Page 61 of Angel's Vengeance

“Yeah, that’s the wrong fucking thing to say to me.Word of advice: don’t tell someone whose very existence has been defined by waiting to, you know, keep on trucking.”

“Goddammit, Chrome, I didn’t tell you about my wings or my power because you’re the reason I have them in the first place!”

Chrome’s hand stilled above the bowling ball.“What?”

Rhode ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the roots.“When I was shot down, Cyro was going to take my wings, and I was prepared for that.I was prepared for any type of physical torture that bastard could have dreamed up.My soul’s spark would have returned to the Eternal Flame, and I would have died happily knowing my purpose as an Empyrean warrior had been fulfilled.But when he laid your well-being across the path of my final salvation and gave me a choice of either giving you up or turning myself into what I have become, believe me, brother, when I tell you it was no choice at all.”

Chrome straightened.“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that there is nothing I would not give up in this world, in the previous one or the next, if it meant losing you for good.”

The floodgates didn’t just open but were battering-rammed to splinters.Rhode held nothing back.Not how he had been shot down, what manner of torture they’d enacted, or even the bargain he’d struck that he would never bring himself to regret.For the first time since he’d been freed, he told Chrome about what he’d always remembered, which bits he chose to keep to himself, and fears he’d never shared to another soul, dead or alive.The minutes ticked on, and still, Rhode didn’t stop.Not when a screensaver covered the game’s scoreboard or when that pissant attendant was ordered to go check on the two of them and see whether they planned on finishing the game because maintenance would be arriving soon to service the lane.

As if oiling down a pinsetter was suddenly going to make the establishment’s long-lost customers reappear.

Rhode made it a point to keep going, though.He poured every bleeding second of his existence in captivity into Chrome’s eardrums, leaving nothing out.His fears, doubts, occasional hopes, and far more frequent disappointments.He spared nothing until every last memory was scooped out and delivered to the sentinel in whatever condition those memories happened to be in.

Perhaps it would have been a more cathartic experience if Rhode wasn’t standing in the middle of a bowling alley alongside bench seats that had seen more sweat than sanitizer and below a suspended ceiling with tiles so stained they sagged.

By the end of it, though, that damn bench seat, not his best friend, was the thing that caught Rhode when he finally needed something else to support himself besides determination and resolution.

Then Chrome grabbed a seat next to him and, in a similar show of mental exhaustion, leaned his forearms on his knees.“You can’t do that.You can’t come in here and say all that to me, telling me I was the reason you were in that fucking hell all that time.You don’t think I blame myself enough?I was the one who sent you out there in the first place!”

“No, I volunteered to go, and you know as well as I do that I didn’t give you a choice.There were no good choices, Chrome.Deep down, youknowthat.”Then Rhode gripped Chrome’s shoulder and dug in his emphasis.“And I wouldn’t have done a single thing differently.When I took my oath as seraphim commander, I didn’t just speak the words as a soldier.I spoke them as a friend.”His throat tightened.“As a brother.You were one of the seven sentinels, and there was no way I could have existed in a world where I would have led Cyro straight to you.Trust me when I say that I never blamed you once, never held any judgment or regret toward you.When you found me and I realized all that I had become, I was fucking terrified, not only at the new powers Cyro’s magic had manifested within me but at how you would look at me if you knew.And I thought that ifyouknew, I ran the risk of Cyro knowing as well, but I was so wrong.So much has changed since I’d last seen you or the others.I didn’t know about the battles you’d all waged with the charmers since my capture, nor did I know the powers the group of you had come to master.”

Chrome’s shoulder muscle jumped beneath Rhode’s hand, but the seraph wouldn’t relent.Not now.“I didn’t know what sort of place I could have within your family, among the sentinels.The parts of me that made me a seraph have been burned away and replaced with powers similar to yours but also very different.I had not shared your bond with the others, had not even lived life in the same world as you all had.And there you guys were, half of you soul bonded, for god’s sake!When you and Drea brought me to the surface, I thought I was as much an imposter as I was an Empyrean warrior.I could no more relate to you than my surroundings.The only thing Icouldrely on, could still understand and hold true to, was my ability to keep Cyro from you and the others.To do that, I had to keep you at arm’s length, and it hurt every fucking minute.”

Chrome’s gaze had turned somber, and Rhode could see the angel reliving those early days after the rescue in a play of mixed emotions that warred across his bold features.

“I never meant what I said, Chrome.I would havediedwithout your compassion, without Drea’s care.Of course I knew you never expected anything in return.”Then the corner of Rhode’s lip lifted.“I suspect if I had tried to truly thank you in any real way, you’d have ordered Drea to shove an oxygen mask on my face and run screaming from the room in search of something to punch.”

The gruff chuckle lifted the sentinel’s shoulders, and Rhode released a breath.“In emergencies, gratitude is implied, you know,” Chrome added.

“Even among friends?”

Chrome ran a hand over his jaw.“But not always among brothers.”

Rhode sat there, still as stone, while he listened to Chrome.

“I never wanted you out of my life.I was beyond angry and equally as hurt.Ax, I’ve only ever wanted you back.It was a miracle of the prime mages that I found you, and when I couldn’t reach you up here,” he said, tapping his temple, “it fucking ate me up inside that I had somehow failed you again.”

“You didn’t fail.”

“Yeah, I did.Because I didn’t do a good enough job of letting you know that, short ofnotlying your ass off and telling Drea that her cooking’s the best you’ve ever had, there’s not a damn thing you could do that would ever take you out of this family.”

Rhode had to grin at that.“I wouldneversay such a thing to her, but something tells me you may have learned that lesson the hard way.”He cocked a brow.

Chrome shook his head and smiled the smile of a thousand fools.“Why do you think I got her a new car?”

Rhode barked out a laugh loud enough to shake the already shaky foundations of the bowling alley.And when Chrome’s laugh joined his and rounded out the chorus, it wasn’t long before tears leaked from both their eyes.

Chrome was the first to wipe his away and regain his breath.“Oh, man, that felt good.”

“Yes.Yes it did.”

Then Chrome held out his hand, but when Rhode did the same, Chrome didn’t grab his palm.Instead, he rolled up Rhode’s silk shirt sleeve to reveal the mark of the seraphim commander, then inched up his own sleeve.When their forearms clasped, it was with an embrace that had first been forged in service of the Empyrean but had since been stoked in service of each other.

“Welcome back, asshole.”

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