Of Alliance and Rebellion

by Micah Persell

  Max’s face, right before her and bizarre looking in the multihued competition of her inner self, blanched, and his lips parted. “Okay,” he said quickly, bending at the knee in the next moment and scooping her up into his arms. “You’re gonna be okay.”

  He began walking down the hall with her resting her cheek on his chest, and every one of his harsh, booted steps reverberated up his body and through hers. She moaned again and clenched her eyes shut. “My head.”

  He cupped her head with one of his massive hands and pressed her face more firmly into the pad of muscle beneath her cheek. “Shhh.” He paused, but then she felt him twist his hips, and with a mighty crash, he kicked a door open and strode into a dark, cool room. Through her closed eyelids, she could already appreciate the lack of lighting, and she felt her rigid spine relax slightly.

  The world tilted, and she felt the crisp sheets of a bed beneath her wings. She adjusted them so they would not be crushed, and Max lowered her until she was lying down completely. He brushed her hair from her forehead with a rough, calloused palm, and Anahita opened her eyes again. Her vision was still split in two, and she saw Max wince when she looked into his eyes. “That can’t feel good,” he whispered, brushing his hand through her hair again.

  “Does it look that bad?” she asked.

  “You have one completely black eye, one completely golden eye,” he said. “It doesn’t look like it feels great, that’s for sure.”

  Anahita moaned and turned to her side, curling into a C. “I am ruined.”

  She felt Max straighten. “I’ll go get help.”

  Before he could step away, Anahita’s arm shot out, and she grabbed a fist of his shirt. “No!”

  Max froze and blinked down at her before placing his hand over her fist and squeezing gently. His brows rose, an undeniable question.

  There were two reasons he could not leave. She could not bear for anyone to know that her Guardian side had been strong enough to set its Compulsion. And as an unfortunate side effect of that Compulsion, she could not let Max out of her sight. She had to Guard him. She felt so helpless. “Do not leave,” she said, her voice breaking. “Please.”

  Max’s nose wrinkled, but, blessedly, he sank to the bed’s surface, sitting in the curve of her body. He patted her shoulder awkwardly, and Anahita blew out a breath and relaxed some more, though her split vision kept her from relaxing completely. She gazed up at him, knowing her eyes were wide and displaying her weakness for him to see, but unable to look away from him. She suspected that it was for a different reason than that she needed to keep an eye on him, to keep him safe.

  Max’s mismatched eyes roved her face. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She would never tell him.

  “I am half Guardian,” she muttered.

  Immediately, she gasped. Her back straightened; her jaw clenched. She had told him! She moaned and placed a hand over the ache in her belly. She had just made a very, very grave error.

  Max patted her shoulder again, this time leaving his hand. It was warm and large and altogether wonderful against her skin. “You didn’t mean to tell me that, did you?”

  Anahita closed her eyes and shook her head just a fraction of an inch.

  He sighed. “Your secret is safe with me.”

  Anahita cracked her eyelids and looked up at him through her lashes. She thought she saw something in his face, but when she blinked again, it was gone, and she knew she must have imagined it.

  “Half Guardian, huh?” he asked, one side of his lips tilting up. “I’m guessing that’s this half.” As he spoke the words, he brushed a fingertip across her right eyebrow—the one above her golden eye. “This doesn’t sound like the end of the world,” Max said, his finger continuing its trail across her cheek. “Guardian—as in ‘guardian angel’?”

  She nodded once.

  “That’s actually ... pretty cool,” he said. “Don’t you think?” His finger trailed down her throat. “Who doesn’t love the idea of guardian angels?”

  His finger was as good as scorching her skin. “I am yours.”

  The finger stopped. Max frowned. “What?”

  “I am your guardian angel now,” she whispered.

  • • •

  Every part of Max’s body froze, except for his eyes, which darted back and forth between Anahita’s black and golden eye. This was the strangest thing he’d ever seen. Her left eye was wall-to-wall black—no pupil, no gorgeous blue, no white. Just black. Her right eye was glowing golden, wall-to-wall, just like her black eye. Every time he looked at her black eye, his own freakish eye told him Anahita was evil. When he looked at her golden eye: good. Her brow was furrowed, and her teeth were clenched, and he knew by the tension in her body that she was in some pretty intense pain. And he had a job to do: get as much information out of her as possible. He’d barely been able to say Your secret is safe with me past the guilty lump in his throat.

  But none of that compared to the bombshell she’d just dropped. His fucking guardian angel?

  He cleared his throat. “Anahita, I may regret this question, but how does that mesh with your mission to kill me?”

  She moaned and curled into herself tighter, her thighs touching upon his back and sending a spike of heat through him. “It does not,” she said on another moan. “It cannot mesh.”

  “Oh,” he said lamely. Inside his head, information fireworks were going off like crazy. His angel was literally split in two. He patted her shoulder once more and gave a squeeze he hoped was reassuring.

  “It hurts,” she whispered, pressing her forehead into his knee.

  A swell gathered in his chest, and most of his thoughts abandoned him, except for one: make her feel better.

  “Shh. I know, pretty baby,” he muttered, leaning forward so that he was hovering over her more. His hand left her shoulder and threaded through her hair. “I know,” he said again.

  And he did. He was suffering from the world’s most epic case of blue balls—his call-to-halt from earlier coming back to bite him in the ass, and not in the sexy way. He’d reached orgasm after initially Impulse-pairing with her, and Eli and Jericho had told him that was a vital step—the one that Oliver had missed. But that didn’t mean the Impulse wouldn’t demand its due on a regular basis, it just meant that he could ... handle it himself, so to speak. And with her body cocooning him as he sat within her huddled form, the Impulse was demanding its due like a motherfucker.

  Even he could tell his thoughts were inappropriate as his Impulse mate was curled into the fetal position because of pain, and for once in his life, he was fighting that inappropriateness in order to help another being. It wasn’t something he was used to, and he was finding it hard—literally—to succeed.

  Anahita reached out and clutched his thigh with clawed fingers, and Max jumped for more than one reason. He brushed his fingers through her hair, hoping against hope that he was managing to keep his touch friendly. “Anahita, try to relax,” he whispered.

  She gave a breathless, humorless laugh, and Max cringed. Yeah, relax. Easy as pie. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I just ... maybe if you relax, the split inside you will, too?”

  She stiffened even further. “What if it does?” she asked, panic overtaking her. “What if the Guardian side takes over?” She tilted her head to the side and stared up at him with wide, black and gold eyes. “Oh, heaven, what if it does!”

  “Okay, okay,” Max said, grabbing her by her upper arms and hauling her up until she was curled into his chest, her lower body still wrapped around him, just now even more tightly. He wrapped his arms in tight bands across her back, tucking her face into the hollow of his throat. It felt so natural, so right, he had to fight his own moan. “Would that really be so bad?” he asked.

  “Yes!” she shouted into his skin, causing goosebumps to erupt all over his neck.

  Ouch, kind of. The thought of being his guardian angel was that abhorrent, huh?

  She pulled back and looked up into his face, their l
ips nearly touching. “I hurt you just then, didn’t I?” she asked, her breath tracking across his suddenly dry mouth.

  Max snorted and attempted a one-shouldered shrug—a nearly impossible feat, he discovered, while clutching her to him as though his life depended on them becoming one.

  “I did,” she moaned. “And I feel bad about it! Because I am supposed to protect you from hurt!” She curled back into his chest and clutched the shirt on his back with desperate fingers. “Oh, this is just the worst possible thing.”

  “Okay,” Max said, patting her back. “Easy with the ego there, pretty baby.”

  “I did it again!” she said, her voice muffled against his collar.

  For some reason, Max felt a belly laugh brewing. His shoulders started to shake, and the next thing he knew, his mouth was falling wide open and the most unpracticed, unattractive, laugh-sounding thing was pouring past his lips.

  He clutched her closer, holding on for balance as the laugh grew and grew, his head falling back slightly.

  Anahita ever so slowly unfolded from her curled position beneath his chin and drew back to stare at him with those mismatched eyes that apparently spelled so much disaster to her entire existence. One of her brows was arching toward her hairline—the one over her black eye—and her lips were parted and slack.

  And, of course, he found this even more hilarious, and he brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, tucking it behind her ear, as his laughter continued.

  Then, magic happened. Her lips tilted at the corners; her eyebrows relaxed. She blinked her eyes twice, and when they opened again, they were the amazing baby blues he was becoming obsessed with. The slightest giggle slipped from her mouth. She gasped, and her eyes shot to his.

  A feeling of accomplishment filled Max’s chest. He had never completed so important a task as bringing this angel relief. “There now, see?” he whispered. “Feeling better?”

  “It worked!” she said breathlessly. “Relaxing actually worked.” Her brows crashed down, a furrow appearing in the smooth skin of her forehead. “Oh, heaven, what if it comes back? It will come back.”

  “Hey, hey,” Max said, giving her a quick squeeze, a sense of urgency overwhelming him at the thought of her panic bringing back the split. “Don’t think about it, pretty baby. Okay? Just ... don’t think about it.”

  She looked at him through dubious eyes.

  “Distraction,” Max said beneath his breath. “We need a distraction.”

  Anahita’s eyes sparkled a bit, and her eyes dipped to his lips. Max’s entire body jolted, and the sudden urge to throw her back down on the bed and lay atop her was almost a plan in motion before he got a hold of himself. Distance, he coached himself again, realizing they were touching entirely too much for distance of any kind to be maintained. Distance and distraction? Max frowned as he straightened and settled Anahita upon the pillow once more, those glorious golden waves fanning out around her head like a halo. His fingers itched to touch her silky hair, and he fisted his hands on his thighs, ignoring the look of hurt that had flashed upon Anahita’s face when he’d separated them.

  “Distraction,” he repeated, smiling weakly at her. “Care to tell me more about this Guardian thing?”

  Anahita’s eyes slid from Max’s face, and, oddly enough, it was the lack of her focus that made Max self-conscious about his scar, realizing in the absence of her blue-eyed warmth that he’d been interacting with her with the appalling state of his looks in full view. As sneakily as he could manage, he brushed his hair over his eye, silencing the cacophonous reciting of good and evil that had once again begun to clash with the disappearance of her dual-colored eyes.

  “I should not have told you what I did,” Anahita said, her eyes darting anywhere but his face. “You are not trustworthy.”

  Fucking ouch, again. She was right, of course. He was anything but trustworthy. Especially concerning the information he’d just requested. Still. Ouch.

  “Well,” he said, pausing to clear his throat. “Don’t think about that either.”

  Her eyes returned to his face once more, and she frowned as she took in the hair covering his eye. She reached forward, her fingers trembling as Max’s gaze zeroed in on them like a cornered animal, and brushed the hair out of his eyes. He couldn’t help himself: he turned his face into the touch. The feeling of her fingers in his hair was just too divine. He barely caught the groan that threatened to erupt.

  “That is terrible advice,” Anahita whispered. “You are truly bad at administering guidance.”

  Another bubble of laughter gathered in his lungs somewhere behind his heart, but he swallowed it down. “A common complaint,” he said, allowing the corner of his mouth to tip up.

  Her fingers stroked through the hair behind his ear again, and Max felt his eyelids grow heavy. He hadn’t slept in ... well, it was more than twenty-four hours and less than a week. Beyond that, he couldn’t narrow it down.

  “You are tired.”

  Max’s eyes snapped open as far as they could, which, at best, was half-mast. “Exhausted,” he admitted after a moment. “I should go catch some zzzs.”

  Her eyes widened a bit. “You cannot leave!”

  Max frowned. “I can’t?”

  “I mean…” She looked away. “I—my head still hurts, and I must stay with you, and I ... just.” She exhaled heavily. “Max, just, please do not leave yet. Please?” She slanted her eyes at his. “You can sleep here. I will watch you.”

  Max looked at the narrow space beside his angel on the bed, and a longing so intense he could taste it poured through him. What could it hurt, really? he rationalized. “No touching?” he asked, the words quicker than he’d intended.

  Another flash of hurt in those blue depths. “If that is what you wish.”

  Max sucked in a breath. “You probably need to sleep, too. At least here I know you’re safe.”

  Anahita shook her head. “Angels do not sleep. Not unless we ... Fall.” She looked away again. “Or are about to Fall.”

  Max felt his eyebrows rise. “Well,” he said slowly. He looked at the space beside the angel again, his body feeling heavy and on the verge of dreams.

  They both stayed frozen in the awkward silence as they waited to see what Max would do. With a sigh that felt like surrender, Max let his body ease down beside Anahita. The firm mattress beneath him felt like a cloud compared to the cot from his prison cell. And the company was much, much prettier as well. They lay facing each other, Anahita’s eyes so big and beautiful. Max scooted back from her as far as the small mattress would allow, his back crammed against the rails on the medical bed. Still, it was close enough for her lily scent to waft over him. He longed to wrap his arms around her, pull her in close, and bury his face in her neck so he could fall into sleep with that scent filling him.

  “Rest and feel better,” Max whispered, a yawn following the words. “I’ll sleep here for now.” His eyes closed and sleep rushed in, but just before he allowed it to overtake him, he repeated once in sleepy murmurs: “Remember, no touching.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The urge to touch him was so strong it robbed Anahita of breath. In sleep, he was beautiful to her. His face was relaxed of his default expression—something between disdain for all humanity and self-loathing—and she wanted to lean in and press her lips to his parted ones.

  His lips were so contrarily soft when compared to everything else about his body and personality. They were vying with his back as Anahita’s favorite part of him, though she imagined if she ever got a glimpse of his body unclothed, priorities would change.

  No touching. This man’s no-touching rule was becoming her bane ... which was saying a lot considering her current predicament . It did not even make sense! They had touched plenty! It felt as though his hands were constantly upon her, and she loved it when they were. Loved it.

  But the touching was very much one-sided now—a swift and not welcome change from their first intimate encounter in that dirty prison cell.
She was discovering that being denied the pleasure of laying hands on her lover was just as bad, if not worse, than being denied the culmination of her desire.

  His breaths were slow and steady, and each time he exhaled, the warm draft of his air crossed over her face, scented of mint. As his eyes were closed, and he could not protest, she found herself edging closer to him with each of his exhales until they were nose to nose, though not touching. She suspected the moment she touched him, he would burst to wakefulness and be very unhappy.

  His face filled her vision, and she was enraptured. Eyelashes black as coal spread across his cheeks; his hair fell onto his forehead, but not—as he so often ensured it did—into his eyes, covering his scar.

  Her eyes traced that scar now, seeing in it all of the physical pain he must have endured receiving it and the emotional trauma he had obviously experienced since. That Guardian Compulsion writhed within her, trying to rise to the surface and protect.

  She shoved it back down, but it did not go far, and she knew this was going to be a constant struggle for her until she completed her mission.

  At the thought of her mission, of harming the man before her, that Guardian Compulsion charged to the front, overthrowing her tenuous roadblocks and tossing her right into Guardian mode.

  Her entire vision turned golden—no trace of black and white this time. Her body and mind were clearly not split on where their priorities lay.

  Anahita closed her eyes tightly, not willing to look through the golden haze that spelled her doom. The possibility that she could hurt Max, let alone kill him, seemed distant and far-fetched.

  Max’s breaths quickened, and Anahita opened her eyes a fraction. His face was no longer relaxed. His brows were low and drawn together. His lips had tensed, a firmer O appearing between them. Behind his eyelids, she could see his eyes darting back and forth.

  A whimper left his mouth.

  Before she’d had time for a second thought, her arms were around him. She pulled him into her body, wanting to wrap her entire self around him and cursing her robe for constricting her legs. She tucked his face into the curve of her neck and threaded the fingers of one hand through the hair on the back of his head. With her other hand, she made what she hoped were soothing circles across the wide expanse of his shoulder blades.