Page 36 of Inflamed By an Incubus

She was distracted, and distracted hunters got themselves killed. There were countless non-humans out there who were looking for hunters to take out, wanting to weaken Archangel and claim themselves a trophy. She didn’t want to become a trophy, but she couldn’t purge the incubus from her mind and was finding it harder and harder to stop thinking about him.

“Needed some air,” she murmured and returned her gaze to the sunset.

Archer sat beside her on the black rectangular protrusion that had a vent on the rear side of it and acted as the perfect bench. Judging by the cigarette butts littering the area around it, people used it frequently. When Archer reached into his back pocket and withdrew his own pack of smokes, she arched an eyebrow at him. He sighed and put them away.

Instead of lighting a cigarette as he had clearly wanted, he leaned forwards, resting his elbows on his knees, his noble profile to her as he studied the city in silence. A black Henley covered him to his wrists, hugged his biceps and shoulders, and the first few buttons had been undone to reveal a strip of his toned chest. For once, he wasn’t wearing his standard-issue fatigues, had donned a pair of black jeans that rode up a little around his ankles to reveal Chelsea boots. He looked like he was going out for a night on the town rather than a patrol, and she wanted to ask if he had plans.

A date maybe.

She almost scoffed at that.

Archer didn’t date.

He could have his pick of the women working in HQ, but he kept to himself, and the one time she had asked if his tastes ran a different course, he had been quick to shoot her down and declare he was straight as an arrow.

He just wasn’t interested in mixing business with pleasure.

Whatever that meant.

Archer casually pushed the black frame of his glasses up his nose with his index finger.

Evelyn waited, aware it was only a matter of time before he picked her up on the fact he kept finding her here.

When he said nothing, she couldn’t hold her tongue, failed to deny the question that bubbled up from her soul and had her aching with a need to know the answer to it.

“Do you think I knew him before?” She risked a glance at Archer and dropped her gaze to her knees when he frowned and slid her a look that said he was more than worried about her now. She sighed. “I think I’ve seen him before. He was there in the Fifth Realm, but I’m sure that’s not the first time I’ve seen him. He’s so familiar… and the things he said.”

“He’s an incubus and he was being held captive.” Archer’s deep voice rolled over her, no hint of malice in it or any emotion at all. He sounded as if he was stating facts, repeating lines he had practiced to perfection in his head, but then his tone softened and warmed, and concern lit his dark eyes. “You can’t trust him. He was playing you, Evelyn.”

Something flickered in his gaze before he averted it, his shoulders shifting on a long sigh. If she had been forced to name that emotion, she would have called it guilt. Why?

“You’d be better off not trusting anyone,” he muttered, his expression darkening.

What had him so moody today?

He idly picked at the left wrist of his top, his jaw flexed and he husked, “You shouldn’t go trusting non-humans. It’s not the Archangel way.”

Evelyn frowned at that. “It might not have been once, but things are different now. There are a few tentative truces between us and the immortals… Prince Loren and the demon king Thorne—”

“That demon king just caused a fight in the cafeteria that put a dozen hunters in the infirmary, and reports place the elf in the cellblock a week ago, soon after the attack started,” he snapped and his dark eyebrows knitted hard as he narrowed his gaze on her. “I don’t think there’s a truce between Archangel and the two you mentioned. Not only that, but do I really have to remind you that you were almost killed by a demon king? None of them are to be trusted. You need to remain loyal to Archangel and not let the non-humans sway you.”

Evelyn leaned away from him slightly and didn’t stop frowning at him even when his look softened, an apology entering his eyes. It wasn’t like him to be this snappish with her. Sure, he sometimes had a hard edge to his tone or said things that cut her, and she did the same when frustration or something was getting the better of her, but the look in his eyes screamed that he wanted to have a full-blown argument with her over this and she wasn’t sure why. Because she kept thinking about the incubus? Was he jealous? Or was his anger just his worry coming out in a bad way?

He blew out his breath and lifted his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose as his eyes closed.

She really didn’t get Archer at times.

She had seen him avoid conflict with the non-humans.

He didn’t know that she had, but she had witnessed it when she was off duty. She had gone for a walk and he had been participating in a nightly patrol with three other hunters. When she had spotted him among them, she had changed course to intercept them and say hello, but two vampires had appeared.

Archer had avoided participating in taking them down.

He had intentionally distanced himself when the team had moved in on them, and she had the feeling it hadn’t been the first time he had avoided conflict with immortals either.

That feeling had only grown when the demon king had shown up in the cafeteria. Archer hadn’t attempted to help the hunters who had gone there to take down Thorne when he had been trying to whisk Sable away to Hell.

She shoved that thought aside, trying not to let it colour her opinion of him. A lot of hunters had avoided the brawl that had broken out, not wanting to get between a demon king and Sable. Sable didn’t tend to react well to people interfering in her business. When the elves had broken into the cell block before that, Archer had come to her to check she was safe, and he had ended up teaming up with her. He had stopped Fenix from taking her, and she was grateful to him for that.

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