Page 74 of Guarded
A brother I missed desperately.
This right here was why I’d insisted on accompanying Micah. Why I’d reluctantly told Jem I couldn’t miss this to meet him earlier.
What I had with Jeremiah…it was so different from what I’d shared with Lyle. He made me feel things Lyle never had.
Excited.
Safe.
Trusting.
Happy.
Wanted.
Being with him made me realise how worthless Lyle truly was. I’d thrown away everything and everyone in my life just to get away from him.
I didn’t regret it, not when it had led me to where I was now. The Seraphim and Jem…they were becoming my new everything. There’d be no replacing any of them. But that didn’t mean the others needed to stay lost. There was room in my life for all of them.
Well, all of them except Lyle.
That was why I was truly here. It was time to repair the relationships I hadn’t intended to break.
Starting with Atlas.
Lyle didn’t stay absent for long.
He appeared halfway through the first session—a presentation about world leaders to be wary of. They included this at every conference and I could never understand why. It wasn’t like we were allowed to interfere. They droned on about the latest fascist party crawling out of the woodwork, but apparently it was ‘interfering with free will’ to stop them reaching power.
I was certain that allowing them to do so interfered with the free will of the groups they targeted, but that logic seemed wasted on the upper echelons of Heaven.
How was it that angels had ended up with the reputationthey had? Most of the time,we were forced to watch atrocities unfold and forbidden to intervene. Something told me Jeremiah, Nox, and their friends would have a thing or seven to say about it. I doubted any of them would feel bad about bumping off a wannabe dictator.
I had to assume the only reason they didn’t was because they valued their immortality as much as every other supe. Archs weren’t just guards, we were effectively God’s police force too. There wasn’t an arch in this room who hadn’t been tasked with putting down a supe for interfering with free will—myself included.
It made me sick, if truth be told.
Every eye in the room turned to Lyle as he walked into the meeting. Staggered would be a more accurate term. Shock rippled through me as he bounced off a doorframe and tripped over a chair.
What the fuck is happening?
Atlas shot to his feet, darting between the murmuring assembly until he was at Lyle’s side. He grabbed his arm, speaking harshly and quickly into his ear.
Lyle shrugged him off with a sneer. Unlike Atlas, he didn’t bother to keep his voice down. “Remember your place,second.”
Atlas flushed red, but that was the only trace of his embarrassment. His face was like stone as he released Lyle and stepped away to let him pass.
Micah’s eyes were wide as he leaned close to me. “This isn’t normal behaviour for Lyle, right?”
“No,” I whispered, unable to tear my gaze away from my former lover as he turfed an angel in our row out of his seat and took it for himself. He was only a few seats down but hadn’t clocked us yet. “I mean, the way he spoke to Atlas? That’s standard, unfortunately. But neverin public, and certainly not in front of this many people.”
“He looks intoxicated,” Micah said before horror dawned. “That, or this is the result of him crossing the line.”
I swallowed hard. I knew exactly which line Micah was referring to. As archs, we commanded enormous amounts of power. We spent decades learning how to properly harness it. How to release it in controlled bursts. It was the most important part of our training, and for a very good reason. If we didn’t, if we stepped past the limit of control and let our power control us, it would end terribly for everyone.
During his second run-in with Micah and Nox, Lyle had stepped over that line. He’d allowed his control to snap and his power to overwhelm him. The only reason it hadn’t ended catastrophically was because of the timely arrival of Dimitri, Micah’s former second, along with the sons of Lucifer. They’d been able to subdue Lyle before any real damage was done.
It happened so rarely that none of us really knew what effect it had on the arch afterwards. Normally, the arch didn’t survive. They’d be hunted down and executed. Heaven would deem them too dangerous to live once they’d demonstrated such a weak grip on their power.
