“Sounds serious.” He stopped, glanced around, then moved further away from the dumpsters in the dingy alley. “First…” He pulled her to him, and his mouth came down on hers.
She kissed him back, but then she dragged her mouth away, unable to enjoy this.
His eyebrows lowered, and his gaze searched her face. “How do you feel?”
“What?”
“Your problem, Ely. The temperature?”
“The same.” She rubbed her throbbing temples and took a step back, needing distance to think, to say what she had to. “It’s not about that.”
“All right,” he murmured. “You haven’t been yourself since earlier. What is it?”
But staring into his lean, handsome face, Ely knew that no matter what happened, he deserved the truth. She removed the car from her coat pocket and handed it to him.
A smile tugged his lips and wrung her heart as he looked up. “Okay. So?”
“It belongs to you.”
He laughed, and those striking eyes glowed to that soft flame-gold. When she didn’t laugh with him, he frowned. “You’re serious?”
“I picked it up when you dropped it.”
He went dead still. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I was the one you crashed into, and the car dropped from your hand. I…I picked it up.”
“Ely, you’re not making sense. The seer said the one who left me to my fate was an angel, a Fallen.”
“Yes, me. I am an angel, too. Just not like the divine ones, and not a Fallen.”
He shook his head. “You’re not making any sense. You came to this worldtwoyears ago!”
“Yes, thesecondtime. The first time was apparently over two decades ago. I didn’t realize back then that the time difference in the human world would be so vast since time moves differently for us. Slower.”
He went quiet, ominously quiet, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Nate, I told you why I escaped my home. The first time was to avoid the mating from happening. I dived through a portal into this world, and with the guards after me, I was terrified. After I fell into the East River, I went into hiding somewhere in the city. That’s when I heard a woman’s anguished cry, then a faint sob filled with so much terror—”
“No!” He shook his head, thrusting his fingers in his hair as if he would tear out every strand, he trampled to the dark warehouse opposite them.
Slowly, she followed, emotions clogging her throat. “I-I came out of hiding to see if I could help. A child ran into me as a man shouted—”
“No, just no!” he snapped, wheeling back to her. “You…you—! I can’t do this right now!”
“Nate, please, hear me out,” she begged, reaching out to touch him, but he stepped back, shaking his head repeatedly as if to dislodge her words.
“I can’t.” Streaks of red flared in his darkening eyes, his features tense like a lit keg of dynamite about to explode.
Ely wrapped her arms around her waist, tears choking her. “I’m so sorry. I-I didn’t know this world, and I thought I could trust the people I left you with—”
He shot up a hand, stopping her. “My destiny was to die, but you—youchanged it!”
“I wanted to protect you. I couldn’t let them kill you!”
“But they did, didn’t they?” his tone went cold. “Giving a boy a life that should never have been.”
The tears she fought hard to keep back slipped free. “I didn’t know.”
