Page 3 of Semi-Fallen

On their own, none of her features were remarkable. But the combination of those high, knife-edged cheek bones, big chocolate-brown eyes, and rosy lips together made her nothing short of stunning.

As a soldier of Heaven, it was his duty, his sacred oath, to hunt and destroy Nephilim—the forbidden offspring of angels and humans. He’d hunted this Nephilim for many human years. He could smite her where she stood.

But he didn’t.

Worse yet, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to.

Maybe it was because he’d been on this planet, in this dimension, for long enough to develop a bit of a fondness for it and its people. The food, the sights and sounds, the entertainment and humor—it was all pleasing to him. Killing the Nephilim would mean leaving it all and returning to Heaven to await his next assignment.

And Heaven didn’t feel like his home anymore.

It hadn’t since he’d been captured by demons and left to rot in a hell dimension prison for so many years. Every one of the angels he called brothers and sisters left him there without bothering to search or plan a rescue. They simply carried on with their own missions like the good little soldiers they were.

Sometimes, for fleeting moments, it made him wish he was capable of falling. Other angels could choose to surrender their grace and power and live a mundane life amongst the humans. Soldiers weren’t afforded that luxury.

The thought of being powerless was terrifying, but then again, the thought of following orders didn’t hold much appeal these days, either. Funny how being forsaken and left for dead will tend to do that.

Lucien almost let out a bitter laugh at the memory of his escape nearly fifteen years ago. A demon named Gabriel and his half-demon bride, Adrianne, had facilitated his release.

And they’d treated him better, more fairly, than his own brothers and sisters in arms.

If he’d known at the time that the Nephilim he sought—the one he’d lost track of while he was imprisoned in a hell dimension—was right here all along, things might’ve ended differently.

But now…

He sighed. Now he was stuck watching from the shadows as the pretty little Nephilim helped Gabriel, the closest thing he had to a friend in this dimension, hunt and subdue a fire demon he knew for a fact had killed twenty innocent humans.

She did it with shocking ease, too. The rest of her team, even Gabriel, struggled to control the beast. But not her. One scream—a tiny one, at that—had taken it to the ground.

She could’ve done so much more damage. Her control was remarkable. So was her concern for her teammates. She’d waited to defeat the creature until her team was protected.

Hardly the Heaven-destroying monster he’d been trained to kill.

And before the end of this day, he’d have to decide if he wanted to kill this seemingly innocent Nephilim and return home, or defy Heaven itself to protect her.

It was going to be a very long night.

Because he didn’t have a clue what the right decision was. Was there even a right decision in this instance?

But that wasn’t even the real problem.

The real problem was that he wasn’t even sure right mattered anymore. Not to him, Heaven, or anyone else in this dimension.

CHAPTER 3

Lane set her lunch tray down on the table in the Section 8 cafeteria, doing her best to ignore the werewolf who was trying so hard to get her attention.

When she sat down, he dropped into the chair across from her and leaned down so that she was forced to look him in the eye. Deliberately and slowly so that she could read his lips, he said, “So, heard you took down another demon, freak show. Nicely done.”

Abel Woods was a vile jerk. He was about her age, and looked like every mean, bullying jock in every teen movie ever made. Tall, muscled, classically handsome features, overly styled blond hair, and a sneer that perfectly complimented his cold, dead eyes.

If he was her trainee, she’d make it a point to knock him on his ass every day until some of the arrogant bravado started to drain out of his soul.

The fact that he was even talking to her at all showed a stunning lack of self-awareness. She outranked him by years. He’d only entered the training program a few months ago. She was his superior in rank, age, strength, and intelligence, and he had the nerve to call her names?

But telling him so would be pointless. He was just displaying typical insecure werewolf behavior by trying to assert dominance. He’d picked out the strongest person in the room, and was trying to get the best of her to prove what a big, tough, wannabe-alpha wolf he was.

Yeah. Not happening. She wasn’t in the mood.

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