Well, that hadn’t gone according to plan—at all.

Moira stood in front of Severus’s bedroom door, her fingertips still tingling from when she’d last touched him. The look in his eye—the hurt, the anger. She hadn’t meant for any of that. On the way home, a giant pile of Monroe’s takeout boxes on her lap, Moira had rehearsed what she’d need to say to him. She’d wanted to tell him that her mom’s journal had made things startlingly clear, and that if it was true, and Aeneas would go to such great lengths to silence her, then he would hurt Moira’s loved ones too. He would make her suffer by making them suffer, and then he’d take her out. It was the one way to keep his secret. Aeneas couldn’t bribe her like he’d done with her mom; she didn’t want money. She wanted the truth.

And it seemed like he would kill to keep the truth dead and buried.

The conversation was supposed to be honest and open, logical and forthcoming, but as soon as she’d sat down in front of Severus, she’d choked. All the carefully constructed speeches disappeared, and she had just been rambling, not choosing her words as thoughtfully as she could, not expressing herself as clearly as she would have liked. In short, it had been a disaster, and now Severus was gone—gone with the opinion that she didn’t want him.

Which couldn’t be farther from the truth. Why was it such a ridiculous idea that she would want the space to keep him safe? Moira loved him. Distance wasn’t an insult—it was a protective measure.

Drawing in a shaky breath, she pressed a hand to her forehead. She had known Severus wouldn’t go down without a fight. He wouldn’t step back from this unless she hurt him, but she hadn’t wanted to take that path—she still didn’t. Make them hate you, then it’s easier to say goodbye. No. She didn’t want to become a tired cliché. That hadn’t been her intention. They could do this, together yet apart, without breaking anyone’s heart.

But maybe it was too late for that. Maybe she had already done it.

Adrenaline coursed through her, and her hand shook as she tossed her mom’s journal onto Severus’s bed. She had to make this right. She had to fix it before he spiraled into thinking she didn’t want him, trust him, love him. Wiping her tears, she took a few deep breaths, noting how cold the room had become. No frozen eyelashes this time, but it had taken days of crying for those to form. If she sorted this out right away, there would be no more tears this morning.

She had heard the door slam earlier, so it didn’t surprise her to hurry downstairs to a Severus-less first floor. Alaric was still in his bedroom, which left Ella and Malachi, both of whom were in the kitchen. Ella looked up sharply from where she had been unpacking the takeaway boxes at the breakfast bar, Malachi hovering just a few feet away. That golden lion’s mane, his thick wild hair connecting with a thicker, wilder beard, looked just as ridiculous today.

“Hey,” Ella said as she crumpled up a few plastic bags and set them aside. “Are you okay? What happened? He just left.”

Moira nodded; she had already noticed the keys for the SUV missing as she passed the front door.

“We… I don’t know. I screwed it all up.”

Ella’s faced shifted to something more sympathetic than Moira thought she deserved. “I know. We kind of heard. Everything.”

Moira exhaled sharply and pulled her phone out of her pocket. Tapping around on the screen, she found Severus’s contact page and pressed the call button. It went straight to voicemail. She bit the insides of her cheeks and tried again as Ella continued to slowly, tentatively unpack all the breakfast crap they’d bought. Voicemail again. Tears blurred her vision, but she swept them away. He was doing it on purpose—rejecting the call. Severus had never had a dead cell battery in all the time she had known him.

“Oh, honey, I know you meant well. I’m sure he just needs to cool off a bit.”

“Yes, this is a trying time,” Malachi said, pushing off the counter and strolling to Ella’s side. He then had the gall to wrap one burly arm around her shoulders, his hand dangling dangerously close to her boobs. “But I’m sure we will all get through it…together.”

Moira pressed her lips together, the incredulous look on Ella’s face plain as day and objectively hilarious. Her best friend met her eye briefly, then picked up a decidedly not plastic bread knife from the sea of Styrofoam takeout boxes—and stabbed it into the top of Malachi’s hand.

Moira gasped, gawking at the pair. Malachi’s howl of pain startled her, but Ella remained unfazed as he staggered back, demon eyes aglow, wounded hand clutched to his chest. Moira hurried forward, not liking the way the chaos demon was staring at her best friend—like he wanted to eat her, or fuck her, or maybe both. He lurched for her, lips lifted in a snarling sort of smile that should have sent Ella running.

“Oh my god, what?” Moira hissed, grabbing her best friend by the elbow and dragging her away. She shot Malachi a bewildered look over her shoulder, but Severus’s big brother appeared utterly transfixed on Ella, his teeth bared and his smile dark. When Moira finally stopped in front of the staircase, using it to block Malachi’s line of sight, she rounded on Ella, her eyes growing wider by the second. “What?!”

“He just needs to learn about personal space—”

“So you stab him?!”

Ella arched an eyebrow, her arms crossed and her face flushed. “Yeah. Moira, he’s a demon. He’ll survive. Alaric said I need to set firm boundaries.”

“Oh my god.” Moira pushed her palms into her eyes, ignoring the slight headache developing behind the left one. “I cannot handle another demon drama today, Ella. I’ve got enough of my own to deal with—”

“You don’t have to take care of this. I’m fine.” Her friend’s hands wrapped around her wrists, tugging. Ella wasn’t strong enough to move Moira if she didn’t want her to, but she conceded, letting her hands fall to her side.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” Ella glanced toward the kitchen, in which they could both hear Malachi snarling and growling to himself. “I’m good. There are plenty of other knives to stick in other places if need be.” She raised her voice a little for that last bit, then lowered it again as she asked, “What are you going to do about Severus?”

Moira stared at her, mouth hanging open, trying to figure out who was this woman standing before her. Ella had always been the louder, braver, brasher of the pair. She’d faced down many a schoolyard bully back in the day, despite being half their size, and while Moira loved her protective bestie, she had a mouth on her—a mouth that could get her into trouble, especially with demons. Without Severus, there was no one to keep Malachi in check.

No one but Ella, apparently.

What the hell had this day become? It had started out so simple.

“I…I don’t know.” She shook her head, finally breaking under Ella’s unflinching stare. “I don’t know if I want to leave you two alone now—”

“I’m fine,” Ella insisted. She spoke a little louder again as she said, “Right, Malachi? We’re cool?”

“We… You… We are most certainly… You,” came the demon’s eloquent response. Ella waved it off, shrugging.

“We’re cool. Seriously. What are you going to do? He took the SUV and left. Slammed the door. He seemed pissed.”

“He was upset,” Moira agreed, her adrenaline spiking again at the thought of their last conversation. “I didn’t get my point across like I should have. I told him that I needed space and distance, and I tried to tell him that it was because I want him to be safe, but I kind of just rambled. I fucked it all up.”

Ella grabbed her arms and gave her a little shake. “You didn’t fuck it all up.”

“I could have. I don’t know. We’ve never fought like this before. He misunderstood everything, and I was just crying because…because I don’t why, but I was, and it was a mess.” She sniffled, her frown deepening—but her resolve firm as ever. “I don’t want us to fall apart because of some stupid misunderstanding. I need to find him and talk about this. He needs to know I’m not, I don’t know, abandoning him or leaving him. I don’t know why he would think I—”

“Ah, yes, one of the universe’s great mysteries,” Malachi mused from the kitchen. Both Moira and Ella peered around the stairwell, and Moira winced when the chaos demon finally yanked the knife out of his hand, blood gushing all over the takeout box lids. His demon eyes remained as he glared at them, tossing the knife behind him. It landed noisily in the sink seconds later. “Why, oh why, would my little brother misconstrue something as innocent as a bit of space as something worse? Imagine, spending your whole immortal life loathed by your own kind and repeatedly rejected by your parents. No, I can’t possibly fathom why he’d be so sensitive to this. No idea.”

“Okay, peanut gallery slash brother of the year.” Moira held up a hand to silence him. “I get it. Thanks for the commentary.”

“And stop bleeding all over breakfast,” Ella added. Malachi’s glare sharpened.

“Then don’t stab me.”

“Well, stop touching me when I don’t want you to and I won’t,” she fired back. He held up his wounded hand, blood running in twin streams down his forearm, and sputtered at her. Ella rolled her eyes. “Go run it under the sink. You’re fine.”

“Ella, don’t antagonize him.”

“Moira,” her friend met her eye, “I got this. Go find Severus. He took the SUV. Do you know where he’d go?”

“I have an idea,” she said, watching as Ella dug out a pair of shoes from the closet and deposited them at her feet. She slipped her feet into her flats, offering a half smile when Ella handed over her purse. “Seriously though, I don’t know if I want to leave now. Should we wake up Alaric?”

“In my very limited experience, demons just need to know you don’t put up with shit,” Ella told her, arms crossed, fingers drumming on her bicep. “But if it makes you feel better, I’ll grab Alaric.”

“Dearest, I promise we don’t need a chaperone,” Malachi drawled, and Ella’s blush worsened. With the keys to Alaric’s Lamborghini in hand, the white monstrosity still parked out front, Moira looked between Ella and Malachi, not even a little bit sure what to make of them. She hesitated, not wanting to leave her best friend in a tense, possibly dangerous situation, but then there was Malachi at the sink, running his hand under water, grumbling to himself—and smiling.

“Right, we’ll unpack this,” she gestured between the pair, “later.”

“Nothing to unpack, but okay,” Ella said with a quick smile. “Good luck. I’m sure Severus will understand once you explain a little better. Even if you two pretend to separate to fool Aeneas, at least it’s something, right? Make him think you don’t care about Severus anymore, so then he’s off the guy’s hit list. Possibility.”

“Yeah, on a TV show.”

“I’m just spitballing here.”

“I know, and I love you.” She kissed her best friend’s cheek, then shot Malachi a warning look when he glanced their way. “I’ll be back soon. Everybody behave. Save us some breakfast.”

“I’ve already got the oven preheating to keep your stuff warm,” Ella insisted, all but shoving her out the front door. “Go find him. I know you two can work it out. Maybe try not to cry. Kind of muddles the whole thing for guys when you’re crying. Kind of unfair.”

“Noted.” But no promises, of course. Moira had never been this emotional in her entire life. It was like once her mom got sick, all bets were off—the tears were ready and waiting to fall for every little thing.

Not that she saw the conversation with Severus as little by any means, but she could acknowledge that she’d cried a lot lately. Too much. Time to put on her big-girl pants and talk this through the right way.

Purse thrown over her shoulder, she hurried outside, closing the door firmly behind her, and then beelined for the Lamborghini. As she climbed in the driver’s seat, terrified of driving such a prestigious car, she heard Gibson calling her from across the street. She glanced up, and, through the traffic, she could see him shaking his head and mouthing no. Apparently the SUV was up for grabs, but the Lamborghini was not.

“I’m not waiting for a taxi, Gibson,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t hear her anyway, and then slammed the door. Once she got the sleek sports car revved up, she checked her blind spots and quickly merged with the morning traffic. It took a few minutes to get a feel for how the car handled, but soon enough she was whizzing between lanes, bypassing slower-moving vehicles like she’d been driving the Lamborghini her whole life.

Still, by the time she shifted the damn thing into park in the football stadium parking lot, she was shaking like a leaf and sweating like she had actually stolen the car. The only thing that calmed her nerves was the sight of Alaric’s enormous SUV parked in the spot Severus usually chose. Her gut had been right—he’d come here to think.

She climbed out of the low car with some difficulty, weak-kneed and desperate to find him. When he wasn’t sitting in the SUV itself, she jogged toward their secret entrance at the back, jiggling the handle a few times to get it open. By the time she raced up the back stairwell and into the stadium seating, her heart was pounding between her ears, and despite not being out of breath, she found herself panting.

Gripping her purse strap tight, she whirled around and scanned the wall behind the last row, the one they usually sat on to watch the sunrise. And Severus—wasn’t there. She frowned. No. The SUV was in the parking lot. He had to be here.

Worried, she scanned the stadium, following the wall all the way around the first curve—until she found him. He was on the field. Smoking and staring down at his phone, right there in the middle of it. Her heartrate slowed, relief washing over her. Relief and mild annoyance at the confirmation that he was, in fact, screening her calls. But she probably deserved that, even if it did nothing to help their situation.

Dragging a hand through her hair, Moira started her slow descent down the wide metal stairs of the stands. She thought about what she needed to say and how she needed to say it. How she needed to be sensitive to his history of rejection—and how she needed to make it perfectly clear that she didn’t want him to go away permanently. She didn’t want this to be over—even if she had used that awful word earlier.

Moira nibbled her lower lip, studying him. She should have made that part way more obvious the first time around.

Halfway down the stairs, something caught her eye—six somethings, actually. Six balls of light flickered to life around the football field, each one hovering some twenty feet from Severus. Encircling him—and warping from shimmering orbs into men in finely tailored suits. Men with white hair. Six of the ten faces she had memorized from Severus’s sketchbook.

Her eyes widened. Angels.

“Severus!”

Her panic echoed across the stadium, infecting him the second he looked up. Dropping both his phone and his cigarette, Severus looped around, searching for a way out, as Moira sprinted down the steps. The angels moved in on him steadily, a pack of wolves advancing on the lone elk they’d separated from the herd.

She pushed her new body to its limits, not thinking—just doing.

“Get away from him!” she cried. “Leave him alone! He didn’t do anything!”

His black eyes sought her out between a pair of angels, wide and frightened, arms up. She shook her head ever so slightly, flying off the last step and charging over the cement barrier that separated the field from the crowd. No. They aren’t taking you. I won’t let them.

Severus tried to find an out, but every step back he took was another step closer to a different angel. The six had started to glow again, a pure white halo humming to life around them.

“Stop!” she shouted, her throat raw and her hands burning. “Stop! He didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Moira—run!” Severus bellowed back at her, his voice tight—and scared. He looked terrified. As the angelic glow intensified, he was forced to shield his eyes, snarling. Her feet pounded the turf. Nearly there, but so were the angels.

“Don’t touch him!” She could hear him screaming now—screaming like Diriel had when they’d left him to face the wrath of Asmodeus. It cut through to her marrow, a sound she would never forget. Her hands throbbed with heat, with light, and she lifted them, ready to fight for the man she loved. “Leave him—”

She gasped when the nearest angel turned, their eyes meeting. Blue eyes. Like looking in a mirror. The glow of the six was overwhelming now, even to Moira, but she saw those eyes—and she knew instantly.

She’d had her mom’s eyes before all this.

Now, she had his.

Moira reeled back, hoping her angelic light would do something, hoping she hadn’t brought a knife to a gunfight. Ten feet away. Five. Just before she could reach Severus, grab him, his agonized screams filling the stadium, Aeneas lifted his hand, palm out, expressionless.

And with a lazy flick of his wrist, like shooing away a fly—he blasted her clear across the field. Moira’s white light had lit up the Inferno, but the light of a true angel could illuminate a city. She shrieked the moment it hit her, drowning her in heat as it hurled her over the field and into the barrier. Her new body, the kind built to withstand pain, broke through the concrete, forcing the air from her lungs as she barreled back into the stands.

Moira lay there, gasping. Pain bloomed throughout every limb. Something was broken. It had to be. She blinked hard, rebelling against the darkness that threatened to consume her, willing herself to get back up and fight for Severus.

But she couldn’t move. Warmth dribbled from her nostrils, out the corner of her mouth. She choked his name, her gaze dropping to her arm—which was supposed to be lifting and bracing and pushing her back up again. It didn’t move. Nothing did. Slowly, she looked up at the clear blue sky, each blink heavier than the last.

“S-Severus?”

The last thing she realized before the blackness took her, her broken body sprawled across the first-row seating, was that she couldn’t hear him screaming anymore.

* * *

Moira awoke to the sound of her own heartbeat.

Eyes closed, the world dark around her, she first clued in to the steady, constant rhythm. Beep beep, beep beep, beep beep. It was the same sound she had listened to for weeks as her mom lay in a hospital bed. On that final day, Lara Aurelia’s heartbeat had been inconsistent—too fast, too slow, until finally it was too nothing. Moira had heard it stop. She’d heard the crash cart rattling down the hall. She had been pushed out of the way as the dedicated hospital team pounced on her mom and tried to revive her heart.

This was much calmer.

She inhaled deeply. The scent of clean, albeit starchy linens filled her nose, paired with the faintly chlorine smell of recently cleaned floors. No need to open her eyes—she knew she was in a hospital bed. Not at home with Severus. Not at the stadium with Severus. In fact, not with Severus at all.

The angels had taken him.

Her eyes snapped open at last.

Her dad had tried to kill her—again. Or, at the very least, tried to seriously maim her. Groaning, she shifted about, her body stiff and sore, but still in one piece. Maybe he hadn’t tried to kill her. As angry tears swarmed her eyes, as she stared at the white ceiling tiles speckled with grey, she figured maybe he had wanted to send a message. Her worst fears had come true. He had taken the man she loved.

Severus could already be dead.

“No,” she croaked, her voice hoarse. Thank goodness she hadn’t woken up with some tube stuffed down her throat—that would have been alarming. Still, when every swallow felt like sandpaper, she had to assume one had been down there at some point.

Who cares about a fucking tube? Severus is…

Out there.

Being tortured.

Being punished for some crime she knew he hadn’t committed.

And she couldn’t sit here a second longer without him.

Much to her surprise, she had woken up in her own private room. The door was closed, the curtains drawn over the window. A pile of fat, squishy pillows propped her up, and a few layers of blankets kept her nice and toasty. Straightening up hurt. Her shoulders, her sides.

Oh. Her left wrist was in a cast. Moira wiggled her fingers. While they were sore, nothing felt broken, and having broken her right arm when she was nine, she still remembered that pain. She examined the cast. Nope. Not broken. She winced when a sharp pain shot from her wrist to her elbow. Something definitely hurt. Actually, a lot of things hurt. Her entire being ached, certain parts sharper than others, but after testing the rest of her limbs, she decided she was alive and in one piece. If something had broken, her new body had already started to heal it.

“Good job, new body,” she muttered, checking under her hospital gown, her cheeks warming to find herself naked. Someone had undressed her. Someone had found her. What would they think of that scene? How would they explain the damaged barricade? How bad had her injuries been when they’d happened upon her?

Bad enough to warrant a cast. She picked at it for a moment, hoping she’d be able to get it off before she left the hospital—which would be soon. Very soon. She had every right to check out of here without a doctor’s permission.

First things first—she reached over and turned off the heart rate monitor. If she went ripping all the sensors off herself, the machine might call a code. Next came the sensors on her chest, then, with some effort, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and carefully removed the IV line from her right hand. It smarted a little, as did her ribs now that she was upright. In fact, her entire body just felt heavy, like it wanted to fold over on itself—or go back to sleep. Taking soft, short breaths, she prodded each rib bone and hissed at the sharp pain that flared in response.

Fractured, probably, though it was difficult to tell which ones were fractured and which ones just hurt a whole hell of a lot.

As she slid off the bed, tentatively touching down on her toes first, she was pleased to note that her head was clear. Nothing seemed clouded. She could move her mouth, form coherent words without slurring. So, she wasn’t doped up. That was good. It meant she could, with a clear mind, check herself out of here.

Walking proved to be a little more difficult than she anticipated. The entire right side of her thigh was heavily bruised, as was her arm, and she found herself shuffling to the private bathroom. Shuffling, shuffling, shuffling along, slowly but surely, and she gasped when she flicked on the light and caught herself in the mirror.

Not only was her right side bruised, but the entire right half of her face had the same colouring. She inched closer to the small mirror over the sink, gently prodding the skin, and decided that it looked worse than it felt. The handful of new, thin gashes across her cheek and forehead were also tender, but no worse than what Diriel had done to her. She stared at her face, the unbruised side made paler by the intense colouring everywhere else.

“I can do this.” She cleared her throat, voice still no more than a hoarse whisper. “I can do this.”

Get out of here. Find Severus. Make the right people pay.

Nothing else mattered.

After making a quick toilet pit stop, Moira shuffled back to her room—only to find zero personal effects anywhere. No purse, no phone, no clothes. Right. All three were necessary to get out of here. So, she double-checked that her butt wasn’t hanging out the back of her gown—it wasn’t—and then headed for the door.

The long corridor, stretching on in either direction, was quiet when she stepped outside. Moira counted a dozen doors on both sides of the hall, and she figured she was in one of the hospital’s private recovery suites. How she’d wound up here—she had no idea. Most emergency patients landed elsewhere, usually in a room with nothing but a sheet dividing them.

Down to the left, she spotted what looked like the edge of the ward’s nursing station, but before she could start her slow, zombie-like shuffling, Moira grabbed her chart from the little pocket on the back of the door. Nibbling her lower lip, she scanned it for a list of the injuries she’d been admitted with: broken wrist, six fractured ribs, possible concussion, abrasions throughout.

No internal bleeding—it had been underlined twice. Huh.

Well, some of those things were already healing themselves—and someone was going to want an explanation for that. She needed to get out of here.

“But you called me. I’m her emergency contact! Why would you bring me here if I can’t see her?”

Ella’s panicked voice carried down the hall from the nurse’s station, and Moira’s face ached when she risked a smile. Good. Someone to help her get out of here. As she shuffled along, she noted that it was well after ten o’clock at night—she’d been out for most of the day. Ella must have been losing her mind. Brow furrowed, she tried to push herself harder, faster, not wanting her best friend to worry a second longer than she already had.

“Visiting hours are over,” a woman remarked in a firm, patient tone. “You can come back first thing tomorrow morning—”

“No,” Ella snapped, “no, I’m going to see her now.”

“Look, I don’t know how you even got up to this level, but I can’t allow you—”

“I’m family! We… She’s my family,” Ella pleaded. “Please just tell me where she is.”

“If you don’t remove yourselves, I’m going to have to call security.”

“Fine. Don’t help. Moira? Moira?!”

Too exhausted to respond, to keep shuffling, Moira leaned against the wall just past the last doorway, in full view of her people, but neither Ella, the red-faced nurse, or the tall blond guy seemed to notice her presence—

Wait. Was that Malachi?

Why didn’t he look like a yeti?

Moira’s eyes narrowed, taking in his new appearance. He stood behind Ella, hands in his pockets, expression hard and eyes dark. Not quite full black, but she knew that look; he was a second away from making the switch. Gone was the enormous beard, replaced with a clean-shaven face that showed a strong jaw and dimpled chin, his lips supple and slightly downturned. He and Severus shared a nose, the same regal cheekbones, but while Severus’s eyes were charcoal most of the time, Malachi’s were a startling blue. The change from blue to black was probably off-putting.

Her gaze shifted a little higher as Ella continued to argue with the nurse. Gone was Malachi’s wild, beast-man hair. He now wore his short, textured golden locks swept back. He even rocked a little side-part.

He looked good.

Really good. The fitted ruby-red dress shirt, sleeves scrunched up around his elbows, muscular forearms on display, and the grey slacks—not exactly summer appropriate, but attractive on a man of his stature.

Wait.

What?

She wrinkled her nose. Maybe she did have a concussion.

“That’s it!” the nurse proclaimed from behind the counter. “I’m calling security.”

“No, no, please don’t,” Ella said as the woman picked up the phone, its cord stretching as she pressed it to her ear. “I’m sorry for yelling. Really. I—”

Just as the nurse started to tap around on the dial pad, Malachi calmly reached over, his arm seeming to stretch on forever, yanked the phone out of her hand, and crushed it into little bitty pieces on the countertop.

“Why don’t you go ahead and tell us what room’s she’s in, and we’ll be on our way.” His smile had Ella blanching, and the nurse staggered back into the wall, her eyes wide. Malachi, meanwhile, appeared to be trying hard to restrain himself. “I think it’s in your best interest—”

“Malachi, don’t threaten the nurse,” Moira managed, forcing herself to have the energy for all this, to swallow the surge of white-hot rage she used to feel whenever her mom came home from a twelve-hour shift, a veteran nurse with twenty-six years of experience, and told her about some asshole who had made her night hell for no reason. “She’s just doing her job.”

“Oh my god, Moira!” Ella squealed, darting around Malachi and charging toward her—only to stop just shy of dragging her into a hug. “Your face. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, are you okay?”

“I’m sorry about these two,” she said to the nurse as the woman blitzed around the counter and made a beeline for the door. “They’re just passionate people…”

And she was gone. So much for having the staff on her side when she tried to discharge herself. Malachi watched the nurse go, hands in his pockets, and then shrugged as the door swung shut.

“We tried it your way,” he said, strolling over to a frantic Ella, who was still checking Moira over without touching her. “I think mine was more efficient.”

“She’s going to get security,” Moira told him weakly. “Your way kind of sucked, but… Thank you.”

He nodded, but before he could get another word out, Ella straightened, her voice high-pitched, verging on hysterical. “What happened to you?! I get a call that you’re in the hospital, that they found you at the campus stadium unconscious! Did he do this? Did Severus do this to you?”

“What?” It took her a few seconds to process the accusation. “No. Of course not.”

“Diriel? I thought you said he was banished from the city—”

“I need to get out of here,” Moira muttered, tugging at her cast. “Nothing’s broken. I’m just a bit beat up. Really. I’m fine.”

“Shall I go look for a healer?” Malachi asked, rocking back and forth on his heels. “I’m sure you’ll be sorted entirely come tomorrow, maybe a few days. Angel hybrids tend to be quite resilient, apparently—”

“Stop being so calm about this!” Ella snapped, glaring between them. She then grabbed Moira by the shoulders and forced her to meet her gaze. “Honey, I’m glad nothing’s broken, but this is serious.”

“I know, I know, I’m more tired than I thought I was.” Suddenly all she wanted to do was curl up on the floor and sleep, her eyelids heavy.

“Was it Diriel? Should I tell Alaric and Gibson to stay outside—you know, monitor the doors or something? They’re just parking the car.”

“No,” she said, then offered her best friend a weak smile. “No, it wasn’t Diriel. It…” Moira swallowed hard, her dad’s eyes flashing across her mind, Severus’s screams rattling around her brain. “It was angels.”

Malachi inhaled sharply, and she looked up at him.

“Angels did this, and they took Severus. They came for him, and they got him.” She shook her head, lower lip starting to quiver, her voice suddenly thick. “He was screaming and I tried to stop them, and then…then this.”

She gestured to herself, leaning back on the wall for support. Her vision blurred, but she blinked back her tears quickly. No time for tears. Every tear shed, every second wasted, was another moment without Severus.

Another second of him being tortured.

“Angels?” Ella asked in a small voice.

Moira nodded, a bitter laugh escaping her. “Angels.”

“Angels…” Malachi let out a long breath, his hand pressed to his forehead, his eyes black. “Fuck.”

* * *

To be continued in KILLER, the final novel of THE HUNT serial. Look for it June 28th, exclusively on Amazon.