Her anguished cry infiltrated his mind, tearing through his shields. Lore froze, feeling as if he’d been stabbed in the heart. With a harsh inhale, he rubbed his chest. “Nia?”
Just silence and the melodious rustle of the flowing waters answered him. How had he heard her…?
The truth struck him like a blow to the gut.
Heavens!He’d bonded—soulbonded with her.
He paced the riverbank, trying to understand how. He was an angel…
Then he didn’t care about the how of it. It had happened with some of the Watchers, too.
Now he understood why that light he always felt and thought of as Nia was really her being a part of him. The silver glow in her pretty amber eyes, when they’d first made love, wasn’t about his powers but a sign their souls had joined.
He shut his eyes, reveling in happiness. But all too soon, reality stole his joy. While he didn’t know much about this kind of bonding, he couldn’t stay mated to her. Not only would the seraphs pick up on it the moment he crossed their paths, which was dangerous in itself, but he still had to fall from grace.
He couldn’t take her with him through a journey he alone must endure.
She’d suffered enough.
With intense regret and a torment that strangled him like a noose, Lore forced himself to reach for the part of him where her light remained, a little dull with the way they’d parted.
“I will make it up to you,habibti, I swear.” He pressed his burning eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “If I don’t survive this, be happy.”
If he did die, so would she. That much he knew about soul joining.
With his mind, he snapped the bond?—
A gut-wrenching groan tore from his throat, and he stumbled back, his knees buckling beneath him. Only centuries of iron control kept him from collapsing completely. Anguish torethrough him, the chasm within deepening, widening, leaving him utterly bereft and empty. His sight blurred.
It took a moment, several maybe, before he could move, could function again.
If Chamuel saw him now?—
Jaw clenched, he shoved every atom of emotion deep within him and bolted it down.
A shift in the air dragged his attention from the river.
Lore glanced back as Chamuel approached, the soft breeze fluttering his long white robe. As usual, his silvery-white wings swept the grass, the angelic glow in full force.
These seraphs would never tone down their brightness, not when they were of the highest ranking.
“Loráed, you requested a meeting?”
With his demeanor back to normal, he faced the Supreme Seraph. “Chamuel,” he greeted with a half bow. “I did.”
The irony didn’t escape him to be on the other side of these interrogations that Chamuel had entrusted him with, speaking and counseling angels who would fall. Now, he just wanted it over.
“Is the job completed then?”
Lore clasped his hands loosely at his back and didn’t respond. If he did, he just might lose his tightly held calm. The woman who was his other half, his very heartbeat, was far more than a “job.”
He got straight to the point. “I have given this matter a great deal of thought.” Maybe it was his tone or words, but Chamuel shifted his attention away from the rippling waters to focus on Lore, probably sensing the calamitous change about to occur.
“It’s fine if you choose not to go through with this task, Loráed. There are others?—”
“No one touches her.” His tone morphed to icy, and he tensed, ready to kill. “I mean it, Chamuel. What you decreedgoes against everything we, as angels, should be known for. Justice. Mercy. To kill an innocent due to a happenstance of birth, or that she may have the powers of the Watchers, is wrong.”
“You have never opposed any previous task of this kind, Loráed,” Chamuel said, his voice smooth with infinite patience, compelling.
