Page 23 of Angel's Vengeance

The angel gritted his teeth, then a sharp slice ripped through the chilly air.Wings.Two gleaming pale silver wings shot from his back, and terror gripped her heart at what he was intending to do.

She’d seen those wings before and, amid the tossing and turning that plagued her last night, put the pieces together of what exactly they were made of, what she knew Cyro had done to him—and how truly brittle his metal could be.

“No!”

The impact scattered every remaining raptor in the trees and smashed Rhode’s forehead into the ground next to her ear.His grunts and strangled breaths provided the soundtrack for the snow cascading around them.Then the cage of Rhode’s arms extended, cowered, then extended again as he struggled to support the huge branch flattening the two of them into the packed snow.

Bruising pain assaulted her as her limbs mingled with Rhode’s, pressing into each other at sharp angles.Owing to the meager padding of her winter coat, her back had been somewhat spared the worst of the impact, but that meant nothing for the straining angel above her, whose every ragged breath interlaced with her frightened ones.

It all ended as soon as it started.The falling wet snow settled around them, its heavy cascade no longer pattering on the shield of Rhode’s wings.

Neela squinted for what meager light she could access within the shadowy cage of his wings.Over Rhode’s shoulders, a mighty oak branch glinted back at her as it stuck out several feet on each side beyond Rhode’s already condor-length wingspan.Breath somehow rushed into her compressed lungs, which were so tightly flushed against his deep chest.

And that was a pity, because her panic didn’t make her nearly as helpful as she’d hoped.

“Holy shit!There’s a tree on your back!”

“I’m ...aware ...”

“No, you don’t understand.With the age of that oak and the length of the branch—it’s a good fifteen feet long at least.Add on the ice encrusting it and the diameter of the wood, how wet the core will be owing to the season, that’s got to be a good thousand pounds!”

Rhode’s shoulders threatened to burst the seams of his coat as he tried to push the weight off them as much as he could.His eyes were squeezed shut, his brow creased in what she had to imagine was both pain and concentration.“Got that.”

“But your metal!It’s?—”

“Dammit, woman, I fucking know, all right?”

Sweat beaded across his forehead as his hips swerved, then steadied with the weight of the rocking branch.Holy hell, he wasn’t just keeping the thing from crushing her butbalancingit as well.The man was banking his body so the limb—a limb the size of many mature trees—wouldn’t roll over his head and flatten hers.

“Are you hurt?”he grunted out as he held a plank above her while a tree held its own plank on his back.

“I’m fine.But how can we?—”

“Need to shift.”

“No.Rhodium’s too breakable.It doesn’t have the tensile strength to?—”

Hot breath tickled her ear and brushed across her nose as he tried to push up and look at her.“If you have a better idea, I’m all ears.”

That silver fire swirled in his eyes again, pinning her impossibly further beneath the weight of his stare.Then she sucked in a sharp breath as his hip flexors chiseled out a hard path along her inner thigh.He groaned and tried to tilt his lower body away from her, but he only succeeded in widening his legs a bit to redistribute the weight.

Which put a whole lot more of him front and center against her.

“Fuck, this branch is too heavy.”

“What will happen?If you shift?”The question was her only acquiescence to the inevitable transformation and the only option that would separate their two quickly fusing bodies.

Rhode’s voice softened to a nearly inaudible whisper.“I need my fire.Can’t access it like this.Not yet.Need to incinerate the wood.”

“Why can’t you access it yet?”

He looked away and took that vibrant stare with him.

“Oh.”

The soul bond.Molly and Brass had given her more of the rundown on what happened when a celestial angel connected with their mate, and the reality made her all sorts of worried.In Brass’s case, and that of the other sentinels, their fire was trapped inside them, only to slowly be set free when physical contact with their soul bond increased over time.

There was a great significance to it, as she understood things, one with lasting consequences.

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