Nyalla’s eyelids were growing heavy, and she’d just begun to lose herself in the drama of Zane and Phoebe when she heard the click of the porch door opening. She felt Gabe standing in the doorway, saw him out of the corner of her eye.

“None.”

Her heart twisted at the depth of loneliness in that one word.

“You wanted to know how many angels I’ve joined with, and the answer is none.”

He was four billion years old and he’d never joined with another angel? Nyalla turned in her seat to face him. “Why not? Does it have to do with your vibration patterns?”

“No. Joining actually improves our vibration patterns. It brings us close to the divine. I just…” He ran a hand through his spiky black hair. “I never found the right angel. Honestly, I never tried to find the right angel. I had my choir to run and my duties on the Ruling Council. I never wanted there to be any question of a conflict of interest on my part. I didn’t want to worry that my partner might be with me primarily to improve their status in Aaru and not because they truly wanted an emotional connection with me. And…” again she saw fear in his eyes. “no one was truly worthy. I’d rather wait than join with an angel whose vibration levels were less than mine.”

He was terrified. Nyalla searched his face and found four billion years of self-imposed isolation because he was afraid he was the one who wouldn’t be found worthy. In spite of his lofty vibration level, his dedicated service to Aaru, his strict adherence to the rules, Gabe was positive that he’d never achieve that emotional connection. He’d spent his life squeezed in a vice, between two powerful elder siblings that he desperately wanted to best. He wanted their approval, their admiration, and he never got it. He couldn’t be like the younger two. He couldn’t ever gain the respect of the older two. The best he could do was to pull himself away, to create an island where no one could reject him or judge him as lacking in any way. If he let no one in, then any criticism would just slide right off his back.

It was so sad. Nyalla put the book down and stood, reaching up to cup his face in her hands. “You’re my best friend, Gabe. In less than two days, you’ve become my best friend.” She pulled his face to hers and kissed him, soft and gentle, her lips lingering briefly on his. “I hope someday you’ll find me worthy. I hope so, because you’re my ‘deep abiding emotional connection’. You.”

One of them had to risk it all, to take the chance, so she chose it to be her. In spite of all the hurt she’d had at the hands of the elves, in spite of the pain of eight failed relationships, she was the less damaged of the two of them. She was the optimist who kept trying while he’d been the one who walled himself off. It was up to her to open the door, to make herself vulnerable, and hope that he’d meet her somewhere in the middle.

A breath shuddered through him and he pulled her close, crushing her against him. She felt his ragged breathing against her hair, his fingers curling to grip the back of her shirt.

Finally, he pulled back and she saw the shine of tears in his eyes. “You’re my best friend too, Nyalla. I care more about you than I do about anyone. You are worthy. You’re worthy, but I don’t know if I can ever give you a physical affirmation of my affection.”

Her lips trembled, but she forced them into a smile. “No sex? Because that would be sinful, even with you as a human right now?”

“No, it’s not the act itself that is the sin, it’s the devastation it causes to both the human and the angel. I’ve seen it too many times, not just with the Nephilim I watch over, but the angels and humans who created them. These relationships always end badly, and it’s the human who suffers the most. We’re not meant to love humans. We can’t give a human partner what they need. And if we let our emotions get the best of us and procreate with them, an innocent child suffers as well. Humans and angels should never love.”

“Too late.” She reached up to touch his lips and halt his words. “Do you think us not having sex will change anything? Sex is just one expression of love. Take that away and the emotion still remains. If your reasoning for not having sex with me is because you want to spare me the hurt of loving you or to stop this feeling from happening, then you’re too late. And whether you choose to have sex with me or not, nothing is going to change what I feel for you.”

“This will end in tragedy,” he whispered against her finger. “I don’t want that. I can’t stand the thought that you may end up hurt and hating me. I don’t want a tragedy.”

“It won’t be a tragedy,” she smiled, and this time it was not to mask her tears. “If you let it, ours will be a life full of laughter and fun, of walks along the beach, sailing, scuba diving, reading side-by-side with our toes digging into the warm sand. It will be us dancing in the moonlight, exploring new places together. And when there are sad times, hard times, we’ll hold each other’s hand and get through them together. For as long as we both shall live. Love for us won’t be a tragedy. I promise.”

He smoothed her hair and took a deep breath. “I want to tell you about the first Nephilim I watched over. When the tenth choir fell and Micha took charge of the Grigori, we hunted and killed as many Nephilim as we could find. We established a system of rules and procedures to catch angels before they were so tempted that they might repeat that disaster. But one day a member of Micha’s choir came to me and confessed that he had fallen in love with a human woman, and that she was pregnant with a child of his making.”

Nyalla’s brows furrowed. “Why didn’t this angel go to your brother? Why you when he wasn’t even a member of your choir?”

“Because suicide is an unforgivable sin, and this angel wanted to die. I have a reputation as the strictest of the archangels. He hoped I’d deliver death as a punishment.”

“Did you?”

“No. I made him tell me everything. I wanted to know what could cause a righteous angel to fall so low, and what could have gone so wrong that he wanted to die. Once I heard his story, I couldn’t deliver death as a punishment to this angel. I sentenced him to penance, forbade him from ever interacting with humans again — especially the woman he’d impregnated and his child.” Gabe’s eyes met Nyalla’s. “I want you to know his story as well as mine. You are the only one I’ve told this to.”

She nodded. “I’ll keep your secret, Gabe. You can trust me.”

He touched her cheek. “I know I can. I just wanted to tell you so you knew how important you are to me that I let you know my secrets. As for the angel…well, it was a reckless, foolish impulse on his part that only brought sorrow and tragedy. He’d been a messenger, delivering information to Micha and the Grigori. Sometimes when he had delivered his messages, he’d stay and watch the humans. This woman caught his eye, and before long he found himself entranced with her purity of spirit, her beautiful heart. He revealed himself to her at first to praise her, but eventually he returned again and again, and found himself in love with her.

“She wanted a baby and he finally relented and gave her one. But he couldn’t marry her or be as a human husband to her. He couldn’t be with her all the time due to his duties in Aaru. She refused to leave her town and family to live in isolation, and rightly so. Living alone without any contact, waiting months or years for her angel lover to return, raising a Nephilim child alone — it would have been a horrible life. Her family and the townspeople thought she was a loose woman as an unwed mother, and begged her to marry one of her many suitors to save her reputation and give the baby a good life.”

Nyalla watched his face, seeing nothing but calm resignation there. “Why didn’t he assume human form and marry her? It would have been sixty or seventy years at the maximum. That’s not so long for an angel to be away from Aaru.”

He shook his head. “Travel to and from Aaru is tracked, and that long an absence would have been noticed. We were on watch for that sort of thing given what happened with the tenth choir. The best he could do was sneak away now and then, or see her when he was sent to deliver a message. If he’d been discovered, then his child would have been killed. He tried to be with her as often as he could, but it wasn’t enough. One time he came and she told him that she’d married a good man, one who would raise their baby as his own. She told him it would be best if she never saw him again.”

Nyalla blinked back tears. It hurt to be rejected, but how it must have hurt an angel to be given his walking papers. “Did he? See her, I mean? Or his baby?”

Gabriel shook his head. “No. He came to me and confessed, hoping death would release him from the pain. He never saw her again. He never knew anything about the child and the child’s life. But I couldn’t allow a woman and her human husband to raise a Nephilim without at least checking to make sure the baby didn’t kill their entire village or destabilize the positive evolution we’d planned for the humans.

“I have more leeway in my comings and goings from Aaru, so I visited often to make sure the boy was thriving and happy. And what I saw gave me hope. The woman seemed satisfied with her human husband, even though they were not rich and lived in violent times. The Nephilim had several human half-brothers. He was a wonderful child, perfectly balanced and centered with admirable vibration levels. He was kind and generous of spirit, gentle of heart. After twenty years of visits I realized that they didn’t need me watching over them with such frequency. They were a happy family. The best I could do was go back to Aaru and ensure that the hunter Grigori never found the Nephilim child.”

“So it sounds like the pain in this relationship was mostly on the angel’s part,” Nyalla commented. “Things are different now. Being an unwed mother no longer carries such a stigma in most cultures. A woman might not want to go months or years without seeing her beloved, but there are cases when careers or immigration issues cause that sort of separation even in human couples.”

“She was hurt. She never loved her human husband in quite the same way as she loved the angel who’d fathered her child. The angel was devastated, but she was strong enough to know that love and devotion sometimes are not enough. She needed more, and her angel couldn’t give that to her.”

“But Gabe, that happens even in relationships between two humans,” Nyalla protested. “You can’t blame this kind of pain on the fact that he was an angel. Nothing that you’ve said so far would be exclusive to an angel-human pairing.”

“It gets worse,” Gabriel told her with a wry twist of his mouth. “It became obvious that this Nephilim wasn’t like the other children, or like his brothers. His mother eventually told him about his father, warned him to keep his abilities hidden lest he be found and killed. He couldn’t do that,” there was a note of pride in Gabriel’s voice. “This Nephilim worked tirelessly to lift up the humans who were suffering and neglected. He was a shining light to all. And then they killed him.”

Nyalla caught her breath. “The hunter angels? They found him?”

Gabriel shook his head. “No, the humans killed him. Because sometimes they can be like demons. They can be filled with greed and jealousy and pride. These particular humans could not stand to have such a light amongst them, making them realize their own shadows, so they killed him. His mother watched it. His mother had to bury her child. And he didn’t die because of a human war or disease, or an accident. He was killed because he was a Nephilim. She made herself turn away from the being she loved most, and even that did not save her child from being killed. No good came from that love. No good at all. The only thing that love brought was pain and suffering.”

Nyalla reached out for his hand, not sure what to do. Should she hug him? She was still tucked in against him, but right now he seemed particularly unapproachable.

“I wasn’t there for him,” he insisted. “I thought they’d be okay, that the only threat to them would be from a hunter angel. I wasn’t there for his mother or for him when they were being murdered. If I had kept better watch, I could have saved him. That’s why I’ve spent thousands of years protecting Nephilim, and strictly punishing angels who lie with human women. We’re derailing any progress we’ve made in human evolution with our selfish actions. We’re only hurting them. We are the ones who have turned humans into demons. It’s all our fault. It can’t keep happening. Humans and angels don’t belong together.”

She wrapped her arms around him, putting her cheek against his chest. His muscles jumped under her touch, but he didn’t pull away. “It was not your fault that a Nephilim died. And our evolution, positive otherwise, isn’t the responsibility of the angels. You can’t carry the world on your shoulders, Gabe. You can’t keep accepting responsibility for everything that happens here or in Aaru. You cannot take on the sins of everyone. It’s not your burden to bear.”

He pulled her tight against him. “Someone needs to bear that burden. We’ve made so many mistakes with the humans, that it’s our responsibility to put it all right again.”

She suddenly understood. All of this was about him, not the humans, not this Nephilim, and not the other angels. It was about his need for one shining achievement, one thing to prove that he could best his two eldest siblings at something. He need to prove to them, to Aaru, and to himself that he was worthy.

“Did you ever think that in trying to make things right with the humans, you’re making it worse? Gabe, that woman could have experienced heartache with a human mate. Thousands and thousands of men and women have throughout history. And millions of people suffer the excruciating loss of a child, sometimes due to murder. Do you think that woman’s pain would have been any less if she’d fallen in love with a human from a different culture where their marriage would have been forbidden? Or that her grief would have been any less had her human child been murdered in the same way by envious humans? I can assure you it wouldn’t.” Nyalla lifted her head to look at him. “I’m so sorry the Nephilim died, but he risked his life to make a difference in human lives. Isn’t that a noble cause? Isn’t that something worth dying for?”

She looked into his eyes, a silver light swirling within the blue-gray. “I don’t need my angel omnipotence to know the path we’re on will bring heartache, Nyalla. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t ever want to be the one who causes you pain.”

“You can pull away from me as that human woman did from her angel lover, you can refuse to make love to me, but you’ll eventually fall in love. If not with me, then with someone else. You can’t stop these things from happening. The fates, the will of your creator, isn’t something that you can hold against, no matter how strong you are, no matter how high your vibration levels. Eventually the right angel will come along for you, no matter how hard you resist it. And you’ll have to let that angel in.”

She couldn’t quite read the odd smile he gave her, the blue in his eyes lightening to azure. “When I feel things are hopeless, you are here to drag me out of the muck, Nyalla. I doubt I’ll ever fall in love with an angel. Instead I’ll find love unexpectedly, when a human woman collars me, hits me on the head with a sauce pan, ties me to the bed and stuffs some underwear in my mouth.”

Was he saying what she thought he was saying? Nyalla felt her skin warm, her heart race out of control. “Silly. It wasn’t a sauce pan, it was a fry pan. And the underwear in your mouth was a pair I’d worn the day before.”

He grinned, bringing her hand up to kiss the palm. “I know. Come sleep in the bed with me tonight as you did last night. I like touching you while I slumber. I like having you near.”

She smiled and tugged his hand as she led him toward the bedroom. “Me too, Gabe. Me too.”