Aramael placed the tape and scissors into the drawer with careful precision, slid the drawer closed again, and then paused, staring at his outstretched hands. His traitorous, treacherous hands. Hands that had tended a mortal's arm but had wanted—coveted—so much more.

He curled his fingers tightly into his palms and watched his knuckles whiten. Somewhere, somehow, in the process of looking after Alex, his awareness of her had grown. Become more than some ethereal connection. Become...physical.

The scent of her hair, the warmth of her breath on his cheek, her proximity itself had triggered a longing in him that set every fiber of his being aflame, touched off an intensity of sensation so acute that the very texture of her skin had imprinted itself on his soul. Aramael's belly clenched and his entire body thrummed with pent-up energy—a foreign, nearly living force he had no idea how to handle.

Physical desire for a mortal. In all his years, he had never experienced an agony quite so complete, quite so...

Exquisite.

"Bloody Hell!" His harsh curse echoed in the empty kitchen. He leaned his fisted hands on the counter and hunched his shoulders against the quiver coursing through his center—and the ache underlying it. An ache born of a need so raw, he thought it might have the capacity to redefine him.

He eased his head back against the strain building in his neck. At least this time he hadn't been completely caught off guard by his reaction to her, had managed to endure his feelings without projecting them. Doing so had taken a toll, however. A much greater toll than he would have imagined, if he could ever have imagined it at all.

Exquisite agony.

He stared at the ceiling. First his attack on the mortal man, and now this. He dreaded what might come next. Above him, footsteps crossed the floor, and water began to run. Alex, getting into the shower.

A newborn imagination snaked to life within him, conjuring an image for which nothing in the universe could have prepared him: Alex, her long hair caught up, her slender neck and shoulders exposed, stepping naked under a cascade of water; her skin, smooth, slick, glistening with a thousand tiny beads of moisture. Alex, tipping her head back to let the water flow over her face, pivoting under the spray, rivulets sliding down her back, her waist, her hips...

"Well," a voice said, shattering the image in his mind as suddenly as it had formed. "Of all the things I might have expected from this hunt, this certainly wasn't one of them."

Verchiel.

Aramael whirled to face her and hot, liquid humiliation washed over him at the idea of the Dominion bearing witness to his internal struggle. What had merely clenched in his belly before now twisted into a defensive, angry knot. "My thoughts are none of your business, Dominion," he snarled.

Verchiel eyed him, looking puzzled, and then intrigued. "What thoughts?"

With a rush of irritation, Aramael realized he had misinterpreted her presence and piqued a curiosity with which he preferred not to deal. He put Alex from his mind and pulled together his fractured center, and then leaned against the counter, arms crossed.

"Never mind," he told the Dominion. "You're here about the mortal."

"The one you attacked, yes."

"A mistake."

Verchiel raised a delicate, silver-white brow. "Your second mistake today," she pointed out, her voice no less tart because of its mildness. "The very fact that you struck a mortal, Aramael—we'll be lucky if you haven't already precipitated matters."

Aramael scowled at her. He needed no reminding of the One's pact with Lucifer. Or that, if the mortal had died, Aramael's actions would have allowed Lucifer to toss aside the agreement in its entirety, and could very well have resulted in all-out war between the loyal and the Fallen. Might already have done so even if the mortal lived.

But he was damned if he'd take full blame.

"No," he said. "You do not get to pass judgment on me for Mittron's arrogance, or for your own complacence. You know as well as I do that something is wrong here, but rather than find out what it is, you're behaving like a puppet, doing no more than what you're told to do."

"I'm following orders, Aramael. It's what we do."

"Then maybe we need to do more."

Dismay crossed the Dominion's face. "You don't mean that."

His words were tantamount to blasphemy, Aramael knew. No angel had the free will to act on his or her own. Not since so many had exercised that will in following Lucifer. He half expected instant reprisal, the rush of Archangels' wings, but there was nothing but his own irritation with himself. Of course Heaven's enforcers weren't coming for him. They answered not to Mittron, but to the One, who wouldn't even have noticed Aramael's transgression just now because her presence in her angels' lives had been noticeably lacking for the last several millennia.

Which was how Mittron got away with this arrogance in the first place.

Aramael levered himself away from the counter and stalked toward Verchiel, stopping when she took a step back. He lowered his voice to a growl. "Bloody Hell, Dominion, just for a moment, think for yourself. If I'm to protect Alex and complete this hunt, I need to know what's going on. Have you even tried to find out why she can see me? Is it because she's Nephilim?"

Not only did Verchiel not reply, she wouldn't even meet his gaze. Aramael's irritation surged, and then he realized that the Dominion didn't avoid him but instead stared past him, her eyes wide with dismay. For the span of a heartbeat, Aramael wondered if he might have underestimated Mittron; then, in almost the same instant, he knew he faced something far worse than potential judgment.

Abruptly, Verchiel withdrew from the room and the realm. Her final words, whatever they might have been, went with her. With no similar escape available, and because he had no choice, Aramael turned to confirm what his instinct, his heart, already knew. Alex stood in the doorway between kitchen and hall, her skin glowing from her shower. Damp tendrils of hair escaped the twist on top of her head, clinging to her neck, and a white terry cloth bathrobe fell in soft folds to skim her ankles. She looked beautiful, fragile, and utterly panicked.

Aramael felt it then. Felt her awareness of him. Keenly. Decisively. Knew she saw him not as another mortal, but in all his angelic glory.

For long, agonizing seconds, he stood frozen, unable to react, bared to a mortal in ways he had never imagined, vulnerable in ways he could not explain. Until at last Alex blinked and, far too late, the curtain of celestial duplicity slipped into place between them once more.

Alex slid to the floor, her shoulder resting against the door frame. With a mighty effort, Aramael pieced his presence back together, and then roused himself to motion. He strode forward to crouch in front of Alex, trying not to flinch at the hollowness he saw in her eyes—a hollowness he didn't understand but knew he had somehow caused. He sought for words of reassurance and comfort but found none in the inner turmoil he'd once known as his center.

Slowly Alex's expression hardened into something cold and uncompromising, and he saw her withdraw so far into herself that he knew he had no hope of reaching her. Not now, not like this. He rose, stepped back, and waited.

Long seconds ticked by while Alex stared into a place he could not follow, her face an alabaster mask. At last, ignoring the hand he extended to her, she climbed painfully to her feet, met his gaze, and squared her shoulders.

Then, very succinctly, she said, "Get the fuck out of my house."

#

Don't think, don't think, don't think...

Alex climbed the stairs and lurched down the hallway to the bathroom. She closed the door, fumbled with the lock, and leaned her head against the frame. Only then could she breathe again, gulping air into deprived lungs. She slumped against the wall and willed her legs not to fail a second time, because she wasn't at all sure she could get up off the floor again. Wasn't sure she would want to...

Don't think.

Her head pounded. She pressed her fingertips against her eyelids and then pushed herself upright and crossed to the sink, reaching for the mirrored cabinet above it. Her gaze locked on her reflection. She took in the pale face and haunted eyes. The resemblance was undeniable. It had always been there. But how deep did it go?

No. You're not her. You're nothing like her. Jennifer said so.

But Jennifer didn't know about the wings or the voices or—

Alex opened the cabinet and took out the bottle of acetaminophen.

Don't think.

She pried off the cap and shook two tablets onto the countertop. She hesitated, assessing her pain level, wondering how much medication they had already given her at the hospital, and then added a third tablet. If the pills had more than their intended buffering effect, if they made it possible to sleep, maybe, or to forget what she'd seen in her kitchen just now—thought she'd seen—

Don't think.

Alex returned the bottle to the cabinet and ran a glass of water. She tossed back the tablets, drained the glass, and stared again at her reflection. A hollow-eyed woman gazed back at her. A woman with wild gray hair and piercing blue eyes and a manic intensity, who had been plagued by beautiful, glowing, winged beings that hadn't existed.

Winged beings like Trent.

Glowing ones like the woman with him.

DON'T THINK!

Too late.

She'd heard the voices as she'd come out of the bathroom. Had known she should ignore them and stay away; known she didn't want to identify their source. But her feet had taken on a life of their own and led her downstairs, one step at a time, until she reached the bottom. Until she traversed the length of the hallway. Until she stood in the doorway and saw the woman, ethereal in her beauty, robed in iridescent purple, her silvery hair shining with a light of its own making, standing just beyond him.

Her partner, but not her partner, at the center of the kitchen, with massive wings rising more than a foot above his head and trailing nearly to the floor. Golden wings, their feathers alive with a fire that seemed to surround each and every one of them. Shimmering, pulsing, hypnotically beautiful fire.

An eternity had passed before the woman disappeared and he turned, almost as if he moved in slow motion, to face her. A man in real life, an angel in her mind's eye. Gray eyes had clashed with hers, imprisoned her—no, impaled her—driving the wind from her body and coherent thought from her mind.

She didn't know how long they'd stared at one another, neither moving, before she had blinked and the wings had disappeared. Before his eyes had taken on the torment that made her want, once again, to reach out to him, as if her touch could heal something in him. Something in herself.

Except whatever was wrong in him existed only in her imagination, and what was wrong in her could not be healed.

Alex turned and hurled the glass at the bathroom wall.