"Paying my debt to my father." Ian felt the familiar lack of emotion settle over him, wiping away the flash of regret that he was isolating himself from her. He'd had to rebuild himself after Alice had died in his arms the first time, and he was better at it now. No more spending months in chains just to stay alive. He was a veritable rock. Go, him.
Now that he knew she was safe, he had to let her go. He had a promise to keep, a debt owed, family honor to restore. He had to find a way to release the souls of his seven dishonored ancestors from their ignominious hell reserved for Order of the Blade members who died ignobly...by their own hand.
Until Ian broke the curse and freed the souls of his father and grandfather, they would suffer in eternity. And if he died before he broke the curse? Eternal hell for all. He was the last Fitzgerald. There would be no one left to save them. There was no way he was going to risk that just because he had the hots for a certain angel.
He'd spent too long chasing her down. It was time to move on. Refusing to acknowledge the regret, he forced himself to turn away. He grabbed his shirt off the beach, the one she'd rejected. He yanked it over his head and began to stride back toward the road, toward the SUV that had brought the three men there.
"Hey!" Ryland jumped in front of him and shoved at his chest. "What the fuck are you doing?"
"Leaving." Ian sidestepped him and kept walking, keeping his back toward the water and the woman who could so easily reach into his soul and crush it. Because who had time to have their soul crushed? No one he knew.
"The hell you are." Ryland grabbed his arm and spun him back. "Some bastard we don't know is trying to destroy the Order, and he's trying to wipe out our trio of guardian angels. We've found Sarah, but there are still two more, one of which we're pretty damn sure is the woman who's got you all twisted up."
"What are you talking about?" That was the first Ian had heard about someone trying to destroy the Order. He knew they'd had some close calls recently when one of their teammates, Kane Santiago, had tracked his sheva into a hell storm, but Ian had been hunting for Alice at the time, and he'd missed out on it. "Who's trying to take down the Order?" Battles were one thing, nothing more than a typical day, but someone targeting the Order specifically was a different matter. No one dared take them on.
Frustration flashed across Ryland's face. "We don't know. Kane saw him, but he was insane at the time, so he doesn't remember much. Gideon and Quinn are trying to track the guy. You and I have been assigned to find Alice and determine whether she is one of the Order's guardian angels."
"Him? What do you know about him?" A dark foreboding began to seethe inside him, an ominous sense of something seriously wrong. "What did I miss?"
"What did you miss?" Ryland spat at him in disgust. "You missed a hell of a lot over the last year while you were pining over the death of your sheva instead of being where you needed to be."
Ian was not interested in revisiting the months he'd spent chained up because he'd been too pathetic to keep himself alive after Elijah had done his Order duty of protecting his teammate by murdering Ian's sheva before she could turn him insane. Ian was aware that he'd failed to deliver as an Order member, and it was a bitter taste in his mouth. "I'm not talking about what happened back then. I'm talking about what's going on now." The past was a done deal, but if there were problems now, he wanted to be a part of the team that would handle it.
Ryland shook his head, and Ian didn't miss the unflinching evasiveness in Ryland's gaze. "You and me pulled angel duty. That's all that matters. If Alice is part of the trio that protects us, then we bring her back to Dante's mansion where we can keep her safe. That's why we're here."
Dante Sinclair, their former leader, had been murdered several months ago. He was a legend, a man of such intense power that he'd been able to lead a team of ruffians.