had been necessary. His consort had always been strong; as a hunter-born, she’d been stronger than most ordinary men. And the instant she settled into her wings, she’d begun to learn how to utilize her new body.
She’d fought him for her freedom when he would’ve cocooned her in safety.
Weakness, helplessness, was her enemy, returning her to a childhood in which she hadn’t been able to stop a monster.
Later, once the food was gone and she lay in his arms, she said, “I’m afraid, Archangel. What’s happening to me?”
Rage tore through him all over again, and he knew that if he lost her this way, to an unseen assailant, he would become a monster himself. “I have no answers yet, Elena, but I will tear the world apart until I find one.”
Her fingers spread over his heart. “We,” she reminded him.
Closing his fingers over hers, he said, “We.”
Her body went soft and unguarded against him not long afterward. She slept . . . and dreamed. Her breath caught, her pulse increased, and a thin sheen of perspiration glimmered on her skin.
Speaking into her mind, he said, I am here, hunter-mine. Nothing can harm you.
A slow exhale, her breathing beginning to even out as she turned into his body and fell into a deep, restful sleep. Raphael didn’t sleep. He watched over her. The attack on Harrison entwined with the voice that spoke ominous things to her, and the changes in her, they were clearly stirring up the darkest memories of her childhood.
Raphael could open her brother-in-law’s mind without effort, discover what it was Harrison Ling had done that had made him a target. Except that would cut Elena to the quick. She would feel complicit in his violation of Harrison’s mind—because that was how she’d see it: as a violation.
If Raphael acted now, he did so knowing it would bruise her and cause a fissure in their relationship. Such a fissure might heal over time, but enough fissures and the whole thing would break apart.
“Love,” he said to his warrior, “is a most inconvenient thing.” She stirred, a soft smile curving her lips . . . and he saw a small feather of darkest blue detach from her wing to lie orphaned against the white of the sheets.
24
Raphael watched his consort dress after breakfast; she’d slept a bare three hours before waking. He hadn’t pushed her to attempt more rest—he knew Elena. She wouldn’t truly rest until she’d nullified the threat to her sister and niece. As it was, she’d eaten and drunk five times what she normally would, but her facial bones were starting to become more obvious nevertheless, her clothes a fraction looser on her frame.
Her body was burning fuel at a phenomenal rate.
“Where do you go this morning, Elena?”
She strapped on her crossbow. “To talk to Andreas—I’m going to see if I can track down some sketchy friends of Harrison’s.”
He settled slightly; the senior angel was loyal to the core. “Pass on my greetings to him.”
“You know I don’t like him.” Scowling, she slid her long blade home in its spine sheath. “He’s got a streak of cruelty in him that’s disturbing.”
“So did I.” Raphael had once broken every bone in a vampire’s body to the size of small pebbles, turned the vamp into nothing but a fleshy sack incapable of conscious movement—and he’d made sure the male stayed awake through all of it. “Perhaps Andreas needs to fall madly in love with a hunter.”
Elena shuddered. “I wouldn’t wish that on any hunter—and no, he’s way worse than you.” A pause, then grudgingly, “Though I guess my perspective is skewed since I’m passionately in love with you.” She watched him put on leathers of gunmetal gray with an appreciative gleam in her eye. “I mean, Honor’s a sane woman with advanced degrees, and she married Dmitri, of all people, so maybe being part whackadoodle is a prerequisite to falling in love.”
He clasped on wrist gauntlets of beaten steel not because he needed them today but because Elena had given them to him. “Such romance you give me, hbeebti.”
Laughing, she zipped up her jacket, a lethal black-clad woman who took no prisoners. “What are you doing today dressed up like the sexiest warrior I’ve ever seen?”
“Archangel business.”
Her eyes danced at his deliberately arrogant tone. Closing the distance between them, she rose on tiptoe, her hands gripping his bare biceps to demand a kiss that held naked need. Raphael gave and he took and they broke apart on a rasp