Adrian stalked past the guards. His facial features were expressionless and cold. He didn’t glance in her direction as he spat a single word at the vampires. A word she didn’t understand.

She made to follow him, but one of the guards grabbed her by the wrist, halting her.

She tried to jerk away, but he held steady.

“Release her, or lose the hand,” a harsh voice whipped out, and the vise grip instantly fell away.

Elin’s gaze returned to the cells—and collided with Thane’s.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THANE STRUGGLED TO rein in his temper. At any moment, Elin could race around a corner and witness the horror of his actions. If she saw that side of him...if she screamed...

He burned the demon and all of its severed parts, destroying the evidence. He’d gotten the answers he’d sought anyway. He now knew the prince was a fallen angel named Malice, once a soldier in the Most High’s army. Unlike demons—spirits that inhabited the earth long before humans—the prince had a corporal body, and therefore couldn’t possess someone else’s.

When Sent Ones fell, they lost all power. The same held true for the angels, but they could gain power through acts of evil and spiritual theft, basically siphoning it from others.

Like any living being, the prince had weaknesses. However, Thane had yet to learn what they were.

Pride?

Hatred?

Malice’s endgame? The destruction of mankind. Both to punish the Most High for banishing the fallen angels from the highest level of heaven, and to try to steal all the power he felt he’d been denied.

To start, Malice and his five cohorts had struck at Germanus—ripping out the root—but there would be others.

Malice’s next move? Unknown.

When Kendra continued her pleas for help, Thane took a page from Jamilla’s book of attack and removed the girl’s tongue. There was no way he would let her receive aid from the very girl she’d beaten and scarred, and as soft as Elin’s heart was, she might very well ask him to release her.

He might very well say yes.

Now, guilt was heavy on his shoulders. “I’m willing to look past the surface to the reasons, and fully accept my share of the blame for the horrors of our relationship, but I will not tolerate bad behavior.”

Her narrowed gaze sizzled at him, even as blood leaked from the corners of her mouth.

“Do not speak to my human again,” he told her.

After sending Adrian to find Bellorie, Thane stepped out to see Elin. Only to watch a guard grip her fragile wrist.

No one touched her but Thane. Anyone tried...they died.

When did you become so possessive of a female?

When I encountered this one, apparently.

He met her smoked-glass gaze and remembered Orson’s use of the word halfling. Please, don’t be Phoenix.

He closed the distance. Perhaps he should send her away for a few hours. He was always seething with intensity after battle or torture, and he’d just come from both. If he went about this next encounter the wrong way, he would scare her. But she lifted her chin with brave determination, surprising him, and a deep sexual awareness cut through his fury and fear.

He couldn’t send her away.

For a moment, he saw her as she’d been in the tub. Naked. Flushed with heat and arousal, nipples turgid, stomach quivering, legs parted for his fingers. Even now his shaft readied for her, growing long, thick and hard.

Not yet.

A tremor rocked her, as if her body reacted to his of its own accord.

“Are you cold?” he asked, just in case. “I will have a robe fetched for you—”

“I’m not cold.”

Did she hunger for his touch? His taste? He would give anything to know.

“I’m, uh, sorry I interrupted your murder session.” She reached for him but balled her hand just before contact and dropped her arm to her side. “You, uh, seem to really be enjoying it.” Her gaze landed on the bulge between his legs, before darting away.

He clenched his jaw. “I didn’t enjoy it the way you’re thinking.”

“Hey, no judgment,” she said, palms out in a gesture of innocence.

“Elin. I’m aroused, yes, but it’s for you.”

Her eyes widened, some of the smoke replaced by crackling flames. “Oh.”

That was all he got?

“Yes. Well.” She cleared her throat. “Do you have to torture the Phoenix? Can’t you let them go?”

“I wasn’t torturing a Phoenix,” he said. “But I will. Soon. An eye for an eye—”

“Puts you in a never-ending cycle of violence, yes,” she interjected. “They’ll retaliate, then you’ll retaliate again, and so on and so forth.” She sighed. “Look, I know I didn’t have any right—”

“You have every right,” he said, and knew he’d just shocked the listening vampires. But it was true. Why deny it? Things were different with Elin. Things had always been different. He liked that she’d sought him out, expecting him to fix her problems. He even liked the scolding she’d just given him—maybe because she was right.

She nibbled on her bottom lip, as though unsure. Of his reaction? As if he would harm her? “Really?”

He nodded. Then, with his eyes still locked on Elin, he snapped, “Leave us” at the vampires.

The pair rushed to the elevator without delay, disappearing behind the doors. He wouldn’t take Elin to his suite until she felt safe with him. Because, when he got her alone—anywhere other than here—he would pounce on her. He knew it.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to this world,” she remarked.

As if he would allow her to leave it. “You will.” A command he expected to be obeyed.

She shrugged. “Does it affect you emotionally, to torture others?”

No one had ever asked him such a question, and he wasn’t quite sure how to respond. He’d been a young lad of three when the gold striations had appeared in his wings, informing him and everyone who looked at him of his warrior status. At the age of five, he’d left the only home he’d ever known to begin his training.

At ten, he’d made his first demon kill.

Elin reached out and twined her fingers with his. Her skin was warm and soft, though calloused. The freely offered contact—the comfort of it—stunned him.