Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
“Alexander-mine,” she murmured, brushing her lips over his. “You are the heart of my entire world.” Words she’d not say to him while he was conscious—perhaps she’d get to that point one day, but she couldn’t yet see that future.
Especially not when she was still stinging from the news that Rzia and Camio had reconciled. She’d never seen her mother so giddy and happy, a child who’d found her favorite toy after losing it for centuries upon centuries. Her father, meanwhile, was all grace and warmth, the smug candle flame around which her mother hovered.
No matter her feelings on her parents’ relationship, she hadn’t said a word. There were some mistakes you couldn’t stop people from making. But to Sleep or not? Yes, that was one mistake she’d ensure Alexander didn’t make. Her lover wouldn’t die because he’d been too arrogant to rest when it was his time.
16
“We are nine now,” Alexander said to Caliane when they met in the Refuge not long after Sha-yi’s death.
“I fear it may be eight,” she murmured. “Dragan has vanished as of the past half moon, and I’m certain he has gone into Sleep. Else he’d never be this quiet.”
She was proven right on the next full moon, when Archangel Dragan’s second informed the Cadre that his sire had chosen to Sleep.
So it was that the Cadre was eight for one thousand years until an ascension no one saw coming.
Zanaya was her archangel’s right hand by then, her most senior general in name, and her second in truth. Inj’ra’s long-serving second and cherished friend had perished in a personal fight that had gone too far.
And while Alexander’s Zani might be ruthless, she was also loyal; she’d liked and respected the lost second, so the fact she effectively held his position was a thing of circumstance rather than a conscious effort on her part. That she didn’t bear the title of second was a conscious action, a way to honor the lost friend who Inj’ra would mourn for eternity. For as Avelina had been by Alexander’s side since before his ascension, so had Inj’ra’s second.
Today, he stroked his hand over the sleek curve of Zanaya’s flank, the beauty of her skin unlike any other in angelkind. Even the most stunning vampire couldn’t compare to her; she was unique, a dark flame so hot it incinerated. She might be small in stature, but she made up for it in the violence of her will and the fury of her temper.
He’d watched her fight in battle and roared with pride because she was his.
He dreamed of her when she was in her archangel’s territory, and he’d made friends with Inj’ra for the mercenary reason that it meant he could visit Zanaya almost at will.
Sliding her hand down to his cock, she gripped it, squeezed hard. “Do you think I don’t know that you talked my sire into positioning me in your court for the turn of the moon? Your generals need my guidance about as much as mine need yours.” That black fire in her astonishing eyes. “I’m not a doll for you to move as you wish, Archangel Alexander.”
He could’ve met anger with anger, but he cupped her cheek, the melded onyx and amber of the strong and powerfully unique ring she’d given him a warm familiarity on his finger. Unlike most such rings, his didn’t feature a piece of amber—rather, the amber and the onyx had been worked together, so that the sunlight of the amber wove through the obsidian of the onyx.
She laughingly refused to tell him how she’d done it. But that she’d taken as much care with his amber as he had with hers meant everything. “I can’t sleep when you’re far from me,” he said. “I did it once, waited more than a millennium. Never again. I’ll cheat, lie, and bargain to have you close.”
A startled blink, her fingers releasing him at last, her hand coming to lie flat against his chest. “You shouldn’t say these things, lover,” she murmured. “I will take advantage. To control an archangel would be a power indeed.”
He knew that she told the truth, that part of her was exactly that merciless—and he loved her all the same. Because she’d forgotten one critical factor. “Are you in control then, Zani?” A single kiss was all it took, her answer in the primal pumping of her hips as she rode him, and in the bites she left all over his body.
“I will own you,” she said, her skin aglow with heat in the aftermath and her eyes glittering. “Until you’re in me and I’m no longer this mad creature around you.”
“Try,” Alexander said in challenge as he began to kiss his way down her body, to the shadowed juncture between her thighs.
She screamed her pleasure, her hands wrenching at his hair and her thighs clamping around his head. He rode her bliss, licking her into oblivion even as he spilled his own seed onto the bed like a callow youth with his first woman.