Watcher Compelled: Dark Angels Paranormal Romance (Watchers of the Gray Book 6)

by JL Madore

  Layne studied the face of the abomination that now held her nephew’s essence. She wanted to throw the kid. Could she remove Taid’s gift somehow? If the kid was dead . . .

  Her impulse must have shown because the Watcher bodyguard swooped in and snatched him back.

  “Get it out of him,” Layne said, her stomach churning at the thought of her nephew tied to that brat in any way. “Taid wouldn’t want this—to be part of the enemy for eternity.”

  “Obviously he did because he chose this.”

  “That’s a filthy lie, a Watcher trick to suck you into their world. No wonder you and Gheil are so ass over ears in the plans to be besties with the enemy. They’ve got you fucking brainwashed.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Jhaia said, standing to her full and imperious height. “I brought you here to share a great blessing, and you spit on it and insult my friends. You dishonor Taid’s choice with your venom. I have never been more disappointed in you as I am right now. Out of my sight.”

  Jhaia flung her hand, and Layne’s world spun in a vortex.

  When things settled, she found herself standing in her apartment in the dark, legs unsteady, her heart racing. Jhaia had never spoken to her like that before. She’d never lashed out or sent her away.

  Layne rubbed at the sharp ache in her chest, convinced Jhaia’s alliance with the Watchers wasn’t what it seemed. They manipulated her. Used the grief of her son to draw her into their plans to subdue the Darkworld into submission.

  Despicable assholes.

  They’d reap what they sowed. Layne swore her praise to the Dark Prince, understanding why he led her there tonight. The Watchers needed to be eliminated to free her sister from their manipulative clutches.

  Consider it done.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Bo retreated from the pain and mental anguish of captivity to the dirt-floored hovel where he’d known the only true happiness of his existence. After he’d left the home of his abusive clansman and before his transition at fifteen, there had been five glorious months where he’d known love.

  “Bosse, you return,” a sweet voice of innocence welcomed him, and he followed the dream deeper into his memories.

  “Blessed eve, my sweet Gyda. How fare you this night?”

  Gyda left her place fighting with the smoldering peat in the hearth and ran to him, launching into the air and into his spindly arms. “I missed you.”

  He chuckled. He’d been gone mere hours but returned her kiss. Grateful as he was for the connection, it rang so new and uncharted it sent pulses of emotion through him in equal measure: doubt, elation, wanton, and worry. How would he defend his love? How would he feed them? If they were blessed with sons, what name could he give them?

  Gods, to be given so much from Oden meant he had much more to lose.

  “Tell me, my rugged Dane, what news comes from the north?” Worry soured the song of Gyda’s voice and he hated that Bjorn of Harsgard’s shadow darkened her threshold, even this far south.

  “I hear nothing from the north, kona. I told you, a worthless slave and one girl of many going missing from his household would never warrant notice.

  We are safe here.

  Those words haunted him even with his emotions locked down, and the world blocked from existence. What haunted him more is that even with all the women he’d slept with since, Bo had only ever made love to his sweet Gyda.

  The others, the faceless ones to follow, the drunken nights and nameless dalliances, those women filled his shadowed soul with shame. His behavior in Purgatory stood out as only the most recent insult to everything Gyda taught him about the preciousness of life and love. It betrayed the gifts she’d given him.

  Kindness.

  Trust.

  Acceptance.

  Clenching his teeth, he pushed against the pain gripping his heart. Part embraced the suffering, believed he deserved all the imagined censure and disappointment that festered within. Another part of him, a sad and beaten-down part, hoped that one day he’d turn it around and redeem himself.

  He saw how transformative the mated love of his brothers was. He wanted that for himself. He wanted a love that would make Gyda proud of the male he’d become.

  Still, he held back. To give himself over completely to love meant he could feel the level of pain he’d suffered when Bjorn’s men found them. The pain of watching Gyda die—of knowing he’d failed to protect her. The pain of not dying himself but lying in the mixture of their blood for hours and days, waiting for the Viking gods to claim him.

  The final pain ate at his soul the most.

  Months later, when the Seraph collected him at fifteen, he learned he’d been cursed to live an immortal life of servitude. He would never die.

  He would never to join Gyda in Valhalla.

  Layne shook the snow off her coat and tossed it over a ripped leather desk chair in the corporate room of the abandoned motel. She figured the rebellion lucked out finding this place, but the truth was, the Serpentines seemed to have a knack for finding all the decrepit, run-down, forgotten holes in the city. This was only one of many places Gideon and his species leaders had at their disposal.

  “How’s it going?” she asked Gideon, approaching what was once a glass-walled meeting room back in the day. She stopped beside the Rebellion leader, far enough away that his snaky hair couldn’t reach her if it struck out to bite.

  Peering into the glass office, the Serpentine King watched their prisoner. The Rugaru—Linsale, she thought was his name—had the Viking Watcher hooked up to some kind of metal headgear.

  “Why the Frankenstein routine?”

  Gideon shrugged. “We’re working on harnessssing Otherworld energiesss to ssstrengthen the power of the Rebelsss.”

  “Harnessing for what?”

  “A weapon, of courssse.”

  She looked at the Watcher slumped over to the side, his mouth hanging open like he was about to say something when he blacked out. “He doesn’t look like he’s got much energy to give you.”

  “No,” Gideon agreed. “We’ve taken what we could. Now it’sss only information we need from him.”

  “He doesn’t look up to giving it.”

  “Unfortunately, he retreated into a mental shelter of sssome sssort,” Gideon said, rubbing long-nailed fingers over his mouth. “At firssst, the readingsss flowed but then he ssslipped away.”

  “How much did you tranqualize him?”

  Gideon shrugged. “Guesssing the amount for a Watcher isn’t exact. Perhapsss you can sssee where he went, Déjà? He’sss well ressstrained.”

  The idea of getting close to him again made her queasy. Sure, she’d cozied up to him at the Dark Prince’s party, but that was anonymous, and he was waaaay out of it. Here, if he roused, he’d see her—and not Déjà Vu, the rebel Djinn she projected.

  He’d see her—Layne.

  Watchers weren’t fooled by the cloak-and-dagger magic of the Otherworld. As part of their policing powers, they weren’t fooled by parlor tricks.

  “Well, Déjà? Are you willing to play your part?”

  Personally, Layne thought she’d played more than her part. She went to Purgatory to speak with the Dark Prince. She gathered the intel about the Watchers and their mates. She was the reason they had this one in custody.

  Still, if they wanted the plan to work, they had to be quick about it. She did want the plan to work. Whatever hold the Watchers had over Jhaia and Gheil had to end.

  “Fine.” Layne’s heart pounded as she grabbed a rolling chair and pushing it toward the door. The casters bounced over the tiles and she fought to stay on course. “You’ll want to give us some privacy if you don’t want me in your head. With the shape he’s in, I’ll have to go strong to get inside his mind.”

  “Fair warning,” Gideon said, backing away. “We’ll be out at reception if you need us.”

  Layne studied the oatmeal-colored wall while she waited for Linsale to leave and close the door. After turning down the lights, she rolle
d the chair in front of the Watcher and sat knees to knees.

  She didn’t look at him. Not yet. In Shayton’s palace, his glassy, absent gaze comforted her.

  Tonight would be different.

  Something about him echoed under her skin and she didn’t like it. Sure, he was stupidly attractive and build like a god, but she didn’t consider herself that superficial. She’d chocked it up to Nephilim aftertaste. Like his touch left residue on her and needed time to wear off.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, reassuring herself.

  The ends justified the means and what she’d done and would do was all for the greater good. She drew a deep breath and raised her gaze.

  It hit her like a train derailing in her head. One moment, she was chugging down the tracks with justice for Taid firmly locked on the horizon, and a blink later, her engine careened off the rails and plummeted over the side of a raised bridge.

  All her resolve, every ounce of legitimate argument for the actions she’d taken for her cause, did a complete free fall and slammed right into the six-foot-four, blond Viking with the golden eyes of his Archangel sire.

  His pupils grew focused.

  The moment he recognized her, his lip curled, and he pulled at the restraints holding him in place. Even secured to the metal frame of the wheelchair with red-metal shackles, his massive body coiled, ready to lunge forward and attack.

  Hello, Watcher, she said into his mind, stopping at the first barrier. She gave him a moment to register her presence.

  Invading someone’s consciousness took finesse if you didn’t want to leave the person sipping pudding through a straw the rest of their life. That wasn’t what they wanted.

  Wasn’t what she wanted.

  Do you remember me? On some level, he would, but she’d locked all his tangible memory of their encounter away. To speed up the process of connecting, she released the block and let him have access to everything she’d taken.

  The inundation of images caught her off guard. He pictured the two of them in the throes of sex, surrounded by bodies writhing, hands touching. How had he seen her so clearly through the fog of inebriation? It was unnerving.

  She felt his teeth teasing her neck.

  Remembered the powerful thrust of his hips.

  The growl that rumbled from his chest wasn’t a sound of anger. It was pure, primal, beast.

  The highlight reel continued and her cheeks grew hot. They lost themselves in so many positions she felt like they reenacted the entire Kama Sutra. No man had ever ravaged her like that before.

  Their worlds outside of that party ignited around them and went up in an inferno blaze. He’d been nothing but sex. As if he saw and felt and smelled nothing but her body.

  Layne pushed back and rolled away. With her hands trembling, she shook her head and threw up a block.

  Damn him. How had he gotten into her head?

  Stupid. She’d spoken to them about underestimating the strength of Nephilim. She couldn’t afford to underestimate him again. Watchers were Other. Not Dark. Not Light. They were powerful and an unknown to her.

  She had to be more careful. The mind was powerful—the most sensual and sexual organ in the body. To get answers, she gave him access to her body, but he wasn’t welcome to anything more.

  After cleansing her thoughts, she set her hands over his and reconnected. His heart ached, torn in two from their encounter. As much as he reveled in the pleasure of what they shared, he regretted it far more.

  You and me both, buddy.

  His head hung forward, and his breath grew ragged. His regret was rooted deep in his psyche and left her a crack in his shield. She followed the pain way back into his memory to a young girl—a willowy blonde who couldn’t have been more than thirteen.

  My sweet Gyda.

  The spindly boy with the developing frame and easy smile barely resembled the male before her. She watched as his memories replayed in a loop of self-loathing, ending with the two of them bleeding out on the bank of a creek.

  That the Viking’s emotions ran so deeply for the snapped twig proved how pathetic Watchers were. She always imagined they emerged from the heavens the hulking assassins the Darkworld knew them to be. Apparently, they started out as weak as the pathetic humans they lived to protect.

  At the Dark Prince’s party, she’d encountered him amongst too many others to delve into his mind and have a look around. Restricted to playing twenty questions, she could only use her powers to read impressions. Tonight’s efforts would yield far more productive information.

  The end of the memory loop snapped him out of his preoccupation. He sensed her intrusion and threw up a block.

  The inundation of her own worst memory knocked her back. The murder of her parents. Gheil had been away, training. The household staff had held off the attacks, sacrificing themselves long enough to ensure she and Jhaia survived.

  The mournful bay of the Hellhounds still woke her at night, her sheets soaked in a cold sweat. Different things triggered it. Tight spaces. The smell of dank and damp stone. Being cold in the dark.

  Getting locked in a hidey-hole with your sister while your parents and everyone you knew were eaten did something to a kid.

  Layne cursed and broke the connection again.

  Asshole.

  How was he able to breach her veils of security?

  Shaking her hands out, she stretched her neck from side to side. His mind was strong, but she’d break him.

  To save her sister and her people from a deadly mistake, there was no other option.

  Jhaia slammed the door and stormed into her brother’s home. She found him nursing a snifter of brandy in front of the fire, a tomb of a book in his lap. When she rushed in, the intrusion struck her. “I apologize, Gheil. I was in such a . . . I shouldn’t have come. I need to calm down. This isn’t your problem.”

  Gheil set the book on the side table and rose. “It seems this is exactly where you need to be. Tell me, has the Watcher’s wife upset you?”

  “No. Thea is lovely. It was my fault. I thought if Layne met them, if she saw the child and understood that Taid had been freed by them—”

  Gheil’s frame stiffened and he raised his chin. “What did she do? Shall I apologize to the Sumerian and his family?”

  “No. I took responsibility for her behavior and Thea was gracious, as always. I’m just soooo . . . I’ve never been so humilated in my life.”

  “That you’re surprised by Layne’s poor sense of decorum and lack of reason paints you in the most generous of lights, Jhaia. You have long been the only one in this family who holds any hope that she’ll ever change.”

  Jhaia wanted to scream. “I truly thought she’d see Zane and feel a connection—understand that our children and their children and the children of the others, they deserve more than the status quo. Stryker was right to fight for change, but confrontation and killing isn’t the way.”

  Gheil poured her a cordial and held it out to her. “I’ll reach out to the Watchers as a courtesy and ensure there are no lingering doubts as to our commitment to the course.”

  Jhaia sipped at the delicate edge of the crystal and let the spicy sweetness linger on her tongue. “Thank you. I’m sorry to put you in this position.”

  Gheil gestured to the sofa, and they returned to the fire. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  Zander hung up the phone and headed back into the war room where everyone was gathered. “Seth, you’re with me.”

  “Are we moving out?” Danel asked.

  “This is in-house.” As they beat feet through the ranch, he wondered how long it had been since they caught a break. Too long. That’s all he knew. “That was the Djinn Master on the phone. There was a minor issue involving Zane during Thea’s visit with Jhaia tonight. He assured me that Tanek took care of things but wanted to ensure that we were clear his sister’s opinions of treachery were not indicative of his own.”

  “Treachery? Jhaia said something against Zane? I can’t
imagine that.”

  “No. Their younger sister, Layne. Jhaia wanted to ease the female’s suffering about Taid’s death and thought seeing Zane might bring her a measure of peace. That backfired.”

  The two of them took the stairs on a run, three at a time until they got to the third floor. At the end of the hall, the door to the Egyptian’s suite was open.

  They found the wives lounging on the leather couches, watching a movie, cheering up Storme after her ordeal. Her leg was patched up and bandaged but Zander couldn’t look at it without his beast raging. Phoenix’s mate had been hurt in the crossfire of their lives.

  Seth headed over to check on the sleeping babes in the playpen while he rounded the couches. “Excuse the interruption, ladies.”

  Ronnie paused the video and Storme sat up. “Have you found Bo?”

  “Not yet.” Zander held his hand out to Austin and she came to him without question. His mate hugged his side and he drew strength from their connection. “This is about you, Angel. I got a call of apology from the Djinn Master.”

  “He’s perfect, as always,” Seth said, kissing his boy’s cheek before placing him back into the playpen. Once he’d confirmed his son’s well-being, he came around the couch and wrapped his arm around his wife. “Are you all right?”

  “It was nothing,” Thea said, looking flustered. “The girl got upset, and Tanek swiped the baby right from her hands. Nothing happened. Jhaia was embarrassed and apologetic. She needn’t have bothered her brother. No offense was taken. Not everyone is on board with our plans to bury the past. There are bound to be some who think the worst of us.”

  “You should tell us these things right away,” Seth said, brushing a golden swath of hair behind her shoulder. ”Hell, Tanek should have told us.”

  She tilted her head toward him and smiled. “There are far more important things going on right now than a woman I’ve never met thinking I manipulated her sister. Tanek would’ve told you if there was anything to tell, I’m sure. He’s probably preoccupied with finding Bo. Zane and I are both fine.”