Page 4 of Angel's Smoke

“Gah!”

Anna swiped a hand in front of the mirror, padded back to her room, and snatched her glasses off her nightstand, intending to do something so incredibly productive that it would kick all that free-thinking nonsense right out of her noggin. Squinting at the time again, she took a deep breath, threw her shoulders back, and put her hands on her regrettably larger hips. She had a few hours before her first telehealth client, and she wasn’t about to spend it analyzing why her heart wouldn’t calm the heck down after replaying the dulcet timbre of his voice, or how he knew she lived in New Hampshire, or what the hell she’d done to deserve a veritable Greek god kneeling naked before her feet and spouting words of ownership.

I’m yours.

Oh, she’d caught that little diddy, all right. Caught it and became so sick with it that the very notion of another man, even one she’d made up, holding any kind of possessive sway over her—and, by extension, her baby—was enough to catapult her out of the few hours of rest her traitorous body had finally let her have.

Anna stormed over to her dresser, not even bothering with the light, and searched around by feel for her workout clothes. If Captain Dream Muffin was going to start getting real, then so was she.

Nothing like an extra-long session of prenatal yoga, followed by a double dose of guided meditation and a cup of decaf French vanilla coffee to get her mind back in the game.

Yoga. Coffee. Clients. Throw some food at the problem. More clients. More food. Rest. Repeat.Thatwas the routine she needed.

Nowhere did she have room for the haunting eyes she couldn’t stop imagining. Eyes that somehow made her chest feel lighter in the same way that her motion detection lights would as they’d fire up and illuminate her steps when she’d take out the garbage before she’d even realized she needed the light.

Eyes that seemed to follow her everywhere she went.

Chapter3

The weight of dawn’s impending presence bore down on the granite walls of the den’s great room. Despite the angels’ underground haven being nestled cozily beneath New Hampshire’s White Mountains, the rocks cocooning their home always managed to alert its residents to the rising sun. Or, at least, they’d used to back when each of the sentinels was more attuned to their metals at that hour, instead of their mates.

Iron smoothed out the first of several architectural drawings along the farmhouse table—a table that had been the centerpiece to so many battle plans and breakfasts—and, with his palms pressed to the paper, closed his eyes and just let the energy of the mountain ground him for a moment. Mages knew he needed whatever magic was available to get his head on straight after the night he’d had.

The granite and shale he and his brothers had long ago carved their home into had always been a source of comfort and security, and yeah, he’d go so far as to say solidarity as well. While all the mortals were barely rubbing the morning crust out of their eyes, Iron and the other angels were being softly sung to by the burgeoning and resonating warmth of sun on stones. The metallic powers each of them commanded were literally rocked awake each morning by the minerals’ subtle infusions of magic into their celestial makeup. For some reason he’d never been able to parse out, the morning sun always seemed to take a liking to his small, stranded family and showed its favor accordingly.

It was a lovely gesture. Truly. Except when you’d been fortunate enough to find your soul bond and regain full use of your long-lost celestial powers as a result. Once that happened, all of that becoming-one-with-the-dawn crap? About as obsolete as a mortal’s appendix. For everyone except him. Half the time, the other angels skipped out on sunrises altogether in favor of more leisurely ways to spend their morning.

After last night, could he blame them?

Then those jade eyes, which had yet to grant him a moment’s peace in the two hours he’d tried and failed to find sleep again, swam to the forefront of his mind and all but dolphin kicked away any hopes he’d had of trying to be productive.

She was in New Hampshire. Fucking New Hampshire. In the eons he’d spent waddling around the mortal plane he’d been stuck on, all this time, she was here.Here. Not even near him so much as right under his goddamn nose. Hell, she could have brushed his shoulder walking past him on the sidewalk or been working at the front desk of the barbershop he went to once a month for a beard trim and that hot lather lineup his barber, Charlie, was so good at.

Before the dreams, he could have been staring into her face every day for who knew how long and not even known it.

Iron exhaled every last bit of air from his lungs and forced the tension in his muscles to get gone. A few more slow inhales, followed by agonizingly long exhales, was a trick Rhode had taught him. Breath work, he’d called it. Well, whatever it was, it sure as shit didn’t fix his problems, but it definitely helped shift perspective on his priorities a bit. When he opened his eyes again, the array of building sketches, utility layouts, and property zoning maps pulled him back to the present.

Rhode and Neela’s homestead. With any luck, the ground would thaw out shortly and they’d be able to make headway on some of the foundational work. Fine by him. The sooner, the better in his book. When Rhode first floated the idea of building the property, Iron had not only thrown himself into the project but practically elbowed anyone else out of the way who offered to help him.

Of all the other sentinels, he was the most analytical, so the solitude and schematics soothed him, and it gave him a refreshing purpose that didn’t involve smashing his knuckles into charmer cheekbones. Besides, when the den would grow quiet and his brothers tended to their soul bonds behind closed doors, the building project was the only thing that managed to keep Iron’s head on even remotely straight while the rest of his sour senses were doing their damnedest to spin wildly out of control.

But as Iron slid over a few of the stainless steel demitasse cups he’d grabbed from the kitchen and plunked them down on the corners of the sheets so the drawings would lay flat, his knuckles bumped against something else. Glass, not metal.

A hazy veil swept over his vision. Odd. He didn’t even remember carrying the shard around with him anymore. For so long, the small test tube containing the long bony bit had sat nestled within his flannel shirt pocket, warming his skin through the fabric with the smooth reminder of the other weight bearing down upon him: returning home.

But it wasn’t in his pocket this time. When the hell had he taken it out?

The vial spun a lazy dance as it rolled, its stoppered end arcing cleanly across the proposed electrical map while its bulbous tip stayed still, like a drawing compass determined to chart out Iron’s options for him. As if he didn’t already have a fucking clue that the severed shard from the Empyrean relic, which they’d managed to swipe from Cyro, had about as much magic in it as the proverbial white tip of a birthday-party-circuit magician’s wand.

Iron and the other sentinels had learned that the bone-like bit broken off from the relic, the rest of which was still in Cyro’s possession, was so prized by the demon ruler because the relic was also a fragment, one carved from the Empyrean’s gates and thus believed to still hold the celestial power of the Empyrean. A power that Cyro had attempted to corrupt so he might finally enter Heaven’s highest realm and lay waste to the light that had resulted in him—the first charmer—and all other full-blooded charmers after him being relegated to the darkness.

Iron’s interest in the relic had taken on a similar obsession, though for entirely different reasons. If he could harness the relic’s dormant celestial power, maybe, just maybe, he could find a way for him and his brothers to finally make it back home.

But that hope had been ignited months ago and had since been burning way too hot for far too long. If this tiny sliver of the Empyrean’s gates had any juice in it left to give, it certainly wasn’t interested in letting Iron know about it. No matter that he’d pored over every tome in their library, all written in various languages, or gassed himself to exhaustion trying any combination of magic and angel fire he could come up with. In the end, the tiny needle-like vestige did what it always did for him: hit him with its infamous sorry-not-sorry pearlescent wink before rolling over to give him the cold shoulder.

This time, however, Iron met the shard with a glare, though it was more at his annoyance for not grabbing his overshirt before he left his suite. Therefore, the shard had to hitch a ride in his fist instead of his flannel.

Because, of fucking course, Iron wasn’t about to be without the thing, goddammit, no matter how annoying it was. The very paralyzing thought of it somehow burping up answers when he was showering or it finally hope-casting its secrets at the exact moment he wasn’t around to hear them kept him awake at night. So, yeah, no wonder the damn thing was rolling around under his nose. He’d freaking put it there.

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