Page 33 of Angel's Vengeance

Neela didn’t have to visit an animal shelter again to have the picture drawn of a panicked, desperate animal only to have it dragged out for those who loved it the most to gawk at.Especially after she left said animal licking a new set of wounds.She needed to do something before someone else got hurt at her expense.

“Excuse me!Rhode and I need a minute.”Neela leaped off the bench, grabbed Rhode by the flaming arm, and dragged him down the first corridor she saw.

To her great surprise, no one asked her why she was so calm seeing his fire or how she knew it was safe to touch.

And to her even greater surprise, Rhode didn’t fight her as she pulled him away.

Chapter16

Rhode’s rage was a practiced undertaking, and that was about the only thing in recent memory he could honestly say he was proud of.When examining all the good he’d accomplished in his existence, his ability to only fly off the handle when called to do so had turned into a calling card of sorts.An expertise.A skill set so rare and valuable that, in a different time, full-blooded Empyrean warriors had learned to tread with care where his temper was concerned, ensuring it was only called upon in pursuit of the enemy rather than misdirected elsewhere.

Well, all of that careful toe-stepping had flown right out the fucking window, apparently, and maybe that was for everyone’s benefit.

Loose cannons were liabilities.Any sentinel in that room would be the first to say so, and they had, in no uncertain terms.And he sought to, what?Convince them that suffering somehow equaled service?That his time trapped in the proverbial trenches negated the eons that the others spent inactualservice, withactualskills strengthened through familial bonds he had been severed from long ago?

Dammit, he was better than that, but hell if any part of him could see that beyond the temptation of what vengeance offered or the?—

“Goddammit!”His shoulder slammed into the wall’s granite corner before Neela, who never looked backward and was seemingly annoyed at his sudden lack of propulsion, grabbed him and yanked his arm harder, until he had no choice but to follow.

“Door ...Door ...There must be a door around here ...Ah!Door!In here.”

No sooner had the sting in his muscles subsided when the door latch clicked behind him and the motion sensor lights fired up.Once he finally got his fire and fury under control, he slowly tried to center himself among the great mountain’s soothing minerals and ...sacks of chickpea flour?“Why are we in the food pantry?”

“Because this was the first place I could find with an unlocked door that could afford us some privacy.”

“And why would we need privacy?”he gritted out.

Neela whirled on him and pointed a finger at his chest.“Do you even really need to ask me that?Because if you had any ounce of awareness, you’d be able to tell that you were about to go all Silver Surfer meets Human Torch in there, and I don’t think either of us would have appreciated the ramifications ofthattemper tantrum.”

Cold clarity returned to him.“Temper.Tantrum?Never, in all my years, has a female spoken to me as if the very fury of the Empyrean was being wielded by none other than a toddler.”

“Yeah, well, what wouldyoucall it when the person pitching a fit is too stuck in his own emotions to be able to hear that his family’s complaints about him are one hundred percent?—”

“If you think for onefuckingsecond that I’ll let you?—”

“—unequivocally—”

“—insert yourself where you don’t?—”

“—wrong!”

“—belong ...Wait, what?”

“What?”

Neela staggered backward and threw out a hand to support herself against a shelf containing commercially sized cans of San Marzano tomatoes.Likewise, Rhode felt a similar ricochet, but her barbs didn’t slay so much as stun him.

Had she just said ...?

And then he saw it.The deepening pink creeping high into her cheeks, the upturned creases in the corners of her eyes threatening to dip southward.The way her expression didn’t just soften but somehow melted and reformed into an icy awareness that always came when one tried to mask their wounds.

“Shit.Neela, I didn’t mean?—”

But she cut her gaze away and examined a basket of baby purple potatoes while she cleared a gather of emotion from her throat.“What I was trying to say is that your family is wrong, Rhode, and trust me, I’m not just saying that to try and make you feel better.I have zero interest where that’s concerned.”A near-silent sniffle pricked his celestial senses before quickly dissipating beneath her words.“I’m saying all this because when something’s worth fighting for, sometimes the desire to correct the misconception can be lost behind the desire to be correct.And believe me when I tell you that I don’t say this because I’m smart.It’s just that I have firsthand experience with sticking to problems a whole lot longer than most others.It kind of comes with the territory when, as you pointed out, one has a habit of not belonging.”Glistening honeyed eyes found him, and he cursed himself for having put the sheen there to begin with.

Then cursed himself anew for admiring the unique shimmer, as well as the way his fingers itched to cradle her red cheeks and call his thumbs into service to swipe away the first tear that might fall because of his callousness.

“Why do you think neither you nor my sire have managed to chase me away yet?I promise you, it’s not for lack of trying but because I am as persistent as you are important to what Cyro has in store.And if you would stop fighting me for more than one damn second, I’d be more than happy to explain my theory on the subject.”

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