“I’m going to marry you one day,” I said suddenly, then winked to make it more lighthearted than I truly meant it. But seriously, I needed to lock this dude down before he realized he could probably do better.

“Hey, I’m supposed to be saying those things,” he answered with a grin.

I scoffed. “Don’t be sexist.”

He rolled his eyes. “Woman, try them on. Do you have any idea how hard it is to measure your arms while you’re sleeping? You shove them between your legs!”

My laughter rang out, filling the air around us as I popped on my tiptoes to plant a kiss on his lips.

My mom told me once that your first love was dangerous. First love could make you, but also destroy you. If Lincoln was to be my destroyer, I was okay with that—it was worth the making of me.

I finally reached in and pulled the cuffs out, letting the box fall to my feet. Tilting my arm to the side, I slipped the cuff over it and then straightened it so it fit neatly in place.

“Like a glove,” I told him.

They were exquisite. The front had an engraved pair of angel wings on each cuff, with my name underneath. They shined in the sunlight, showcasing their fresh silver polish.

“They should save your ass on Fight Night.” He ran a hand through his hair, smoothed his shirt, and tucked it into his pants. We’d totally just had a quickie in his trailer, so he was trying to tuck in his uniform, hiding the evidence.

I smoothed my hair as well. “So, third year I get to move into the Fallen Army barracks, and I can keep those living quarters even after graduation?” I asked. I’d read the salary package with an eagle eye. Mostly because it was the best job I’d ever had, and I was going to need to take care of my mom and Mikey.

He ran a hand down the side of his trailer, looking at it fondly. “Yeah. Some students like to stay in the dorms if they have younger siblings there, like Angela and Luke, or you and your brother. I used to share an apartment in the barracks with Noah, but…”

I knew this shit was painful for him to talk about, but I wanted to know everything about him. Like why he was the only guy who lived on campus in a trailer.

“After my family died, I didn’t want to step foot in our family home. It was like a memory crypt. But this was our camping trailer. Just enough good memories that it wasn’t overwhelming.”

Oh God, I felt bad for asking.

I placed my hand over his. “It’s a pretty sweet little pad,” I told him.

He smiled, looking down at me with those crystalline blue eyes. Visually, Lincoln and I were opposites. Where my hair was blonde, his was dark; where my wings were black, his were white. But we couldn’t be more perfect for each other. When I didn’t want to kill him, I was madly in love with him. That was the most anyone could ask for, right?

He stroked my hair and tucked it behind my ear. “My mom would have loved you. She always told me, ‘Don’t settle. Wait for a strong woman and she’ll raise strong daughters.’ You’re the strongest person I know, Brielle.”

My heart melted at the compliment, and my stomach did flip-flops at his reference to his mother’s approval of me. He barely talked about his late parents, and never about his little sister, so it meant even more that he’d shared that part of himself.

“She was kind of a raging feminist.” He laughed, seemingly lost in the memory.

“Sounds like a smart woman. How did your dad keep her locked down?” I joked.

A genuine and open smile stretched Lincoln’s lips, one I’d never seen before. “He didn’t. Said that was his secret. Never try to cage the free bird.” He winked.

I’d officially lost count of how many winks he’d given me.

I wished I could have met his parents. Lincoln had only met my mom a few times when she’d come to visit, and while he was polite, I knew his cautious glances at her forehead meant he’d never fully trust her. Not until I could free her.

Before I could say something sickeningly lovey-dovey, the walkie-talkie on his belt loop squawked.

“Grey, you coming?” Noah urged through the device.

Lincoln smoothed his hair one last time, then leaned forward, and kissed me chastely. “See you soon. You’re on my team tonight,” he declared before he started to jog away.

“Do I have to call you, sir?” I screamed after him.

“Yes!” he yelled, and then he was gone.

Dammit. He was going to milk this ‘sir’ thing for a while.

I ran my fingers along the wing engravings on the cuffs and smiled.

We could pretend all day that he was in charge, but I knew the truth.

Chapter Seven

Shea’s face was pressed against the glass, looking out the window as we left Angel City, and made our way into the war zone.

“Tonight is just a drive-by. We want you to see what we’re up against, get a sense for the terrain. To hear the noises, see the risks, and then come right back,” Lincoln told us as he paced the aisle, holding onto the handrail above him intermittently. “You’re rookies. You won’t be doing missions for a while, so don’t ask,” he barked to our small group of nine second-year rookies and Noah, plus the driver.

Luke raised his hand. “So people, like, live out here? Why don’t we just ferry them into Angel City by the busload?”

Lincoln’s face took on a hardened expression. “Unfortunately it’s not that easy. A lot of the people out here are slave bound. Those who aren’t are trapped into some kind of deal with a demon that keeps them here. The demons out here run the war zones like a mafia. If you live in their territory, you have to pay protection money.”

“Oh,” Luke said and looked out at the desolate landscape. We were passing the area we’d done the gauntlet in. The broken-down neighborhoods and shelled-out buildings, some still smoldering, were depressing to say the least.

“Another issue is resources,” Lincoln continued. “Angel City is only so big, and we only have so much to go around. The demons outnumber us greatly, and they’ve taken so much of our land. We try to push back and take back certain parts, but when we finally do, they look like this.” He gestured to the windows.

Geez, I was very fortunate to be living in Angel City. They didn’t cover the war on the news or anything like that. The news was still run by the humans, and they mostly talked about things going on in Angel City, with an occasional story about Demon City, or beyond the wall. I’d never seen a news crew out here, or heard a Fallen Army soldier interviewed. We knew the war with the demons was ongoing, but we were safe in our little city and we had enough to worry about with the Awakening and all that stuff. I felt kind of selfish now, and was glad I had joined the cause.

“Now we’re going to be entering Inferno. It’s a town run by demons that’s unstable, but we’re close to taking it back. They don’t have walls up or guarded checkpoints, so we’re able to infiltrate it easier. Some of the more outlying towns, deeper into their hold, are much more secure,” Lincoln explained, as our bus crawled deeper into the smoky black night.

I raised my hand and Lincoln nodded in my direction.

“Inferno?” I asked.

Lincoln smirked. “We’ve named all of the local demon strongholds after the levels of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. The city of Treacherous, formerly San Francisco, is the most powerful demon stronghold in the world.”

I wanted to chuckle at the silly names, but his statement gave me chills. It reminded me that we were a small part of a very big problem that extended all over the world. Every major city, in every state, in every country was divided—Angel City on one side and Demon City on the other.

When the bus dipped onto a side road, I saw streetlights up ahead, and the buildings looked more and more put together. Lincoln’s hand moved to rest on the butt of his gun as we rolled closer to Inferno.

“I want everyone to just look outside the windows, get accustomed to this town, because it’s our current base. The goal is to take it back, then extend the wall of Angel City out here, and start cleaning it up,” Lincoln announced. “But that’s obviously confidential. Fallen family only,” he added.

“Fallen family” was another word for the army. That meant any of this intel could be shared among others in the Fallen Army but no civilians.

Wow, we’re going to be taking an entire city back from the demons? The thought was both thrilling and terrifying.

As we pulled onto the main road, I started to hear music and see a hustle and bustle of people scurrying along the sidewalks.

My eyes landed on a Mugwort demon. They were total alcoholics, and you could tell one not just by the yellowish bone-colored horns that protruded off their warty faces, but also by their drunken walk. The one I saw now was swaying with a beer in his hand, singing something.

Shea and I kicked one in the balls once. They were lecherous assholes, constantly hitting on women. The one Shea and I had attacked had been too hammered to retaliate, so luckily, we’d gotten away scot-free.

As if he wanted to prove my thought, I saw the Mugwort demon reach out to a passing woman who looked human and grab her ass.

I waited for her to smack him with her purse, or flip him off, or at least scowl, but she didn’t. She just gave him a hollow look and kept walking, like maybe she’d been grabbed too many times to react anymore.

Oh God.

It was such a small thing to notice, but it affected me deeply, as deeply as if I’d seen an innocent woman murdered or raped. Because they were the same. They’d broken that woman’s spirit, and that was as horrifying as death to me.

My eyes flew to a street fight that was in progress, and I gasped when I saw it was children. The two boys didn’t look more than twelve years old, but they were throwing punches that resembled those of a trained fighter. Demons stood in a circle around them, cheering them on, and waving dollar bills in the air.

No.

“Don’t look away.” Lincoln’s voice shook me from my trance, and I pulled my eyes from the fight to see him speaking to one of the other rookies on our team—Valerie, a Necromancer. “You have to see what we’re up against, and you have to get the shock over with, because the next time we bring you in here, we’re going to need your help. We need to save these people, and we can’t do it without you,” he declared.