Archangel's Blade (Guild Hunter 4)

A whisper of sound.

Looking up, she saw Misha peering over the edge of the roof space. With her eyes, she told him to be quiet, to be still. But he was his father’s son. Screaming in rage, he jumped on the back of one of her attackers, sinking strong little teeth into the vampire’s neck. The vampire went to rip off her son and throw him to the floor as she fought to escape, to protect him.

“No!” One of the others caught Misha’s screaming, twisting form in his arms. “She wants the older child alive!” He squeezed her sweet boy tight as she begged him not to hurt her child. But the monster only laughed, continuing to crush Misha until his tiny, fierce body went limp.

Then, finished with her, they broke her spine so she couldn’t escape as the house filled with smoke, with flame. She died with her baby in her arms, holding on to the end. But there was no peace for her soul, her mind filled with the echo of Misha’s screams, the sight of Caterina’s ravaged neck, and Dmitri’s haunting words when Isis’s men came for him. “Will you forgive me, Ingrede? For what I must do?”

Such a proud man, her husband. So very, very proud. “You fight a battle,” she’d whispered, touching her hand to his cheek. “You do this to protect us. There is nothing to forgive.”

So he had gone, her Dmitri, gone to the bed of a being who saw him only as a thing to be used. And he had promised to come back, no matter what it took. But now, she wouldn’t be waiting for him.

His heart would break.

“Honor!” Dmitri shook the woman who had slept so warm beside him through the night, trying to wake her as she cried great, hiccuping tears.

Then she turned, burying her face into his chest, and he knew she was already awake. Her tears, they were those of a woman who had lost everything. Utter devastation in every hot, wet drop as she cried and cried and cried, her body shaking so hard, he worried she would shatter.

She wouldn’t hear his words, wouldn’t be gentled, so he simply held her, tighter than he ever had before. She didn’t fight him, didn’t do anything but cry—until his chest was wet with her desolation and he wanted to tear something apart. But he didn’t tell her to stop. Amos’s death, he thought, had been the catalyst for this, and if she needed it to complete her healing, so be it.

So he held this hunter whose midnight green eyes said she saw him, shadows and all, who touched him as Ingrede used to do, who made him imagine an impossible truth, held her so close that she was a part of his very soul.

37

Honor sat with her legs dangling over the side of the railingless balcony outside Dmitri’s office. It would be a terrifying plunge if she fell, but she figured one of the angels below would catch her. Of course, she wasn’t about to take the chance—there was no way in hell she planned to die anytime soon.

Not after it had taken her so long to come back from the last time.

Her breath caught in her throat at her conscious acceptance of an impossible idea . . . except it wasn’t. It was as real as the Manhattan skyline in front of her, steel against a cerulean sky streaked with white. The memories had cascaded one on top of the other since she woke in the early hours of this morning, crying so hard that her chest remained sore, her eyes swollen and her throat raw.

He is my husband.

Perhaps not in law, but as far as her soul was concerned, Dmitri belonged to her.

Always.

When the door slid open at her back, she glanced over, expecting the man at the center of her thoughts. It wasn’t. She smiled at the hunter who came to sit beside her. “How did you get up here?” Security was airtight.

Ashwini swung her feet. “I sweet-talked Illium.”

“I didn’t know you knew him.”

“I didn’t. Now I do.” Dark brown eyes full of liquid intensity settled on Honor. “He said you needed a friend. I knew that already, but I pretended it was news. What’s wrong?”

Honor turned her face to the wind, letting it push back her unbound hair, tangle it into as wild a mess as Dmitri made of it in bed. “You’ll never believe me.”

A long silence before Ashwini said, “Remember the first time we met?”

The memory was crystal clear. It had been in a raucous bar filled with hunters and mercenaries. They’d laughed over drinks, eaten deep-fried everything, sowed the seeds of a deep, abiding friendship. And then, as they were walking out the door—“You called me an old soul,” she whispered. “A lost soul.”

“Still so old you make my chest hurt”—Ash leaned in so their shoulders touched for a moment—“but no longer lost.”

Shuddering, she braced her palms on the rough surface on which they sat. There would be no more whispers, she knew, from a life long gone—there was no longer any need, the barrier between past and present wiped out in the storm of her tears until she saw the woman she’d been as clearly as the one she was now.

The reawakened memories caused her agonizing pain. The thought of losing Caterina and Misha . . . she couldn’t bear it. But she’d remembered, understood something far more beautiful, too. Loved, she had been loved. And, she thought, remembering the arms that had held her so very tight this morning, she was loved again. He might never be able to say it, the lethal blade her husband had become, but she knew.

What she didn’t know was whether her beautiful, wounded Dmitri was ready to hear what she had to tell him.

Dmitri watched the two women sitting out on the balcony and checked for the third time to ensure the wing of angels waiting below were on alert to catch if necessary. “I should go out there and drag them both inside,” he said to Raphael when the archangel walked in to stand beside him.

“Yes,” Raphael said. “It should be a most amusing sight.”

Dmitri shot the archangel a dark look. “Your consort is a bad influence.”

“My consort is now joining your woman.”

Turning, Dmitri saw Elena come to a somewhat wobbly but safe landing on the balcony. She pumped her fist in the air before sitting down next to the long-legged hunter with the dark eyes who was Honor’s best friend—and, according to the reports they had on her, an extremely gifted individual when it came to those senses that weren’t accepted by most humans. Immortals, however, had been alive too long to dismiss such things as fancy. And so they kept watch on Ashwini. “Janvier courts her.”

“I think it’s time to pull him in.” It’ll give Venom a long enough period to ensure a smooth transfer.