by Alisa Woods
She recovered faster, perhaps because his lovemaking had truly brought back her joy. This man—this good and righteous man—was the father of the child inside her. She was imperfect, but she carried perfection—her angel nature—as her birthright. Between them, they couldn’t have formed anything less than the spotless soul she felt pulsing inside her womb. So come what may in the dark future ahead, Leksander was right—if she could survive this, if she was strong enough to give this baby life, then she would have done something good.
She wouldn’t doubt it again.
Erelah edged up on her side and curled up next to Leksander’s splayed body. His eyes were still closed, and her light touch on his chest—just fingertips resting there—seemed to jolt him awake.
“Have I exhausted you, dragon prince?” She grinned. In truth, he did all the work. But she could fix that next time.
A slow smile spread across his face, then he opened his eyes and slid a sideways glance to her. “Is that an invitation?”
“I think you are too sluggish with pleasure.” She sat upright on the bed.
He scowled at her. “Sluggish?”
“The bed has made you soft,” she teased, edging up onto her knees. “And slow.” She twisted fast and scrambled off the bed. His hands closed on her bottom to yank her back, but she slipped from his grasp. She heard his growl but didn’t look back as she dashed to the furthest corner from the bed, up against the conjured rock wall that blocked the mouth of the cave.
He was right behind her, and when she turned, he grabbed her wrists and pinned them above her head to the wall. “Slow?” he growled, a wicked smile on his face. “I’ll show you slow.”
That promise of sweet torment was almost too good to pass up. Still, she was tempted to pulse a little angel power and blast him across the room, just to make him work for it.
But then the wall shook behind her. At the same time, something boomed.
Blank surprise took over her face.
Leksander stepped back, eyes wide. “What was that?”
She shook her head, rapidly, and fear seized her.
Leksander waved a hand at the rocky wall, wiping it from existence. The white curtain lay in shreds, charred on the floor.
And beyond the mouth of the cave lay a horrible destruction.
Holy shit. For a moment, Leksander was frozen in place.
Then he rushed forward to the mouth of the cave, remembering at the last moment to stop before getting burned by its magical electric energy.
Outside, chaos filled the skies. Swarms of shadow angelings, their dark wings glistening in the sun, dipped and wove in the air above the canyon. The rocky walls on either side were likewise coated with black-winged creatures clinging to the rock, awaiting their turn to take flight. The dragons of the House of Smoke… his brothers… they were nowhere to be seen.
Then Leksander spied a black dragon, broken and bloodied, being carried by two shadow angels just before they flipped in the air and disappeared—carrying that dragon off to some horrible fate in the shadow realm.
“Nooo!” Leksander shouted his frustration, but that only caught the attention of one of the shadow angels. He paused mid-air, baring his teeth, which were filed to sharp points. He had an unearthly beauty, like all the angelings—shadow or light—but the snarl and the teeth and the twisted, black tattoos across his chest turned him into a terror. Then he rushed at the cave—
Leksander stumbled back, catching Erelah behind him and pulling her close.
The shadow angel bashed into the wards at full speed—and bounced. He shrieked, and a trail of sparks and smoke tumbled with him to the bottom of the canyon.
“Leksander.” Erelah’s voice trembled. She was clutching her stomach.
“What’s wrong?” The terror that gripped him now had nothing to do with the shadow angelings outside and everything to do with the angeling he loved.
“The baby.” Her deep scowl reached inside him and carved its mark. “It is…” She searched for the word. “Angry.”
What? Leksander gripped her shoulders and tugged her back from the cave mouth. They were both still naked, so he quickly conjured clothes. “What do you mean?”
Erelah was rubbing her belly. Her eyes had fallen shut. “It’s all right,” she murmured. “They cannot harm you.” She was speaking to their baby, reassuring him.
“They can’t penetrate the wards,” he assured her… and the baby. Somehow, the tiny thing had been upset by what was happening outside. Or maybe the baby sensed that Erelah was upset. Either way, Leksander was freaking out enough for the both of them… and he needed to keep his head about this.
Then another boom rocked the cave, vibrating the floor and stirring the dust.
Erelah’s eyes popped open and scanned the chaos outside.
Then Leksander saw what the swarms of angelings were trying to accomplish. They were picking up rocks—boulders really—and carrying them to the top of the canyon, above the cave… and then dropping them.
“Holy shit,” he whispered, his brain stunned once again.
Both his brothers, gone. A dozen of the House of Smoke’s best warriors, gone. Who the hell knew what happened to Tajael. And now these shadow anglings were trying to bomb their way into his cave.
“How close are we to the top?” Erelah asked quickly.
“Too close.” He scoured his memories. “Maybe twenty feet of rock? Maybe less.” Shit! Why hadn’t he found someplace more secure?
“We have to leave.” But her eyes were as wide as his.
“We can’t leave!” Leksander scrubbed his face. Think. What could they do?
“You drop the wards, and I open a door—”
“It’s too risky.”
Another boom rocked the cave. “This is too risky!”
Oh, fuck. She was probably right, but holy, magic, this had gone bad fast.
Even though they were further back in the cave, they had caught the attention of two more angelings. One flew at them, headlong, like the first had, only to be knocked senseless by the wards. The second hovered in front of the cave opening, studying it… and them. Then he spread his wings and lifted out of sight.
“That’s not good.” Leksander bit his lip then turned to Erelah. “You don’t even have a blade, my love.”
“It matters not,” she replied quickly. “If I have to fight with a blade, we are lost. The numbers are too great.” She grimaced. “And I recognize this Regiment.”
Leksander nodded. “The tattoos are the same. These are Elyon’s angelings.” Elyon was the sworn enemy of Razael, Erelah’s angel father, who turned shadow at her conception. Elyon already had a special interest in Erelah and had tried to kill her once. At least once.
“If his angelings are here, he cannot be far behind,” Erelah said.
Another swarm of anglings caught their attention. The black-winged creatures were working together, carrying what looked like a tree between them, barreling down the canyon.
“What the fuck are they doing?” Leksander asked, mouth gaping.
“They are…” Erelah gasped. “They are coming here.”
The cohort of angelings was picking up speed, and it was clear they intended to ram the invisible wards with this massive uprooted tree they had scavenged from somewhere in the forest. But the wards were only meant to keep out immortal beings and magic. Not flying missile trees. “Look out!” he shouted, but Erelah had already unfurled her wings and leaped to the top of the cave, jumping free of the path of the tree. At the last instant, Leksander scrambled to conjure a rock wall to block it. The trunk of the tree sailed into the cave, roots first—the wall formed a fraction of a second too late, slicing the tree in half. The massive root ball crashed in Leksander, carrying him to smash into the back wall. The force was a fraction of what it would have been with the full tree, but it was still so hard that he nearly blacked out. Both he and the mass of roots slumped to the floor.
He was dazed at first but managed to shove it off then sc
ramble on hands and knees through the mess. “Erelah!” He climbed over the root tangle, searching for her. “Erelah!” There was no answer, but the damn wall was in the way. He waved it away, revealing a tree explosion in the front half of the cave. Erelah was standing at the front in a corner made by the wards and the massive tree trunk, which was sticking right through them. She was apparently unharmed—thank God—but she was talking to someone just outside.
A shadow angeling.
What the fuck? “Don’t listen to him!” Leksander yelled out as he climbed over roots and shattered tree pieces, bracing himself against the trunk that crowded the cave. He struggled to keep his footing as he made his way to the front.
The shadow angeling flicked a look to him, dropped something at the edge of the cave, and then lifted off. For a moment, Leksander could see dark markings in long stripes across his back. Not the normal tattoos, these looked like healed-over wounds, ropy and jagged. The angeling soared up out of view.
“Are you okay?” Leksander asked Erelah when he reached her, his hands automatically gripping her shoulders, his gaze scanning her body. But she didn’t have a scratch.
“I’m fine,” she said tersely. “But we must leave, Leksander.”
“Who the hell was that?” he asked, jerking his thumb toward the shadow angeling who just left.
“He is Elyon’s son.” When his eyes bugged out, she added, “His name is Micah. He helped free me from his father before.”
Leksander scowled. “I thought Tajael rescued you.”
“Him as well.” She peered down at the lip of the cave, just outside the wards. “But we can trust Micah. He paid a price for his help, one he knew was coming. He has a pure heart, even in shadow. And besides… he has brought me a blade.”
Leksander followed her gaze. Sure enough, there was a black-as-midnight angel blade on the narrow ledge. “Why would he do that?”
She frowned. “I don’t really understand it. But he does not wish to follow Elyon’s ways.”
Leksander shook his head. Whatever. The masses of shadow angelings were still churning the sky. “Even with a blade, I don’t know about this, my love.” He knew what she wanted—to lower the wards and run. “Even if we reach the keep and no one follows…” He turned to face her. “Which they will. It takes time to lower the wards at the keep and then raise them again. Not a lot of time, but precious seconds we may not have if we have angelings on our heels.”
She scowled, looked to the knife, then back out at the forces gathered. “Or angels.”
He blinked. “What?” Then he looked. At the far side of the canyon, another black-winged form had appeared, but this one was larger than the others. Leksander could hear his rolling, dark laugh across the canyon. His hair was white and long and floated out like an unholy halo from his head. “Elyon,” he whispered.
“We must leave now,” Erelah rushed out. “Drop the wards. I shall grab the blade. Should any reach us before I can travel—with you by my side—then I can fight them. Or if they follow us to the keep.”
Leksander nodded, his chest tight. He’d gone after Erelah when Elyon captured her the first time. Leksander had been the bait that lured a legion of dark angelings away from her. A distraction. But a True Angel was more powerful than a legion of angelings put together—and while it seemed like his wards should hold against any immortal, he’d only ever seen it tested with ordinary immortals like angelings and dragons. Even the fae were nothing to the full power of a True Angel.
If Elyon wanted to batter down the wards… it was possible he could.
“All right,” Leksander said, quickly. “Are you ready?”
She edged closer to where the blade lay just outside the wards. Then she bent down, ready to grab it. She took his hand and peered up at him. “Ready, my love.”
His heart clenched. A full scrum of dark angelings and a Dark Angel himself were outside those wards… and he was about to bring them down. Exposing his mate and the child who was the urgent target of everyone. Leksander swallowed and raised his hand—
“What is that?” he asked, freezing his hand mid-air. Another black-winged angel had appeared above Elyon… along with easily a hundred angelings at his back.
Erelah popped back up, scowling. Then her eyes went wide. “It’s my father!”
Leksander grimaced. Razael was far better than Elyon, but he was still an angel in shadow… and he probably had his own ideas about this baby his daughter was carrying.
“We should still go,” Leksander said, squeezing her hand.
“No, wait.” Her attention was captured by the fight unfolding. It was like a giant vacuum had sucked every angeling out of the air near the cave entrance and pulled them toward the mid-air standoff at the opposite side of the canyon.
“Now, while they’re distracted,” Leksander insisted.
Erelah bit her lip, but she didn’t respond. They both watched as the sky blackened with dark wings. This battle would be epic, and bloody, and a hell of a distraction for them to escape under. Maybe it would be better to wait until they went at it.
And then in a blink… Elyon was gone. Along with his angeling hordes.
Vanished without a sound or spilling a single drop of angeling blood.
“Okay, what just happened?” Leksander felt like all of this—the entirety of his time in this cave with Erelah—was one insanity after the next.
“I don’t know.” The blank surprise on her face mirrored his.
“I still think we should go,” he said.
She turned to him, placing a hand on his chest. “My father is an angel Fallen because he created me.” She blinked a little too much then shook her head. “It matters less that he is my father. The fact that he was trying to create an angeling without Falling… don’t you see? He must know more about this. He must have had a plan for how to bring me into the world—just like our child—without bringing the End of Times.”
“The End of—Erelah!” He gave her an exasperated look. “That’s not your responsibility. You need only worry about our baby. Our family.”
“You are wrong, dragon prince.”
But before he could argue any further, Razael appeared next to them in a flash of angel light. Leksander stumbled back, dragging Erelah with him. She was nowhere near as concerned about this as he was.
“Erelah.” The angel’s voice boomed. He was ungodly beautiful—long dark hair, bright blue eyes—demon-like but less than Elyon and his minions. “Is it true? Are you carrying this dragon’s child?”
Erelah stood straighter. “Yes.”
“And your wings?” As he floated there, grilling Erelah with questions, his hundred angelings had followed him across the canyon and formed a cloud of black feathers in the air around him.
“Why do you care?” Leksander asked. He didn’t like the direction this was going.
But Erelah had already unfurled them, and their snowy white beauty was cramped by the tree trunk bisecting the cave.
Razael sighed and briefly closed his eyes. A murmur of awe or appreciation or something went through the assembled angelings. And a few icy looks as well—those made the hairs on the back of Leksander’s neck rise. He stepped in front of Erelah, a reflexive protection, even though it was no doubt useless.
“You are truly earning your name, Aurora,” her father said.
Leksander threw a pinched look at Erelah.
“The name he had chosen for me before I was born,” she explained. To her father, she said, “How have you banished Elyon? We need to make transit to Leksander’s keep to ensure the baby will be safe until it’s ready to be born. Then… then we can talk, my father. There is much I have need of learning from you.”
Even Leksander could see that soften the angel’s heart. Leksander still didn’t trust him, but if Razael could safeguard them on their way to the keep…
“This dragon’s wards will not be sufficient to hold Elyon off, my child.” He frowned. “Not if he knows you have returned to the light. Ab
ove all, he wishes to see that destroyed. To see you in shadow. Then you will be nothing but another disgraced angeling who tried to mate and stay pure of heart. You are no threat then—indeed, you are an asset to the shadow realm. On pain of battle with me—a battle that would have incurred massive losses on his side and mine, for he knows how I feel for you—he agreed to let me be the one to turn you. But turn you, I must. Or he will come for you.”
“You’re not turning anyone,” Leksander said, stepping even further back from the wards and grasping hold of Erelah’s hand. He would love her in light or in shadow—that didn’t matter—but he’d be damned if he’d let some fallen angel decide that for her.
“It’s all right,” Erelah said.
He turned to her. “No. It’s not.” He dropped his voice even though surely the angel could hear. “You don’t know his intention, Erelah.”
She put a hand to his cheek. “But I do know. He tried to stay in the light when he created me, Leksander. He attempted to do what we are doing now. I’m carrying the child he thought I could be. He knows how this could possibly work. Please. Trust me on this.”
There was no part of him that liked this. “It’s not that I don’t trust you—”
“He doesn’t trust me, Erelah,” her father said from behind him. “And with good reason.”
Leksander turned to scowl at him.
Razael offered up his hands. “I told Elyon I would turn her to shadow. But I have no intention of doing so, dragon prince. If Erelah can remain in the light, then that must be allowed to happen. That’s why you must come to my Regiment for the duration of the pregnancy. She will be well hidden there.” He gestured around to the angelings floating beside him. “We can offer protection you can get nowhere else.”
“He is right,” Erelah said quickly. “We should go. Before Elyon suspects that my father has failed.”
What the fuck… this was the most insane idea he’d heard in a day of insanity.
But he also couldn’t see a way around it.
