Whatever she could hear from me, she didn’t like it.

She backed away when I tried to touch her, shaking her head. “You hate me,” she said flatly.

I controlled my flare of irritation. Of course she thought so—my anger was so powerful it would swamp any other feeling. “No I don’t,” I said, trying to sound reasonable and failing.

“I’m not doing this.” She was close to tears, which surprised me. Throughout the last few days, no matter what she’d had to deal with, I’d never seen her cry, something I was profoundly grateful for. I hated it when women cried.

“Yes,” I said. “You are.” And before she could avoid me, I scooped her up under her arms from behind and soared upward, deliberately keeping her mind open, not shutting it down as I had the last time I flew with her.

I heard her gasp over the sound of the wind as it rushed past us. I crossed my arms over her chest, holding her against me, and I could feel her heart racing. She was warm against me, despite the cool air, and after a moment I felt her stiffness relax so that she flowed against me, sweetly, like a reed in the water, and her skirts covered my legs as we climbed higher.

I’d only meant to take her as far as our apartment on the top floor, but the moment I felt her joy I changed my mind. I soared over the huge old house, turning right to avoid the oily smoke of the funeral pyre, heading deeper into the virgin forests with their dark trees, past sparkling water. I rose above the mist, where the sun was bright overhead, warming me, and I let that warmth flow to her, sending tendrils of heat throughout her before she could be chilled by the atmosphere. We went up, way up, over the peak of the mountain, and out of instinct I called for Lucifer’s faint voice. Uriel’s plans had worked well—

the fierceness of the Nephilim attack had kept us all too busy to search for the one man who could save us. I called, but there was no faint whisper. For once all I could hear was Allie’s longing, singing to me, her body dancing with mine even as her mind still fought it.

We banked, passing a startled flock of Canada geese, and I felt her laugh against me, felt the sheer joy that suffused her, just as it suffused me when I flew, and my arms tightened imperceptibly, holding her even closer, somehow wanting to absorb her into my bones.

My wings spread out around us as I headed back toward the house. Allie was relaxed now, warm and soft and yielding against me, and I knew the unexpected flight had been a wise idea. Not that she wouldn’t be ready to fight me all over again, the moment we set down. But at least for now she had accepted my strength, accepted my touch. She would again.

I landed on the narrow ledge lightly enough, planning to hold on to her until my wings had folded in, but standing still on the terrace felt too good, and instead I put my face against her neck, breathing in the sweet smell of her, until she panicked and jumped away, turning to stare up at me with an expression of shock.

Which wasn’t surprising. My wings were particularly impressive—an iridescent cobalt blue veined with black, they were emblematic of one rule of the Fallen. The longer we’d lived, the more ornate were our wings. The newly fallen had pure-white wings. Lucifer, the First, had wings of pure black. I was somewhere in between.

I let them fold back into place, hoping this would be enough to calm her, but she still stared at me. Her unexpected tears had dried, thank God, and she was ready for battle. I could still feel the lingering trace of her pleasure at our flight, and I stifled a grin. No one had ever enjoyed flying in my arms before, and it was almost as heady an experience for me.

“All right,” she said. “What are we going to do about this mess?” She’d decided to be reasonable. I could sense it, sense her struggling for her usual pragmatism. No problem was ever so big that it couldn’t be solved, she was thinking. There had to be a way around this.

“There isn’t,” I said. “We’re talking about forces beyond your comprehension. Things that can’t be reasoned with.”

She didn’t snap at me for reading her. “In other words, we’re trapped.”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t like it?”

I could feel the too-familiar rage simmer inside me. I had never had to share my mate, ever, throughout the endless years of eternity. Only Azazel had wed the Source, and I could remember only too well the difficulties during times of transition. Difficulties I’d attributed to grief and the usual problems in a new relationship. Now I wondered.

“You don’t need to answer,” she said glumly. “I can feel it.” She was misreading me again, mistaking my anger at sharing her for a rebellion against her as my wife. I looked at her, and a stray memory surfaced.

“Where did you grow up?” I demanded, more intent on answers than on soothing her wounded pride. I could take care of that quite effectively when I got her into bed.

“I’m not going to bed with you.”

I laughed, which startled her. She expected that her ability to read me would be annoying, but by now it was just the opposite. It was proof that whether I liked it or not, she was mine, just as I was hers. “You grew up in Rhode Island, didn’t you?” I said, ignoring her protest.

“You already know everything about me, including the number of men I’ve slept with and whether I enjoyed it or not,” she said bitterly.

“I never paid attention to your childhood,” I said. I remembered her. She’d been seven years old, sitting alone outside a small house near Providence.

Her long brown hair had been in braids, her mouth set in a thin line, and I could see the tracks of her tears as they’d run down her dirty face. She was using a stick to dig in the dirt, ignoring an angry voice that came from the house. I’d stopped to look at her, and she’d seen me, and for a moment her eyes widened in wonder and her pout disappeared.

I knew why. Children saw us differently. They knew we were no threat to them, and when they looked they knew who we were, instinctively.

Allie Watson had looked at me and smiled, her misery momentarily vanishing.

I should have known then.

I saw her again when she was thirteen, and too old to see who I really was. I hadn’t expected to see her, and when I did I moved back into the shadows so she wouldn’t notice me. She was angry, rebellious, storming out of a store in front of a woman who was praying loudly and calling upon Jesus to spare her such a worthless, ungrateful daughter.

I’d wanted to grab the woman, slam her against the wall, and inform her that Jesus was far more likely to spare the daughter such a harridan of a mother; but I didn’t move, watching as they got into a car, the mother tearing off into traffic, her bitter mouth still working as Allie looked out the window, trying to shut her out.

That’s when she saw me again. Even in the shadows, her young eyes had picked me out, and for a moment her face softened as if in recognition, and she lifted a hand.