Commander of the Echelon was back. The Third Archangel had sent a message to her, ordering her to go to the Fourth Commander and heal him.
She smoothed her golden hair in the twin braids she had gathered into a sort of bun at the back of her head, and then the two wavy lengths of loose hair she had allowed to flow beside her cheeks today. A last-minute decision she had made upon looking at her reflection in the mirror.
It had taken a few minutes to rearrange her hairstyle, and she was sure the Fourth Commander wouldn’t be happy with the delay, but she wanted to look her best for him.
He had been distant recently, distracted by something. The last time she had been sent to him, he had barely looked at her, had been focused on the floor of his apartment, clearly watching something unfolding in the mortal world.
She had heard rumours he had been sent to retrieve a half-breed for the Echelon and that he had failed and was now seeking her, had even gone against the orders of the Archangels and had entered Hell.
Had he been injured there?
She knocked softly on the double doors of his apartment in the Echelon headquarters and waited, nervously retying the twisted band of gold rope that held her white robe closed at her waist. She licked her lips, a vain attempt to settle herself. She healed others, but the Fourth Commander always made her nervous.
She was always the healer the Archangels sent to him. There had to be a reason for that. A purpose. She had thought about it often when she was healing him, tending to his wounds after his battles.
Now, she felt certain they had chosen her for him.
He was powerful, handsome, but a little dark. She was sure she could grow used to that aspect of him if he sired her offspring, though. If one of them was born with the mark, they would be as important as he was, and she would rise in the ranks because of what she had done.
There was a chance she might even be selected to lead one of the healing houses.
She knocked again. Her senses said he was in his rooms, and he was moving around them. The Archangels were never wrong about who needed healing, and she could smell blood. When he didn’t answer this time, she twisted the handle and gently pushed the door open.
“Forgive my intrusion.”
Her eyes widened.
Blood tracked over every inch of his bare chest, drying in thick rivulets down his muscular arms, and stained the armour he still wore on his lower half. Vicious gouges streaked across his chest, as if some wild beast had gored him with its horns.
It wasn’t her place, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “What happened?”
He glared at her and turned away, revealing the horrific injuries on his back and the two long scars where she hoped his wings were hidden.
“Demons,” he muttered, his voice blacker than his expression as he resumed his pacing, leaving a red smear on the white marble tiles in his wake.
“You must keep still.” She picked up the basket of healing items, closed the door, and hurried over to him.
He didn’t do as she bid. He kept pacing, taking long strides across his apartment, leaving blood everywhere. It was stark against all the white, turned her stomach with fear as she took a closer look at him and saw all the wounds on his body, all the slashes and punctures that still seeped crimson.
“What sort of demon has the power to do this to you?” she whispered, unable to hold that question back too.
“Elite.” He practically growled the word.
She wasn’t familiar with that sort of demon. Was it powerful? It had to be powerful in order to wound the Fourth Commander like this.
“And I did not say demon, I said demons,” he snapped and glared at her, and she shrank back, curling away from him as the air around him darkened and chilled. He frowned and sighed, his big body relaxing as he looked himself over. “I apologise. Just fix this. I have somewhere I need to be.”
He was mad if he was planning to return to whatever battle he had come from. She didn’t press him for information. It wasn’t her place. She set the basket down, opened it, and took out everything she was going to need. She wasn’t sure the large canister of healing water she had would be enough to wash all his wounds, but she would make it work somehow, because she was sure that if she left him for any reason, he would be gone when she returned, whether he was healed or not.
“You must keep still.” She tried not to flinch away when he turned dark eyes on her again, ones that warned he didn’t like her ordering him around.
He had been warm towards her once, and she had thought they were growing closer, that he was coming to desire her as someone who could bear him offspring. She wasn’t expecting him to pledge himself to her. She wasn’t a fool. Echelon were revered, and many of them had offspring with multiple females. Only the strongest of those offspring would be chosen to follow in their footsteps.
She was sure she could bear that child for him.
He stilled at last and stared at the floor again, his silver gaze distant and troubled as he watched something in the world beyond their realm. She carefully removed his armour, stripping it from him piece by piece, struggling to ignore the curiosity that built inside her as she set the limited parts of it aside. What had happened to the rest? Had the demons stripped it from him?
When the last of his armour was gone, she set to work, unabashed by his nudity. She had seen him naked countless times now, found his body quite alluring. She would go as far as saying his powerful physique delighted her, and would never admit it to anyone, but she had thought about it sometimes when she was alone in her small room. She pictured him to be a gentle lover despite his strength, attentive and tender.
His expression hardened, his black eyebrows dipping low above the straight line of his nose as he narrowed his gaze on something.
“What is it you watch? The demons?” She had never been so bold before.
Normally she remained as silent as possible so as not to disturb him. The fact she was speaking with him made her a little giddy, had the nerves she always felt around him rising to the fore to make her hands shake. She hoped he didn’t notice.
He shook his head. “The demons are dead… though I was not the one to kill them.”
Anger flared in his eyes, giving them a golden shimmer. It faded a moment later, his face softening in a way that drew a frown from her as she carefully cleaned his chest, moved closer to him than usual, so their bodies almost touched. What was he watching that calmed him so easily?
She didn’t possess the power to see the things he saw. If she turned her gaze to the mortal realm, she wouldn’t be able to locate the object that fascinated him and held his focus so completely.
She sponged over his hip, chased the watery rivulets of blood across his stomach, so low her palm brushed the trail of hair above his penis. Her heart thundered, courage faltering as her eyes leaped to his to measure his reaction.
He frowned.
Not quite what she had expected.
The females in her healing house spoke of the other Echelon, how they had been bedded by some of them, their touch arousing the males as they worked. She glanced at the Fourth Commander’s manhood. It hung flaccid and evidently uninterested in pursuing such wicked pastimes with her.
Perhaps it was because he was distracted by whatever he was watching.
“Is it your mission objective you are watching?” She weathered a curious glance from him and the following frown.
“No.” He returned his gaze to the floor. “Just do your work.”
She nodded, her courage failing her completely as his tone lashed at her, as he put her in her place with only a look and a handful of words. She moved behind him, finishing bathing him. When she was done with the healing water, she carefully dried him off, tending to every inch of him. Still no reaction.
He didn’t even acknowledge she had touch
ed him this time.
She was sure the Archangels intended her for him, so she wasn’t going to be deterred. Since realising their reasons for always choosing her for the Fourth Commander, she had been faithful to the male, had refused the advances of many others. She had saved herself for him.
She held her hands over the wounds on his back, using her gift to aid his healing process. The shallower slashes and punctures closed instantly, leaving his skin smooth and perfect again. The deeper ones drew grunts from him, his muscles tensing as his flesh stitched back together. She controlled the flow of her power, even though it drained her to do so, making it easier on him by slowing the healing so he didn’t experience the pain of it all at once.
And so she could spend longer with him.
Even though he wasn’t with her.
His gaze remained fixed on the floor. On something else. Someone else?
There were rumours about him floating around, ones spread by his own comrades. The half-breed wasn’t the reason he had been so distracted and distant recently. She pushed the painful thought of him with another female out of her mind. She had been chosen for him. He would sire her offspring, and she would make him love her. Somehow. She didn’t want him to be with other angels. She wanted him to need only her.
She moved around to his front, and he frowned and leaned to one side, peering past her. Staring at the damned floor.
“What holds your attention so fiercely?” She regretted that question the second it left her lips.
He didn’t look at her. “None of your business.”
“I need to heal your neck. Could you raise your head for me?” And break his gaze with the mortal realm in the process.
“No.” He tossed her a black look, one that chilled her as the air around him seemed to darken again. “Continue your work.”
She bit her tongue to stop herself from demanding he look at her and not whatever held his attention in the human world. Pain blossomed in her heart and she did her best to ignore it and the whispered taunts in her mind as she worked to heal his neck. It wasn’t a female. The rumours were lies. He was meant for her.
She was meant for him.
She leaned a little closer as she lifted her hands higher, attending to a cut on his earlobe. A frown flickered on his brow as she brushed her fingers over it, touching his skin. She trailed her hands down his strong neck, keeping contact with him for a change, something she had never done before when in the healing stage of tending to him.
He huffed, but didn’t order her to move away.
Her hands drifted lower, healing the smaller wounds on his chest first, and then skimming across the flat slabs of his pectorals to the gouges. She hovered her palms above the deep grooves, gentling her power so she was healing him slowly, painlessly. Not that he noticed.
His eyes were still locked on the infernal floor.
But they were brightening, turning gold as his pupils dilated.
Was she affecting him?
Emboldened by the thought she might be, she eased her hands lower, focusing on the wounds on his stomach, grazing her fingers over the relaxed muscles that were still pronounced beneath his skin.
His pupils dilated further.
Was this what her fellow healers had told her about? Surely that was desire in his eyes. Passion he might give to her if she continued to be brave.
She swallowed hard and forced her hands lower, to a wound that cut across his stomach below his navel.
His penis twitched.
Heat washed through her, startling and swift, and her pulse accelerated.
He lifted his hand, ran it over his mouth, and muttered, “Swimming again.”
He said those two words as if they were a curse, and she frowned as she tried to make sense of them. Swimming again?
“That damned two-piece.” He almost groaned the words as his manhood twitched again.
It hit her that he was watching a female. A human female. He was watching her while she was here with him, throwing the human and his evident desire for her in her face. No. No way. She was not going to let a human take him from her.
She stepped back, hastily untied the gold rope at her waist with trembling fingers, and tried not to shake as her white robe fell open, baring her curves to him.
His gaze finally shifted to her.
She pushed on, determined to conquer her fears, to overcome them because she couldn’t let that female have him. He was meant for her. She had been chosen for him. She let the robe fall from her shoulders, the soft material sending a shiver through her as it brushed her skin to pool around her feet.
The Fourth Commander stared at her. “What do you think you are doing?”
She was tempting him. She was going to win him. That was what she was doing.
She stepped close to him, pressed her body to his and gripped his shoulders, pulled herself up on her tiptoes and kissed him. Electricity arced through her, the taste of him divine and the heat of his lips against hers a drug she wanted to indulge in forever. She moaned and kissed him deeper, sweeping her lips over his, stroking them with her tongue, a fever wracking her as she worked her body closer to his.
His hands clamped around her hips.
To draw her closer?
She shivered at the thought, aching for it.
He shoved her away from him.
To take her to his bed?
She looked up at his face, sure she would find the heat of desire in his eyes now.
They were glacial, the coldness of them hitting her hard, destroying the courage that had been blooming inside her.
He stooped, picked up her robe, and looked as if he wanted to hurl it at her as his expression blackened, his lips compressing into a thin line and his eyes growing dark. He hesitated, drew down a deep breath, and then carefully wrapped the robe around her instead, pulling it closed over her chest.
She caught the sides of it, her eyes burning and shame eating away at her as she slipped her arms into it and tied it over her body.
That shame became anger, rage as she had never known it, when he spoke.
“Leave and forget this foolishness.” His voice was as cold as his eyes.
She obeyed the order to leave, gathering her healing items and racing for the door, trembling from head to toe, but she wouldn’t forget him. She wouldn’t give up on him.
She couldn’t.
He was meant for her.
And she wouldn’t let the mortal bitch have him.
CHAPTER 25
Zephyr turned the demon away, tempted to rip him to pieces for bringing him no new information on Emelia. He had four in his service, all mercenaries from different kingdoms, all after his gold. He had promised the one who found her that he could take whatever he desired from the hoard hidden deep in his network of caves. The incentive had been enough to have six demons pledging themselves to him.
Two had died. One in an altercation with the angel in Hell when he had been attempting to listen in on a conversation. The other after he had returned to report that fact to Zephyr and had admitted to not assisting the male and allowing the angel to leave.
The angel wanted Zephyr dead.
Zephyr wanted the angel dead.
The demon had been given a chance to eliminate the male and had fled instead. So now, the demon was dead. The message it had sent to the remaining four demons had certainly spurred them into action, although apparently none of them had personally encountered the angel since their comrade had been reduced to a smouldering pile of ash by him.
Wilhelm, a demon from the Third Realm, had balls as big as they came as he strode forwards with purpose, his dusky horns flaring into twin daggers through his thick chestnut hair as he exchanged a look with the demon Zephyr had just dismissed. The male’s deep red eyes tracked his opponent, not leaving him until the other demon, one from the Fifth Realm, had teleported.
That demon had a problem with Wilhelm that stemmed from what Wilhelm called ‘ridiculous loyalty to a pathetic kingdom’. The
two realms had been at war recently and although they were mercenaries and neither had fought in the battle between the Third Realm and the Fifth Realm, the demon bore a grudge against Wilhelm.
Zephyr couldn’t really understand that. He had fought in that war, his dragon clan hired by the Fifth Realm. He felt no anger towards Wilhelm and was inclined to agree with the male’s view of the kingdom. The Fifth Realm was pathetic. It had lost the war despite having a larger force, and the clan had lost many dragons in the process.
At least Ren had demanded the coin up front. It had been enough to add to the hoard of every warrior.
On top of that, Zephyr had found his mate.
That was worth almost as much to him as the gold.
Wilhelm brazenly strode towards him, not stopping at a meek distance like the others had. He didn’t stop until he was almost toe to toe with Zephyr and refused to cower, kept his chin tipped up and shoulders straight. In a fight, Zephyr could take the male if needed, but the demon was strong, broad bare chest packed with muscle and legs like tree trunks in his tight mahogany leathers. The male had twice his build.
In this form.
As a dragon, Zephyr would stand fifty feet taller than the demon even if he entered a rage state, and could crush him like a bug beneath his paws.
Wilhelm reminded Zephyr why he was his favourite.
“I found her.”
Just like the demon to announce something so important in a brusque, blunt way. The others would have embellished a little, built him up with a tale of their travels before announcing their success. Not Wilhelm. He said things straight.
The demon offered another reminder.
Sometimes, that wasn’t a good thing.
“She was fucking an angel at some fancy country estate.”
Zephyr growled and bared his teeth as they all sharpened into points.
“Think it’s his?” Wilhelm pulled a thoughtful face.
“I don’t give a shit if the house is his, or hers,” he snarled in the demon tongue and stepped up to the male, glaring right into the bastard’s eyes. “Tell me where this was.”
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