Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(13)

Aureline chewed as she thought. Because that was the thing with Auri—she was kind and generous, but she wasn’t simple in the least.

Right then, the spotted kitten who’d deigned to permit Zanaya to look after her, jumped up on the wall between her and her friend. Anisha yawned to show off her sharp teeth, accepted Auri’s exclamations on her beauty, then curled up to nap. The only sign of her affection for Zanaya was the tail sleek and dark that rested against Zanaya’s thigh.

Zanaya adored the haughty beast.

“I suppose I haven’t been kicked by life yet,” Auri said at last. “And I’m not going to live in fear of things that haven’t yet occurred.” She passed across another piece of the sweet star-shaped fruit. “I’ll keep on trusting until I get kicked so hard that I begin to flinch.”

It was Zanaya’s turn to think as she took a bite of the crunchy treat. “I suppose I’ve never been kicked, either.” She hadn’t ever thought of it in those terms. “But unlike you, it’s because I don’t trust many people.”

“I’m shocked.” Auri’s voice was bland. “It’s not like you’re still holding it against poor Meher for calling you a feral.”

Zanaya elbowed her best friend. “I plan to hold that grudge forever.”

“Even though he has bowed down on the floor to beg your mercy and admitted he was being a stupid dick-waving kid trying to look big in front of his friends?”

Zanaya snorted.

Pointing her small knife at Zanaya, Aureline said, “I believe him. It was a horrible thing to say, no doubt about it, but he’s not bad when he’s not waving his dick around.”

“Perhaps I’ll run mad and try to be more like you,” Zanaya said with a scowl. “Give people a chance. Even Meher.”

That turned out easier said than done, but . . . Meher didn’t break her trust after she gave him a grudging chance.

The redheaded and wide-shouldered asshole actually became her friend, loyal and true.

It was this Zanaya, a woman capable of a fledgling trust, but with scars far deeper and stubborn, who first saw General Alexander. She’d heard about him, of course. It seemed like half the women she knew—and half the men, to be fair—couldn’t stop sighing over him. Golden hair, eyes of captured lightning, a honed body straight out of a fever dream, that was what they said.

The half that weren’t sighing over him were in awe of his battle tactics. Meher waxed lyrical on the topic at any given opportunity. “They say he’s Akhia-Solay’s battlefield heir, ruthless, calculated, and built with honor.”

Zanaya hero-worshipped no one and had no intention of starting now. She was also immune to pretty men. Her father was one of the prettiest men in the angelic world, and while Rzia’s obsession was a flaw her own, Camio wasn’t blameless. He’d fed on Rzia’s adulation when it suited him, hadn’t he? He’d fueled her dreams of forever.

Then he’d decided he was bored and moved on, leaving carnage in his wake.

No, beauty didn’t sway Zanaya. Neither did the kind of arrogance Alexander no doubt possessed.

She had zero doubts about her ability to resist his allure . . . until the moment she locked her gaze with one of inhuman silver.

Her world stopped. Just stopped.

All those words people used about General Alexander? They weren’t anything near enough. He was power and he was beauty—and he was danger. And it all sang to her in a way nothing else in her life had ever done.





9


Alexander wasn’t ready for Zanaya. A blooded general of three thousand years of age, a man both feared and revered, and she took him down like he was the stripling when she was the one barely past her majority.

Her hair was astonishing—curls that reached the middle of her back and were a shade unlike any other: silver kissed by purple, soft and luscious. Twilight in living form. But its beauty was eclipsed by that of her skin, for it was the color of night when the moon didn’t rise, flawless and smooth. She was small but shapely in form, her eyes an intense dark brown that gave nothing away, her wings midnight with a dusting of silvery white.

He could’ve handled her arresting beauty; there were many lovely angels and vampires in the world, and he’d bedded a great number of them. But he had no chance against her spirit. She held his gaze with a fierceness unexpected in one so young.

Drawn as he was to her, he was no predator. She might believe herself ready to tangle with him, but in immortal terms, she was but a babe. It wasn’t the same with mortals—he could lie with a mortal woman of a bare twenty or so years without guilt, for mortal lives moved much, much faster.

That woman in her twenties was apt to be seasoned by life, and know herself. Most mortals of such an age were already long married, with babes of their own. They saw him as another adult, albeit a pretty angelic one. And even there, he was careful about the women he bedded. Never any who were married or entangled with another, for one. After that, it was a thing of heart and spirit. He could count his mortal lovers on one hand—and he remembered and mourned each and every one.

Hanisha so sweet and graceful but with a backbone of steel.

Sukhon, a fellow wild child who’d have lived life naked if she could.

Adah, a maker of music driven by her art.

Eir, swift of foot and lithe of body.