He woke before her but stayed motionless and watched her sleep, counting the lashes on her eyes, the tiny freckles on her face, feeling the rhythm of her breath. After last night, he had not a single doubt in his mind that she was his mate. Even so far from his family at such a bad time, he hadn't felt angry and panicked and as if he was in the wrong skin.
Because Andromeda was here and because she understood him.
Though she'd only known him for a short time, she'd understood he'd come to her because he needed contact, needed someone to hold on to while he waited for news about Illium. She might play and fight with him in normal life but when it was serious, she was right there, her arms strong and her affection a passionately protective force.
He was going to win her, no matter what.
And he'd find that stupid Grimoire book so he could put his scent all over her, inside her.
Getting out of bed before he rolled her over onto her back, parted her thighs and sank inside her wet tightness, he tugged gently on the braid in which she insisted on taming her pretty hair. "Wake up. It's time."
*
Andromeda took in Naasir's expression the instant she woke, was happy to see that he looked more like his usual self. The painful hours since he'd woken her in the night had made it clear he cared deeply for his family . . . would care as deeply for the woman who was his. Andromeda wanted to be that woman so much it hurt.
Shoving down the need lest it paralyze her, she got ready. Isabel had found her some combat leathers that fit, the leather worn-in and the shade a dusty brown perfect for this mission. The pants hugged her legs, while the top--which she'd worn over a tank top modified for wings--left her arms bare but came up to her neck and fit snugly around her wings.
Soon after her meeting with Caliane, Andromeda had started wearing in the boots she'd found in the closet, and though they remained stiff, they were far better than flimsy slippers. As for the scabbard Isabel had given her, it was perfect. "I'm ready," she said, joining Naasir out on the balcony ten minutes after he'd woken her.
He was dressed in a sand-colored T-shirt and cargo pants of desert camouflage, boots on his feet.
While the two of them ate a quick breakfast, Avi and Isabel went out with a squadron and dealt with the four enemy lurkers. Since Amanat was Caliane's heart, it hadn't been built to house prisoners. Avi's only choice was either to execute the prisoners or send them elsewhere.
"He plans to place them on a prison ship once he's finished the interrogation," Isabel told Naasir and Andromeda after flying back to confirm things had gone exactly as planned. "It's anchored deep in the ocean, so even if Lijuan's people figure out where they are and mount a prison break, it won't put Amanat at risk."
"Thank you for the safe harbor," Andromeda said, touching both hands to Isabel's. "Please thank Lady Caliane too." Raphael's mother was with her maidens and not to be disturbed. "I hope we'll spar again one day, Isabel."
"Of course--I must reclaim my honor." A quiet smile. "Safe journey, my friends."
Andromeda and Naasir left quietly, slipping out into the early morning darkness like wraiths. They'd decided she couldn't afford to fly, not yet. Since this entire country had been part of Lijuan's territory before Caliane awoke, Lijuan had spies and loyalists throughout. Should Andromeda be spotted, the enemy might decide to shoot her down, or to take her in the air where Naasir couldn't back her up.
"It's so peaceful this time of day," she said as they walked through the forest outside Amanat. "Even the monkeys are asleep."
"They're not asleep--they're just not sure about you." Reaching out, he ran his hand down her back and over her wings. "Now they know you're mine."
She couldn't restrain her shiver. His eyes seemed to glow. "I'm going to find the Grimoire."
The low, deep promise sent a surge of pure want through her veins, temptation an ache in her breasts, tension in her abdomen, damp readiness between her thighs. "I'd break my vow for you," she whispered, heartbroken at the idea that she might never know him as intimately as a woman could know a man.
Fangs flashing, Naasir bent to her throat to breathe deep. But even as her eyes began to close, her blood honey, he pulled back and shook his head, the shaggy silver of his hair glinting in the faint light of dawn. "You must keep promises," he said. "Even those to yourself."
Her lower lip shook. "You see how bad my control is over my base urges," she whispered. "You're having to school me."
Naasir smiled as if she'd said something wonderful. "I don't see a problem. My mate should find me irresistible."
She wanted at once to kiss that wicked mouth with its sinful smile, and bare her teeth at him for his arrogance. "I'm not your mate." Could never be, her bloodline of the enemy and bound to that enemy.
Naasir growled. "I'll make you change your mind."
Andromeda wanted to play with him so badly that she did something unforgivable--she encouraged him to think they could have a future. "Oh? How?"
"Wait and see."
The monkeys started calling out then, one swinging upside down from a branch above to stare right into her face. When she cried out and jumped back, the monkey and Naasir both laughed. The others joined in, the sound raucous.
Scowling at her unrepentant partner, she pushed at his muscular arm. Undaunted, he grabbed her hand and held it possessively in his.
She curled her fingers around his palm, not challenging his right to touch her.
*
Two hours of walking brought them to the spot where Naasir had arranged for a large vehicle to be waiting for them, watched over by a vampire who saluted Naasir then took off in the direction of Amanat. Modified to transport injured angels if necessary, it had plenty of room for her wings and the rest of their journey to the airfield passed quickly.
Since Philomena likely had eyes on the airfield as well, they'd had to make a decision about whether to arrange a different jet, or to do the unexpected. Since it was unlikely they could arrange another jet as fast as those in Raphael's fleet, they went with the latter option. Driving the vehicle right to the jet in order to offset the chance of a surprise attack, they had the pilot file a flight plan that took them across Favashi's territory and deep into Michaela's.
Once Philomena passed on the information to Xi, he'd either follow them to their destination, or send a squadron after them while going with his own instincts--which would likely lead him to Rohan's palace. Regardless, he'd be at least a five-hour flight from Andromeda and Naasir's actual destination.
Once in the air, Andromeda settled in while Naasir prowled the aisles like a beast caged. "Come here," she said after ten minutes, having moved to an extra-wide seat meant to accommodate two angels who wanted to sit side by side.
He scowled but came. "I don't want to sit."
"Lie down and put your head in my lap."
Still scowling, he stretched out on the seat as she'd suggested. His tension remained unabated. When she began to stroke her fingers through the heavy silk of his hair, however, his eyes closed and he made a rumbling sound in his chest. Smiling, happy to simply be here in this moment with him, she continued to pet him until he fell asleep. Even then, she didn't stop, the pleasure in doing this for him a glowing warmth inside her.
When he stretched some time later and opened his eyes on a yawn, it was to look at her with a sleepy gaze and say, "This is a mate thing to do."
Yes, it was. "Is it?" She forced a teasing smile. "If I'm your mate, shouldn't you be doing it in return then?"
He reached up to place his hand on the back of her neck, his skin warm and a little rough. Her pulse thudded at the contact, her senses lost in the silver mysteries of his eyes.
"I wouldn't just pet your hair," he said. "I'd stroke your wings, especially the places I'm not allowed to touch yet."
"Naasir," she whispered, leaning so close to him that their breaths mingled. "Why did you not find me sooner?" They could've had centuries together instead of mere weeks.
"I wasn't ful
l-grown." He ran the fingers of his free hand over her cheek. "I didn't yet have the understanding of what it meant to have a mate."
Lifting her head before she closed the final distance between them and stole a kiss, she tilted her head to the side. "But you're six hundred years old."
Sliding his hand from her neck, he insinuated his arm behind her waist, so that he was holding her under her wing. His body heat burned into her back and the upper part of his arm brushed against the inner surface of her wings. It was a deeply intimate hold.
And it felt unmistakably right.
"I'm not like other six-hundred-year-old immortals," Naasir said, his voice unexpectedly quiet and serious. "I'm not like anyone."
"I know." She ran her fingers through his hair again. "You're unique and wild and extraordinary."
"Sometimes I'm more animal than man."
She shrugged. "In my experience, animals are often far better than people." Massaging his nape when he tugged her hand down to it, she smiled. "You can't scare me off. I've stood face-to-face with monsters--I know you're the opposite."
His gaze darkened. "I really wish I could kill Lijuan."
Realizing he'd taken her reference to Charisemnon's court as being to Lijuan's, she nodded. "The mortals who seek immortality, do you think they ever consider the fact that immortality might mean being stuck with people you despise for centuries or even millennia?"
Naasir didn't answer, his eyes closed again. "Use your nails," he said lazily.
When she ran her nails over his nape, he purred. It made her body sing, her breath shallow. "Were you ever human or were you born as you are?" she asked when she could speak coherently, her need to know him endless.
His lashes lifted. "Most people ask who Made me."
She could see why--being Made by an angel was the only known way to become a vampire. "But you're not a vampire," she said definitively. "You have enough vampiric characteristics that it's easier for people to categorize you as a vampire than to accept the unknown, but I told you I like hunting secrets."
Naasir's lips curved in a playful smile. "Ellie calls me a tiger creature. It makes her crazy that Raphael won't tell her what I am and spoil my game."
Andromeda pulled at his hair a little. "You and your sire are clearly both as bad as one another."
His laughter filled the cabin. When he spoke again, he said, "I was once human . . . and I was not human. Then I became me."
She narrowed her eyes at the riddle. "I think Raphael's consort and I should join forces."
A grin. "It is a game."
"Give me another clue."
"I am a thing of more than one thing."
"You're not a thing," she said with a frown. "You are Naasir, a beautiful, dangerous man."
He sat up without warning, making her heart thud. Bracing one hand on the armrest on her left, his arm diagonally across her body and his face bare inches from hers, he said, "I am a person to you."
It wasn't a question but she felt compelled to reply. "You are the most fascinating, most wonderful, and most aggravating person I've ever met."
Bending his head with a grin at the last, he rubbed his nose over hers. "And you, Andi, are the smartest, most sparkling, most-delicious-smelling woman I've ever met."
Her thighs clenched at the memory of what he'd said he'd do to her should he ever sink his teeth into her. "I will figure out the mystery of you," she said, throwing down the gauntlet. "When I do, will you tell me of the adventures you had in your youth?"
"I can tell you a story now." Retaking his previous position with his head on her lap and his arm around her back, he bent one leg at the knee, the other stretched out on the seat. "When I first came to the Refuge, I was small, a boy like Sameon."
Andromeda tried to imagine him as a child, couldn't. To her, he was and would always be, a strong, deadly man.
"I didn't know I wasn't supposed to touch wings." He rubbed the back of his hand over the inner surface of her feathers, eyes going heavy-lidded when she shivered. "Even though Raphael had told me after I yanked out one of his feathers, I still didn't understand--I wasn't grown like another boy of the same size, and my mind couldn't understand things like that."
"But you could understand other things?"
A nod. "I knew who was a good person and who was a bad person. I knew never to be alone with certain people, and I knew I could play with the other children but that I mustn't hurt them with my fangs or my claws or I'd lose my friends. I was very careful with them--angel babies are very fragile."
"Yes, I suppose they are." Especially in comparison to a boy who had claws and fangs. "You said you were human and not human. When you were younger, were you more not human?"
A slow, sly smile. "You're clever, Andi."
She pulled his hair again. "Answer the question."
Baring his teeth at her, he said, "Yes, I was more not human. But I knew how to play with other children." A sudden darkness in his eyes. "I never played with angel or mortal children before I came to the Refuge. My before-friends were snow wolves. The other children were all dead. Ghosts."
28
The scholar in Andromeda wanted to follow that dark thread, but the woman who'd fallen so entirely for this man knew down that alley lay only hurt for him. "I'm sorry," she said gently. "Did you make good friends at the Refuge?"
"Yes." A flash of fangs. "Some parents said I was a bad influence, but the children liked me."
"Of course they did." Andromeda laughed. "Are you still friends with those children now?"
"Yes. Especially with two of them," Naasir said. "One works with Galen, the other is a scientist on a tropical island in Astaad's territory. When I visit, he gives me fish to eat." Naasir looked dubious. "I eat it to be polite, but I don't understand fish."
Her lips twitched. "You're a good friend." She could just imagine him eating the fish while trying to figure out why anyone would eat fish. "Tell me the rest of the story."
Fingers brushing over her hip, he grinned. "Because I didn't understand I wasn't supposed to touch wings, I'd do things like wait on top of bookshelves or cling to the ceiling and drop down on unsuspecting angels. Before they'd finished shrieking, I'd have torn off a feather and run away."
Andromeda's shoulders shook. "You were a little terror."
"Yes," he said proudly. "Then one day, I jumped on Michaela."
Andromeda's laughter dried up. "Did she hurt you?" The archangel renowned for her vivid green eyes and flawless skin the shade of milk chocolate, her beauty the muse of poets and artists through the ages, was not known for her patience.
"Michaela wasn't an archangel then, but she was dangerous all the same. Only her scent was . . . not what it has become." Naasir frowned, as if trying to figure out the change. "She was fast though. She caught me by the foot before I could run away and, holding me upside down with a grip on one ankle, her arm stretched out so I couldn't get her with my claws, she said, 'You are in trouble.'"
Andromeda swallowed. "What did you do?"
"I had one of her covert feathers in my hand and I offered it back to her. When she didn't take it, I growled and clawed and tried to get away."
Andromeda's heart was in her mouth, though Michaela clearly hadn't done Naasir any lasting harm if he was telling her this tale. "Did she take you to Raphael?"
"No. She carried me to Jessamy and told her I needed lessons in civilized manners."
"Did Jessamy make her let you go?"
Naasir shook his head. "I'd torn up all my schoolbooks the day before and eaten the schoolroom's pet bunny."
Andromeda knew she shouldn't, but she burst out laughing. "You didn't."
"It was there and I was hungry and no one told me I couldn't eat it," he said with an aggrieved look on his face. "Why would you put a bunny there if it wasn't for eating?"
"Poor Jessamy." Wiping away her tears, Andromeda shook her head. "What did she do?"
"She locked all the windows and doors in her study space in the Archives,
then held on to me while Michaela slipped out and pulled the door shut behind her, making sure it locked. When Jessamy released me, I raged all around the room, tearing up things, clawing the furniture and even biting her."
Andromeda's smile faded. "You felt trapped."
"Jessamy didn't know all of my life before, didn't understand what it would do to me to be caged. As soon as she realized I wasn't just angry, but scared, she opened the door."
"And you ran?" she guessed, her heart hurting for that small, scared boy who didn't know how to be in an unfamiliar world.
Naasir's answer was a surprise. "Jessamy was crying. Even though I was scared, I knew that was bad, so I went over and patted her hand and said sorry for biting it."
Andromeda's own eyes turned hot.
"She went to her knees and told me that wasn't why she was crying. She was crying because she'd made me afraid when she'd just wanted a chance to talk to me without me running away when I got bored."
Andromeda could well imagine Jessamy's distress. The teacher of angelic young had a heart so huge, she loved each one of her charges as if that child was her own. "You decided to stay, didn't you?"
"I didn't like Jessamy crying--she was always nice to me, even when I tore up her books. I put my hand in hers and we went for a walk to a place with gardens, where she took a seat on a stone bench, put me on her lap, and started to teach me what I needed to know so I could live in the world without people being angry with me all the time."
The ache inside Andromeda, it was so deep now, for the boy he'd been. "How long did Jessamy teach you such things?"
"For years." Naasir's tone held a deep vein of affection. "It took me time to learn but Jessamy is patient. Every afternoon, we'd sit in the garden and she'd teach me things the other children already knew. Like how I shouldn't growl at people even if I didn't like them, and how bunnies and other animals in the Refuge weren't for eating."
He rubbed his fingers over her hip. "Dmitri taught me, too, but Dmitri didn't care if I ate pet bunnies or if I jumped out at him so he wasn't the best teacher on the topic."
Andromeda could well imagine that Raphael's deadly second had a far more laissez-faire attitude toward etiquette and behavior. When you were that dangerous, you made your own rules. "And now you can be so civilized it's scary."