Veiled Guardian: A Borne of Angels Novel (The Awakening Book 1)

by Leigha Wolffe

  “What took you so long? Are your many long years wearing on you finally, Brother?” Firin’s voice gave nothing away, but his mouth was ever so slightly turned up at one corner.

  “It took us quite some time to get through their wards. They are incredibly strong. Plus, Brother, we hadn’t expected a mating. We tried to be respectful,” Aodh replied sarcastically, earning a wide grin from Firin, and a wide-eyed gaze from Jade.

  She turned her head slowly to look at me, then her mouth dropped open. “Oh, my gods, goddesses, nephilim and the Entity! Alex!”

  Here it came. I had watched my bff bang her boy toy against a tree outside our borrowed home, and she’d just realized it. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened!”

  “You’re sorry?! Ugh! Alex…” she dropped her head into her hands and covered her face. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I forget sometimes how new all this is to you. I got so wrapped up in finally getting to consummate my bond with Firin in this form. I can’t believe I did that to you. The magic when we’re together is overpowering. It’s stronger the longer we’ve been apart, and we haven’t consummated in two generations. That’s why the vampires had to keep their distance. If it had affected them, they’d have gone into a total frenzy. A sex and feeding frenzy is, admittedly, not the worst way to go, but I didn’t know they were all here or I would never have… Can you forgive me?”

  “Honestly, Jade, it didn’t look like you had much of a choice.” I laughed, which calmed her fractionally, but she still turned on Firin with a murderous gleam in her eyes.

  “I can’t believe you did that knowing they were out there and my human best friend was standing here!” She backhanded his arm for good measure.

  “Darling, I was hardly alone out there, and I had no more control over myself than you did,” he rumbled gently. “The draw to you is greater with each new generation. Besides, your friend is hardly human, now is she?” he hedged.

  Everyone turned to look at me. Everyone. And I heard the vampire behind me move infinitesimally closer and inhale deeply. Jesus, has this guy never heard of personal space? I rounded on him in a horrified outrage, prepared to teach him a lesson or two on the subject.

  “Did you just sniff me, A—” I never finished the name, rendered speechless as I took in his porcelain skin, crystal green eyes, and his ethereally beautiful face, framed by blood red hair.

  “It’s Aiden, love.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “From the club—”

  “I remember. The friend of Jade’s...” Admittedly, an eye roll got away from me that time, as I turned to face Jade and Firin, but it felt deserved. “You could’ve warned me.” I shot to Jade, but she just smiled devilishly. I took a deep breath to dull the sound of irritation in my voice, but I was still speaking through gritted teeth. “You’re not a vampire at all. You’re a Dark Nephilim. A ‘very old’ friend. I get it. Cute joke. And did you seriously just sniff me again?!”

  “I did, love. Can’t seem to help myself. You smell divine,” Aiden whispered into my hair.

  I turned back to tell him off, but he was so close to me, it just put us face to face. Actually, he was so much taller than me that it was more like chest to face, so I had to look up at the perfection staring down at me, and I forgot why I turned around.

  I’d been so focused on Ash the first time we’d met that I hadn’t really been able to appreciate the richness of his masculine beauty. His eyes were a bright, crystal green, like the pictures I’d seen of the ocean in the Thailand. His skin was pale and smooth giving it an almost luminous quality in the moonlight. He was built like an MMA fighter, too. Strong but long and lean, muscular beyond belief but not bulky. He stood more than a head taller than me, putting him at well over six feet tall—maybe six foot, six inches—with dark crimson hair. He spoke with the same not-quite-British accent I remembered, and I was no closer to identifying it, but it seemed to roll out of his chest like thunder and I could feel the vibrations all the way into my bones.

  “I’d wager you taste just as divine, love. I know I made you angry the night we met, but I have not been able to stop thinking about you. That is how we found you here, Firin’s draw to the Goddess, and the draw I felt to you.” He dipped his face to my shoulder and traced his nose along my neck, inhaling deeply, and making my entire body tingle and shudder, and I sighed.

  Then I could feel it happening, the burning in my eyes and a sharp pain near my shoulder blades as my wings exploded out of my back… and a glowing sword appeared in my right hand.

  I heard gasps all around, and there was suddenly a lot more space between me and the crowd of nephilim and vampires. The only people who hadn’t fled across the yard were Jade, Firin and Aiden.

  Firin had taken a defensive position in front of his beloved, staring suspiciously at the sword in my hand. When he finally dared to look away from it, he looked up at me and barely more than whispered, “She bears an angelic blade…”

  Aiden seemed oblivious to the sword—and to the other people surrounding us—but was staring at my wings with wonder and something that looked a little like longing. He finally broke whatever spell he seemed to have been under and whispered over all the nervous murmurs of the crowd, “What is this magic?”

  Jade, who was watching all this blatantly entertained, no modicum of subtlety, just chuckled and pushed her way out from behind Firin. “Now, that is a long-ass story.”

  Not even broken by the chorus of breaths a group this size would usually create—since the collection of vampires and nephilim standing before me didn’t actually have to breathe—the silence in the wake of our interaction was deeper than I’d ever experienced before. It was eerie, like a soundproof bubble. Outside our clearing the forest was alive. Crickets chirped, small animals shimmied through the underbrush, birds settled in their nests for the night, leaves rustled in a gentle evening breeze, a nearby lake lapped at the shoreline and streams rushed eagerly toward their final destinations. Within the clearing around the house it was like a vacuum, a breath of utter silence.

  “That sounds like a story I’d like to hear.” Firin was the first to disrupt the enchantment that had fallen over us, as Aiden continued to gape in fascination, at my wings. “You are not as we are, but similar. I sense great age and power, yet you smell of youth, innocence”—he paused briefly as a flash of pain stole across his usually serene countenance, and he gasped—“and angels. Your angelic nature, it—”

  “Calls to me,” Aiden finished for him, no longer bewitched by my wings. Instead, his eyes bore into mine as though within me might lie the final vestiges of all he had lost, of all they had once been. “It commands me. I felt it the night we first met but not to this extent. It’s stronger now. You’re stronger. What madness is this, that I find a haven for my eternal soul in the eyes of one so young? I would give my life to serve you, mistress. To save you but one iota of suffering, I would sacrifice all my long years.”

  I had somehow missed Aiden moving closer to me, during his soliloquy. He stood before me, now close enough that our breaths mingled in the cold night air. For a second, I thought he was going to kiss me. For a second, I wanted him to.

  “You have bewitched me,” he whispered. “And were I able to undo it, I would not. My life is yours.”

  I leaned toward him, but Aiden dropped back away from me, landing on one knee, a number of the rest of the group following suit. Like a fairytale, they knelt, and I was as humbled as I was confused. When had this become my life?

  “You don’t even know me,” I breathed. The world seemed to have shrunk down to a miniscule size, and Aiden and I were all that seemed to be left of it. “You don’t know what I am… or what I’ve done.”

  “It matters not. We have all done unspeakable things, things for which we must atone. We are all monsters here, and you are our queen.”

  More and more of their group had taken a knee until there were only a few left standing, including Firin. Being the consort of a goddess, I so
rt of figured he was immune to whatever it was that had brought the others to their knees. I turned to my friend and her lover for an explanation, but they were staring at one another.

  “Could it be, my love?” Firin whispered to Jade.

  “It’s possible. The possibility the two prophecies were about the same person never occurred to me. I just assumed it was two different prophecies and therefore two different people. The Vampire Queen has nothing to do with the Veil or the apocalypse,” Jade responded clearly, but her tone lacked her signature confidence. “I mean, it didn’t seem to, but...”

  Firin stretched his neck taut and grew very still, like a deer suddenly on alert. “If she is then we have to rethink everything we know about both prophecies.” He turned his head sharply to me, and I stiffened in response. “Everything.”

  Undeterred from her path by anything happening around her, as always, Jade continued, “Firin, you need to stop for a moment. Listen, focus. Can you feel her call? Is it her?”

  Please, say no. Please, say no. Please, say no.

  “Yes.”

  Fuck.

  Firin, followed by the rest of the massive group, dropped to his knees as Jade stared at me wondrously. Through all this madness, she had never looked at me like I was no longer me until that moment, and I felt acutely the sudden loss of that bit of normalcy as she stared at me with the tiniest bit of fear.

  I hadn’t been a part of this world long, so I’d really only been privy to the one prophecy, and even that I haven’t heard in its entirety. The idea that there was more than one prophecy hanging over my head was a bit much to digest. I knew I didn’t want to know the answer to this next question, but I knew I had to ask.

  “Who or what is the Vampire Queen?”

  Epilogue

  Andrew

  It was dark. Cold. I remembered pain, fear, teeth, and claws. My surroundings lightened infinitesimally, and blurry shapes and colors became visible.

  “He’s waking up. Maybe we weren’t too late, after all,” an airy, bell-like voice whispered.

  “Do you think he’ll make the transition safely?” asked a second voice, this one gravelly and deep but just as pleasant. “Nothing seems to be happening.”

  “We’ve done everything we can. All we can do now is wait. It’s just lucky we found him when we did.”

  “He was trapped in Shadow for a long time. But he’s strong. Really strong…” the gravelly voice whispered, an awkward tenderness coloring his tone. “I just don’t know how she hid him for so long.”

  “A mother’s love, they say.”

  “What would you know of it?” the deeper voice snapped, growing suddenly harsh.

  “Nothing, I suppose. Do you think he’ll remember anything?”

  As soon as he said it, I began searching the depths of my mind, desperately trying to find something useful. There were shadows of memories, but they were thin and difficult to grasp.

  “I don’t know. Halflings are usually brought here so young that they have no lasting memories, no deep attachments. We’ve never brought one in this old, but hopefully, the change will eradicate most of it.”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  “We just have to hope it does. He’s very strong. We’ll need him for what’s coming—Wait, look. It’s happening. He’s starting to change.”

  The voices began to blend together, and the words stopped making sense. What little I could see of the world began to spin and glow, colors swirled around me, through me, and then I felt a heat in my belly that grew, intensified until it felt like my whole body was on fire. I tried to scream, but my mouth and lungs wouldn’t work. I couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t draw breath, and the inferno only grew until all that existed was pain.

  “He’s not gonna make it,” one of them whispered, or at least it sounded like a whisper. Everything was growing quiet, and I couldn’t even tell which of them was speaking anymore. Then the pain disappeared, and one of them yelled, and then there was a bang as something heavy slammed into something else, but it was all quiet, distant and muffled. Everything began to slip away, allowing my body to relax in its wake, and my mind cleared for a moment. I could feel the blackness reaching for me, claiming me, and as I succumbed once again to the dark and the cold, one memory leapt forth, clear and strong.

  Alex.

  Something about that word… No, not a word. A name. It filled me with strength, not just the will to survive but the need. I surged forth from the depths, clawing my way out of the darkness and back toward the light, and finally reaching it, I opened my eyes.

  “He’s back!” the girl gasped, and I heard the sound of footsteps rushing closer as she leaned over me, checking me over with wide eyes full of wonder and fear.

  “By the gods, he made it!” said the man from my other side, and I turned to look at him. He smiled, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. “Welcome back, boy. And welcome to the Wild Hunt.”

  “Alex.”