Page 28 of Angel's Enemy Omega

The far wagon is unguarded, its flap open.

Taking a torch from the fire, he checks inside. His heart sinks. The wagon master is prone on the straw mattress, black blood seeping into the tick.

A curse explodes from his lips.

“Myra!” he barks across the camp. “Someone get her. Now!”

Myra appears out of thin air. “What?”

He shoves the torch at her. “Gorman’s dead. I need to find that damn—” He breaks off with a grunt. Myra makes for the wagon, but he stops her. “Don’t touch anything.”

As he turns on his heel she calls after him, “Was he infected?”

“Yes,” he growls over his shoulder.

Infected and mere hours from a long and painfully drawn out death, probably. But he told Nur not totouchthe human, damn it.

He heads around the back of the wagon, finding Nur’s clothes in a wet pile. A trail of footprints fade into the grass. Past camp, over the hump of a hill, he finds the hollow sitting on a low slope overlooking a valley. His naked back is to Arsene and his arms are wrapped around his knees. Scars lash him all over with moonlit silver. He looks so vulnerable. Arsene wants to shout at him. He wants to possess him.

He comes to a stop behind Nur. “I told you to watch him.”

“I’m not your servant.” His words are slurred and he sways slightly.

For the first time in days, Arsene reaches deep, deep down to the bright thread connecting them, and he listens to it. A familiar ache echoes in the pit of his stomach, the one that means Nur is hungry.

As always.

“You didn’t take his soul.”

“He’s free to join the other human souls in the pit.” Nur waves a clumsy hand, still not looking at him. “Maybe he’ll turn up again as a demon. On that day, I’ll be free to devour him.”

“You still need to feed.”

“I’ll survive, I suppose.” Nur shrugs. But his shoulders tense as Arsene draws nearer. “You said you’d kill me if I touched them.”

Arsene sits next to Nur in the cold, wet grass.

As if he could kill Nur.

Instead, his anger drains away into the vast landscape.

“Why did you do it?”

Nur hums. “I knew he was sick.”

“Butwhy? You could have told me.”

Nur laughs, low and bitter, flashing his sharp teeth. “Maybe I want you to punish me. You’re disappointing me in that arena, by the way.”

Thoughts flicker through his mind at speed. He can’t pin any of them down.

Light gleams in the grass, shimmering stars reflected across the field. They pull away from the earth in groups, rising to form dancing constellations. They’re not stars at all, but insects glowing with bioluminescence. They’re taking flight after being woken by the rain.

Nur’s muscles shift as he lifts his head to watch them. His pale eyes shine like moons themselves. His hair is pulled back, exposing the sharp planes of his face, and it makes him look like a vergis. The sight tears at Arsene like a wild animal in his gut.

Without thinking, he digs a hand into that silken hair and tugs it free. It slides like rainwater over his knuckles, and a faint perfume rises. Nur gasps and his mouth goes slack with surprise, making it all too easy to take possession. When Nur opens to him, tongue soft and slick, his deadly teeth grazing Arsene’s lip, he flushes all over with sudden need. Why had he been denying himself this?

Nur’s claws prick his chest, sending sparks up Arsene’s spine. His breath melts across Arsene’s cool skin as he gasps.

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