“But—”

“There is no rush, reshon. We are protected here. My strength is returning on its own. Your magic is yours. You must make the decision to use it when you feel safe.”

She nodded, but her mouth was still downturned.

“Smile, Ava.” He touched her chin. “We are home.”

“Don’t tell me to smile when you’re still not whole.”

He swallowed the pain. He wasn’t whole. He wasn’t the man she’d once loved. He was different. Damaged.

“Do you love me?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then I’m whole.”

A wound doesn’t heal just because it stops bleeding.

They were both still wounded, but her love had stopped the bleeding. Malachi knew everything else would come in time.

HE walked next to her in the forest, the trees towering over them and the moon high and full. He could hear the birds. Feel the grass beneath bare feet.

She walked with the dark angel at her side, but he could not hear them. As much as he strained, no voices reached his ears. It was as if the dark one had wrapped Malachi’s mate in a fog, shielding her from him. From the forest around them. From the night.

From everything.

For a heartbeat, his grey eyes met the golden gaze of the Fallen, and a whisper came to his mind.

Thousands of you, Scribe. One of her.

The warrior scanned the forest with newly woken senses. No longer did he reach for his mate wrapped in the fog; he reached outward.

Darkness surrounded them. And though the light from the full moon shone overhead, it did not illuminate the forest, save for the path they walked. A heavy presence pressed against his skin, and at once he perceived the truth.

Do not fear the darkness.

The dark angel was shielding his mate as she dreamed. Hiding her.

But from what?

MALACHI woke when her lips met his. The black night was a cloak around them as she moved over him, covering his body with her own. His magic reached for her but only brushed against the cool of her skin. Whatever barriers fell in the nighttime, she still held her soul back. His talesm glowed in the cocoon of their bedclothes, lighting their skin as they moved together.

She was silent as they made love. Their bodies spoke for them.

Kiss me. Hold me. Mend me.

Make me whole.

He felt his soul reach out, straining for hers. Ava sighed as he entered her. His breath became hers.

Again.

More.

Again.

Tighter. Higher. Faster.

When they came, it was together; he felt her pleasure as his own.

She held him over her, her arm wrapped around his neck so their cheeks pressed together. He panted into her neck.

“Ava, let me—”

“No,” she whispered. “Stay. Just like this. Need you. Need this.”

“Too heavy.”

“No.” He was still buried in her. She wrapped her legs around his hips and held him tighter. “Stay. I need to feel you.”

He said nothing more. Only held her. Kissed her. Over and over. Soft lips brushing her cheeks. Her lips. Her eyelids. Her neck.

“I’m here,” he murmured.

“Not a dream.” Her voice had become frantic again.

“It’s not a dream. I’m here.”

“Okay.”

“Ava.”

“Hmm?”

He pulled away just far enough that their eyes could meet. “Let me in, reshon.”

Her eyes darted to the moon shining high through the narrow window of their bedroom. “What are you talking about?”

He looked at her for a moment, then he reached up, bracing his arm at her side so that his other hand was free to trail up her body.

Over the curve of her hip. The dip of her waist. The rise of her breast.

His finger settled over her heart and he wrote there, scribing the ancient words she had used to call him back. Dips and swirls of angelic runes over her skin. The incantation glowed gold under his hand.

Vashama canem.

“Malachi?”

Come back to me, reshon.

HOURS later, Ava still wouldn’t rest. He wondered if she was afraid to dream.

Malachi only dreamed of her.

He could see the dawn begin to break. Birds sang in the small garden below them.

“I need to find out who I am,” she said, her voice barely audible in the quiet room.

“What do you mean?”

The first crackle of the muezzin’s call to prayer echoed through the air as Malachi rolled to his side and traced a hand over her shoulder, letting his magic flow over her. Her skin flushed gold as her mating marks came alive. She shivered at the contact.

“Stop,” she said. “Don’t distract me.”

He smiled. “But I’m so good at it.”

She turned toward him, capturing his hand between her own. She laid them beneath her cheek, and he was content.

“I need to find out who I am,” she said again. “What I am.”

Jaron. Hiding her in dreams. The Fallen protecting her from… something.

Do not fear the darkness.

“You want to find your father.”

“Yes.”

Chapter Two

“I’M BEING STRAIGHT with you, Ava. Your dad—”

“When are you ever straight with me, Luis?” Ava paced in the living room.

Her coffee sat cold on the end table, and Malachi read the newspaper silently in the corner, keeping one eye on her and the other on the subtitles at the bottom of the television screen. The paper he was reading was Arabic. The news was in French.