Page 9 of Angel's Vengeance
Axtar.
No.Rhode.That was what he’d called himself.He’d thrown that moniker out with such surety that it made her question whether she was wrong about him.Had she confused him for someone else?Her heart had fluttered an insistent beat when he’d stood before her, until he flinched when she’d said the name—flinched like those adults did in mortal movies when they came across a seemingly irrelevant object and it triggered some childhood flashback.
Except this was anything but a movie, and wherever Axtar/Rhode/whoever went when she’d mentioned the name and caused his eyes to tighten was clearly nowhere she had any business urging him to revisit.
Intellectually, she’d known that and would never forget the hellish circumstances of their encounters, if she could even call them mere encounters.
So then why did she secretly wish he’d remember her regardless?
At the far wall, joined by evenmoremen with equally and impossibly wide shoulders, was Rhode, engaged in some sort of heated conversation with the other angels who she’d met earlier.Chrome and Iron, if she recalled correctly.However, after taking another look at the way Chrome was pushing through the other bodies around him to jab a finger beneath Rhode’s chin, she might have to amend her use of the wordheated.
Whatever the discussion, it had blown pastheateda while ago and was firmly set tobroiling.
The men were fuming, that much was clear, even though very little of what they were talking about was coherent.She got the gist, though.Didn’t need an advanced degree to read anger right.
Neela’s stomach twisted, and the hot chocolate threatened to curdle in her gut.Rhode’s face, even draped in fury, was such a beautiful terror only made more breathtaking by the powerful and icy stillness of his frame, one she still couldn’t look away from or reconcile with the images her memory kept calling forth.His mien was such a contrast to that of the men around him, Chrome in particular, who was a veritable inferno to Rhode’s imposing glacier.
And then, like any silently resentful glacier, it splintered.
Rhode grabbed the nearest chair and raised it high above Chrome’s head.But before he slammed it down on the angel’s skull, bright blue flames erupted down Rhode’s arm and incinerated the chair into ashes.Like the snow from earlier, black flecks tumbled around the men, coating everyone in the remains of Rhode’s quiet rage.
Molly roared up out of her seat.“Hey, what did I say about keeping the floors clean?And you owe me for that chair!That was hand-braided wicker!”
But her screams were barricaded behind Brass’s immovable back as the angel threw himself in front of his raging mate.Others hollered, and a few of the angels tried to grab Chrome and Rhode by the arms, but neither were having it.
Chrome shrugged out of their hold, blinked away his confusion, then snarled.“Did you just try to attack me?”
The flames licking around Rhode’s arms extinguished.“That is the wrong question.”
“Oh, really?Because I think it’s the perfect fucking question.Or is this what your repayment truly looks like?”
Rhode seethed.“Does your care come with strings attached?Is that why you pulled me out of that hell?So I might one day drop to my feet and praise you to finally assuage your own guilt?”
Fire crackled behind Chrome’s eyes as his jaw tightened.“You know it doesn’t.”
If Neela thought the tension was thick before, it morphed into something downright impenetrable.She tried to look to Molly for answers, but all she got was a patient Brass holding the woman back as his mate kicked out and cursed at every male her death-ray stare zeroed in on.
Then Rhode unexpectedly swung his arm in Neela’s direction and leveled a finger right at her.“Therightquestion, theonlyquestion I want to know the answer to is what the hell that woman has done to me.”White-hot flames swirled among irises that a moment ago were an earthy, familiar brown.“And why is she still breathing?”
Chapter5
It had been some time since Rhode had been scooped out so hollow to the point where very little was up for discussion when it came to his faculties.It wasn’t a foreign feeling by any means, just one he blessedly hadn’t had an opportunity to visit since he’d been topside.But now that he was no longer on his back on top of a stone slab with chains weighing down his dignity, the true terror of that vacuum slammed into him like a Mack truck.
Logic, emotion, and even that damn fire he’d somehow managed to wield were all ejected from his body and overall consciousness.Because in what world would he have ever raised a weapon, let alone one laced with a power seraphim had no history or capacity of brandishing, to Chrome?His former intelligence master, who had been at one time his truest brother in every sense of the word that mattered?
The answer to that and all of his torments, as it had been for so many agonizing years of his life, always—always—began and ended with the same singular group of beings.
Charmers.
No sooner had the chair’s ashes fallen at his feet than his finger found its next target.It was the only thing that his trembling body and addled brain could make sense of.Not the roar of angels around him, nor the strong arms that yanked on his shoulders, pulling him away from whichever of Chrome’s responses was liable to lead to the destruction of far more than a single wicker chair.Rhode heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing, except the magnetic pull toward the woman across the room whose very presence urged his insides to riot and rage.
Through the shouting and mélange of muscles, one very large, very imposing figure broke free and placed his barrel chest right in front of Rhode’s outstretched finger.Tungsten—the prime sentinel, with his shoulder-length mane of golden hair vibrant enough to equal, if not outshine, the hair of the very woman he was blocking Rhode’s view of—pushed forward until Rhode’s finger had no choice but to bend at an angle that had it backing down.It wasn’t long before Titan, Tung’s second, and Iron had flanked their leader, choking off any view of the female entirely.
And then, with one swift jerk of his chin, Tung commanded what was left of Rhode’s beyond-divided attention.“We are going to have a conversation.And you are going to sit down and be a part of it.”
“In front of that thing over there?”Rhode flicked his chin toward whatever part of that demon was still on the other side of the mountain of angels blocking his view.
It had been the exact wrong thing to say.