Fuck. Why was he so hot?
He waited as I battled with myself. I’d spent thousands of years masking my pain and my fears. I’d never opened up to anyone about all the things that terrified me. Not even Ramel.
I winced, thinking of how Ramel had literallydiedrecently, the crushing terror that had gripped my soul when I’d realized my best friend was truly gone.
We were immortal.
Until Yahweh had invented the golden material that was capable of slaying us, we hadn’t needed to worry about death. Not really. There was Aetherium, but only four blades had ever been created, and Ramel and I possessed two of them.
One came in the form of a dagger that Ramel had given Lilith, and the other was the blade of Ramel’s scythe. The other two had been lost for millennia.
Because of this, I hadn’t been equipped to accept Ramel’s death.
We’d been able to save him, but that had only been because he was a stubborn bastard and had refused to pass on. His spirit had clung to Lilith, and Gabe had been able to sew his soul back into his body using Yahweh’s spinning wheel and kiln.
As an angel.
Gabe wasn’t an angel anymore.
It wasn’t a process we could recreate.
“I’m scared you might die,” I finally admitted, crushing my eyes shut against the pain of his imaginary death.
Gabe fell quiet, and he brushed my hair out of my face.
“Open your eyes, Shemhazai,” he ordered, and I peeked at him through my lashes. He was so fucking beautiful, and he was looking at me in a way no one ever had before.
Like I was something precious.
Like I wasn’t a disgusting, broken creature that had been beaten down before he even knew who he was meant to truly be.
“I’m not going to die.”
I scowled at him.
“Don’t make promises to me you can’t fucking keep, Gabriel.”
He frowned and brushed his thumb over my cheek.
“I would never break a promise to you. Especially not this one. I told you I would never leave you, and I meant it.”
“You can’t help it if Raziel fucking kills you.”
Gabe’s eyes darkened, and he pulled back. Pinning my hips to the bed, he snatched up my hands and pressed them down on either side of my head, a deep, masculine growl building in his chest.
“I am not afraid of Raziel, Shemhazai. He’s just another angel. I’ve fought and killed scarier monsters than him. So haveyou.The god of creation is literally crucified to a fucking cross because of us. I will not allow him to take you from me, and he won’t take me from you either.”
I knew logically what he was saying was true, but the trauma I had sustained at Raziel’s hands made him so much bigger in my mind than any other threat I’d ever faced.
He had already taken so much from me. It felt like a self-fulfilling prophecy that he would take Gabriel from me, too.
“I just… I don’t want to face him.” My eyes stung with the annoying burn of tears that kept seeming to plague me in this shit town, and I blinked them away angrily. I was so tired of Gabriel seeing me like this.
It wasn’t hot.
It was pathetic.
And I fucking hated it.
