He peered over his wing, his silver gaze locking with hers, as if he wanted to gauge her reaction. “Nine hundred and twenty-four.”
“Fuck, you’re old.” She smiled when he looked affronted. “Puts my thirty-six years into perspective. I thought I was getting old. Now I feel like a spring chicken.”
He glowered at her and went back to his wing, evading again. “These tufts at the bend are alula, and these are scapulars.”
“They look soft.” She reached up and ran her hand over one, delighted when they were as soft as they appeared, and over the fact she was finding it easy to touch his wings now, as if it was perfectly natural for her to be doing such a thing.
Which was such a relief that her throat closed up. She picked up her soda again and took a mouthful, hiding in the can as she swallowed it because she didn’t want him to see how this was affecting her. She had been so convinced she would never know normal again that it was all a little too much for her to handle.
Wolf furled his wings against his back, so they draped across the paving behind her, and swigged his drink, his feathers quivering less this time. He stared off into the distance, mercury eyes reflecting the sunset as it intensified, the entire sky above the distant woods turning pink and gold.
Emelia studied his profile, unable to take her eyes off him. They were so different. He was closing in on a thousand years old, was an immortal warrior, and his seven-foot frame made her feel like a damned dwarf, but she had never felt closer to anyone in all her limited years.
She had never felt so comfortable around a man.
“It is beautiful here.” He sighed and rested the can on his knee.
It was, and she appreciated it more for having been in Hell, a world without colour and light, and life. Did he feel the same way now that he had been there?
“Wolf?” She swirled her can around in her right hand, her eyes on it now as she thought about that realm and his reason for going there.
Not the dragon.
He was doing it for her.
“Yes?” His gaze landed on her, sending heat dancing over her skin.
She tripped on her words. “I… could you… just… I won’t tell you not to… but know that I don’t want you to go back there.”
He was right, and she couldn’t tell him what to do any more than he could tell her what to do. His need was as strong as the one that beat inside her whenever she was feeling brave, was able to think about Zephyr and facing him without crumbling into a pathetic weak little thing that just wanted to hide and cower somewhere.
He wanted to make the dragon pay.
He just wasn’t afraid as she was, not even of going into a place that apparently hurt him. He faced that pain and bore it, endured it so he could fulfil the desire drumming inside him.
“Emelia,” he started and then looked away from her, and she appreciated him not lying to her. Telling her he wouldn’t go just to please her and offer her relief, and then going back to that place would hurt her more than the thought of him entering Hell again. She didn’t want him to lie to her. “Would you like to fly? I mean, if you wanted, I could—”
“Hell, no!” She weathered his glare as his head swivelled towards her. “It’s just, no thanks. I don’t like flying in planes… The thought of flying… Can your wings even support the weight of two?”
He casually hiked his shoulders. “I believe they could. They can easily carry me, and you cannot weigh much. You’re such a slender, petite thing.”
She mirrored his glare. “I’m not petite.”
She supposed she was compared with his seven-foot frame, but she had managed to hit the average height for a woman. Just. Considering her mother had been petite, she was counting her blessings. If she had come out five or six inches shorter, she would have felt ridiculously tiny when standing near Wolf and not just tiny.
“It’s not my fault immortal genes make men stupidly tall,” she grumbled into her can.
The corners of his profane lips curled into a shadow of a smile. “All male angels are tall, but the warrior class are the tallest.”
“You’re considered warrior class?” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, could easily see why he would be with his carved muscles and impressive physique and the calluses she hadn’t missed on his hands that said he wielded weapons a lot. “Like me?”
That shadow of a smile became a full-blown grin.
It devastated her.
Tore down her defences in a skipped heartbeat.
He was gorgeous when he smiled like that, his silver eyes shining brightly with it.
“A warrior?” He chuckled as he looked at her. “Perhaps in your world. In mine, the males would think you play at being something you are not.”
“Well, that’s nice,” she snapped with a frown. “Now I know Heaven is severely lacking in equality, I definitely don’t want to go there.”
He shrugged again. “You could not venture there anyway. The entry points into my realm have been sealed to all outside my breed for centuries, since long before I was born.”
“You couldn’t even sneak me past the pearly gates?” She swayed towards him and stopped herself when she realised she meant to nudge him with her arm, a silly gesture meant to cajole him into playing along with her, but one that probably would have had his eyes glowing gold again.
And her heart missing another beat.
“There are no pearly gates, and Heaven is what mortals call it. Like Hell. Mortal terms, used to make it easier to communicate with your kind.”
“Is it made of white fluffy clouds?”
He chuckled, the warm sound of it like a shot of the finest whisky, smoky and decadent, and filling her with a gentle heat that melted her worries away again.
“It is mostly white, that much is true, but it is not clouds. Like Hell, it is a solid plane, with mountains and forests that surround the cities. Creatures roam it. There are roads and farmsteads and many things you have in this world.”
“So it’s nega-Hell?”
He arched an eyebrow.
“Like a negative version of Hell? Hell is all black, and Heaven is all white?”
He rolled his shoulders again. “The sky is blue.”
She tilted her head back and looked at her sky. It was growing dark now, and faint pinpricks of stars were emerging.
“You have stars there.” It was a statement, not a question, and he looked at her, a flicker of a frown dancing on his dark eyebrows. She pinned her gaze back on the heavens again. “When we met on the rooftop of Archangel, you said you preferred the view of the stars from my world.”
“I do.” He leaned back, resting his elbows on the flagstones, and stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankles. “The days are longer where I come from, and I am always busy when I am there. Here in this world, I have time to stop and look.”
“It’s important to do that.” She lowered her gaze to him and didn’t look away when their eyes locked. “To stop and look. To take a breath to see the world around you… The leaves as they emerge in spring, or flowers that blanket a summer meadow, the snow as it falls, or the stars in the sky. We only get one life. It’s important to take in as much of the world while we can and not rush headlong through our years only to end them never seeing anything.”
She chuckled and shook her head.
“Look at me… lecturing an angel on the importance of taking a moment to take in the world before it’s too late. You’re a bloody thousand years old.”
“Nine hundred and twenty-four,” he corrected as his eyebrows dipped low above his swirling mercury gaze.
“That’s probably eight hundred and fifty more than I’ll ever see.”
Something crossed his eyes, a shadow that darkened them, and she wanted to know what he was thinking as he looked away from her, gazing up at the emerging stars again.
The air between them cooled like the day as it turned to night, and she wished she could take back what she had said, because it clearly troubl
ed him. He wasn’t the only one who had thought about the fact he was immortal and she was just mortal. He wasn’t the only one it troubled.
Even if they were to end up together, how long would it be before he moved on? She was going to age, and as far as she knew, he wouldn’t. Or at least he would do it extremely slowly. She gave it no more than ten years before he traded her in for a younger model, probably one who was immortal like him.
For some reason, that made her heart sting. She rubbed the sore spot between her breasts, trying to ignore the ache and how hopeless she suddenly felt, deflated when just a moment ago, she had been filled with life and light, and everything had felt wonderful for the first time in what felt like forever.
“Emelia?” he murmured, his voice distant in her ears. “If you could live forever, would you?”
She pursed her lips as she considered that. “Who wouldn’t want more years? All those things you wanted to do and never found the time… You could do them. You could see the world change, explore it all, touch a thousand lives. What human wouldn’t want more time? I’d be crazy to say no.”
“But I mean… if it was possible for you to become immortal.”
That sounded less pipedream and more serious, so she looked down at him, studying his face as he studied the stars, diligently keeping his eyes away from her. Did he know a way to become immortal? Would she want to go through with it if he did?
She returned her focus to the stars, thinking about it as she traced patterns in the sky, linking the brightening pinpricks.
If she had a chance to live forever, would she take it?
Sable had become immortal when she had mated with Thorne. Olivia had gone through the same transition.
But they had been fated mates.
Born for each other.
“I don’t know.” Because she honestly didn’t.
If she remained mortal, Wolf might leave her when she grew old or got a few wrinkles and things started sagging, but that pain would be short-lived, over in a matter of years when her life came to a close.
If she became immortal and Wolf left her for some reason, she would have to face centuries of living with the idea the man she loved had abandoned her.
She tensed.
The man she loved?
Was it already too late to save herself?
She had wanted to find a way to guard her heart against him, had thought she had more time.
She traced the noble lines of Wolf’s profile, heart hitching as she thought about her feelings and how deep they ran.
She loved him.
This wasn’t good.
She couldn’t love him, couldn’t love an immortal. Their relationship was doomed from the start. She fought to stifle the hurt that caused, but it bloomed in her chest, swift and fierce, stealing her breath. He said he didn’t want to hurt her, and she didn’t want that either, but just the thought of falling harder for him and having him leave her when she was too old cut her deep. It wasn’t the only source of her pain, though. Even if he didn’t leave her, their love would only destroy one of them. The thought of him having to watch her age, seeing her change and fade, knowing he would lose her in the span of only a few decades, tore at her too.
“I fear I have outstayed my welcome.” He pushed to his feet, the air around him cold and darker than before.
Emelia struggled to find her voice to ask him not to go, not to leave her, not yet.
He took a slow step backwards, and the pain in her heart grew as she realised he was distancing himself from her, bringing up a wall between them to shut her out. Why? It wasn’t the first time he had done it, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. Why did he feel the need to close himself off to her?
Or perhaps he just closed off the softer parts of himself.
She looked at him, studying the hard planes of his face and his impassive silver eyes as he stared down at her.
“Emelia.” He dipped his head, those cold eyes slashing her heart to pieces, and then he was gone.
She blinked, stared at the spot where he had been, and wasn’t sure whether she wanted to scream out her frustration or curl into a ball and hold herself.
“What makes you pull away?” She tugged her knees up to her chest and held them.
She thought back over everything that had happened today, how he had reacted at times, darkness emerging in his eyes and sucking the warmth from the air, and how withdrawn he had become whenever she hadn’t been speaking, holding his focus.
Cold danced down her spine, chilling her blood.
Was Hell affecting him worse than he had let on? Had he left because their conversation had pained him, or because he needed to go back to Hell and continue his hunt?
Was he hiding things from her?
She didn’t want that. She worried about him enough as it was without him concealing things from her. How badly did Hell affect angels?
Enough to turn him from good to evil?
Fallen angels roamed Hell and called it home. Could spending too much time in that realm, exposed to all the darkness it contained, cause Wolf to fall?
A fiery lance speared her heart at that thought and she shot to her feet and strode over to the table, her eyes on the phone resting on top of her fleece.
She needed answers.
And she knew Wolf wouldn’t give them to her, would skirt around the issue to keep her from worrying and from demanding he give up his mission to avenge her.
So she would get them from Sable.
Her friend had mentioned an angel in London, one she had been to see when her, Thorne and Bleu had been shut out of the Third Realm during the war. One who Sable had been frequently visiting in the past few weeks as she tried to learn more about the world her father had been part of. Sable would be able to answer her questions, and if she couldn’t, Emelia would ask her to introduce her to the fallen angel.
She dialled Underworld, the nightclub where Sable had been hiding out between her visits to Hell and the angel.
“Yello,” a deep male voice growled at the other end of the line.
Kyter. The big jaguar shifter owned Underworld and had seemed nice enough the few times she had met him.
“It’s Emelia. I need to speak with Sable.”
Glass clinked and someone muttered obscenities in the background. Kyter covered the receiver, and she couldn’t make out what he said as he shouted at them.
She gripped the phone harder, waiting impatiently as an argument erupted. As it subsided, the line crackled again, and Kyter’s voice came through loud and clear.
“She’s not here right now, but I can relay a message when she drops in.”
She let out the breath she had been holding and sucked another in for courage when she thought about how angry Wolf might be with her for meeting her friend and probing into his life as an angel, let alone the fact she was going to meet Sable when he probably still wanted to fulfil his mission to bring her in for the Echelon.
He could be mad at her all he wanted.
Sable was her friend, and she would protect her.
Wolf was her everything, and she would protect him too, even if it was from himself.
“Tell her I really need to meet her.”
A loud crash sounded at the other end of the line.
Kyter growled something at someone else and then gruffly spoke to her.
“Tell her yourself. Her idiot mate just landed on one of my tables with her.”
CHAPTER 18
Emelia sat at the long black bar of Underworld, the music quiet as the place dialled down for the evening. She had driven straight from her home to the heart of London, the thought of seeing Sable and getting everything off her chest while learning more about angels too alluring to deny.
For once in her life, she wanted to talk to someone. She needed it.
She sipped her whisky, savouring the smokiness and smoothness of it as it reminded her of Wolf and the way he had laughed. That laugh had been just as intoxicating as the drink, and s
he wanted to hear it again, and feared she wouldn’t if she let him continue his vendetta.
“Another?” Sherry asked as she reached her and stopped cleaning the bar top.
She had a lot in common with Sherry. They were both human and they both knew that immortals existed, and neither of them were particularly bothered by it.
The blonde swept her ponytail behind her as she straightened, and grumbled something as she pressed her hands into the small of her back and arched forwards, causing her white shirt to tighten across her breasts.
Her warm blue eyes turned cold as a man hollered something in her direction.
Sherry saluted him with her middle finger. “Rowdy fuckers.”
Kyter paused as he came out from the back of the bar with a box in his arms, his face darkening and eyes brightening to a shade of gold that matched his wild short hair as he looked from Sherry to the man.
“He bothering you?” he growled and narrowed his gaze.
His muscles tensed beneath his tight white shirt as he flexed his fingers against the cardboard box.
The man made a fast exit.
“Nah.” Sherry waved her hand down through the air. “Just tired of getting catcalls whenever I stretch. It’s not my fault I’m blessed with boobs.”
Emelia wished someone had blessed her with them. She looked down at her own meagre offering, hidden beneath the loose black T-shirt and leather jacket she had thrown on before jumping in her car.
She shut out the voice at the back of her mind before it could wonder whether Wolf liked large breasts or not.
Sherry and Kyter both looked towards the entrance of the club. Emelia glanced there too, the hope building inside her turning into something else as she saw it wasn’t Sable.
It was Anais.
And she had the feeling the fair-haired huntress wasn’t here for a nightcap.
Anais pulled a face that was half apology, half grimace as she slid onto the stool beside Emelia.
“Sable isn’t coming,” Emelia said for her, sparing her the job of having to break the news to her. “She sent you.”
“Yeah.” Anais accepted the whisky that Sherry poured for her and offered another apologetic look, her dark blue eyes overflowing with it and concern. “She said you wanted to talk about a problem.”
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