Contents

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Of Wings and Wolves

SM Reine

Copyright © 2012 SM Reine

Published by Red Iris Books

Series by SM Reine

The Cain Chronicles

The Seasons of the Moon

The Descent Series

For S&R

prologue

Gwyneth Gresham stood in the doorway of the new world with an infant cradled in each arm. She had expected something monumental to mark her passage into an entirely different universe—choirs and trumpets, maybe, or some kind of alarm bells. But she was only greeted by an empty cave with a note written on the wall in chalk. It read, The nearest town is ten miles north. Follow the rising sun. Ask for me at the book shop.

She turned back to see where she had come from and found nothing but smooth wall. The door was gone. The babies’ mother was on the other side, just two steps away, yet utterly unreachable.

Gwyn’s heart gave a nauseous flip-flop, and she hugged the twins tighter. The boy squirmed. “It’s okay,” she whispered. It was only the first of a thousand lies she would have to tell, now that she was in the Haven.

She climbed the tunnel leading to the surface and stood on the brink of a wide wilderness. The trees sparkled with autumn, a cool breeze promised winter, and the ground was carpeted with rotting leaves. It might have looked like home if she hadn’t left behind a rainy spring evening on the other side of that door.

Ten miles, the note said. Heck of a walk.

Gwyn took off her shawl, wrapped it like a sling, and slid her grandniece into the side. The boy remained against her shoulder. One free arm would have to be good enough.

The girl sought out a breast and mewled in protest when she only found shirt. “Don’t fuss, babe. Your mama will be back soon,” Gwyn promised.

She glanced down the tunnel one more time, but it was empty.

Gwyn began to walk. The babies slept.

Their mother never followed.

one

Twenty years later.

It wasn’t often that Summer had a cooler head than her brother, Abram. In fact, she could count the number of times that he had freaked out on her toes and still have an entire paw left over. But on the rare occasions that he did lose his shit, Summer relished it. She liked pretending to be the superheroically calm twin for once.

“You’ll be fine,” she said, trying to channel her grandma’s reassuring gravity. She loosened Abram’s tie, twisted it around, and cinched it tight again to make the knot symmetrical. “You’re more qualified for this position than anyone else in the entire world. They might as well send home all of the other candidates right now.”

Abram’s lips tightened and his jaw clenched, which was, on his personal “Panic Scale,” the rough equivalent of screaming and running in circles. “That’s optimistic.”

She beamed at him. “It’s a good day for optimism.”

It was a beautiful day on the Marut University campus—the kind of balmy March afternoon that was so rare a ditch day should have been spontaneously and unanimously declared by the student body. Who wanted to be learning when it was seventy degrees out and the air smelled like blooming flowers? Nobody. That’s who.

But everybody wanted a chance to earn fifty thousand dollars.

This was the semester in which MU had opened its new archaeological studies wing. The aging university had received that particular blessing from the owner of Adamson Industries, who recently announced his intentions to hire a student intern—a job that meant awesome elbow-rubbing, prestige, and a fifty thousand dollar scholarship.

So instead of swimming in the lake, getting drunk on the beach, or any other wonderful way to spend such a day, over a hundred hopefuls were sweating it out in suits on the quad. And the interviewing students weren’t alone. The CEO of Adamson Industries was the richest man in the world, but he hadn’t been seen in public for years; just about the whole town was crammed into the quad, hoping to catch a glimpse.

“Nobody even knows what the internship entails,” Abram said.

Summer had been bouncing around to get a view of the library doors, but she stopped at her brother’s voice. “Huh?”

“You said I’m the most qualified for the position, but we don’t even know what the position does yet. I’m just an art major. And I’m eighty-ninth on the interview list.” He tugged on his sleeves again, even though the line of his jacket was already perfect. She flicked his knuckles to make him stop.

Summer had no idea how they planned to choose the intern out of so many candidates, but each student had been assigned an interview block that was only three minutes long. Abram wouldn’t get long to make an impression.

“Being eighty-nine just means that the eighty-eight people before you are wasting their time,” Summer said.

He rolled his eyes, but she could tell that he was trying not to smile. “It means that this Adamson guy will be bored by the time he gets to my interview…if he even shows up for it.”

“Shut your pessimistic mouth, Gresham. I’ll hear none of it.”

She shoved him lightly, and he shoved her back, but they couldn’t really get into a fistfight while Abram was dressed for his interview. Nothing like grass stains to ruin that good first impression. There wasn’t enough room to tussle properly anyway; everyone was trying to gather around the library doors, and the crowd filled the quad all the way back to the English department.

Abram eyed the crowd and started tugging on his sleeves again. “You should be interviewing, Summer. You’re so much more charming than I am.”

“You’re the one dying to talk Mr. Adamson into building a new art department. I don’t even want a job.” Summer flicked his knuckles one more time. “Stop that. You’re ruining the illusion of being the perfect candidate.”

He lifted his eyebrows toward his nonexistent hairline. Abram had recently shaved his head again. Between his cue ball skull and massive shoulders, he looked a little bit like a thug. But a very professional thug. “The illusion? I thought you said that I’m the most qualified person in the entire world.”

“Oh, you know what I mean,” Summer said.

“I don’t think I do.”

“You’re perfect. That’s what I mean. Also, shut up.”

The crowd chose that moment to push toward the library doors harder than before. A young woman teetering on the grass in heeled pumps bumped into Abram’s back, and he staggered. Summer grabbed his arm to keep him from falling.

There was something hard and crusty under her fingers, near his left elbow. She tugged his sleeve out so that she could see.

Was that…mustard?

“I got hungry,” he said with the sorrowful tone of someone who had just been caught at the scene of a murder. He fidgeted with his sleeve again, and Summer realized that he had been trying to turn the cloth so that the stain would be hidden at his side. “I had a tofu dog while you were in class this morning, and I accidentally leaned on the wrapper.”

Summer’s jaw dropped. “And you tried to hide it from me? That was three hours ago! I could have washed the jacket by now!” Abram opened his mouth, but she cut him off by flicking him again—this time in the forehead. “Not a word, baldy. Wait right here.”

She fought her way out of the crowd and hurried for the nearest bathroom. There was no chance that she could reach the library with the mosh pit on the stairs, but Hanlon Hall was next door, and the sidewalk in front was empty.

There was more commotion inside the building than she expected. Summer rushed past student services, and it looked like nobody was actually working at their desks. Everyone was leaning through the windows and doorways to stare down the hall.

Summer practically had to punch her way to the bathroom. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she whispered as she elbowed past a cluster of instructors. Nobody even glanced at her.

She shoved through the doors. Every stall in the restroom stood open and unoccupied, and nobody was in front of the mirrors.

Ah, sweet solitude.

She yanked a fistful of paper towels out of the dispenser on the wall and soaked them under a faucet. Summer’s black curls almost swung into the line of fire, but she pushed them back before they could get wet. Then she grabbed a paper cup and filled that, too. She was willing to bet that Abram hadn’t thought to hydrate himself when he bought a tofu dog.

Summer looked at herself and plastered a preemptive apologetic smile on her lips. Back into the trenches.

Something in her teeth caught her eye. She leaned into the mirror, peeled back her lip, and tongued her right canine. Was that rabbit fur caught in her fang? Oh man, she must have been walking around with breakfast sticking out of her teeth all day.

Picking the fur out with her thumbnail, she flicked it into the trash and rushed for the door again, paper towels and cup in hand.

The door slammed open—and slammed into someone.

Summer hadn’t been expecting her momentum to be interrupted, so she dropped the cup. At least, she would have dropped the cup, if there hadn’t been a very broad chest covered in a very expensive suit in her way.

She stared at the wet spot on the jacket as it spread. Her smile vanished. “Oh, fuck me.”

Summer looked up to see who she had hit.

It wasn’t a faculty member. In fact, she wasn’t even sure that he was human.

Only a god could look like that.

The rest of the world completely vanished as she stared at this towering man. She was tall for a woman and she still had to look up to meet his gaze.

He had blue eyes, so bright and pale that they were nearly colorless, like the way the sun burned away the sky on a hot day. And those eyes were set in the kind of face that Summer had only ever seen carved on marble statues: dimpled chin, high cheekbones, strong nose, lips that tilted into a frown. The sweep of brunette hair falling over his forehead saved him from looking too old-fashioned; it was a modern cut to match his modern suit.

His modern, expensive, wet suit.

Apologies failed to escape her mouth. She moved to dry him off with the paper towels—wait, except that those were wet, too. That wasn’t going to help. What are you thinking, Gresham?

Trick question. She wasn’t thinking at all with him looking at her like that.

The instant her hand moved toward his jacket, he caught her wrist and held it tight. “It’s you,” he murmured, his voice somehow both silken and rough. Her jaw dropped open, leaving her gaping silently for a full ten seconds before she could respond.

“Me?” Summer asked. Her ears were ringing in the aftermath of those two little words. She never wanted to hear another voice again.

He used her wrist to tug her closer, and his smell enveloped her. Summer was used to all the normal smells of a human, both natural and artificial, and he had none of them—neither sweat nor cologne. Not even a hint of laundry detergent. Instead, he smelled like a hot breeze blowing over dry grass, the ash of a forest fire, the musk drifting from a forest of ancient trees.

“Forget about me,” Summer said. “What are you?”

The question made his eyes spark. Was that a response on his lips…or something else?

But someone new was there, touching his arm, trying to catch his attention. Summer realized that everything had gone quiet because of a shocked silence. Everyone, from staff to faculty, was staring at her for splashing water on some gorgeous guy in Hanlon Hall.

“Running late, sir,” said another man, tapping his wrist. Ordinarily, his ginger hair and freckles might have caught her eye—Summer liked the nerdy types—but she could barely even see him now. Her standards for men had been instantly, irrevocably ruined.

The god she had run into finally looked away, and Summer breathed for the first time in minutes.

She stared at his retreating back. He was followed by four people, all of whom clamored for his attention—clearly some kind of entourage. Her eyes dropped to the seat of his trousers. This god wasn’t just in possession of an incredibly broad chest and smoldering eyes. He also had the nicest butt she had ever seen.

He took a last glance at her before turning the corner, and Summer realized too late that he had caught her staring at his ass. His gaze scorched straight to her core.

Then he was gone.

Summer’s bones melted. She sat down on the bench outside the bathroom with her empty cup, a fistful of damp paper towels, and the strange sensation of hollowness. Life resumed as the administrative assistants went back to work and the instructors headed out to the quad with everyone else.

The interviews. She had forgotten completely.

Summer shot to her feet, refilled the cup, and rushed off to find her brother.

“What do you mean, the interviews have been called off? They haven’t even seen you yet!”

“Adamson Industries didn’t interview anyone,” Abram said, vibrating with tension as he paced through the foyer. His footsteps rang out sharply on the ceramic floor.

It had taken several minutes for Summer to track down Abram, but not because the quad was crammed. The crowd had been dispersing by the time she got back, and she ended up having to follow Abram’s scent trail to the library, which was no more crowded than it usually was around midterms. Everyone had left as soon as they heard that Mr. Adamson was gone.

Summer gaped at her brother, at the library, at the disappointed candidates continuing to disperse. “So the internship was canceled?”

“Someone said that they already picked a student outside of the interviewing process.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said.

He drank the water she had brought for him, crushed the cup, and spiked it in the trash. “Believe it.” Abram ripped open the top button of his suit. “So much for getting a new art department. And the scholarship.”

The unfairness of it all choked Summer. She clenched her fists and tried to control her anger. “How could someone do that? You’ve prepared for weeks! Doesn’t this Adamson guy even care about how many people he’s disappointing?”

Abram shouldered his bag. “When you’re that rich, I guess you don’t have to care about anyone but yourself.”

Summer had reserved three hours of dedicated server time so that she could compile her midterm project, but she didn’t feel like sitting in a cold computer room anymore. It wasn’t just because of the beautiful day. Abram’s disappointment had left a hard, sick knot clenched in her gut, and all she wanted now was grass beneath her feet, the wind in her fur, and solitude.

She headed for the computer sciences building, but she barely noticed where she was going. She couldn’t get the god in Hanlon Hall out of her mind.

He had been wearing an awfully expensive suit. Could that have been Mr. Adamson? Did the accident offend him so badly that he decided to cancel the interviews entirely?

No, it couldn’t have been him. Her mental image of the reclusive CEO involved gray hair, jowls, and wrinkles. Not a man barely any older than Summer’s twenty years, who smelled like the element of fire trapped in a flawless body.

The interviews must have been canceled for some other reason.

Instead of going inside the computer room, she ducked under the trees and rounded the building. She made sure that nobody was watching before she jumped onto a chain-link fence and climbed behind the building.

The facilities department had protected the solar batteries behind a gate so that they were only accessible from the boiler room—or by one determined woman who was very good at climbing. The seclusion made it the perfect place for Summer to hide her clothes when she wasn’t using them.

She reached between the metal casings of the batteries, where she hid an empty backpack for storage. Keeping her ears perked for the sound of approaching footsteps, she unbuttoned the front of the dress and kicked off her sandals. She had been enjoying the warm day in a cotton one-piece that would tear easily in a rush, and as her fingers moved over the buttons, Summer found herself thinking about that god again.

It had been a pathetically long time since Summer went on a date—or even found herself attracted to someone, for that matter. But he didn’t look like the kind of man who dated. With that much heat and intensity, he could only consume, utterly and completely.

Why didn’t he smell human?

She shook her head to clear it of all those wild thoughts and continued to strip.

Summer had opened the dress all the way to the hem and started sliding it off of her shoulders when she heard the voices.

“Are you sure she went this way?”

“Positive.”

“But there isn’t anywhere to go over here…”

Her heart leaped into her throat at the sound of the two men talking. They were close.

She lifted her head and sniffed the air. She could learn a lot about people by their smells, and these guys reeked of hair gel, expensive fabric, and cologne. The sticky musk clung to her throat. Neither of them were the man she had splashed in Hanlon Hall.

And judging by the sound of their movements, they were only a few steps away from coming around the fence and seeing Summer crouched half-naked behind the solar batteries.

She had never gotten dressed so quickly in her life.

By the time the men passed the brick wall, Summer was casually leaning against the back of the building—outside the fence—with her dress buttoned the wrong way and her chest heaving.

She tried to look like their approach surprised her, and also like she hadn’t just launched herself over an eight foot fence with her super-strong thigh muscles. “Hello, there,” Summer said, flipping her thick hair over her shoulder in an extra-casual gesture. “I was just…leaning.” Leaning? Brilliant, Gresham.

The men exchanged looks. They both wore gray suits, like they should have been in an office talking about quarterly reports or yelling at vendors over the phone. One was red-haired; one was brunette. They were otherwise indistinguishable from each other. If you’ve seen one yes man in a two thousand dollar suit, you’ve seen them all, and Summer had already run into these two anyway. They had been with the hot guy outside the bathroom.

“What’s your name?” asked the brunette.

“Summer,” she said. “Summer Gresham.”

The first man leaned over to the second to whisper, “It’s definitely the one he wanted.” Summer probably wasn’t meant to hear it, and a normal person wouldn’t have. But she wasn’t exactly normal.

“Can I help you guys with something?” she asked.

The redhead stepped forward and shoved a manila envelope into her hands.

“You’re the new intern at Adamson Industries,” he said. “Congratulations.”

two

The instructions in the envelope were simple: Arrive at a certain address on Saturday morning at eight o’clock. Dress professionally. Do not bring a cell phone.

Summer stared at the last instruction for a long time.

Mr. Adamson was just paranoid about corporate espionage…right? It wasn’t like he was some creepy eccentric that planned to kidnap her or anything. Rich guys didn’t need to kidnap girls when they could just buy them.

Or, if he looked like Mr. Adamson, he could just glance at a girl and have her devoted to him for the rest of her life.

Summer was stretched out on a blanket to enjoy the unseasonable warmth, and she rolled over onto her stomach so that her back could get sunlight, too. Her skin was naturally a light shade of brown, so she didn’t need the tan; she just liked to be outside with the sun, the breeze, and the squirrels in the trees.

Sir Lumpy agreed, and was happy to take up half of her blanket with his massive feline body. At Summer’s motion, he stood, stretched, and rubbed his nose on her chin. He was drooling again—now that he was eighteen years old, he was always drooling—and his affection left her skin feeling slimy.

Her kitty was the only animal that wasn’t terrified of her, so Summer let him drool on her all that he wanted. She suspected that he just didn’t realize he should be afraid of her, like all of the wild animals in the area. His frowning mouth, wrinkled nose, and buggy eyes supported her theory that there might be something off about her cat, and his habit of running face-first into closed doors and occasionally licking walls didn’t help. The only reason that he hadn’t been eaten by something while wandering around the forest was that no predatory animal dared come within ten kilometers of the Gresham cottage.

Abram had said that Sir Lumpy was dumb and ugly. Once. Summer had put him in a chokehold until he took it back. As far as she was concerned, Sir Lumpy was lord and master of the forest, her noble white knight, and the only friend Summer had that didn’t share blood with her.

She scratched her cat under the collar. “You wouldn’t let creepy Mr. Adamson abduct me, would you?”

He responded by walking in front of her face and tickling her nose with his tail. He must have been chasing sexy lady cats through the bushes again because his fur was filled with burrs. Summer picked out several before he strutted out of arm’s reach.

“You should give up,” she told him as he flopped onto his side again, spreading his black belly fluff across her blanket. “Those girls aren’t good enough for you anyway.”

Sir Lumpy responded by vigorously washing his arm with a black-spotted tongue.

Propped up on her elbows, Summer flipped through the internship packet one more time. The first page had the instructions. Pages two through six were a history of Adamson Industries and their investments into education. The last ten pages were a detailed questionnaire that demanded far too much information of Summer, including a family medical history.

“What kind of internship is this supposed to be, exactly?” she asked Sir Lumpy, who had found her pen and was chewing on the cap.

No way was she going to give Adamson Industries her mother’s identification serial number. Summer didn’t even have a mother.

“Did you say something?” Abram asked, ambling out of the house with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He had traded out the suit for a tank top and shorts.

Summer wrinkled her nose at him as he selected a nearby tree and dropped the bag beside it. “Have you ever seen Mr. Adamson? Do you know what he looks like?”

Abram lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “He’s a recluse. I was surprised to hear he planned to show up for the interviews that didn’t even fucking happen.”

A sense of guilt crept over her. She flipped the packet over to conceal the Adamson Industries stationary. “But he’s young, right? Late twenties?”

“I don’t think so. He’s been CEO at least forty years.”

So maybe the guy in Hanlon Hall wasn’t Mr. Adamson after all. But then why would Summer have been singled out for the position? It seemed like he had recognized her, even though she was certain that they had never met before. She couldn’t have forgotten a face like that.

Abram grabbed a sturdy branch and began performing chin-ups with his feet hooked into the straps of the duffel bag, which was weighed down with something heavy. Probably cinder blocks again.

“What—are—you—reading?” he asked, punctuating each word with another flex of his arms to lift his head over the branch. Sir Lumpy decided he was much too dignified to be in the presence of such grunting and strutted his way toward the cottage.

She slid the papers back into the unmarked envelope. “Nothing. Just some stuff for my algorithms class.”

He grunted in acknowledgment, and Summer watched him exercise for a couple of minutes before the sight of his exertion became too tiring. Sir Lumpy was right. It was hard to relax properly when someone else was working so hard.

Summer grabbed her sunglasses, blanket, and the envelope, and followed her cat to the front door.

The Greshams lived in an ivy-covered cottage fifteen kilometers north of Marut University. It had been built from the ground up by Uncle Scott before he died, and his mark was still on everything: the horseshoe over the door, the greenhouse that Summer dutifully maintained around back, the bay window with a pentacle inset. Uncle Scott had been a witch, so he had breathed love and magic into the cottage, and it felt like the walls glowed with inner light. Summer had always thought that it looked like something out of a fairytale.

Grandma Gwyneth was gardening in the flower beds by the path, but at Summer’s approach, she sat up and pushed a loose gray hair off of her forehead. Her gloves and knees were covered in damp soil. “Got a second?” Gran asked.

“Sure.” Summer opened the front door long enough to let Sir Lumpy inside, since he was much too dignified to use the cat door, and then joined her grandma again. “What’s up?”

“Smell this.” Gran pushed a flowerpot into her hands. Three tiny green shoots protruded from the surface.

Summer sniffed. “Tomato plant.”

“And this other one?”

“Cabbage. The third one is summer squash.”

“Thanks, babe,” Gran said. “I brought these out to start hardening them off, but I forgot to label the pots when I planted the seeds. I must be going senile.”

Summer had to laugh at that. Gran was about as likely to go senile in the next decade as Abram. She looked exactly the same now as she did in Summer’s baby photos, and her mind hadn’t aged a day, either. Gran described herself as “permanently old,” but Summer preferred to think of her as timeless.

Regardless of what she wanted to call it, Gran was immortal. A fairytale grandmother for the fairytale cottage.

As she leaned over the flowerbeds, her thick gray braids swung over her shoulders and tickled the dirt. Summer pulled them over her back and knotted them loosely. There was an early spring blossom sticking out of the grass nearby, so Summer plucked it and put it in the center of the knot.

Gran had been working long and hard, but instead of smelling like sweat, as most people would have, she gave off the faint odor of homemade chamomile soap. The only other smell came from her necklace: a silver-coated animal skull with agate eyes that was haloed with the smell of mausoleums and graves.

There was nothing else in the world that smelled like Gran. The magic that kept her frozen in time was special.

But she wasn’t the first person that Summer had been around that day who smelled special.

“What would you say if I told you that I ran into a man that didn’t smell human?” Summer asked, curling her bare toes in the grass.

“I would tell you that it’s not possible for someone who isn’t human to be here. There’s only three people like us left in the whole world, and they live in this cottage. That’s what I would tell you.” But Gran looked worried. “What did he smell like?”

“Forest fires. Sunshine. Ash.”

“Any chance you were confused?”

Summer remembered the way the world had vanished at his touch, and her cheeks heated. “Maybe a little. I was…distracted.”

“Hmm.” Gran went back to digging. “It’s worth investigating. If someone—or something—is here that’s not human, we need to be real careful.” Her voice took on a hard edge. “And if worse comes to worse, we might need to do something about it.”

“Like what?”

Gran removed her gloves and reached out to stroke Summer’s curls. When her grandma touched her like that, it always made her feel like a little girl again, tiny and safe and warm.

The next words to come from her mouth were matter-of-fact, and not nearly as comforting. “Like getting rid of him.”

Gwyn waited until Summer and Abram fell asleep, Sir Lumpy gave up yowling, and the weight of night silenced the crickets. It wasn’t hard to stay awake; she hadn’t slept in over twenty years, and she was used to spending her evenings in pensive silence.

But she wasn’t planning on spending this night meditating, as she usually did. She put on boots, wrapped herself in a jacket, and borrowed Abram’s keys.

She drove with the windows rolled down, unaccompanied except for the breeze and starlight. The headlights barely seemed to cut through the gloom.

Nights were always so much darker here than they had been back home. There was no moon to light her way, and what passed for civilization was sparse; long weeks of exploration had yielded nothing more than a dozen towns, each the size of Hazel Cove—hardly large enough to create light pollution.

Gwyn headed north, deeper into darkness and away from the town. Within a few miles, pavement turned to packed dirt, and then the bushes grew too thick to keep driving. She parked.

It was a long hike into the hills. Cerulean hints of false dawn traced the horizon by the time Gwyn found a slope covered in creepers and mint, both of which she had planted to help her find her way.

She followed the line of herbs, and found that the tunnel waited for her, just as it always had. Gwyn had allowed bushes to grow over the entrance, but not too thick; she pruned them twice a year to keep the path clear. But not a soul besides Gwyn had passed through since Scott had died.

Pushing through the branches, she slid down the tunnel. Gwyn kept a hand on the wall until her eyes adjusted enough to make out shapes in the darkness. She had left Scott’s chalk message, just in case, but time had faded it to an illegible blur.

The back wall of the cave was the same way it had been for two decades: covered in petroglyphs, smooth, and unbroken.

Still no door.

Gwyn closed her eyes and tried to imagine everything that she had left behind. It was more than just her ranch, the moon, and everyone she knew. Her niece, Rylie—the mother of Summer and Abram—had been in a bad situation when Gwyn carried the twins to safety.

She could only imagine one reason that Rylie hadn’t immediately followed. It was a likelihood that Gwyn had desperately struggled not to think about.

Twenty years.

“Where are you?” she asked, pressing her hand against the cool stone where a door should have been.

She wasn’t disappointed by the responding silence anymore, although it had cut deep for the first few years. Watching Summer and Abram learn and grow was an experience that she would never regret—and she hoped that she could do the same for their children someday, and the children of their children.

But Rylie should have been there to see Summer and Abram grow. Not Gwyn.

It was always heartbreaking to see that empty wall, but tonight, it also left Gwyn with a new layer of mystery. Summer’s sense of smell was perfect. She knew a storm was brewing a week before the first raindrop fell. If she said that she had smelled someone that wasn’t human, then something had happened—something bad.

Nothing should have been able to follow Gwyn to this side of the wall.

Worry weighed heavily on her as she returned to the surface, twice as confused as she had been when she went under.

Dawn broke over hills. As always, the sun rose in the north.

three

Summer rested her head on Gran’s knee, hugged her calf, and watched the sleet fall outside the window. It was a stormy day, and Uncle Scott had said that she couldn’t play outside until the sky cleared, leaving her bored and restless—a dangerous combination for a six year old.

“Do I have a daddy?” Summer asked as she began unlacing Gran’s shoe. They sat in front of the stifling heat of the living room woodstove, which was the only source of warmth in the house.

“Everyone has a daddy,” her grandma replied, licking her finger and turning a page in her paperback. “And a mama, too.”

“Even Abram?”

“He has the same ones you do. Why do you ask?”

“We found a nest yesterday,” Summer said, tugging the lace free of the holes in Gran’s right shoe. “We followed the mommy bird back to the tree. There were three eggs and another bird watching. Mommy, daddy, babies.”

“You better put that string back before I whip you with it,” Gran said. Summer knew she didn’t mean it, so she kept tugging. “You don’t think you came from an egg, do you?”

Summer rolled her eyes. “No, Granny. We’re mammals.”

“Right, sorry. I almost forgot.”

“Mammals suckle their young,” Summer said, yanking the lacing free and turning her attention to the other shoe. “Was I suckled?”

“Only once.” Gran shook her foot free.

“Why?”

Gran sighed and set down her book to give Summer her full attention. “Your mama wasn’t around when you were still little enough to want it. You know, if you’re bored, I can find something for you to do.”

That was the worst threat possible. Gran did mean that one. Summer gave up trying to get her other shoe and stood, twisting the shoelace around her first finger. “So where are they?”

Gran cupped her cheek in a hand. “They’re busy saving the world, but they love you very much, and they’ll be here just as soon as they can. All right? Do you want a cookie?”

Even at six years old, Summer knew an attempted redirection when she heard one. But Gran hadn’t looked sad until Summer started talking, and now she looked like she might cry. If a cookie would make Gran happy, then she would have a cookie.

She wrapped her arms around Gran’s neck, silently requesting to be picked up, even though Uncle Scott said that she was much too big to be carried now.

“Yes, please.”

The sound of sleet on the window faded, replaced by the rumble of thunder. The living room dimmed.

Summer woke up. Her eyelids peeled open, and a furry nose jammed into hers. Sir Lumpy chirped.

So it hadn’t been thunder. Just a purring puma.

“What time is it?” she whispered.

He licked her cheek. Summer grimaced, pushed him away, and wiped the skin dry. It was damper than she expected—she had been crying in her sleep.

The clock said it was almost midnight, so her alarm was due to go off in five minutes. Sir Lumpy’s timing was perfect.

Summer slipped out of bed and bent over her desk, which was backed by a huge poster of an island resort. Her head was filled with the cottony confusion of sleep, and she had to blink at her monitor for a few seconds before she could actually read anything.

She had used her bedroom computer to look up the address Adamson Industries’s men had given her before dozing off, and she wanted to double check the location before leaving. It wasn’t far from Marut University—about five kilometers down the coast of Lake Ast, and well within running distance.

Almost a week had passed since her strange encounter in Hanlon Hall, and Summer had been debating whether or not she should take the internship the entire time. The problem had kept her up every night, long after Sir Lumpy was finished with his midnight yowling ritual.

Her sense of decency said that she should refuse the offer. Even if the circumstances hadn’t been so weird, it felt like a betrayal to Abram. She hadn’t even told him about the offer yet. On the other hand, Gran said that it was worth investigating, and Summer would have investigated herself off a tall bridge if her grandma told her to do it.

Summer sighed as she wiggled out of her shorts and kicked them onto the bed. If she was going to be honest with herself, the urge to put on her nicest skirt, abandon her cell phone, and show up at the door of Adamson Industries had nothing to do with Gran’s suggestion, and everything to do with Mr. Adamson’s deep, endless eyes.

Whether it was her brain making decisions, or a slightly less rational part of her body, Summer wasn’t going to walk into that building without knowing what she was getting into.

She was going to go spy on Adamson Industries.

About two years before he died, Uncle Scott had added glass doors that opened straight into the forest from her bedroom, and she opened them now to stand naked in the doorway. The breeze ruffled through her curls and whispered down the curves of her back. She closed her eyes to savor the moist spring air on her breasts, her stomach, her thighs.

Something furry and vibrating bumped into her ankles, leaving behind a streak of drool.

“I haven’t forgotten you,” she said, kneeling to run her hand down Sir Lumpy’s spine. He arched into her touch. That was the kind of happy purr that could shatter glass.

Not only was he the only animal in the world that didn’t fear Summer, he was also the only living creature that kept her company on the long nights she spent on the wild. But Sir Lumpy couldn’t go where she was going. Not tonight.

Gently nudging the cat back into her bedroom, Summer stepped outside and closed the doors. His mouth opened in a silent meow on the other side.

“Sorry, hot stuff,” she said, tickling her finger over the glass where his black nose had left a smear. “Maybe tomorrow.”

Summer faced the forest. The night was dark, but she didn’t feel even the slightest nudge of fear. There was nothing in the darkness that could hurt her when she was in her second skin.

The breeze picked up, and Summer smelled a herd of deer that had passed through earlier. She could taste the fur and pheromones that had been rubbed on the trees. There were fawns among them, at least two does, and a buck. He might be good hunting later. For now, she only cared that she couldn’t smell humans in her forest.

After twenty years of living with dual natures, shapeshifting was as natural to Summer as walking. All she had to do was step from one skin into the other.

She dropped to a crouch and began to change.

Her bones expanded, contracted, reconfigured. The fingers and toes digging into the grass became paws. Her skin blossomed with fur. Her nose elongated into a muzzle at the same time that the world’s colors became duller and her hearing improved.

It only took a few minutes for Summer to finish and stand on all four legs. She was a wolf the size of a small horse, and for the first time in days, she felt truly relaxed.

Summer took off and left the dream’s haze behind, giving her muscles time to warm up before hitting top speed. Her stamina was endless. She could run a hundred kilometers a day at an easy lope. But she didn’t have all day—she needed to be home in time to dress for her meeting with Mr. Adamson, if she decided to go at all.

She rushed through the trees, splashed across a river flush with melted snow, leaped down small cliffs, and never lost a beat.

The trees vanished, opening into a field of long grass. Her passage made lightning bugs erupt into the air, dance between her flying legs, and swirl around her ears.

The constellations had crept halfway across the sky by the time that forest gave way to dorms and paved roads. Summer could mark the time by following the archer’s march toward the hills, so she knew that it took her almost an hour to reach the university. Plenty of time left in the night for spying.

The south edge of MU blended into the town, which hummed with activity. People were enjoying their Friday nights at downtown coffee shops and clubs, although many of them had spilled onto the streets to enjoy the warm night.

For a moment, Summer paused in the shadows behind The Cracked Teacup to watch the crowd.

Everyone looked content. They were in little clusters or big groups, but nobody was alone. They talked, laughed, and danced to a live band at the pavilion down the street.

The couple at a nearby table was oblivious to all of this activity. They bowed their heads together, and the man rubbed his fingers over the woman’s knuckles while she spoke. The look he gave her almost took Summer’s breath away.

No man had ever looked at her like that—like there was nobody else in the entire world.

Summer tore herself away and angled for the beach, which was devoid of campers and bonfires this time of year. She pounded sand toward Adamson Industries.

When she passed the peninsula shielding the south end of the lake, she was surprised to find that the address she had been given didn’t belong to an Adamson Industries office at all. It was a private residence—although that was an awfully modest way to describe the castle that confronted her at the end of the road.

Mr. Adamson’s home was a vast collection of towers and wings barely clinging to the side of a steep hill, as if it could tear free of its moorings and plummet into the black depths of the lake at any moment.

Summer stopped short, poised atop a cluster of half-submerged rocks. Cold water sloshed over her paws.

This was where she was expected to spend the first day of her internship without a cell phone?

Hello, creepy murder house.

The manor was dark, but a large garden at the base of the hill was brightened by white fairy lights and torches ringing a lattice gazebo. That wasn’t quite as terrifying. Summer could deal with that.

She jumped off the rocks and paced along the edge of the fence blocking the lawn. It was a modern, metal affair with barbed wire coiled around the top. Strange to see—few places around Hazel Cove bothered with much security. Maybe reclusive Mr. Adamson really was a paranoid nutjob.

Or maybe he wants to keep his supple young interns from escaping.

Banishing those crazy thoughts, Summer turned her attention to the entry gate. It was well-lit, locked, and watched by guards. No way could a giant wolf get in without being spotted.

Summer probably could have jumped the fence if she gave herself a running head start, but that was the second most conspicuous way to break into a property riddled with guards. Instead, she jogged along the edge of the fence until she got closer to the gazebo, and that was where she found it: a rabbit hole that exposed the bottom of the fence.

She wasn’t above a good dig, even if it meant that she would have to scrub under her fingernails in the morning. She tore at the soft earth until the hole deepened enough for her to wiggle her head through. Letting all of the air out of her lungs, she kicked her hind legs and squirmed to the other side with only a tiny scrape down her spine, which healed immediately.

As soon as she cleared the trees on the other side, Summer saw why there was so much light around the gazebo, which was draped in swaths of red silk and strings of golden lanterns. The citizens of Hazel Cove weren’t the only people enjoying the warm Friday night; Adamson Industries was having a party in the gardens, too. A three-piece band played among the orchard in tuxedos, smelling faintly of shoe polish and the wax used to keep violin bows limber. Women wearing elegant dresses whirled on a polished dance floor with handsome men in suits.

Cigar smoke drifted toward Summer. She huffed and blew the stink out of her nose.

Where was Mr. Adamson?

She prowled along the edge of the light, nose to the ground and eyes on the party. She could only catch glimpses of the attendees through the red drapes. There were plenty of handsome men there, young and old, blond and brunette, but all obviously wealthy beyond Summer’s wildest dreams. None of them approached Mr. Adamson’s unearthly good looks.

Summer slunk away, maintaining a low profile.

The wealthy investor must have owned half of the beach around Lake Ast. It was quite a jog to the manor on the hill, and she didn’t come across any other fences on the way. The places the guard patrolled left invisible scent trails like bright, flashing warning signs, and avoiding them was too easy.

Summer slipped into a bush and kept her ears perked. A guard passed without seeing her. He smelled like oils, plastics, metal.

As soon as he was gone, she darted across the road and climbed the hill.

The manor loomed overhead, growing until it filled her vision. She jumped over a low stone wall and found herself in another garden at the base of the main house, this one much finer than that near the gates. The perfume of apples, plums, and moist soil filled her nose. Plump blossoms hung from every vine. And were those berries growing on the bushes already?

There were no guards in this garden, so Summer crept forward to stick her nose in a hedge and sniff around.

What kind of gardener could grow blackberries in winter?

Even though not a single plant had been touched by fire, she could smell burned forest, the heat of mid-July, and something masculine that stirred longing inside her human heart. That wasn’t the smell of any ordinary gardener. That was the smell of the god from Hanlon Hall.

Motion directed her gaze above the hedge to a balcony jutting from one of the towers. A man was perched on the very edge of the balcony’s stone rail, with the same precarious look of the house on the hill. A centimeter forward, and he would fall.

Summer studied the man’s profile against the dark sky. Strong nose, dimpled chin, a sweep of dark hair. She had only glimpsed that profile once before, but it was permanently branded on her memory.

It was Mr. Adamson himself. He was shirtless, barefoot, and wearing only slacks.

The curves of his muscular back were lit by the light filtering through his bedroom curtains. When she had bumped into him, it felt like running into a wall, and now she could see why. He had the broad shoulders and strong arms to match his statuesque features. His skin was flawless marble.

What was he doing? Did he plan to jump into the lake?

He blew out a sigh as he gazed at the stars. His brow knitted together.

Summer knew that look. She had worn it herself on a thousand nights just like this one. It was loneliness, deep and impenetrable.

But why was he so lonely? There was an entire party’s worth of people on his lawn.

Mr. Adamson turned. Summer’s heart stopped beating at the sight of his face in full view, terrified for a moment that he might have seen her, but he only gazed down the hill. The reflection from the gazebo was captured in his eyes like pinpricks of starlight. There was a universe of heartache beyond his eyes, betrayed by the frowning curve of his lips.

That wasn’t a man that had hired an intern so that he could kidnap or hurt her. That was a man who was looking for companionship, whether he realized it or not. Summer could feel it deep in her heart.

She was so wrapped up in staring at him that she didn’t even notice when someone sneaked up on her.

“Holy shit.”

The guard that she thought she had avoided stood on the other side of the garden wall, gaping at the giant wolf in the hedge. His hand crept toward the walkie-talkie on his shoulder.

Uh oh.

The voice drew Mr. Adamson’s attention, and Summer felt his eyes pierce straight through her hide. He straightened on the balcony. “Get the wolf. Now!”

The guard grabbed his walkie-talkie to tell the others.

She launched out of the garden and tore down the hill again. But where the Adamson property had seemed empty and peaceful just minutes earlier, it suddenly teemed with men, and every single one of them was running toward her. Flashlights danced over the grass.

There was no way she could get to the fence without being seen. She had to lose them.

Summer darted toward the forest, but a wall of bodies blocked her path. Pieces of metal flashed in the glow from the guards’ flashlights. What was that acrid smell, like lubricant and metal and fire?

Cold shock washed over her. They have guns.

The forest was out of the question. Summer spun, searching for another way out.

She could swim across the lake—great idea, except that her fur weighed a million pounds when it got soaked, and Lake Ast was huge. Or she could make a break for the gate and hope that those men wouldn’t be willing to fire where the party guests could see it.

An idea struck Summer.

The party guests.

The guards were moving in fast, but humans on foot had nothing on a wolf moving with panicked swiftness. She whirled and tore across the grass, heading straight for the beach, where a dozen men waited.

She lowered her head and plowed straight into them, knocking at least three of them onto their backs.

Sorry! she thought with an inward wince. At least the sand was soft.

They hadn’t expected her to dive into a group of guards, so they couldn’t react fast enough to grab her. Summer vanished into the bushes around the side of the gazebo, snagging one of those pretty red drapes along the way and being careful not to tear it in her teeth.

Change, Summer!

It was a lot harder to step from one skin into another when her mind was a blur of adrenaline. She could barely remember what having fingers felt like.

Men crashed through the foliage in search of the wolf. She squirmed closer to the base of the gazebo, and Summer watched feet in formal shoes dance over the wood floor as her bones popped and crunched.

It was hard to track the smell of the guards with so much cigar smoke hanging over the gazebo, and she couldn’t hear them moving under the strains of the cello. They could have been anywhere—kilometers away or seconds from finding her.

Faster, faster…

Her fur dropped to the grass, baring brown skin and muscular legs. As soon as she had hands, she checked the top of her head. Her curls were intact, but it would probably look like she had stuck a hedge to her skull. Too late to worry about that now.

Summer’s tail vanished last, and she jerked the silk drape around her naked body. A couple of the women at the party looked like they were wearing nothing more than a few scraps of loose cloth, too. It was a matter of presentation. There has to be a way to make a convincing dress out of this thing.

She was still trying to figure out how to secure the silk at her shoulder when she turned around—and came face to face with the looming face of Mr. Adamson.

four

Once, when Summer and Abram were much younger and much stupider, they had decided that they needed to build a fort where Gran and Uncle Scott couldn’t find them. They explored the depths of the forest well beyond the bounds of Summer’s established territory, and found a cave at the bottom of a ravine.

It was the farthest that Summer had gotten from the cottage in her entire young life, and she was thrilled. It was a whole new world among the boulders and brambles. Who knew what they would find there?

“This will be perfect for a fort,” Abram said, dropping his backpack at the mouth of the cave.

Summer said nothing, because wolves don’t speak. But excitement had gotten the better of her. She butted her head into her brother’s knees and nipped at his fingers, and Abram, annoyed, thumped her in the head.

They struggled, fought, and slammed into a boulder. It was fun for a few minutes—until Abram broke his ankle.

Suddenly, their goal to build a fort was a lot less important than the logistics of getting him out of a ravine again with a bum leg. They hadn’t brought enough deer jerky to stock the fort for longer than a day or two, and they had been careful to pick a ravine where nobody would find them.

“This is your fault,” Abram told her. Still, Summer said nothing. This time, it was because she was too embarrassed to change back and apologize. “You have to get Gran and tell her what we did.”

He was right, of course. Abram was always right.

While he sat, she quickly searched the cave to make sure it was safe for him to wait alone there. It smelled damp and muddy and a little bit like animal droppings. As a wolf, Summer never thought anything smelled bad, exactly—just interesting. And the cave had some of the most interesting smells she had experienced.

She sniffed around until the smells led her to the back of the cave.

That was how she startled the bear.

Summer would never forget meeting that animal’s eyes. They were startlingly intelligent and set every one of her senses on alarm. It was as though she had somehow found the soul of the forest itself slumbering in that cave—a powerful, primal force that she couldn’t begin to fathom.

A strange energy passed between them. The understanding of predator meeting predator. A moment where Summer realized that she was about to be attacked, and that a wolf with a human mind was no match for the elemental anger of a bear.

It was a lot like looking at her death.

If Summer had been stupefied by running into Mr. Adamson in a crowded university hallway, it was nothing in comparison to what she felt running into a sleeping bear. But being caught naked outside Mr. Adamson’s house was even worse than both of those experiences.

The man’s colorless irises seemed to glow with the light from the torches around the gazebo. Tragically, he had found a shirt on his way down to the party, but it wasn’t buttoned all the way. It gapped around his throat and bared the hollow where his collarbones met. Even though the three-piece orchestra was still playing, she felt like all noise and life beyond their two bodies had vanished.

When Mr. Adamson didn’t immediately call to his guards to arrest her, a thousand excuses whirled through her mind—none of them very plausible.

Sorry, my clothes spontaneously combusted at your party, so I decided to wear the decorations.

I survived a horrible shipwreck and washed up on your beach. Can I borrow the phone?

Or, least plausible of all, I’m a shapeshifting spy who changed back because she didn’t want to get riddled full of bullet holes by your battalion of guards.

Summer settled for saying, “Hi.”

He might as well have been carved from stone for all that he reacted to her greeting. His eyes dropped to her dress, her bare feet, the hands clutching at the drape.

When he reached out, she flinched, but all he did was pluck a twig from her hair. He flicked it to the grass. “Hello,” he said, and her leg muscles liquefied at the wry twist of his lips. Summer had to lock her knees to remain standing. “Come with me.”

Come with me? To where? The murder house? Was he going to abduct her, kill her, throw her body in the black depths of the lake?

He extended his hand, and she edged away as though his fingers were venomous snakes.

But then Summer thought back to his lonely perch on the balcony. She had been confident that he wasn’t a dangerous man in that moment, and she could still feel the lingering urge to save him, like a knot of warmth in her chest.

Plus, it wasn’t like he could know that she had been the wolf in his garden.

Biting her bottom lip, Summer took his hand. Mr. Adamson’s fingers curled around hers.

The touch of his skin was a lightning bolt straight to her core, making her abs clench and her body flood with heat. Her knees buckled. She would have fallen if Mr. Adamson hadn’t supported her against his side.

She realized that her makeshift dress had slipped to expose the side of her breast. Summer flushed and tugged the cloth in place again.

“Watch your step,” he said, as serene and emotionless as the surface of the lake.

She glanced over her shoulder at the party as he led her away. There was safety in that public space, with the laughter drifting through the air and the sweet cry of the violin, and he was taking her away from it into a dark world of the unknown.

A pair of men with flashlights intercepted them on their way across the lawn.

“We can’t find the wolf,” said the first after giving the CEO a brief salute. He had a bushy mustache and a fancy badge on his chest, which said Head of Security Dale Carr. Well, la di da.

The second man, whose badge only said “Lewis,” was staring at Summer like she was an hors d’oeuvres at the cocktail party. His eyes roved down her bare shoulder to the place her hip peeked out of the drape. Her cheeks grew hot.

Carr went on. “I recommend we evacuate the gazebo and perform a full sweep of the property. It can’t have gone far.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Mr. Adamson said. He wasn’t looking at Carr. He was glaring furiously at Lewis, who had yet to notice.

“Sir—”

Mr. Adamson released Summer’s arm, but only to grip Lewis’s collar. The guard’s gaze snapped away from her long legs. “You’re fired,” he said, just as calmly as before. He dropped Lewis. “Carr, show him out.”

All of the color drained from Lewis’s face as he spluttered.

Carr looked like he wanted to protest, but he swallowed it down. The look of disapproval made his mustache twist. “I’ll take care of it, sir,” he said.

Mr. Adamson took Summer’s arm again and walked her up the path toward the grand doors of the main house. She hesitated on the steps. It felt like she was wandering into a bear cave hidden at the bottom of a ravine again. She stood on the brink of darkness, knowing that something waited for her, and she was helpless to back away.

He continued walking and refused to release her hand.

Summer had gotten lucky after stumbling upon that bear’s cave, since Gran had known that her kids were up to something and followed them to the ravine. By force of luck or the blessing of a higher power, she had also thought to bring her shotgun. It was the only time that Summer watched her grandmother shoot something, and the first time she watched something die. Summer had walked out of the cave with a few quickly-healing scrapes and a deep sense of shame.

But this time, the bear wasn’t trying to maul Summer. He was dragging her deeper into his cave, and Gran was nowhere to be seen with her shotgun.

Mr. Adamson pushed her up the stairs.

Summer swallowed her fears and followed him inside.

Mr. Adamson’s entryway was just as grand as the gardens, but Summer was too scared to appreciate the fancy rugs, wainscoting, and sculptures. They were met at the door by a maid wearing a plain black dress. “Find clothing and then deliver her to my office, Margaret,” he said.

He released her, and Summer discovered that she had been leaning on him harder than she realized. It was all she could do to stay standing, and she felt cold in the absence of his touch.

The CEO vanished up the stairs.

“This way,” said Margaret. She was just as stony-faced as Mr. Adamson, although it looked more likely that she had been wheeled out of a family cemetery than hewn from marble. And she walked fast for such a little old lady. Summer had trouble keeping up with her.

“I think there’s been some kind of mistake,” Summer said. “I’m not supposed to be here. I was just leaving.”

The maid ignored her and stepped into the hallway.

There was enough space for a hundred bedrooms in what looked like an endless corridor, but Margaret stopped at a small room just off the foyer. She unlocked the door with a brass key as thick as her finger. The hinges whined in protest as they entered.

The room on the other side was a modest bedroom with a narrow bed and tall wardrobe, which a second key unlocked.

“Size eight, I should think,” Margaret said. Considering her wooden expression and stiff motions, her voice was surprisingly gentle.

Summer looked down at her hips, still barely covered in her stolen drape. “Sorry, I’m more like a ten. My brother’s been making me do squats with him and I can’t shake the bacon addiction. Everything goes straight to my ass.”

A tiny smile. “Never apologize for your curves. They’re a woman’s deadliest natural weapon.”

Actually, Summer was pretty sure that her giant wolf fangs and razor-sharp claws were her deadliest natural weapon, but she appreciated the sentiment.

Margaret produced a blue dress from the wardrobe and held it in front of Summer, as though mentally sizing it. Summer opened her mouth to protest the frills, but before she could speak, the maid shook her head.

“No, no. Not that one. He likes gold.”

“Excuse me?”

The maid dropped the dress and pushed through the hangers until she found a shimmering gold gown. She pushed it into Summer’s free arm. “This will do. Shoes are in the bottom drawer. I’ll wait for you outside.”

“Wait,” Summer said. “What’s going on?”

There was something mischievous in the twitch of the Margaret’s left eyebrow, though she wasn’t smiling anymore. “Mr. Adamson wants to see you in his office. The only women to have seen that room are among his staff. It’s a special occasion—you should look good for it.”

And with that befuddling pronouncement, she slipped out of the room.

Summer quickly inspected the room for security cameras, but found nothing. She was still reluctant to let the red silk puddle to her feet. It left her naked, vulnerable, and seriously out of her comfort zone in some zillionaire’s house.

She lifted the gown to study it. Margaret had a good eye. It was cut generously below the waist and would flow from her ample hips like torrents of sunlight, while the fitted blouse would complement her modest breasts. The short sleeves would show off her upper arms, too—the best part of her body, in her humble opinion.

A quick glance through the wardrobe showed her that most of the dresses would complement her figure well. And all of them were in sizes ranging from eight to twelve.

Why did Mr. Adamson, richest man in the world, have a wardrobe filled with dresses that looked like they had been made for Summer? And why in the world should seeing him in his office be a special occasion?

Considering that the only alternative to wearing the dress was making a break for it in her birthday suit, she decided that it was probably better not to ask too many questions.

Summer dressed before searching through the drawer of shoes. None of them fit her. Though her wolf paws were relatively dainty, Abram had once said that her human feet belonged on a basketball player. The biggest size in the drawer wasn’t even long enough to reach her heel.

Picking at her hair with her nails, she attempted to tug the unruly mass into something decent. There wasn’t much she could do about the knotted curls, but she removed a few leaves and a caterpillar. The idea of Mr. Adamson seeing her like that made her intestines writhe with embarrassment.

When Summer emerged, she found Margaret waiting right outside the door, just as promised. And better yet, she had a wide-toothed comb.

“Turn around,” Margaret said.

Summer offered her back to the maid, who zipped the dress. “Thank you, Margaret, truly. Your kindness means so much to me.”

The maid was wooden-faced again and didn’t acknowledge that she had spoken. “This way.”

Margaret headed up the stairs. Summer picked at the worst knots in her hair and hurried to follow.

“How long have you worked here?” she asked. The wood floors were cold and hard under her bare toes. It felt strange to be among such grandeur without real shoes.

“My entire life,” Margaret said.

Her hands stilled on her hair. “Like, child slavery?”

“Not at all. My mother and grandmother were in Mr. Adamson’s employ as well. I grew up here, just as my mother did, and my family has been paid well for our loyalty.”

“You mean, your grandma was in the employ of the Adamson family,” Summer said. There was no way Mr. Adamson was old enough to have known this woman’s grandmother.

“Mr. Adamson has no family,” Margaret said, stopping in front of a grand door carved of heavy oak. Summer hurried to tug the comb through her hair one last time. “He doesn’t appreciate being touched. Don’t probe him about his past. Keep your eyes to the floor if you have good sense. But don’t be afraid to flash a little leg—it will be good for him.”

With a flash of a wink, the maid plucked the comb from her hand and shoved Summer inside the office.

Summer whirled to grab the giant brass handle, but it felt like the other side was being held in place. She jiggled it hard.

“Don’t break my door.”

The smell of bonfires on the beach. Burning pine needles. Heat radiating off of sunbaked soil.

Mr. Adamson was already there.

She counted to five before turning around.

In comparison to the antiquities populating the rest of the house, Mr. Adamson’s home office was modest and functional. The oldest things in the room were the books on his floor-to-ceiling shelves. The desk was modern and minimalistic, without as much as a stray sticky note marring its surface. He didn’t even have a computer.

And on the other side of the desk stood Mr. Adamson himself.

Some part of her was disappointed to see that he had put on clothing. More than just the white shirt he had been wearing when he found her in the bushes, he was wearing a jacket, loafers, and…were those cufflinks? Who wore cufflinks in his own house?

Her gaze trailed from his wrists up his muscular arms to his broad shoulders and square jaw. When she reached his eyes, she realized that he was giving her the once-over, too. But it was impossible to tell what he thought of what he saw. She was pretty sure that her approval wasn’t quite so subtle.

Margaret had said, Keep your eyes to the floor if you have good sense. The maid probably knew best, but Summer could tear her gaze from him as easily as she could choose to stop breathing.

“You’re early,” he said.

It took a moment for her to realize what he meant, and once it sunk in, her cheeks burned even hotter.

He recognized her as the intern. Of course he recognized her. He had seemed to recognize her the first time they met, too.

“I am so sorry, Mr. Adamson—”

“You’ll call me Nashriel,” he interrupted. “I don’t want to hear that surname on your lips again.”

She bit her bottom lip. Neither his tone nor volume had changed, yet she felt as though he had just yelled at her.

Nashriel. Summer rolled the name over and over in her mind, pondering the emphasis he had placed on the “el” part of it.

It only occurred to her at that moment that she hadn’t actually seen his name on the Adamson Industries website or literature. No first name, no photo. Mysteries layered on mysteries.

Summer ventured a smile. “That’s a really unique name. Your parents must have some sense of humor,” she said, finally releasing her death grip on the brass doorknob. “I mean…Nashriel, right? Can I just call you Nash? Nash is better.”

His stare turned to a glare.

Ooh-kay. So he hadn’t inherited that sense of humor.

She cast about for something to break the awkward silence, but the only thing she could come up with was, “I’m sorry that I interrupted your party. My dress, it—um, it had broken. I was trying to fix it. That’s why I was in the bushes.”

With every word she spoke, she felt stupider. That hadn’t been a good excuse the first time she thought of it, and saying it aloud didn’t help.

Nash seemed to agree. The corner of his mouth lifted in what might have been a smile. “You weren’t invited to my party.”

“I guess I invited myself,” she said.

He circled the desk, and his gaze burned paths over her bushy black hair, her cocoa skin, her silver eyes. “You’re dark complexioned, but lack the aura of desert. Perhaps all this time in moist land has changed you. Are you of Kemet?”

Summer took a step back. “What are you talking about? I’m from Hazel Cove.”

“Don’t insult me. I saw women with the same…” He gestured toward her hair. “I saw women like you there on my last visit.”

“What’s Kemet?”

Doubt flashed through his eyes—an expression that she was certain seldom visited his features. He lifted his chin to stare down his nose at her. “Hazel Cove, you say. You’re twenty years old?”

“Yeah,” Summer said, feeling completely lost. “Just about.”

He paced the edge of the office, trailing his fingers along the spines of the aged books on his shelves. Just the sight of it made her feel like she was the one being stroked. A shiver rippled down her flesh. “And you claim to have lived here your entire life,” he said. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

Okay, enough with the attack. Summer planted her hands on her hips. The reminder of the gold dress was enough to get her cheeks hot again. At this rate, she was pretty sure her face was going to get stuck in a permanent blush.

“You’re mad that I grew up in town, but you’re not mad that I trespassed on your property. That’s at least a little bit idiotic.” After a pause, she added, “With all due respect.”

“I don’t care that you trespassed because I wanted to bring you here,” Nash said, stepping behind her.

“I guessed that was your plan when you made the creepiest job offer ever.”

He stopped walking. “Creepy?” She could feel that one word breathed down her neck. His breath was as hot as the midday sun.

“Having your guys track me down is odd. Doing it when I didn’t even plan to interview for the position? That’s creepy.”

“Nobody has ever called me creepy before.”

Now that Summer had started talking, she couldn’t seem to stop. Her mouth had completely disconnected from her brain. “I can’t imagine too many people are honest with you at all. The money and giant freaky mansion is…intimidating.”

Nash stepped in front of her. Her eyes were at jaw-level, so she could see nothing but his dimpled chin, smooth cheeks, and his lips. “You don’t find me intimidating.”

Oh, she was intimidated all right. But a combination of raging hormones and temporary insanity had seized her, and there was no stopping the train wreck now that it had started.

Nash loomed over her, and it occurred to her that all of those muscles she had glimpsed in the garden were lurking under the perfectly-tailored suit. She had the mental image of peeling open his jacket, pushing it off his shoulders, and biting his pectoral. It wasn’t a wolfish thought. No, that desire belonged completely to her human side.

“Tell me why you came here tonight,” Nash said, interrupting her increasingly naked thoughts.

She fully intended to lie, but that wasn’t what came out. “I was spying on you. I wanted to know who was trying to hire me.”

That was definitely amusement on his face now. “And what did you determine?”

“I don’t think you want to hurt me,” Summer said. “I also think you’re probably a good guy, creepiness aside.”

“A ‘good guy’,” Nash echoed. “Good, but creepy.”

Summer just couldn’t imagine that the man who gazed at the sky with such longing was a bad person. But she managed to prevent herself from saying that part out loud. She didn’t want him to connect her with the wolf in the garden.

He stepped away from her, breaking the tense moment. “You appear fatigued. I’ll have Margaret make up the guest bedroom.”

“Wait, what? I’m not staying here.”

“Our work begins at eight. It’s already well after midnight. You may as well get comfortable.”

“Uh, no,” she said. “I don’t think so. My family would notice I was gone.”

“Your family,” he said, as though mulling over the concept. “What do they think of your visit here tonight?” Summer bit her bottom lip and didn’t respond. The silence was probably answer enough.

“I’ll make sure to give the dress back to you,” she finally said, smoothing her hands down her hips.

“No.” His fingers traced the edge of the cap sleeve. “You’ll keep this. At least I can be confident that you won’t be naked when you return in the morning.”

Summer could have just crawled under the floor and died.

What must he have thought she was doing in his bushes like that? There was just no way to spin it in a way that didn’t make her sound insane or weird.

She realized that she was staring at his lips again and made herself focus on her feet.

“Margaret will take you to the car,” Nash said. “I’ll see you at eight o’clock.”

He turned toward his window in a clear dismissal. From their position perched on the cliff, there was nothing to obstruct his view of the endless, starry sky.

Before she left the room with Margaret, Summer had two very distinct thoughts: first, that Nash was impossibly, dangerously attractive; and second, that there was no chance she would make the mistake of returning to his house again.

Nash sat on his balcony to welcome the dawn. It was a ritual he performed every morning—his way of acknowledging the passage of another peaceful night and the return of the sun. Even after so many identical nights, he tried to feel every sunrise as though it was his first. He was mindful of the wind in his hair, the sun on his skin, the stone beneath his hands.

But mindfulness would not come that morning. His mind was already occupied with something else.

Summer Gresham. She was not like any other woman he had encountered during the many long years that he had been known as Mr. Adamson. Where other people seemed dull and lifeless to him—merely mirages flitting through his periphery—she was as brilliant and blazing. Summer was a blow to the gut, a force of nature. Someone who could not be ignored.

How long had it been since he met a human that dared challenge him the way she had? Had he ever met a human like that?

The instant that he had seen her, he had known that she was the one he had been looking for. But he hadn’t expected her to be so beautiful.

He closed his eyes to receive the sun’s warmth on his face.

Twenty years. Twenty years since he last witnessed that flash of gray light that signaled someone crossing over to this world. It had been brilliant enough to illuminate the entire sky. Nash still didn’t know where the gray light came from, but he knew it could only mean that liberation was close.

For the last two decades, he had scoured the world for whomever had crossed over. Yet his search yielded no results, and he had assumed that the visitor had left as quickly as they arrived. But considering Summer’s cluelessness as to the true history of her origins, she must have simply passed through as a child and grown up like the others that lived here.

He could still see her earnest eyes as clearly as though she stood before him now. Her irises reminded him of a moon that Nash hadn’t seen in centuries. He had wished for her to look at him with those moonlit eyes and never turn away.

But did she know the truth?

It didn’t matter. Summer didn’t need to know anything to be of use to him; she just needed to be cooperative. In fact, it would be much simpler to manipulate her as long as she truly believed that he was some billionaire—as if money mattered—offering an internship to a college student—of all the stupid things.

And now he had her in his grip, whether she realized it or not.

Nash would have Summer Gresham, and he would at last be free.

five

“Morning,” Gran said, greeting Summer at the kitchen door with a mug of hot coffee. “Have a nice run?”

Summer dropped onto one of the barstools, careful not to spill. “What? What run?”

“The cat came looking for love in the middle of the night. He only does that when you leave and don’t let him follow, so I assume you must have been running. I’m going to have to wash my bedspread. It looks like a furry black rug now.”

As if summoned by his name, Sir Lumpy leaped into Summer’s lap, circled twice, and flopped onto her thighs. He purred hard enough that she could feel it all the way into her teeth. “Were you shedding on Gran’s bed, handsome? Were you lonely?” He kneaded his paws into her stomach, letting his claws press harder than usual.

The breeze drifting through the open kitchen windows smelled wetter than the day before, and hazy light filtered through the stained glass pentacle. Their break from unseasonably warm weather had passed. Summer could smell rain waiting in the clouds. It was sure to hit by the afternoon.

The smell of an impending storm was quickly replaced by the smell of gas as Gran lit the stove and grabbed a skillet. “I found the dress on the couch, by the way. Very nice.”

Summer’s ministrations paused, and Sir Lumpy registered his annoyance by jamming his face into her palm.

“Sorry. I was going to pick it up this morning,” she said.

Gran pulled a package of bacon out of the refrigerator. “You know I don’t care where you leave your dirty laundry. Pretty dress, though. If you weren’t running, were you on a date?”

“I was investigating the guy I told you about. The one that didn’t smell human.” Another head-butt from Sir Lumpy. She obediently rubbed her fingers over his wrinkled nose.

“And what did you learn in your investigations, Nancy Drew?” Gran asked as she dropped the entire rasher of bacon on the frying pan. She knew Summer’s appetite all too well.

I learned that Nash Adamson looks great shirtless and has a wardrobe filled with dresses in my size. Yeah, that was a little too freaky to admit out loud. “I don’t think he’s dangerous, but…I don’t know, Gran. Maybe my nose was confused.”

“So is he human?”

Summer watched the steam swirling off the surface of her coffee as she pondered the question.

Was he human? She had never met another man like him.

“I don’t know, but I don’t want anything to do with him,” Summer said.

A slow smile spread over Gran’s lips. “Oh, really.”

She focused hard on her coffee. There was no point in trying to lie. Gran knew everything. “I said it wasn’t a date. I didn’t say that he’s not stupefyingly sexy.”

“Sexy just means he’s likely to be twice as dangerous. I wish you would have told me that you planned on digging around. I would have come with you.”

“You would have brought the shotgun,” Summer said.

“Right. My shotgun and I would have come with you. That’s what I said, wasn’t it?”

“It’s hard to investigate from a jail cell.”

Gran laughed. “I’d like to see the army of police officers it would take to arrest you, babe. Anyway, I’m not saying I’d shoot anyone. I just worry about you.”

“No need to worry,” Summer said. “I’m officially done with this guy.”

Or, at least, she would be “officially done” as soon as the rooster-shaped clock over the stove ticked to eight. Failing to show up for the first day of her internship should send a pretty clear message to Nash.

Gran transferred the bacon to a plate and set it on the table. The edges were barely browned, just the way Summer liked it, and she inhaled three pieces immediately. She could feel the fat heading straight for her ass. Worth it.

Abram entered, sweaty and shirtless. Gran had already whipped up a vegetarian omelet for him. “Thanks,” he said, planting a kiss on her wrinkled cheek as he took the plate.

He flopped into the other chair at the table. He was followed by the scent of dirt, tree bark, and oil paint, just like every morning. Abram always woke up before Summer to paint for an hour, then exercise for an hour. The guy was obsessed with fitness, and she had no idea why. He wasn’t a shapeshifter, but he wasn’t a lightweight, either—even as a kid, he had been ridiculously ripped, and there wasn’t a broken bone he couldn’t heal in a matter of days. A little laziness once in a while couldn’t hurt him.

Summer leaned across the table and jabbed her fork into his omelet. The motion made Sir Lumpy drop to the floor with an offended chirp.

“I finished it,” Abram said, stabbing her fork with his to fend off the attack. “The painting.”

Summer blinked. “Really? The painting? Can I see it?”

“Not yet. It’s ready, but I’m not.”

She rolled her eyes. “Very dramatic, Abram.”

He shrugged, but she could tell that the taunt bothered him. “I want to show everyone, but the lighting in the art school’s gallery isn’t right for it.” Left unspoken was that he had been hoping to talk Adamson Industries into building the new gallery he needed.

A fresh wave of guilt washed over Summer as she thought about the way that Nash had looked at her the night before. More and more, she was convinced the internship had been a ploy the whole time. “Sorry,” she said. Abram inclined his head in acceptance of her apology. “Are you still volunteering at the seminar this morning? Do you think you could give me a ride to MU, too?”

Abram’s eyes widened a fraction. Summer always ran to the university—always. But he nodded again.

Summer glanced at the rooster clock on the wall.

It was five after eight.

A misty drizzle was falling over the fairytale cottage as Summer hurried out to Abram’s car, book bag shielding her hair from the rain. Her feet slurped in and out of the mud as she stepped around to the passenger’s seat.

Abram was already waiting for her. He turned on the engine, the batteries hummed to life, and they headed down the road.

He was playing classical music on the stereo again. That would have normally instigated a slap fight over the controls—he knew how much she hated that boring crap—but she wasn’t up for a fight this morning.

She breathed on the window to fog it, and then poked dots in the shape of the archer constellation. “So when did you finish the painting?”

“This morning. I’ve been mostly done for a week, but something wasn’t right. I realized what that was last night in a dream.”

Summer barely even heard her brother speak. The archer constellation on the window looked like Nash Adamson. Not a warrior, but a lonely man sitting on his balcony. “That’s nice,” she said.

“You didn’t want a ride so we could discuss my painting. What’s bothering you?”

“Do you remember our fort in the ravine?” Summer asked.

He nodded. “The bear.”

She bit her bottom lip. Picked at her thumbnail. Finally, it exploded out of her in a rush. “I was offered the position with Adamson Industries last week.”

Her brother’s hands tightened on the wheel, and his brow creased.

He didn’t speak, but she could practically see the thoughts rolling through her twin’s skull. He was thinking about the way the interviews had been canceled, and what it must have meant to have the internship offered to someone who hadn’t even planned on interviewing. And she saw the moment that he came to the same conclusion that she did.

“You going to take it?” he asked.

“Not a chance. I’m not taking any jobs around here. You know I’m out of Hazel Cove as soon as we graduate.”

“Good.” He turned on the windshield wipers, and they beat out a rhythm against the glass. “If you see any of those men from Adamson Industries around again, you need to tell me about it.”

“I don’t think they’ll be a problem.”

“You’re right,” Abram said darkly. “They won’t be.”

Summer didn’t have any weekend classes, but her midterm was due the following Wednesday. The project was a lot bigger than the little proof of concept programs she usually did as homework, so that meant a lot of time compiling. She didn’t really need to be on-site for that, but it was better than sitting at home freaking out about Nash Adamson.

While the compiler’s progress bar inched across her terminal, Summer wandered through the server room in search of error lights. The fans pumping dehumidified air in from the outside world smelled sweetly of wet trees and petrichor, and standing on a vent behind one of the racks was like being in a wind tunnel. It blasted her hair over her shoulders.

She grabbed a magazine that had been left on one of the racks. The pages fluttered in her hands as she flipped through it. The entire travel magazine talked about distant cities, mountains, deserts, islands—places that she had never been before.

Summer stopped on a photo of a rainforest. It looked like a scary place for a human, but maybe not a wolf. It might be fun to chase those orange monkeys.

“After graduation,” she murmured. She had taken double the usual course load for the last two semesters so she could finish sooner. Freedom was getting so close. And a rainforest would be a lot farther away—and a lot more fun—than a ravine in her forest.

It was so loud in the server room that she didn’t even notice someone approach until they shouted. “Summer!”

It was Yolanda, teacher’s assistant and head of the Tri Delta sorority, who were having an event on the quad that morning. Even though she was a wiz with CAD, she definitely didn’t belong in the server room on a Saturday morning. “What’s up?” Summer shouted back, returning the travel magazine to the rack.

“Brian wants to talk to you,” Yolanda said.

Brian was the instructor for her algorithms class that semester. He was about a hundred years old and perpetually grumpy. “What does he want?” Summer asked, stepping off the vent and following Yolanda to the doors.

“No clue. He just sent me a text asking for me to find you.” She shrugged. “Who am I to question the master?”

Summer frowned as Yolanda held a door open for her. Brian controlled a lot of the CS students’ privileges, including access to the server room. Grumpy or not, Brian wasn’t someone she wanted to piss off. “Thanks for letting me know,” Summer said as the door fell shut behind her.

Yolanda gave her a brilliant smile. She smelled like peach body wash, lubricated latex, and beer. The sororities must have enjoyed their Friday night a lot more than Summer had. “No problem.”

Summer worried all the way to Brian’s office, imagining a thousand things she might have done wrong and how she could talk her way out of trouble for it. Most of her teachers were pretty patient with her, but Brian didn’t put up with anything from anyone.

The office was near the front of the CS building, and its frosted windows overlooked the foyer. Summer paced circles near the entrance doors, taking deep breaths and trying not to panic. Neither Abram nor Gran would have panicked.

“Feel the power of the Gran,” she said under her breath. “Be the Gran.”

Intoning her name didn’t imbue Summer with Gran’s powers, and putting off knocking on Brian’s door didn’t help, either. It only made her pulse go from “meeting a grumpy instructor” levels to “impending apocalypse” levels.

Summer swallowed down her fluttering heartbeat and knocked on the door.

A voice on the other side said, “Come in.”

She entered. Brian Flanders’s office was huge, and his chair was turned to face the back windows. It felt like she had to walk a mile to reach his desk. “What did you…?” she began, but she trailed off when she inhaled a scent that definitely did not belong to her centenarian instructor. Or any other human on the planet, for that matter.

The chair spun to face her, and Nash Adamson stood.

Nash was incognito that day. He had abandoned his usual suit for a v-neck shirt, jacket, and designer jeans, which made him look more like an extremely rich college student than a CEO. But Summer had never seen a student with such intense eyes.

The silence between them was heavy enough to crush cinder blocks. Her heart felt like it was ready to break out of her chest and sprint across campus to escape.

After a long, painful silence, she managed to say, “You’re not Brian.” Way to blow him away with your wit, Gresham.

He braced his hands on the desk and leaned toward her. “If I’d known you hadn’t planned on coming back, I never would have let you leave. At least you’re clothed this time, if we generously consider those scraps to be clothing.”

She looked down at herself. She had expected to spend all day with the servers, so she was only wearing a baggy t-shirt and leggings. There was a coffee stain on her breast. She pulled her hair over it. “I don’t want the internship. I was going to write you a letter.” He stalked around the desk, and she edged toward the door. “Or…send flowers?”

Summer bumped into the wall, and he planted a hand over her head. His body radiated heat, as if he was running a fever.

He bent, and Summer flinched, expecting that this was when the yelling would start. But when he spoke again, his words were gentle. “Are you all right?”

Her racing heart slowed a fraction. “Aside from the paralyzing terror? Yes.”

“Why would you be terrified?”

Her tongue tasted like parchment. She swallowed hard. “Mr. Adam—”

“Nashriel,” he interrupted. His lips twitched on the verge of a smile. “Or Nash, as you seem to prefer.”

“Right. Nash. The terror thing? Let me count the ways.” She was embarrassed by how raspy her voice sounded. “For one, you lured me into my instructor’s office under pretense. For another, you have me pinned against the wall, and you’re huge. And finally—no, you know what, those two are good enough on their own.”

He stepped back, straightened his shirt, and looked charmingly confused. “First creepy, now terrifying. I think we’ve started this relationship the wrong way.”

“We’re having a relationship?”

He frowned. “Partnership.”

“Uh,” she said. The richest man in the world wanted a partnership with a coed in a stained t-shirt. Right.

Nash’s lips pinched. He folded his hands behind his back, and seemed to think for several long moments before speaking again.

“I was fascinated to see so many computer classes on your transcripts, considering your after-school proclivities. I, for one, have never found myself comfortable with such technology, although I’ve long invested in its development.”

“Back it up,” Summer said. “What do you mean, ‘after-school proclivities’?”

“You know to what I refer,” Nash said.

Summer only had two hobbies outside of school: making Sir Lumpy go batshit crazy with the laser pointer, and rolling around in the dirt as a wolf. There was no way he could find her kitty antics interesting, which only left one option. And he couldn’t possibly know about that.

“I need to check on my midterm,” she said. “It’s compiling.”

She expected him to try to stop her. Instead, he slid a pair of large sunglasses over his striking eyes and followed. “I’ll be interested to see the project you’re working on,” Nash said, pacing her down the stairs to the foyer. She walked faster, but he kept up with her effortlessly.

“Interested? You’re kidding me,” she said. “Why are you being so pushy about this? Just about any other student at the university would be happy to take the job.”

“You have unique skills that I require.”

“Like what? You don’t even know me. The only skill you know that I have is a penchant for public displays of nudity.”

“It’s a useful skill in the public sector,” Nash said, totally straight-faced. Was he…joking? Did he actually have a sense of humor? “No, Summer, I’m familiar with your studies, and you’re the one I require. I need your unique abilities with…programming.”

Summer was a pretty solid B-grade student. She wasn’t buying it. “Where’s your entourage, anyway?”

“They have weekends off. All of my employees receive excellent benefit packages—including the interns.”

“That’s nice. I’m sure whoever you hire as an intern will be really happy to hear that,” Summer said, throwing open the back doors and stalking across the hill toward the data center. The rain had stopped, but the grass was still slick under her sandals.

“When you failed to arrive on time this morning, I came here immediately to arrange a transfer of funds. I donated three million dollars to break ground on the new computer sciences building an hour ago.”

She stopped walking. All of her good humor had suddenly gone missing in action.

“I don’t want a new building and I don’t want the job. You just—you don’t even have a fucking clue, do you? This is some weirdo come-on. I don’t know why you got it in your head that you need me, but you can’t buy me. Go bribe some other college student.”

He hooked a hand in his pocket, leaned his weight on one leg, and lifted his chin. It pulled his slacks tight against his hips, and that cocky look was simultaneously frustrating and arousing. “I don’t want just any college student to work for me. I want you to work for me.” Summer almost laughed again, until she saw how serious he looked. He slid his sunglasses down his nose and fixed her with the heat of his gaze. “I need you, Summer.”

It felt like the entire campus was spinning around her. That smoky voice, the heated gaze—it was hard to remember why she should find the whole situation weird and kind of insulting.

But was that a hint of vulnerability in his voice when he said that he needed her?

The maid, Margaret, had said that Nash had no family. His house smelled like he never had company beyond his staff. He had been distant from his own cocktail party, alone with his thoughts and an endless night.

Maybe Nash Adamson did need Summer, although not in the way that he thought.

“So this isn’t a come-on,” she said once she remembered how to talk. “You want a programmer. And this is just an internship—not a job—for the rest of the spring term.”

“That’s right,” he said, looking satisfied that she was finally catching on.

That’s bullshit.

Call it paranoia, but Summer wasn’t buying what he was selling. He had already invested in her—not just the creepy wardrobe of dresses, but by building an entire new building. He wanted her, and he wanted her bad. There was no way it could ever be “just an internship.”

But maybe when a man had spent his entire life alone, that was the only way he knew how to reach out for help.

She blew a stray curl out of her face. “Okay. I can be your programmer, but only for the semester, and with one condition.”

“Anything,” he said. It sounded like an invitation.

Summer grinned, knowing how disarming her smile could be. One corner of her lips lifted higher than the other, as if her mouth had been placed crookedly on her face, and it made her look less like a pretty college girl and more like an imp. “You have to buy me a coffee, first.”

six

After a lifetime of homeschooling, Summer’s freshman orientation at MU had been a shock to the system. The idea that so many people would choose to congregate in one area was absurd, but she had adjusted after a few weeks of claustrophobia and a lot of deep breathing exercises.

Now Nash was going through the same shock. It was funny to see the richest man in the world quietly losing his shit at the crowd in the campus coffee shop, which was extra-busy thanks to midterms. The place was packed. They had to shove their way to the counter to place orders.

“Pardon me,” Nash said, looking deeply offended at a student bumping into his shoulder. Summer smothered a laugh behind her hand.

“Do you have any preference?” she asked, gesturing toward the menu board.

His lip curled. “No.”

“Two large vanilla lattes,” Summer told the barista as Nash shot evil looks at the crowd. When was the last time he had been in public without the protective barrier of his entourage? “And double shots of espresso, please.”

Five minutes of waiting later, they found a recently-vacated couch and settled in. The plush leather loveseat sank in the middle, so Summer couldn’t help but melt into Nash’s side. He didn’t seem to mind. He looked like he was probably contemplating buying the whole building so he could bulldoze it.

“I had an assistant review the internship applications again,” Nash said. “Yours wasn’t among them.”

“I told you that I didn’t want the job.”

He sipped his coffee. “Forgive me if I find that difficult to believe. The prestigious position and accompanying scholarship is impossible to resist.”

“Not for me.”

“Then what bait would be more appealing to you? Lifetime supply of coffee?”

“I do want the scholarship,” Summer said. “Just the scholarship. And I want it in cash.” Ugh, it felt so mercenary to say that out loud.

She waited for him to ask why, but he only said, “Done.”

“Great. Now tell me who I’m working for.”

Nash frowned. “You know who I am.”

“Not really. I mean, I want to know you. Obviously, you already know way too much about me, but I hadn’t even heard of you before the interviews.” It was impossible to read his reaction with those reflective sunglasses. “And these need to go away.” Summer plucked them off his face and tucked them in his jacket pocket.

When her eyes met his without the safety of glass between them, his stare was much more penetrating. Almost like he could read her every thought.

“I think we both already know one another better than anyone else in the world knows us,” Nash said, leaning forward to set his latte on the coffee table. When he settled back, he turned to face her, and their knees bumped. His arm was hooked on the couch behind her neck. It was an awfully cozy position for someone who was supposed to be her new boss, but Summer didn’t want him to move.

“We haven’t met before,” she said, just to reinforce the concept.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t know you.” The narrow line of his lips spread into a smirk as his bangs shaded his eyes. “You and I have something in common.”

“A sexual harassment suit waiting to happen?”

So much for that smile. “You’re a complicated woman, Summer Gresham.”

“I have no idea what you mean.” His hair was bothering her. She surprised herself by reaching up to brush it aside. As her hand fell from his forehead, she let her fingers stroke down the smooth line of his jaw.

Her eyes fixed on his lips, and Summer found herself thinking about what a terrible idea it would be to kiss him, and how much she wanted to do it anyway. They had both grown very still.

She was still staring as she asked, “Do you have a lot of fireplaces at your house?”

“A few. Why?”

“I thought I smelled smoke on your clothes.”

“What else do you smell on me?” Something about the way he phrased the question made it sound too intimate to be uttered in a public place. Summer’s cheeks heated.

“Nothing, never mind.” She shook her head to clear it—and to force herself to stop staring at his lips. “Let’s leave. It’s crowded in here.”

He offered a hand to help her stand up. She was already craving the touch of his skin again, so Summer decided to ignore it and get up on her own.

Nash put his sunglasses back on, and they walked outside together.

“Tell me about this internship,” she said as they strolled along the damp sidewalk. He walked so close beside her that their elbows brushed on every other step. “Do you really want a programmer?”

“Yes. Building a new archaeological studies wasn’t mere philanthropy. I obtained parts of computers at a dig a few years ago, and I need someone who can reassemble them and read the data.” He tipped the sunglasses down and peered at her over the edge. “Someone I can trust.”

“Wait, you got computers at an archaeological site? Personal computers?”

“Indeed.”

“But they’ve only been around for three hundred years,” Summer said. “There isn’t any archaic computer your IT department can’t read. I mean, we still learn original machine code in class.”

“Three hundred years old. Are you certain?”

“Uh, yeah,” she said. “It’s kind of my major.”

“If it’s so easy, then you’ll get through the project and take your money home in no time, I’m sure,” Nash said.

Summer rolled her eyes. “Look, you don’t have to make up reasons for me to get to ‘work’ for you. You can tell me the truth.”

“And what’s that?”

“You’re lonely, and you need me,” she said, swirling her finger around the rim of the cup so that she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. “It’s okay to need people.”

Nash stopped walking. Summer knew that she must have struck a nerve, but his expression remained unchanged.

“You don’t know anything,” he growled.

Her response was interrupted by a sudden flare of gray light. It only lasted for an instant, but it illuminated the entire sky, and Nash’s skin glowed with it.

“Impossible,” he hissed.

A drop of rain plonked on Summer’s shoulder. She lifted a hand to feel for more precipitation. “Relax. It was just lightning. This storm’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.”

“Go back into the coffee shop and stay there until I come back for you,” Nash said, grabbing her shoulders. When she opened her mouth to protest, his hands tightened. “Trust me.”

And then he was walking away at a fast clip, almost on the verge of a run.

“That guy must really dislike lightning,” she muttered, peering up at the hazy sky. That flash had been unusually bright. It must have been close. Yet the air didn’t have that scorched ozone smell that always followed lightning. She only smelled rain—and Abram.

The growing wind brought a cocktail of scents to Summer’s nose. She lowered the coffee so that it wouldn’t distract her.

She picked something up off of the gusts that came from the forest—something that made the hair lift on the back of her neck and all of her senses go on high alert.

It was definitely her brother, Abram. But his familiar smell was all tangled up with the iron tang of blood, and something frighteningly foreign. It reminded her of Nash, if he were to drench himself in kerosene and ignite his inner flame. A wildfire that was going to devour the world.

“Abram,” she whispered.

He should have been in the art department, elbow-deep in oil paint and turpentine. So why was his smell coming from the forest?

He’s in danger. She could feel it in her gut.

Her pace quickened. The coffee cup slipped from her hands and the ceramic shattered against cement. Summer’s feet slapped against the ground, clumsy in her shoes, and she kicked them off as soon as she reached the border of grass between the campus and forest.

Another gust of wind blasted her hair out of her face. This time, it didn’t just carry Abram’s smell to her. It brought a cry, too.

He was in pain.

Summer ripped off her shirt and flung it to the grass. The leggings would be too complicated to remove. She could only hope that the hems were weak enough to tear.

She didn’t step into her second skin this time—she leaped.

With a roar, the form of her beast ripped free of her chest, consuming her flesh in an explosion of blood and musky pheromones. Shreds of cotton tangled between her hind legs, but she kicked them aside, and all four paws connected with the ground. Her spine and skull continued to shift as she ran.

Throwing her head back, she loosed a howl into the forest that she knew her brother would hear.

I’m coming, Abram. I’m coming.

His scream responded to her wolfish wail.

The smell of blood and smoke grew thick until it felt like she had to swim through sludge to keep moving. Summer huffed to clear her sinuses of the damp leaves and sap, then breathed deep again. Abram wasn’t far.

His voice whip-cracked through the forest. “Summer!”

She yipped at him and plunged deeper into the trees.

This part of the forest was as familiar to Summer as her bedroom. She darted between a pair of boulders and circled around the hill as Abram cried out again.

Summer found him in the grassy clearing on the other side of the ridge. She couldn’t see any reason for him to be screaming. His back was pressed against the trunk of a tree, but there was nothing physical to hold him in place.

Yet his shoulders twisted and feet kicked as if struggling against a captor.

“Summer!” he shouted.

She sniffed the air. That smell of a raging fire was much stronger in the clearing. Her instincts said that there was an assailant nearby—maybe even two of them. But she couldn’t see anything amiss.

As she watched, a fresh cut sliced open on his cheek, as if the point of a dagger had been drawn from his nose to his ear. Abram thrashed, but jerking his head away didn’t stop the cut.

What the fuck is going on?

Pain flared in Summer’s ribs. She whirled, searching for the source of the attack.

Nothing.

Blood spilled from her fur, and the fever of rapid healing made her flesh crawl and shake. Her nose was filled with the scent of an enemy. But where was it? She snarled and snapped at empty air.

“To your right!” Abram called.

Summer jumped a moment too late. The next hit smacked her into the ground. Weight crushed her ribs, as if someone was sitting on her.

She bit at the air near her side. Her teeth sank into something soft, a foul taste filled her mouth, and shrieks shattered her eardrums.

The pressure vanished.

As Summer climbed to her feet, the trees whirled around her. Ground and sky inverted. There were clouds under her paws and a halo of rain-soaked earth.

When everything reoriented itself, Summer and Abram were no longer alone in the forest.

There were three young children with them, each no more than six years old. They had button noses, plump lips, and eyes framed by thick eyelashes. But there was no mistaking them for normal kids when shriveled wings hung from their backs and blood stained their claws. One of them even had an injured leg—an injury that looked a lot like a wolf bite. The other two held Abram to the tree.

Summer felt dizzy. What she was looking at should have been impossible.

Denying their existence didn’t make them vanish again.

“Can you see them now?” Abram asked.

She couldn’t respond without a human mouth, so she lunged at the nearest child and slammed her head into its midsection. It alighted, flapping its stubby wings, and didn’t fall. She snapped halfheartedly at its ascending feet.

Summer couldn’t bite a child. Even a child that looked like an unholy mix of raven and human.

The creatures weren’t nearly as hesitant to attack. A tiny fist struck the back of Abram’s skull, and he sagged, instantly unconscious. He fell when they released him.

He didn’t move when he landed.

The bottom of Summer’s stomach dropped out.

Please, just be unconscious.

That left all three of the creatures to focus on her. They buzzed through the air and swarmed around her with flashing silver claws. She wasn’t ready for it. All the play-fighting with Abram could have never prepared her for such an assault.

One of the creatures pinned her to the ground, knocking the breath out of her lungs. It was too strong to buck, even for a shapeshifter. The others crouched by her head.

Claws descended toward her throat.

A low explosion rocked the forest. Summer thought that lightning must have struck nearby until she saw the dark shape hurtling through the clouds.

A man dropped from the sky and slammed into the dirt between the creatures. Rotting leaves and moss showered over them, the drooping branches shook, and the entire world trembled under his feet.

He straightened and swept his wings wide. Each was longer than he was tall and shone with internal light. Summer’s eyes watered from the intensity. She couldn’t make out his features, but she thought that he almost looked like Nash Adamson.

He slammed one of the creatures into a tree, then tossed another across the clearing as easily as though it were a sack of flour. The third raked claws down his bare, muscular chest, but there was no blood. He seized the creature’s throat and lifted it above him. “Balam,” he spat. The word was unfamiliar to her, but it fell from his lips like a curse. “You don’t belong here.”

It responded in a high, trilling voice that made Summer’s skull ache. That wasn’t a human language.

“If you hurt her again, I will shatter your bones,” the man said, and he hurled in against the ground.

The three creatures took to the air instantly, shrieking in a shrill chorus, and whirled away in an explosion of glossy black feathers. The wildfire stench faded instantly. It was replaced by a much more familiar smell—more like the comfort of a fireplace in a cold winter.

Summer tried to stand, but her legs weren’t working right. She was still bleeding.

How was she going to drag Abram to safety if she couldn’t even get her paws under her?

Her savior folded his wings against his back as he approached, dimming his radiant feathers. Her eyes adjusted quickly.

It was Nash. He was as shirtless as the night that she had seen him on the balcony, but the wings affixed to his back were new. She must have been confused from the blood loss. Or she had snapped and started to hallucinate. Or maybe both.

But Nash’s dry chuckle was definitely no illusion. “I thought I told you to go to the coffee shop.”

Summer lost control of her second skin. Fingers emerged from her paws, fur fell away, her nose shortened. It was a lot colder without the protection of dense fur, and her lacerated skin burned.

As soon as she had a mouth, she said, “I thought you said that you’re a human.” She groaned when Nash scooped her off the ground and stood.

“I never said any such thing.”

“What are you?” she whispered, struggling to focus on him as her vision darkened at the edges.

The last thing she heard before passing out was a single word: “Angel.”

Then she was gone.

seven

Memories flitted through Summer’s dreams. Memories of bears, caves, and broken bones. Dragging Abram out of the ravine had been a two person job after he broke his ankle, and Gran and Uncle Scott prioritized getting him to the truck. That left Summer healing in the cave with no company but a dead bear.

It couldn’t have been longer than ten minutes before Summer was healed enough to follow them, but to a nine year old, it felt like months. She couldn’t tear her eyes from the bear’s unseeing gaze as the healing fever wracked her body.

She had never experienced anything like the pain of falling under a bear’s claws, yet she still felt sadness at seeing it dead. A force of nature had been destroyed. Gran had proved herself the real apex predator.

Once Uncle Scott returned with a spare sweater, Summer changed back, dressed, and followed him to the cottage.

Gran had already driven Abram home. She didn’t look angry when she emerged from his room a couple of hours later. “He’s okay,” she said, sitting next to Summer on the couch. “And stop looking like you swallowed a rotten egg, because you’re not in trouble. I reckon your experience was lesson enough.”

But that wasn’t why Summer had been struggling to hold back tears. She leaned her head on Gran’s shoulder. “Are you sorry that you killed the bear?”

“No,” Gran said, stroking a hand over her curls. “But I’m sorry that you put me in a place where I had to.” She still didn’t look mad, but Summer felt as though she had been slapped across the face.

“We’re not normal, are we?” Summer asked, hot tears sliding down her cheeks.

“No,” Gran said. “You’re special. Both you and your brother.” She then kissed Summer’s forehead. “Your life’s a gift, pumpkin. Show a little appreciation for it.”

Summer had healed her wounds from fighting a bear in minutes, but when she woke up in the passenger’s seat of Nash’s sports car, she still hadn’t healed all of the scratches inflicted by the winged children. Nash’s jacket draped over her wasn’t doing much to protect the upholstery. Blood and fur was everywhere.

He ignored her protests as he pulled her out of the car and carried her up the front steps to his house. Summer curled against his chest, head tucked under his chin and fingers gripping the collar of his damp shirt.

Margaret met them at the door. “Another dress, please,” Nash said, and the maid disappeared to follow his instructions.

“I can walk,” she said as he mounted the stairs.

“And you would surely walk straight out my door. No, I don’t think so. I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”

“But my brother—”

Nash turned his blazing stare on her. “Your brother is fully capable of taking care of himself. The claws of a balam aren’t poisonous to humans. He’ll be fine. You, on the other hand…”

Summer gave a shaky laugh. “You say that like I’m not human.” She felt his throat humming next to her ear and realized that he was laughing.

It was pretty ridiculous to claim she was normal now that he had seen her shapeshift, but all of Gran’s warnings through the years resonated through her skull. You can’t ever tell anyone. You can’t ever show anyone. We have to be careful, babe, because we’re alone in this world.

But Nash had wings. Wings. Gran had been wrong about one thing—they weren’t alone after all.

He kicked open heavy double doors and carried Summer into a room she hadn’t seen before. There were more bookshelves, a four-poster bed with filmy curtains, and a fainting couch underneath the bay window overlooking the lake.

Surprise rolled through her. Nash had taken her to his bedroom.

His movements were surprisingly graceful as he set her on the end of the bed. She hugged his jacket tight around her. “Don’t move,” he said, stepping into the adjoining bathroom and returning with a wet washcloth.

“I’m fine,” she said when he lifted her arm to wash the scratches.

He scowled as he washed the blood away. “Can’t turn my back on you,” he muttered, turning to her other arm. Margaret entered with another dress, which only looked like a pile of white cloth in her hands. “Put it on the desk,” Nash said without looking up.

“Can’t I just wear it now?” Summer asked, watching Margaret exit with longing eyes.

“No.”

He yanked his jacket away from her, and his eyes skimmed her naked body. Summer’s hands flew to cover her modest breasts.

“What are you doing?” she gasped.

“You’re a werewolf,” Nash snapped, swatting her hands aside. He didn’t seem interested in her bare skin. Only the injuries. “You’ll never heal these wounds unless we clean them. A balam’s claws are silver.”

“But—”

He lifted her into his arms again and strode toward the bathroom. Summer kicked at him half-heartedly. Not only were her injuries failing to heal, her muscles felt weirdly liquid, as though the strength had been drained from her.

Nash propped her against the marble counter and started twisting brass knobs on his claw-footed tub. Steaming water poured from the first tap; soap came from the second. “We’ll have to flush the silver from your system before it gets too deep,” he said, testing the temperature on his wrist. “I’m impressed that your symptoms aren’t worse by now.”

She twisted to inspect her body in the mirror. A long slice marked her from underarm to hip on the right side, her neck had four parallel gashes, and it looked like her arms had been chewed. Those children had been brutal in the moments that she had been pinned below them. She hated to think of what they could have done with a few more seconds.

“You seem to know an awful lot about shapeshifters,” Summer said, wincing as she gently probed the biggest injury with her fingertips.

She watched Nash move behind her in the reflection. He flicked the water off of his hands into the tub. “Of course I do. You’re hardly the first werewolf I’ve met.”

Nash faced her again, leaving the tub to fill behind him. Only now did he look at her—really look at her, and not just the injuries. She lost herself in the endless depths of his gaze, and the worry betrayed by his frown. Nash was worried about her. The glow of that knowledge pushed away everything else, including the pain of the slices, her aching muscles, and her embarrassment.

Well, maybe not that last one.

Summer grabbed a towel off the rack and covered herself with it.

He promptly tugged it out of her hands. “Don’t touch that. It’s expensive, and you’ll bloody it.”

“Excuse me,” Summer said, trying to pull it back, and failing. Most pathetic game of tug-of-war ever.

“You can’t tell me that you’re embarrassed. I’ve never met a modest werewolf.”

“You keep saying ‘werewolf.’ What’s a werewolf?”

Nash’s eyes widened in surprise. “You really don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” she asked.

He twisted the knob to turn the water off again. The bath was full to the rim. “Come,” Nash said, steadying her arm as she slipped a foot into the water. She hissed at the burn of the heat. Water slopped over the sides.

Settling into the tub was sin on her sore muscles. Summer sank against the porcelain, suddenly forgetting that she was supposed to be embarrassed. The water swirled with bubbles and waves of heat, and the tips of her hair floated on the surface. Hopefully, angels were well-stocked with oils and conditioners, or else she was going to have an afro when she came out.

“What’s a werewolf?” she asked, opening her eyes to lazy slits. “What are you?”

“You really have grown up in Hazel Cove,” Nash said, his voice tinged with wonder. He kneeled beside the tub, unbuttoned the wrists of his shirt, and rolled the sleeves to his elbows. “It explains why you didn’t recognize my name, my eyes, or my smell. Had you grown up among kin, you would have realized that I’m an angel the instant we met.”

“Where did you come from?” she asked.

Nash leaned his elbows on the edge of the tub. “Where do you think I came from? What do you know of my kind?”

“My grandmother said that the world used to be full of angels and demons, but that all of them have been gone for a while. Gran, my brother, and I are the only paranormal things remaining.”

His eyes narrowed. “Is that what she told you?”

“I don’t like the accusation in your tone,” Summer said, pulling the bubbles toward her chest. “Can I get dressed now?”

“Are you healed?”

She lifted her arm. Some of the smaller cuts were gone. “Not quite.”

“Then no,” he said, pushing her arm back into the bath. He took a fresh sponge out of a basket on the counter and dipped it in the water. “Tell me how you attracted the notice of the balam.”

“I don’t know. I heard Abram crying out. I found him.” She flinched at the contact of the sponge against her wounds. “I meant to save him, but…I wasn’t strong enough. I’ve never had to fight before.”

“You shouldn’t feel shame. You and your human brother are poorly matched against the balam. They are of ethereal blood, born from the same power as angels, and much stronger than any mortal. The real question is how they reached this place.”

“I guess they came to Hazel Cove the same way you did,” Summer said. She ventured a smile. “Which was…how, exactly?” Nash gave her a blank look. “What, so I have to be naked around you, but you’re not going to get naked around me?”

His right eyebrow quirked. “I could get naked.”

“Not like that,” she said, but the damage was done. A blush was permanently affixed to her cheeks.

Summer couldn’t hold a proper conversation while naked in Nash’s huge bathroom of marble and brass fixtures. Especially not when it looked like he was set on sponge bathing her. She bit back the rest of her questions and complied with Nash’s orders, which were kept short. “Lift your arm.” “Now your other arm.” “Lean forward.” That kind of thing.

One by one, he gently washed out her cuts with the sponge until the water was dark with her blood, the air stunk of silver, and her wounds began to fade.

Nash’s fingers dipped beneath the surface and brushed against her hip. She just about jumped out of her skin, but he only unplugged the drain stopper.

“You’re also the only nervous werewolf I’ve encountered,” he said, a smile teasing at the corners of his lips.

“I’m not nervous,” Summer said. “It’s just…you make me nervous.”

He was still leaning forward, and their faces were centimeters apart. His warm, soapy hand cupped her jaw. “I can’t imagine why.”

She held her breath, expecting him to finally cross the line that he had been threatening to cross since the moment she ran into him in Hanlon Hall. But a shadow crossed his eyes, his hand fell, and he stood.

Nash was suddenly extremely interested in drying off his arms on one of his fluffy white towels.

“You’ll need to shower the rest of the silver away,” he said. “I trust you can do it on your own.”

He left, shutting the door behind him. The water drained from the tub, leaving Summer naked and alone.

Summer wrapped herself in a towel before emerging from the bathroom. The last of the blood had sluiced away in the shower, allowing the wounds to close properly, and now she was in good shape…physically speaking. Her confused emotions were a totally different matter.

Nash waited in the bedroom, wearing a clean change of clothes and facing the storm outside his window. There were no holes in the back of his shirt, no bulges, no indicator that there had once been wings there at all.

“Margaret is preparing the adjacent bedroom for you,” he said.

“You can keep saying that, but it doesn’t mean I’m staying.” Summer picked the dress up off the table and held it up. Looked like another good fit. “I have to get back to Gran and my brother.”

“Why? You’ve clearly been lied to for your entire life. Your grandmother has led you to believe you’re simply special, when the truth is far more disturbing.”

Summer’s grip on the dress tightened until her knuckles whitened. “And what truth is that?”

Nash offered his cell phone to her.

“Why don’t you ask your grandmother yourself?”

“I will, as soon as I go home,” she said, hugging the towel around her body. “Am I going to have to run in my second skin, or are you going to give me a ride?”

“You’re not going home. Somehow, something has crossed into this world, and it wants to kill you. I’m not going to allow that.”

“They didn’t originally attack me; they attacked Abram. I have to make sure he’s okay.”

He still held the cell between them, arm unwavering. “Then that’s something else you can ask when you call your grandmother.”

Summer bit her bottom lip, but she took the phone.

She sat on the edge of Nash’s bed to dial. The first time he had set her there, she hadn’t noticed how soft the mattress and silken bedspread were. There was a smudge of blood on one of the fleur-de-lis.

It only took two rings for Gran to pick up. “Hello?” Her voice was reserved.

“Gran! It’s me!”

“Summer,” she sighed, all of the caution vanishing instantly. “Oh, thank God. Are you all right? Where are you?”

“I’m safe,” Summer said, shooting a look at Nash. He was still by the window, pretending not to listen. “Did Abram get home?”

“Yeah, and what a fine mess he is. The things he’s telling me… Are you on your way home?”

Summer ignored the question. “But he’s okay, right?”

“As okay as someone with a good thump on the head and blood loss can be, but you know Abram. He’s tougher than a tiger. He’s already trying to talk me into giving him the key to my gun safe—which is not happening, son, because you are not hunting those things!” Gran’s volume rose on the last few words until it sounded like she was shouting across the house. If she was yelling at Abram, he definitely had to be in pretty good shape. It was a relief to hear it.

Which left only one question.

“You said that we were alone,” Summer said, dropping into a whisper. “You said we were special. You didn’t say that there were others.”

Gran fell silent.

Summer’s grip grew tighter and tighter on the phone as the silence dragged on. Her heart sank.

“You haven’t been keeping things from us, have you?” Summer asked in a tiny voice.

A heavy sigh blew over the other end of the line. “Guess it’s time we have a talk, babe. Not over the phone. When will you be home?”

Nash was right. Gran had lied.

The shock of it settled into her bones.

“Soon,” Summer said, ducking her head. The tips of her damp hair dripped on the bedspread, leaving little circles like tears. “I have to go.”

“Love you, pumpkin.”

Summer hung up without responding.

Nash stood on the balcony, alone with the wind and the sprinkling rain. It took incredible amounts of self-restraint not to peer through the curtains and watch Summer get dressed.

It should have been impossible for the balam to cross over, yet he had seen the flare of gray light and fought the creatures personally. It hadn’t been a hallucination after millennia of isolation. And if the balam had come in, then that meant there was a way out as well.

A door must have been opened. Nash was so close to escape.

Yet what had seemed like a simple goal just hours earlier was suddenly much more complicated.

Mortal affairs were inconsequential to him. Lies and betrayal—these things fell from human mouths like ripe fruit from a tree, and he had long since learned not to trust what any mortal said. But this betrayal from her grandmother had wounded Summer in a way that the balam had not, and he could not heal these wounds with a hot bath and a change of clothes.

The fact that he wanted to heal her was the most befuddling part of all.

He prowled back and forth on his balcony. The lake’s surface roiled with the storm, black and murky, like the confusion that beat within his chest.

The door to his bedroom slid open and Summer stepped out wearing the dress Margaret selected. It had a low, swooping neckline, short sleeves, and a loose skirt that terminated at an indecent length. He couldn’t help following the curve of her bare thigh down to her calf, her delicate ankle, her shoeless feet.

Summer leaned her elbows on the railing beside him. “The view out here is beautiful,” she said. The wind blew through her wild, unkempt curls, baring her throat in tantalizing glimpses. Nash had never found himself so fascinated by a woman’s form before.

What was it about Summer that entranced him? Was it what her existence meant—the freedom she would allow him to reach? Or was it something else completely?

He pinned her against the side of the rail with his arms on either side of her body. “Why are you so different?” he asked in a low, husky voice. Summer braced her hands behind her for balance. “Tell me, woman.”

She smiled, and he thought that he had never seen a smile so sweet and coy. The apples of her cheeks dimpled. But the smile still showed hints of sadness, and she didn’t have the usual fire in her voice. “It’s the fur, right? Nobody can resist the fur.”

The suggestion of someone else finding her irresistible made jealousy choke him. Nash’s hand slid to the back of her neck, and her lips parted softly, as if silently gasping at his touch.

Summer reacted to him like an instrument sang under the hands of a master artist. All of those subtle, tiny cues—the color in her cheeks, her fluttering eyelashes, the quick intake of breath—only made Nash need her more desperately.

But the instrument was not the only one manipulated during the song. Its cries could break the heart of the musician as well, and Summer’s responses rocked him to the core.

When he didn’t immediately respond to her lighthearted joke, her tongue slid out to wet her lips. A nervous gesture, but utterly entrancing.

“So…not the fur? Maybe the tail? You’ve got to give me a hint here.”

Nash had no words to express his thoughts, and he couldn’t have trusted her with them anyway. Any woman that could so easily manipulate him couldn’t be allowed within his defenses.

Yet he found himself drawing her toward him. Only her hands splayed across his chest prevented him from acting on temptation. “In all seriousness, Nash, I need to go home,” she said, gazing up at him with a flush high on her cheekbones. “I have to talk to my grandma. I have to see Abram. I can’t stay here.”

She could have asked him for the entirety of Hazel Cove, and he would have given it to her in that moment. But asking to be released from his control was too much. “I’ll take you there,” Nash said. “But you’re coming home with me tonight.”

eight

It felt like it had been weeks since Summer stood in front of her Gran’s home, rather than just a few hours. The cottage looked dark and uninviting. All of the curtains were drawn, so the warm glow from within couldn’t light the trees the way it usually did, and drizzling rain left everything miserably damp.

Nash opened the passenger door of his sports car. He had brought an umbrella, and she gave him a grateful smile as she took it. “Thanks,” she said, letting the handle rest against her shoulder.

He scanned the forest as though he expected a thousand balam to jump out at once. “Don’t take long.”

“Why don’t you come inside? You could meet my family.”

Nash looked like she had just suggested that they eat mud for dinner. “No. I don’t think so.” He scrubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “I’m going to take a walk. I won’t go far. Don’t even consider leaving without me.”

Summer rolled her eyes. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. Trust me.”

She just couldn’t understand him. He was hot one moment, and cold the next. Naked in his tub, pinned against his railing—those were definitely hot moments, the kind where she was breathless with anticipation. But just as quickly, he was done with her. Unfortunately, he looked more like he was in the latter mood than the former.

“I’ll be back soon,” he said, turning away. “Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”

He disappeared into the forest.

Summer had to take several deep breaths to compose herself before she had the strength to go into the house. She had been tense since her conversation with Gran on the phone, but the familiar sights and sounds of home helped heal all wounds.

Gran and Abram were both waiting for her in the living room, and her heart swelled at the sight of them safe and healthy on the battered couch.

Abram crossed the room in two steps to embrace her. It was a little like being lovingly mauled by a giant, cuddly tiger. She squeezed him back until his ribs creaked and he gasped. “Are you okay?” Summer asked, holding him at arm’s length. His cheek still had the slice from the balam on it, and it looked deep enough that it might scar.

“I’m fine,” he said. Gran lingered behind him, silent and watchful. “Where have you been?”

“That’s not important. It only matters that you guys are safe. Have you seen anything since this afternoon?”

“No. What were those things?” Abram asked. He sounded calm, as usual, but his furrowed brow made it look like he was almost on the verge of an Abram Panic again. Twice in a week. Had to be a new record.

“Balam,” Summer said. “I guess they’re a breed of angel.”

Gran sucked in a hard breath. “No.”

“What are angels?” Abram asked, looking between both of them. “I feel I must be missing something.”

Summer folded her arms. “Yeah, Gran. What are angels?” She couldn’t help but sound accusatory. She had only argued with Gran once in her life before—when she wanted to go on vacation away from Hazel Cove right before college—and she didn’t like the feeling. It didn’t help that Gran didn’t put up with defiance, and this night was no different.

She gave Summer a level look. “I don’t know much about those, babe,” Gran said. “Never knew any, myself. They’re not all that common.”

“Are they safe to be around?” Summer asked.

“I wouldn’t say anything of the preternatural persuasion is ‘safe’. Any one of us could be dangerous, if we wanted.”

“If there were three of them, we should assume there will be more,” Abram said. “We need to prepare ourselves to leave—I don’t think we’re safe in the forest for now.” He went down the hallway toward his bedroom, and a dark blur darted into the living room as soon as his door opened.

Summer stooped to pick up Sir Lumpy, who gave her an offended meow. “You knew this was coming, didn’t you?” Summer asked, lifting her cat so that he could climb onto her shoulders.

“I knew that we were in danger of having people come find us.” Gran brushed Summer’s hair out of her face. “Don’t look so hurt, babe. I was trying to protect you. I never intended for us to go back where we came from.”

“And where did we come from, exactly?”

Gran’s fingers stilled on Summer’s curls. “It’s a long story.”

“But these things—these angels—there are a lot of them there,” she pressed, and Gran nodded. “Is that where my parents have been all this time?”

“Yeah. They were meant to follow us here, but they never did. Still…there’s plenty of time.”

“What do you mean, plenty of time? They’ve missed our entire lives.”

“Don’t be angry, pumpkin,” Gran said. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know.”

“Because you’ve lied to us. You’ve lied for years.”

“Babe…”

Summer buried her face against Sir Lumpy’s neck. He purred harder. “I can’t deal with this right now,” she whispered. “I’ll go help Abram.”

Gran didn’t follow her as she walked to the back of the hall, where there was darkness, privacy, and a wooden pentacle hanging from the ceiling. She slumped against the wall and let her face fall into her hands. Sir Lumpy started washing her ear.

If Gran had lied about that, then what else could she have lied about? What was truth, and what was fabrication? Summer missed Uncle Scott. If he had still been alive, he would have told Summer the truth.

Abram’s door opened. He slipped out and shut it behind him before she could see what lay beyond. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Summer wiped her cheeks dry, and Sir Lumpy rammed his nose into her fingers once before jumping off to attend to his normal kitty business. “I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it.”

He nodded once, a silent acceptance of her mood. That nod was always very validating. “I think we should get rooms at the hotel in town. Somewhere that people wouldn’t think to look for us.”

“Do you really think that would help? Hazel Cove’s not a big place, and being at the university didn’t seem to help.” Of course, she hadn’t found Abram at the university. She cocked her head at him. “What were you doing in the forest anyway?”

“I felt something.” He rubbed the top of his head with his knuckles, like trying to scrub away a particularly sticky substance. “It tingled and hurt and…buzzed. I don’t know, Summer, it felt like there was something in the air around my head.”

She chewed on the inside of her mouth, trying to think of a response that didn’t involve words like “crazy” or “weird.”

Abram blew out a breath. “I know how it sounds.” He nudged at a patch of carpet with his booted toe. “You feel like that, sometimes. Not buzzing, but…you have your own feeling. Here.” He tapped his chest. “I always know when you’re shifting shapes, because it gets stronger.”

“So you followed that…feeling…into the forest.”

“It was strong enough to pull me out of the art building. I went a short distance into the forest and, and it got even stronger. I found those winged things—”

“The balam,” Summer said. “You could see them?”

“Of course I could. How do you know what they’re called?”

“And they attacked you,” she said to avoid the question.

Abram rubbed at the top of his head again. “Not exactly. I tried to catch one. That was when they attacked.”

And that would have been when Summer heard him starting to shout. “You’re stupid,” she said, wrapping her arms around his waist and hugging him tight. “You saw creepy children with wings and tried to catch one. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“You’re not saying anything I didn’t think myself,” he said. “It just felt like something I should do. Like they shouldn’t be there. Everything felt out of balance, and I wanted to fix it. How did you get rid of them?”

Summer chewed on the inside of her mouth. If there was anyone she could trust with the truth about Nash, it would be her twin brother. They were practically conjoined at the brain. “Abram…” she began.

A strange smell cut her off.

Summer leaned close to Abram and sniffed his shoulder. It was a smoky, woodsy smell, similar to both Nash and the balam, yet belonging to neither. It was softer. More…feminine?

“Have you been burning something?” Summer asked, pacing around him to search for more of that smell. It trailed down the hallway and led to Abram’s bedroom.

“Stay out of my room, Summer.”

But that was an angel smell. Why would his room smell like angels?

Summer pushed Abram’s arm out of the way when he tried to block her and shoved his door open.

His bedroom was part bachelor pad, part art studio. He eschewed an actual bed for a mat on the floor in order to make room for more canvases, paint, and lights. One of the walls was painted smooth as backing for portraits. Free weights were piled in the corner.

Scott hadn’t given Abram the same doors outside that Summer had, but he did have a huge window, which was usually blacked out with curtains. But now it stood open, the drapes flapped in the breeze, and the cold smell of a rainy night whipped around Summer. It carried the smoky angel smell along with it.

One of those creatures had been in his room.

Summer stepped over a canvas to reach his window and slam it shut.

“For someone who wants to move to town to be safer, you seem awfully unconcerned about locking up.” She turned around to find that Abram stood just behind her. She nearly fell over. “Holy crap, Abram, try to make some noise!”

“Something is out to get us,” he said. “You’ve already met him.”

“You mean…” She almost called him “Nash,” but she stumbled over the name. “Mr. Adamson?”

“He’s trouble, Summer. He wants to hurt us.”

She dismissed his worries with a roll of her eyes and picked her way out of the bedroom. Summer had no clue how he could stand to live in such squalor, but it probably had to do with the same mental misfires that made him an artist in the first place. “You’re crazy. He’s the richest man in the world. He has no reason to want to hurt us.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“By engaging my brain and using logic, that’s how.”

Summer returned to the living room. Gran wasn’t there anymore, and she was grateful not to have to talk to her grandmother.

She headed for the front door, but Abram caught her wrist. “You’re right. Hazel Cove won’t be any safer than home,” Abram said. “Maybe we should leave the entire country.”

“I can’t go anywhere yet, Abram,” Summer said. “I have commitments. My degree.” She sighed. There was no point avoiding the subject anymore. “And I took the internship at Adamson Industries, which is going to last until at least the end of the semester.”

Anger flashed through Abram’s eyes. “You’re working for Nashriel Adamson.”

“That’s right.” Summer frowned. “Wait, where did you hear his first name?”

“You’ve got to quit. We can’t trust him.”

She wiggled free of his hand. “You don’t know him.”

“And you do?”

Summer thought back to being pinned against his balcony, sinking into his bathtub, being carried through the forest. Margaret had said that no woman had ever seen his office. Maybe Summer didn’t know him well, but Nash had been right when he said that she knew him better than anyone else in the world.

“Maybe,” she said. “I’m going to step outside for a second. I’ll be right back.”

“It’s very dark. I don’t think you should go alone.” Abram wasn’t a very good liar. She could tell that he wasn’t worrying about the darkness. He was worried that she was going to run off.

She gave him a brilliant smile. “Just for a second. I’ll be fine.”

Summer opened the door to find that Nash’s car was gone.

Forgetting her brother behind her, she slowly approached the place his car should have stood. There was no sign of it. Not even tire tracks to indicate that it had driven away.

“What are you looking for?” Abram asked. He had followed her outside, and the skin on his bare arms was prickled by the night air.

She bit her bottom lip. Nash had been bent on having her at his house, so she hadn’t expected him to vanish. But it was hard to deny what was right in front of her eyes.

Hot and cold. Guess he had gone really, really cold.

“Nothing, I guess,” Summer said. Why did she feel so disappointed? She hadn’t even wanted to stay with him. She turned back to her brother and forced a smile. “What’s for dinner?”

Abram wasn’t looking at her. His attention was focused on the forest over her shoulders, and his eyes widened.

A creature stood among the trees, watching the cottage. It was partially veiled by the thick branches, but even in the night, it glowed with its own internal light. She could make out bare shoulders, a bare chest, crooked teeth. Its hair and eyes were equally colorless, and its skin was slick, semi-transparent plastic over the swirl of silver blood in its veins.

She wanted to say that it was a man, except that she had never seen a man that huge. It was twice as tall as Nash, and easily a thousand times uglier. It reeked of melting flesh. Very few things smelled truly bad to Summer, but this stench made her skin want to crawl off of her bones.

And it was staring at her with murder in its eyes and Nash’s car crushed under one foot.

“Fuck,” Summer said softly.

She didn’t have enough time to change. She grabbed Abram’s arm and threw him into the house.

“Find Gran!” she shouted.

He knew better than to argue with her. He fled into the cottage, the door slammed behind him, and she rounded on the monster as it stomped through the forest. It crushed a sapling under its foot, tore through the branches, and burst into the clearing.

It swiped at her, and Summer threw herself under its grasp. The breeze of its fist ruffled her hair.

The monster was slow to turn on her, unlike the balam, which had been speedy little bees. This was more like the bear that Summer had fought in the cave: lumbering, but powerful.

It took a step toward the cottage, as if it hadn’t decided if it wanted to attack Summer or the building. She grabbed a heavy branch and wielded it like a baseball bat. “Look at me!” she yelled. “Come over here!”

Her shouts seemed to do the trick. It stomped toward her, faster than she expected, and swatted the branch out of her hands.

The contact sent Summer flying.

She hit the wreckage of the car. Pain lanced through her back, and she slid to the ground with a groan. The healing heat came over her, but not quickly enough.

Summer crawled under the wreckage of the car and tried to shift shapes as quickly as she could. She focused on stepping into her second skin, but it was suddenly about as easy as leaping from the sidewalk to the top of a ten story building.

Come on, Summer. Change!

But her body wouldn’t obey.

Metal and plastic groaned around her, and the car started to lift from the mud. Summer muffled a cry underneath her hands.

The front door opened, and Abram stood framed in the doorway. He had Gran’s shotgun against one shoulder.

Stepping onto the lawn, he jacked a round into the chamber.

“Get away from there!” he shouted. His voice was deeper, more powerful than she had ever heard it before, and it carried the weight of authority.

The monster dropped the car and faced Abram.

“No,” she whispered. He wasn’t any more of a fighter than Summer was. He would be pulverized. She wiggled out from underneath the car, emerging soaked in mud.

Abram squeezed the trigger. A gunshot thundered through the forest—and didn’t hit the monster. It was moving faster now, with less confusion and more purpose, and it easily dodged the attack.

One of its meaty hands struck Abram, driving him to the ground.

“Abram!” Summer cried.

A hand caught her arm before she could run to him.

Nash.

Even though it was a rainy, muddy mess in the forest, Nash looked as immaculate as when he sent her into the house. “The gibborim hasn’t gotten you, has it?” he asked. She shook her head. “Good. Come with me.”

“Wait! My brother—you have to help him!”

Nash gave a dismissive glance toward the monster. “Why?”

She grabbed his shirt in both of her hands, jerking his face down so that they were eye level. He looked shocked at her strength. “You need to help him because he might die if you don’t!”

That argument didn’t seem to convince him either, but he gave a long-suffering sigh as he opened his shirt one button at a time.

“Very well. If you ask it of me.”

It made her feel like she was going insane to watch how slowly he prepared himself when Abram was wrestling with a monster twice his height. Nash shed his shirt, rolled out his shoulders, and faced the monster.

How could he care so little about her brother being in danger?

“Hurry!” Summer urged.

The wings didn’t grow from his back. They simply appeared with a flare of light, which was so bright that she was rendered momentarily blind. When her vision cleared again, Nash had already moved into the fight.

The gibborim turned to swipe at Nash, and Summer realized that its back was a ragged mess. There were open wounds where its wings should have been planted, and organs twitched inside its body—were those lungs?

Abram scrambled to the place he had dropped the shotgun. But the instant he picked it up, Nash landed next to him. “Stay out of the way, mortal,” Nash said. “I can’t have you shooting me accidentally.” He jerked the shotgun out of Abram’s hands and flung it into the trees before taking flight once more.

Summer darted across the clearing and snagged Abram’s hand. “That fucker took the gun!” he said, shaking her off immediately.

“Don’t worry. He knows what he’s doing,” Summer said. Silently, she added, I hope.

But her brother wasn’t listening. He broke free to search for the shotgun.

After watching Nash drive away the balam so easily, Summer had expected him to dispatch this creature with the same ease. But this thing—this gibborim—was so much larger, and so much stronger. Nash’s punches didn’t seem to have any real effect.

Summer had to change. She had to help him.

The gibborim’s hand closed on one of Nash’s wings and jerked him out of the sky. His shout of surprise pierced straight through Summer’s heart, breaking her concentration before she could even find it. All Summer could do was watch helplessly as Nash was pinned to the mud with a hand at his throat.

Abram emerged from the forest with the shotgun. “Get down!” he called to Summer, and she threw herself to the ground.

Double ought buckshot ripped through the gibborim’s wounded back. It reared and screamed—without releasing Nash’s throat.

His eyes slid closed. His wings flickered, faded, vanished.

The gibborim turned to face Abram with Nash in hand. The shotgun had no effect on it from the front. Summer had to get him to turn around again.

She grabbed one of the rocks lining Gran’s flowerbed and hurled it at the gibborim’s back. She struck the spine. “Hey!” she yelled, throwing another rock.

It rounded on her with a screeching cry. Two long steps, and it reached for her with clawed hands—

A gunshot split the air, and its face went slack with shock.

The gibborim fell to the mud at her feet.

Abram advanced on it, aiming the shotgun at its back. His face was calm as he squeezed the trigger again. Summer clapped her hands over her mouth and tried not to scream.

Once it stopped twitching, Abram kicked the gibborim onto its back. Silver fluid gushed out of its wounds.

“I think that did it,” he said, calm as ever.

Summer was safe. Now she could go into hysterics.

But the sight of Nash sprawled in the mud a few feet away managed to drive away her urge to freak out. She dropped by his side instead.

His wings were gone and his eyes were shut. He didn’t react when she shook his shoulder. His skin was slicked with silver blood, and she had no way to tell if it belonged to the gibborim, or because of some terrible wound she couldn’t find. She had to get him inside and wash him off.

Summer grunted as she tried to lift Nash.

“What are you doing?” Abram asked.

“What’s it look like? Are you going to help me?”

He didn’t move.

She was strong—stronger than Abram, in fact—but Nash was tall, so getting him off the ground was awkward more than difficult. But once she had him in her arms, she was surprised to find that he was as light as though he was hollow-boned.

Summer staggered toward the cottage. “At least open the front door,” she said through gritted teeth.

Abram didn’t move, but Gran was already waiting to let her in.

“You’re crazy,” he said as Gran rushed ahead to open Summer’s bedroom door.

“He did just try to save you,” Gran said. “You could show a little gratitude, Abram.”

“He didn’t leave me behind when I was healing from the balam attack, and I owe him.” Summer settled Nash on her bed. He looked strange and out of place in her room, which was cluttered with all of her knickknacks and posters.

“He’s the one who saved you from the balam?” Abram asked.

“Yes. And you can help me clean his wounds, or you can go bury the gibborim’s body. Your choice.”

“You have no idea what you’re getting into,” he said.

He left her room and slammed the door behind him.

nine

Summer watched Nash sleep for a few hours. He didn’t seem to dream—his eyelids never fluttered, and he didn’t stir. Not even once.

She didn’t really worry about it at first. Maybe angels were just deep sleepers. What did she know? But when she fell asleep sitting up next to her bed and woke up to find that he was in the same place she had left him, tendrils of worry crept into her heart.

“This is the angel you were talking about, isn’t it?” Gran asked when she delivered breakfast the next morning. She was obviously feeling bad about the previous night’s argument, since she had cooked a giant steak in addition to the usual bacon. The beef had the barest imprint of grill marks. Just heated enough to keep it from being cold on the inside.

“Him,” Summer corrected, taking the plate. “Thank you.”

Gran’s eyes swept over his body. She didn’t show a hint of recognition, but a sly smile crept over her lips. “He is pretty sexy.”

“Gran!”

“I’m old, not blind. Don’t worry, babe. He’s not my type anyway.”

“Why? Because he’s male, or because he’s not human?”

“I ain’t got no biases against preternatural critters. You know that.”

“I don’t know how much I really know about you at all anymore,” Summer said. She picked at a piece of bacon, unable to meet her grandmother’s eyes. “But thanks for the breakfast.”

Gran sighed. “You’re welcome. Need anything for the bird boy?”

“Gran…” Summer said warningly, but her grandmother’s expression was innocent. “No, his injuries were gone by the time I washed the blood away. I have no clue why he hasn’t woken up.” She nibbled on the bacon and gave Gran a sideways look. “You’re not going to warn me away from him, like Abram did?”

“Not a chance. You’re a grownup now, babe. Try to have fun.” She winked and left.

Being left alone with Nash in her bed was kind of awkward, even if he was asleep. It was the first time she’d had a man other than Sir Lumpy in her bed, and Sir Lumpy was not nearly as sexy. Her eyes roved over his bare chest, his arms, the vee of muscle that disappeared into the hem of his pants.

As if he could feel her watching, his eyes opened. “Summer,” he said, his voice heavy with the grogginess of sleep.

“Hey, sleepy,” Summer said. “Feeling rested?”

“Very.” He sat up, and the blankets pooled in his lap. He looked down at his uninjured chest, and then his eyes moved to take in the entire room, from Summer’s island poster, to her workstation in the corner, and the large glass doors. “Where am I?”

“This is my bedroom.”

“Really?” Nash said, and he looked around again with renewed interest. When his gaze fell on her dresser and stayed, she realized that she had left underwear hanging out of one of her drawers.

She pushed the panties inside and closed it. “You healed awfully quickly. I thought I was the only one that could do that.”

Nash pushed the blankets off and ran a hand over his jaw, which was shadowed with stubble. Summer had assumed that his perfectly smooth skin was an angel thing, but it must have been a really good razor. A little beard growth suited him.

“It takes much more than damage to our physical forms to leave a mark,” Nash said. “How did you survive the gibborim’s attack?”

“Believe it or not, Abram and I are perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves. The gibborim was easily distracted. I caught his attention, and my brother…” Summer trailed off and swallowed hard. She still wasn’t comfortable remembering what Abram had done. He was all but a pacifist—for the love of all that was good, he was a freaking vegetarian. Yet he hadn’t hesitated to pull the trigger and blast the gibborim’s skull open when it came down to the wire.

“I’m impressed,” Nash said.

Summer’s gaze traced over his bare arms, and the way that they flexed as he leaned his weight on one of them. Fine veins traced the muscle. Her mouth suddenly felt very dry. “I’m not. Neither of us ever wanted to kill someone. Something.” With a groan, Summer dropped to the bed beside him and rubbed her hands over her face. “It was like Abram moved on instinct. He was amazing.”

“I expect he was.”

The bare skin of his upper arm caressed hers, and Summer was suddenly acutely aware that she was sitting with a shirtless man—a man who was staring at her like she had just delivered herself to him as breakfast in bed. Nash’s body heat was magnetic.

The door opened, and Abram himself walked in, carrying one of his spare shirts. Summer wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he had been listening from the hallway. He was sneaky like that.

He tossed the shirt to Nash, who had to sit up—and away from Summer—in order to catch it. Nash gave her a small smile before tugging it over his head. She tried not to feel disappointed. “If it seemed to you that Abram attacked on instinct, then it’s probably because he did,” Nash said. “From the first time I laid eyes on him, I identified him as a kopis.”

The corner of Summer’s mouth twitched. “Bless you.”

“I could fire you for impudence, intern.” His head popped out of the shirt. Summer couldn’t help but giggle at the sight of his hair sticking up with static.

“You’re not going to fire me. What’s a kopis?”

“Shortly before I was…” His jaw tightened. “Before I came here, the angels worked in alliance with the kings of man to establish a new class of warrior called kopides. We were attempting to separate demons and angels from the much feebler human species to prevent xenocide, and kopides were designed to safeguard the survivors.” A smirk. “Kopides are somewhat less feeble than the average mortal.”

“Feeble,” Abram echoed, arms folded across his chest. He was too muscular for his arms to sit flat, and he glowered like a storm on the verge of breaking.

“I did say somewhat less,” Nash said. “I assume you’re of this class, if you can ‘sense’ the presence of angels and kill on instinct. I would be fascinated to know more about the family that produced siblings such as you two.”

“You’re not the only one,” Summer said.

“Summer,” Abram said, indicating in one word that he wanted to speak to her privately.

She rose from the bed. “I’ll be back in a minute, Nash.”

He reclined against her wall, drawing one knee to his chest. “I’ll wait for you here,” he said with a small smile that made Summer think that his thoughts were much dirtier than hers.

Abram pulled her out of the room and shut the door, very loudly and very deliberately.

“You okay?” Summer asked. “I’m surprised you’re speaking to me today.”

He clenched his jaw and paced a few steps away before turning to face her again. “I killed something last night. I didn’t mean to turn my back on you, I just… I had to figure some stuff out. You still need to be careful. He wants something from you,” Abram said, gesturing at her bedroom door.

A flush of heat rolled through Summer as she thought of his fingers moving over her in the bath, and she suddenly couldn’t meet her brother’s eyes. “I know. But he needs me.” She held up a hand before her brother could explode. “He’s broken, and I think I’m his only chance at being fixed.”

“You can’t fix anyone who doesn’t want to fix himself first, Summer.”

“Thanks, doctor, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I’m serious. When he looks at you…he’s intense. And he’s an ancient being from an old world with powers we can’t imagine. The fact that he’s interested in you at all is worrying.”

She grinned. “Nonsense. He’s no match for me.”

“That, I believe,” he said. “Watch yourself. I’ll be watching you, too.”

“Thanks,” Summer said.

She planted a kiss on Abram’s cheek and went back inside.

Summer found Nash exploring her bedroom. Her TV was turned to a news channel, but muted. Nash stood in front of the doors with his hands folded behind his back and a pensive look.

“Sit down,” Summer said, kicking the door shut behind her.

He sat on her mattress as she indicated. She grabbed breakfast, sat next to him, and cut a piece of steak.

“I don’t eat,” Nash said, leaning away when she offered it to him.

“You don’t eat, or you can’t?” she asked, waving the fork in front of his mouth teasingly.

“Of course I can eat, you foolish woman, my digestive system is perfectly—”

While his mouth was open, she popped the fork into his mouth. A moment of anger clouded his eyes. Then he chewed once, and the anger quickly faded.

She grinned as he considered the food she had deposited on his tongue. “What do you think of it?”

“What in the seven Hells was that?” Nash asked.

“It’s called pan-seared steak,” Summer said. “A very nice cut cooked in butter, extremely tender, and just the right amount of fat.”

“You fed me animal flesh.”

“What, you’re not a vegetarian, are you?”

“I’m not an individual that eats food at all, strictly speaking. My body feeds on things that transcend mere food.” His eyes dropped to the plate. His lips twitched. “But perhaps I’ll try a second bite.”

Summer carved another small piece of steak and moved it toward his mouth. When he reached for the fork, she jerked it out of reach with a laugh. “Let me feed you!”

Nash’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“You took care of me when the balam sliced me up, so it only seems fair,” she said. “Even if you don’t need food to recover, let’s pretend that you do. I have to repay you for everything you’ve done for me somehow.”

“You’re a strange woman,” he said, but he obediently took the bite. Summer couldn’t help but watch very closely as his lips closed around the fork.

“So what do you eat? I mean, if you don’t need food…”

“Human brains,” Nash said once he swallowed.

She nearly choked. “What?”

“Ah, the look on your face. You’d believe anything I said, wouldn’t you?”

Summer ripped a pillow off the head of her bed and smacked him with it. The pillow bounced off of the back of his head. He didn’t look disturbed by her attempt at an attack, but his hair did stick up in the back, leaving him satisfyingly ruffled. And he was smiling, too—even better.

“I’m keeping the rest of this to myself,” Summer said, turning her back on him with the plate on her lap.

“I tease, but ‘brains’ is not far from the truth. Angels feast on human thought. The brilliance of inspiration. Scientists, artists, compassion and genius—this is the energy that sustains an angel. Simply being nearby is enough to keep our bodies functioning and whole.”

“So that’s why you started some big tech company and invest in universities,” Summer said. “You’re eating brains.”

“In a manner of speaking. I also treasure these values on a personal level. Were I human, I’m sure I would have made the same financial decisions I have now.” He leaned against her back and murmured into her ear. “Of course, if I were human, I would also not be so rich.”

She moved to take a bite, but his arm snaked around and plucked the fork from her grip.

“Hey!” she protested.

Nash smirked as he ate the steak. “Delicious.”

She successfully resisted the urge to smack him with the pillow again. “So how long have you been here, then?” Summer asked. “Margaret said that her grandmother was your maid.”

“Margaret talks too much,” Nash said.

“I think she loves you.”

Doubt flickered through his eyes. His fist closed around the fork. “She’s been loyal. Her family is invaluable.”

“So they’re just an asset to you? No way. I don’t think that’s true.”

He didn’t seem to like this line of conversation. He took the plate from her lap. “I don’t know how long I’ve been here, though I can tell you it has been a very long time.”

“Well, what year was it when you moved into that house?”

Now he looked annoyed. “I told you, I don’t know. Angels don’t mark time in the way that humans do. To me, last week is no different than the week that the sun formed from the dust in the void.” Nash set the tray aside and moved to her window. His hip leaned against the TV stand, and the news continued to play out silently behind him. “Some have said that angels possess the innocence and heartlessness of childhood for eternity. I’m not so optimistic. I believe that we’re soulless, more elemental than alive.”

“I don’t think you’re soulless,” Summer said, tracing the ridge of his knuckles with her fingertip. His fist was pressed to the wall beside the window, and his skin was smooth and perfect, so much paler than hers.

He opened his fist and laced his fingers with hers. “It feels as though I have slept for so many years, and only dreamed my suffering. Now that you are here…” His thumb rubbed over the back of her hand. “I’m awake for the first time since the war.”

Sir Lumpy slinked out from the shadows under the bed and attempted to jump onto the windowsill. It was too far for his aging girth to climb. His paws scrabbled uselessly against the wall.

Summer chuckled and picked him up, letting her cat puddle in her arms. He immediately flopped onto his back. His belly fluff spread against her chest.

“What is that?” Nash asked, recoiling.

“This is my one true love,” Summer said, tickling her fingers through his fur. “Nash, meet Sir Lumpy. Sir Lumpy, meet Nash.”

“Sir Lumpy.” He repeated it flatly, emotionlessly.

“I’ve had him since I could barely talk, and ‘lumpy’ was one of my first words. I don’t know why I thought he looked lumpy, but he definitely grew into the name. He lumps around the house like a pro.” A line of drool slid down Sir Lumpy’s face and left a dot on Summer’s shirt. “You want to pet him? He’s friendly.”

“No,” Nash said, “I think I’ll do without.”

She opened her mouth to accuse him of not being a cat person—one of the greatest crimes anyone could commit, as far as Summer was concerned—but then the news on the TV behind him caught her eye. The sleek Adamson Industries logo was being displayed in the background.

“Wait,” she said, leaning around him to unmute the TV.

The sound returned just in time for it to switch from the newsroom to a reporter standing outside the Adamson Industries building in Wildwood. Crews of news teams were crowded in front of the door behind her. “Adamson Industries released a statement today saying that Mr. Adamson, head of the company, has stepped aside to permit new leadership to take control.”

The camera switched to another angle of the building’s front steps. It looked like footage from earlier in the day, when a man in a suit held a press conference. Summer recognized his red hair and glasses. He was one of the men that had offered her the internship. He talked about fresh ideas, a “new direction” for the company, and changing CEOs.

She turned questioningly to Nash. The emptiness in his eyes was terrifying.

“Turn it off,” he said coolly.

Summer immediately hit the power button. “What’s going on? You didn’t step down from running your company, did you?”

“No,” Nash said. “I did not.”

ten

Summer had thought that her life hit apex weirdness at about the time a sexy, winged billionaire saved her from creepy children with claws, but she had been wrong. It was much weirder to be in the back of a limousine with Nash and her entire family. Gran looked totally out of place in her overalls, and Abram just looked mad, because he hadn’t wanted to come along at all.

Summer ignored her brooding brother and focused on the news unfolding on the TV set into the mini bar. It didn’t look like there were any new developments. Just the same thing over and over: new direction, fresh leadership.

Gran opened the minibar, blocking Summer’s view of the news. She picked through the bottles. There was very expensive brandy and vodka in tiny bottles, and the sight of them seemed to displease her. “Never did trust a man that isn’t properly stocked on good beer,” she muttered.

“You don’t drink beer,” Summer said.

“I’ll drink anything when the situation calls for it.”

They finally reached the gates of the Adamson manor, and Nash threw his phone to the seat. “This is a joke,” Nash said. “I started this company hundreds of years ago. There is no line of succession. There is no board. There’s no way there could have been a vote to take the company in a new direction!”

“So it’s bad?” Summer asked.

His eyes flashed. “It’s bad.”

Margaret met them at the steps, just as Summer had hoped she would. She embraced the maid while Abram was still helping Gran out of the limo.

“Jesus,” Gran breathed, taking in the size of the manor on the side of the cliff, the lake below, the sweeping gardens.

“Did the shipment arrive?” Nash asked Margaret.

“Yes, sir. It’s in your office.”

“Make the guests comfortable,” he ordered, and then he rounded on Summer. “You’re coming with me.”

Abram looked like he wanted to protest, but Summer shot him a look that kept him silent. She left her family in Margaret’s capable hands and followed Nash inside.

“I’ve had the computers from the archaeological dig delivered here,” he said. “I need you to assemble them now.”

Summer frowned. “Wait, what about the takeover?”

“It will be addressed,” Nash said. “Trust me. But first things first.”

As promised, there were three large crates waiting in his office. The contents were mostly padding. She grounded herself and took all of the parts out of the boxes one by one, careful not to touch anything that looked delicate. When she was finished unpacking, the office was a delightful mess of computer organs—most of which she didn’t recognize.

Summer started trying to arrange things in a logical order, but some of the parts were so weird that she couldn’t begin to guess at their purpose.

“What is this?” Summer asked, turning the device over in her hands to peer at it closely. “These cables look like something out of a computer, but I’ve never seen a disc like this.”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Nash said.

She held it up next to the memory drive in the bay of the computer. “I think it’s like the optical memory,” Summer decided. “I can work with this. Building computers isn’t my specialty, but it can’t be that hard, as long as I’ve got all of the pieces.”

“They delivered everything that we found. It should all be intact.”

“Then it’s just like a puzzle. Easy stuff,” she said. “Guess it’s time to earn my keep.”

She got to work. He lurked at the edge of the room as she began piecing things together, but Summer quickly lost herself in the task at hand and forgot he was there.

That port connected with this cable. This funny little plug fit into this socket. And all of these little metal frames—those were meant to hold this box, the disc thing, the circuit board. Some of the shapes reminded Summer of archaic computers that she had seen in her history of technology class, and everything fit together pretty well. But when she had run out of pieces to jam together and flipped the switch, nothing happened. Something was missing.

“What’s this for?” she asked, lifting a cable that extended from the back of the computer’s case.

“My engineers believe that it’s for conducting electricity,” Nash said, picking up the phone. “We may need a battery. I’ll contact my men.”

Summer kept fiddling with the computer, but there was nothing left for her to do with it. Three letters were stamped on the side of the brushed metal casing: “UKA.” She wondered what it meant.

After a few minutes, Nash hung up the phone.

“Make yourself comfortable,” he said, throwing some of the packing material back into the crates to clear a path to the door. “I have to make a trip to Wildwood to pick up the battery.”

Summer followed him out the door and down the stairs. There was no sign of Abram or Gran. “Do you think that’s a good idea? I thought you said we’d be safer all together. That’s the whole reason we came here.”

“You’ll be safe enough in this house without me. My guards have been instructed to shoot intruders on sight.” He took his jacket from Margaret and slipped it over his shoulders. The maid was stealthy. Summer hadn’t even seen her approach. “Stay close to the house. The gardens will be safe, but avoid the beach and forest.”

“Maybe I should come with you,” Summer said.

Nash hesitated with his hand on the door. His expression was inscrutable. Was he hot again, or cold? It was impossible to tell. “No,” he said. “I prefer to know that you’re safe here.”

“You’re not going to do something stupid, are you?”

He took her hand. Summer was surprised when he brushed his lips over her knuckles. It sent electricity shooting straight between her legs—like he had kissed somewhere much more intimate. “I will return to you, Summer. I promise.”

Nash operated out of offices in a nearby town called Wildwood. It was somewhat larger than Hazel Cove, though not by much; Adamson Tower was the tallest building there, and it was only seventeen stories. Indeed, Adamson Tower was the tallest building in the entire world. There wasn’t a lot of competition.

He could have had one of his men bring a battery straight to his house, but curiosity had gotten the better of him. Nash needed to know who was fucking with him.

His valet met him on the street outside, and she looked shocked when he emerged from his car and tossed the keys to her. “Sir,” she said.

“Good morning,” he replied, shooting her the kind of look that made it clear questions were unwelcome.

Some of the surprise likely stemmed from the fact that he had arrived without his entourage—those damned leeches in expensive suits that wanted to curry his nonexistent favor—but he suspected that most of her surprise was because of something his “successor” had done.

What had the usurper told them? That he was taking a long leave of absence? Retiring, perhaps?

Someone was going to have Hell to pay for this ridiculousness.

He swept through the front doors of the tower.

Human engineers could never match the ingenuity of angelic architects, so he had designed the tower himself. The sweeping glass sculptures that formed the centerpiece of the foyer had been sketched by his hand four hundred years prior; the smooth stone beneath his feet had been quarried from land that he owned east of Wildwood. He had dictated that the builders should find the whitest, purest stone, so that it resembled the buildings back home. It wasn’t as good as using ethereal bone, but nothing mortal was an adequate replacement for what angels produced.

Conversations fell silent around him as he entered. The receptionist all but fell out of his chair behind the curved desk. All activity in the lobby died within moments.

Nash caught the elevator door before it could close, and three faces, colorless with shock, stared at him from the other side. He thought that they probably worked for him. If he had been more like Summer, he probably would have known their names and positions, too.

“Out,” he said, and they rushed under his arm to vacate the elevator.

When the doors opened on the seventeenth floor, Nash found nobody waiting at his personal receptionist’s desk. His office door stood ajar.

Nash shoved it open.

A woman stood behind his chair. She was the same height as Nash, though much slenderer; her curveless body was draped in an elegant gown of filmy, peach-covered material. The light shining through it showed every line of her ribs, her waist, her hips. Brown hair fell to her elbows in soft waves. Her skin was a dark shade of olive.

He knew that skin, that hair, those ribs. He knew them as well as he knew his own.

“Leliel,” Nash said.

She turned to face him. Like all angels, she moved like she had eight foot wings sprouting from her back, even when they were invisible.

“Nashriel,” she replied warmly. Leliel’s face was still arrestingly beautiful. The blue eyes typical of their kind were striking against her skin, and she had the kind of high cheekbones and strong jaw that would have suited a pharaoh.

After so many thousands of years, Nash had thought that seeing Leliel again wouldn’t fill him with the same bitter anger that he had felt the last time they spoke. Yet it returned immediately, undimmed by time, and he was tempted to wrap his hands around that slender, beautiful throat.

“You’re the one that took charge of Adamson Industries?” he asked. “You ordered that damn press conference?”

“Indeed.” Leliel lifted an eyebrow. “Adamson? Really?”

There was nothing else she could have said to drive him to fury faster than that.

He crossed his office in a flash and slammed Leliel to the window. It was triple-paned and reinforced; nothing short of a bomb could have broken it. But it cracked at the impact of her bouncing skull.

She shoved him away. “I didn’t come to fight you.”

“You can’t have thought I would greet you with a kiss and songs of joy,” Nash spat, reaching for her throat.

She deflected his hand with her forearm. “Stand down, Nashriel!” she snapped. Her energy crackled around them. The lights flickered, buzzed. The bulb on his desk lamp exploded in a shower of sparks. The rest went dark.

The glow of her wings filled the darkness left behind. Leliel had always been the most beautiful angel, with her red-gold feathers and impressive wingspan, and she had the force of energy to match it.

Nash hadn’t felt another archangel’s heavenly light in so long. He hadn’t even realized that he had missed it.

She smoothed her hair down with both hands and took a deep breath. Her wings vanished.

The lights flickered and turned back on.

“Let’s have a talk,” Leliel said, her voice forcibly serene. She pushed him lightly in the chest. The back of his legs hit the chair, and he sat.

“I’m surprised you’ve survived the war.”

Her expression turned pitying. “The war has been over for centuries,” Leliel said. “More than two thousand years.”

“So have you come to free me?” Nash asked.

Her laugh was as light as one of her feathers. “No, my love. I have not.”

“Two thousand years isn’t punishment enough?”

She touched the back of her head, and her fingers came away glistening with silver. “This isn’t a punishment, Nash,” she said, showing him the blood on her fingertips. “You’re still as dangerous as you’ve always been, and here you will stay as long as you present that danger.”

Nash’s hands gripped the arms of his chair. “You mean until you kill our Father.”

“He’s no father of mine,” she said, and he could tell that she was about to lose a grip on that serenity. She paced to the window and folded her hands behind her back again as she gazed at the street below. The wound on the back of her head was already closing again.

“So what are you doing, if you haven’t come to release me?” he asked. “Have you chosen to exile yourself now?”

Her eyes burned with blue fire as she bent down to rest her hand over his heart, and he stiffened. “I know that you’ve found a way out of the Haven,” she said softly. “I’ve felt the disturbances of doors opening and closing in recent years. Obviously, that hasn’t been your doing, or else you wouldn’t be here now. But I’ve brought friends to help me close the doors before you find them.”

Of course that was her plan. It had been far too much to hope that the woman he once loved would have forgiven him.

“So you’re dealing with balam and gibborim now. Have you truly fallen so far?” Nash asked.

“You have no clue how far the glory of angels has fallen since you left.” Her hand clenched into a fist, and she leaned her weight into him. “It won’t take long to resolve my business here. I wanted to see you one last time before saying goodbye for the rest of eternity as we know it.”

“You shouldn’t have wasted your time,” he said.

Her lips twitched. “Tell me, my dearest one—you’ve had a very long time to think on what you did. Are you sorry yet?”

He pushed her hand off of him. “I will never be sorry for choosing the right thing when others were too weak.”

“Perverse,” she murmured, straightening her back. “A leave of absence from Adamson Industries would do wonders for you, don’t you think? Your first vacation in millennia. Savor it, Nash, because once I am gone and these doors are permanently sealed again, you will never have another vacation like it.”

She glided to the elevator and tapped the button.

“I could kill you now,” Nash said in a low growl.

Leliel smiled. She knew as well as he did that he couldn’t hurt her. “I noticed that you’ve had a guest at your house. A young woman. A human. Tell me—what is she to you?”

“She’s an intern.”

“There’s no need to lie to me. You wouldn’t be the first angel to fall into fascination with a mortal.” The doors opened, and she stepped inside. He caught the door to stop her. “What, Nashriel? Do you want me to give you my blessings?”

“If you had the slightest sense of decency, you would let me go home.”

Leliel’s lips pursed. “And leave the girl behind? Perhaps you aren’t as fascinated as I suspected. Perhaps I should remove that distraction from your life.”

“If you touch her, I will kill you.” It burst out of him before he could think to shut his mouth.

“I believe you,” she said.

Nash stepped back. “Good.”

The doors slid shut.

eleven

Summer found Abram standing barefoot on the beach with the tide slowly sucking his feet into the sand. Abram’s gaze was fixed at the distant mountains on the other side of the black lake, but it looked like his thoughts were a million kilometers away. “Angels,” he said softly.

Summer sighed, leaned against his side, and wiggled her bare feet into the sand. “Yeah. Angels. And Gran’s been lying to us.”

“I know.”

“We don’t come from around here.”

“I know that, too,” he said. “I think I’ve known that for a while.”

The water was cold slopping over her feet. Her toes were already numb. “And if she’s lied about that, then what else do you think she’s keeping from us?”

“It doesn’t matter. If Gran’s lying, she has a reason. I trust her,” Abram said.

“But don’t you think she needs to trust us, too? We’re adults now. We can handle anything she throws at us.”

“If it’s bad enough that she thinks we shouldn’t know, then she’s probably right to keep it to herself.”

She used one of her feet to shovel a clump of sand into the water. “I wish I had your faith.”

Abram wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gave it a brief squeeze. Usually, a hug from her twin brother would have been more than enough to calm Summer, but it didn’t help at all this time.

Summer took a step back. She could just make out guards walking along a stretch of beach to the north, and more black bodies on the lawn behind her. She could sense their unease. “Nash didn’t want us to come down to the beach. We’re safer in the house. Come on.”

But he didn’t move. “I think I’m ready to show my painting to you,” Abram said. There was determination in his features, the set of his jaw. “I took it to the art department to show my instructors. We can go to the university together.”

The instant of excitement she felt at the idea of seeing his painting was immediately dashed like waves over the rocks. “Okay, what’s up? That painting is your baby. You wouldn’t try to use it to bribe me if there wasn’t something seriously wrong.”

He looked reluctant to speak, but she stared at him until he relented.

“It’s Nash.”

The mention of his name was enough to send shivers down Summer’s spine again. The way he had kissed her knuckles…

She shook her head to clear it. “Do you know something I don’t?”

Before he could respond, Summer felt a shift in the air and caught a whiff of burning plants. Nash’s smell. She turned to see the gates at the end of his road open to allow a sleek luxury car to enter.

Her stomach knotted. If her brother spoke, she didn’t hear him.

Nash was back.

“Summer,” Abram said with a hint of warning in his voice.

She waved him off. “I’ll talk to you about this later. Okay?”

Breaking into a jog, she managed to reach the top of the hill at the same time as Nash’s car. He emerged carrying a box under one arm.

Nash smelled strange, like artificial polymers, and also like burning hair—an unpleasant odor that made her nose itch. The box must have been the source of the metal and plastic scent. She had no idea what the rest meant.

“The battery?” Summer asked, breathless from her run to his car.

“The battery,” he said, setting it on the hood. He took her shoulders and stared deeply into her eyes, like he was trying to see through to the other side. “Are you okay?”

She found her hands creeping to his hips of their own volition. Her fingers traced the edge of his belt loops. “I’m fine. Nothing happened while you were gone. It was kind of boring, actually. What did you find at the tower?”

Instead of responding, he pulled her into his chest and rested his chin on top of her head. She could feel his heart beating underneath her hands.

The sudden affection surprised her, but not as much as the strength of smells that surrounded her. The stink of burning hair reminded her of the gibborim. And was that…blood?

She pressed her nose into his throat and took a deep breath. His stubble scraped against her lips. “You’re not hurt, are you?” she asked, sniffing down his neck to his collar.

“No,” he said, and she realized what she had been doing. She had practically buried her face in his chest hair. But he didn’t let her pull away when she stopped—his arms only tightened. “I’m not injured, but we should talk.” He spoke a little louder. “Take the box to my office.”

“Yes, sir.” Margaret slipped away before Summer had enough time to wonder how long the old woman had been watching them.

Nash started walking toward his gardens, and Summer hurried to keep up with him. There was no sign of the warmth that had been in his greeting now—his face was stony again, and he barely looked at her as they passed through the iron gates.

“Hold this,” he said, pulling a canister from behind a bush and placing it in her hands. It was a watering can, and a cute one at that. It had a big flower stamped on the side.

Summer couldn’t keep herself from grinning. “Is this yours?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Oh, no. No problem at all. I love flowers,” she said. Nash twisted the knob on a pipe jutting out of the earth and cold water poured forth. Summer filled the can. “You smell like blood.”

“I can’t imagine that I do. I came in contact with no mortals.” Once the can was brimming with lake water, Nash twisted the knob again to shut off the pipe.

“It’s angel blood,” Summer said. “I recognize the smell because I spent way too much time cleaning you up after the last attack. Was it another gibborim? Or more of those child things?”

He was silent as he led her down the path between trees, but she could see the storm brewing in his eyes. He was thinking hard, and not about anything pleasant. “Here,” Nash said, gesturing to a flowerbed that was mostly bare. It was sheltered by a tall apple tree and wouldn’t have received much of the recent rains. “Water this.”

Summer tipped the can. Sparkling water sprinkled over the soil, turning it a darker shade of brown. “I have to say, your gardens are beautiful. I’ve never seen flowers or trees like these. Your gardener must be incredibly talented.”

“I tend them myself.” His eyes skimmed over the plants that she praised with a look that could only be disappointment. “They’re nothing in comparison to the gardens I knew in my youth, but I do what I can.”

“Homesick?” she asked.

He turned his cool gaze on her, and Summer immediately regretted asking. “I suppose. This makes it a little easier.” He took the watering can, and his fingers brushed over hers. For a blissful instant, their hands were joined at the handle. “I discovered who’s attempting to usurp my position.”

“Is it someone in your company?”

“No,” he said. “It’s another angel.”

“How’s that possible?”

“It shouldn’t be. I’ve been the only angel here for…millions of years.” His voice cracked on the last word. Nash cleared his throat before speaking again. “Leliel brought the gibborim and balam with her.” He pinched a few dead leaves off the bush and let them fall to the earth.

“Why is she trying to hurt you?” Summer asked.

“That question is much more complicated than you realize.” He stood, leaving the watering can on the grass. The knees of his slacks were wet. He leaned his shoulder against the trunk of the apple tree and gazed up into the branches. “She can have the business. It’s meaningless. But she can’t have you.”

“Me? Why would she want me? Who is this Leliel, anyway?”

“Leliel was…” He sighed. “She was my wife.”

A leaden weight settled into Summer’s gut. It felt like she was sinking to the grass, melting into the earth, puddling away. All she could say was, “Oh.”

He had a wife. That shouldn’t have surprised her, should it? Nash had told her that he was thousands of years old—as old as existence itself. That meant he had a lot of history she didn’t know.

She swallowed hard. “Why would your…your wife… Why did she…?”

Nash stroked Summer’s shoulder. “Hate burns most fiercely in a heart once filled with love.”

“Do you love her?” Summer asked. It was a stupid question, but she couldn’t keep herself from asking it. Just the thought of it made her heart ache.

Nash’s head dropped back against the tree. He said nothing.

She tried to move away, but his hand shot out and seized her wrist. He pulled her toward him.Guess that answers that question. “I should probably see if I can start the computer up, now that we have a battery,” Summer said.

They stood together, chest to chest against the trunk of the tree, for a long, silent minute. All of this new information was too much to process—the fact that he had a wife, and she was out to hurt them; the entire concept of angels in the first place. Life had been much simpler when Summer thought that she and her Gran were the only weirdness in the world.

She wanted to ask Nash why he had been so desperate for her help, why he would have shaped his life around her, what the kiss on her hand had meant. But all of that seemed too intrusive. Instead, she asked, “Why do angels smell like fire?”

“We don’t,” Nash said. “The way mortals experience angels is spectacularly subjective and personal. We hold domain over the mind, influencing every neuron within your delicate skulls. You can’t trust your senses around me. In reality, I do not look, sound, or smell as you think I do.”

“You mean you don’t look like…” She trailed off when she realized that she was about to say something stupid. The only adjectives that had come to mind were hot, sexy, and really really hot and sexy.

His lips curved into a smile. “I appear subtly different to everyone. Hence why I don’t allow photographs of my physical form.”

“Your physical form?”

“There’s a lot to me that you can’t see,” Nash said.

Summer reached up to brush the hair out of his eyes. “I think I’m getting that.”

A twig cracked. Summer turned to see Abram walking past the garden wall, and she stepped away from Nash, opening her mouth to call to him. But the words died on her lips when the wind carried his scent to her.

He smelled like gunpowder.

Abram sped past the garden, trying to avoid his sister’s notice. It shouldn’t have been hard—she was all wrapped up in that angel, whispering like they shared some kind of secret and acting like there was nobody else in the world. They probably wouldn’t have noticed him if he walked past banging cymbals together.

Keeping the gun he had stolen from the staff shed tucked to his side, Abram mounted the hill to the Adamson house. There were guards nearby, but none of them tried to stop him. There was no way they could have known what he was up to.

Abram only stopped walking when he reached the forest behind the house, which was a little more secluded than the lawn. In the shadow of the manor, neither sun nor rain could reach him.

“I’m here,” he said softly.

A woman stepped from behind a tree. She wore a long gown that covered her from neck to toes and a beatific smile. Abram’s first thought when Leliel approached him at the Gresham cottage was that he would love to paint her, but even though they had met three times now, he still hadn’t gotten up the nerve to ask. It seemed a strange request to make of an angel.

“Well?” Leliel asked.

Abram glanced around before jamming the gun into the back of his belt. “I still don’t know. I don’t think Summer does, either.”

The angel’s mouth tipped down in a frown that was just as beautiful as her smiles. “I must fear the worst,” she murmured. “Nash doesn’t seek companionship. Not without an ulterior motive.”

“Are you sure?” Abram asked. “He seems awfully interested in her.”

Leliel dismissed the suggestion with a flick of her fingers. “Guile and deceit. I’ve told you of Nash’s nature. He would never sink to a mortal’s level.” She nibbled delicately on the fingernail of her first finger. “I’ll have to act quickly to protect all of you.”

“I can protect Summer from him.”

She laughed. The sound would have been pleasant if he hadn’t known she was mocking him. “When Nash shows his true face, you don’t stand a chance against him. Even with that pathetic little firearm. Where is your grandmother? Have you explained the situation to her?”

Abram hadn’t been able to work up the courage to talk to Gran, either. She had spent her entire time at the house talking with that old maid—what was her name, Margaret? His grandmother had given him a deep-seated fear of interrupting her. He didn’t think she would appreciate it, even if it was to warn her that Nash might be dangerous.

He felt a nudging sensation in his belly, and he took a step back to peer around the side of the house. Summer was walking up the hill. She must have seen him after all.

Leliel noticed what he was looking at. “I’ll have to take care of the doors before confronting Nash again. I could use assistance. Can you help me?”

She offered a hand to him.

Abram glanced down the hill again. It wouldn’t be long before his sister was close enough to smell the angel, and only a few seconds longer until Summer could see who he was talking to.

Summer hadn’t wanted his help lately. “Sure,” he said, “just tell me what to do.”

He took Leliel’s hand.

twelve

Summer connected the battery to the archaic computer and flipped the switch on the back. Fans whirred to life. A blue light shone within the case, and a white “UKA” logo flashed on the monitor.

It worked. Great.

So why wasn’t she excited?

Worry had lodged in her throat, like she had failed to swallow the rotten pit of an avocado, and she couldn’t shake the sense that something was wrong. Something even worse than scary angel-monsters and scarier ex-wives.

Summer had tried to catch up with Abram outside the garden earlier and never managed to find him. The guards said that they had seen him going for a walk, but nobody knew where. Nash said that he didn’t sense any other ethereal creatures in the area, so the chances that Abram had been hurt were low. Nothing to worry about.

Nothing aside from potentially being murdered by Nash’s ex-wife, anyway.

She tucked her feet underneath her on the chair and scooted closer to Nash’s desk. She kept glancing at her cell phone where it sat beside the keyboard, hoping that Abram would call, but it remained silent.

Summer distracted herself by clicking through the computer’s files as soon as the operating system loaded. The directory structure was surprisingly familiar. Although the hardware was antiquated, the software wasn’t all that different from what she used in school. It only took a few minutes to become comfortable with the navigation, and soon, she found herself digging into the code itself to look around.

There was little information stored on the computer itself, since most commands called back to a networked database. But an old copy of what the last user accessed had been archived on the computer’s memory. She found a few hundred thumbnails and a lot of plain text files, which referenced unfamiliar locations. Denver? Boulder?

Summer spent hours absorbing all of the information that the computer carried in its memory. She pored over every article until it felt like her brain couldn’t hold any more information, and then she leaned back in his chair and stared out the freshly-washed window. The black, stormy waters of Lake Ast roiled below.

How was it possible for these files to reference so many countries that Summer had never heard of? Italy. France. The United States of America. Canada. New Zealand. She tried to fit them together in her mind like pieces of a puzzle.

Where did Hazel Cove fall into that world? Which country were they in?

She dug deeper into the directories. In addition to text files, there were images attached, too. Summer clicked through to see them.

Most of the photographs were boring—some kind of visual inventory of equipment, apparently. But there were surveillance photos, too. It looked like the cameras were mounted high, and the pictures had been taken without the subjects knowing about it.

Summer went through them one by one. Even though the images were blurry, she could make out a few faces. A young man with white hair. A guy with a strong nose and broad shoulders. And there were wolves, too. Wolves that looked a lot like Summer did when she wore her second skin. A lot of those wolves were around humans, none of whom looked worried to be around such massive beasts.

And then Summer found a picture of a gray-haired old woman with twin braids and a cowboy hat, and she forgot how to breathe.

The door opened.

She looked up, expecting Nash, but it was Gran who stepped through. “Where have you been?” Summer asked, minimizing the window.

“Just been chatting with the maid. Nice lady. I like her. You got the computer working?”

Summer’s tongue was dry and heavy in her mouth. She nodded mutely.

Her grandma sat at a chair on the other side of the desk, and Summer brought up the last picture again. That was definitely Gran in the photo. She hadn’t aged a day since the picture was taken. And she was in the company of a young pregnant woman, maybe Summer’s age, with long blond hair and a huge stomach.

How did her grandma’s photo come to be on an archaic computer?

“What’s wrong?” Gran asked. She couldn’t see the monitor or the photos from her position on the other side of the desk. “You’re making faces like you ate a lemon.”

Summer took a breath to steady herself. “What do they look like? My parents.”

The speedy change in subjects seemed to surprise Gran, and she sat back in her chair. “Oh, well, they look a lot like you and Abram.”

That was the kind of answer she had always given in response to Summer’s requests for information about her family. What did her parents do for fun? Oh, a lot of the same things you and Abram do. Where did her parents come from? Oh, pretty much the same place you did. It was the most frustrating non-answer Summer could imagine getting.

“Was my mom blond?” Summer asked.

Surprise flitted across Gran’s face. “Oh,” she said, and then, “yeah, actually.” At Summer’s expectant look, she breathed out a long, low sigh. “Your mama looks a lot like Abram, in the face, but she has gold irises—that’s the wolf in her. Skinny legs. Nice smile. She’s about as white as I am and as blond as I used to be.”

Summer closed her eyes and tried to imagine Abram as a woman—a skinny woman—with long blond hair. It was kind of a hilarious mental image. It also matched the blond woman in the photo pretty well.

“You take more after your daddy in most ways,” Gran went on. “You’re tall, like he is, and his skin’s darker. He’s kind of a mean-looking guy. Very scary. But he’s good on the inside, just like you are on your outside.”

It was the first time that Summer had been able to form a clear mental image of what her parents looked like, where she had come from. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. “How did they meet?”

“They met because your mama—Rylie—was dating your daddy’s brother. The fact they got together was an accident of fate.” Gran sighed. “It’s not much of a fairytale, babe.”

Dating her father’s brother? Summer’s stomach flipped. She clicked to the next picture. There were a couple of men talking to one another, and they both kind of matched Gran’s description. Obviously brothers, even in such low-quality surveillance photos.

Was she related to them? It was too hard to tell.

“So I’m an accident,” Summer said.

“You’re a happy product of circumstance,” Gran said.

Summer couldn’t bring herself to speak anymore. She dropped her hands into her lap and stared at the monitor.

Gran circled the desk to look at the picture.

The office was dead with silence.

Summer’s lips moved wordlessly as she searched for the right questions to ask. When she finally managed to speak, her voice was tiny. “What are pictures of you doing on this old computer?” Summer asked. She swallowed hard. “And who are all of these people?”

“That’s… Well, that’s Levi and Bekah right there, and probably Pyper in the back. Hard to tell,” Gran said. Summer went to the previous picture. “Those are the witches—uh, James and Stephanie and Brianna. Barely knew any of them.” Another click. Gran’s fingers trembled over her own lips, almost like she had to pull the words from her own mouth. “And that’s Seth and Abel.” She sucked in a hard breath. Her forehead wrinkled. “God, it’s been years.”

“Who are these people?” Summer asked again.

Gran’s finger traced the figure on the left. “Abel’s your daddy.”

Summer couldn’t look at it anymore. She pushed back her chair and stood. “It’s not…this isn’t possible. This computer’s hundreds of years old.”

“Babe,” Gran said gently, touching her shoulder.

Summer pushed her off. “You’re immortal, but you’re not that old.”

“No, I’m not.”

“So what is going on here?”

Gran sighed. “It’s hard to explain.”

Wasn’t it always?

Summer needed air. She flung the office door open, rushed down the stairs, and kept going. She didn’t care that they were supposed to stick together for safety anymore. She needed to get away.

Nash knew something was wrong the instant that he returned to his office and found only Summer’s grandmother inside. His feeling of dread grew when she didn’t leave the moment that he entered. For all of their short hours together, both Abram and Gwyneth Gresham had been obviously avoiding his company—not too strange, considering the intimidating effect angels had on mortals. Most mortals, anyway, if one excluded the occasional beautiful, irrepressible shapeshifter.

“Where is she?” Nash asked.

“Summer’s gone,” Gwyneth said without lifting her eyes from the computer monitor. “Abram too, near as I can tell.”

Nash’s fists clenched at his side. “Where?” he asked, his voice dropping into a dangerous growl.

She only shook her head and kept staring at the computer that Summer had assembled. He moved over her shoulder to see what was so fascinating.

It was a photo of Gwyneth Gresham herself.

“What in God’s name is this?” Nash asked, wrenching her around to face him. “Are you a spy? Tell me how you came to be here!” There was a command in his voice that could not be denied. Not by any sane mortal.

“I don’t respond to orders, boy.”

He gathered himself to his full height. Ethereal energy crackled in his fingertips. “Boy? Have you any clue who you’re speaking to? Hold your tongue or I’ll cut your—”

A shock of pain across his cheek silenced him instantly, but it took several heartbeats for him to realize what had happened.

Gwyneth Gresham had slapped him.

The instant urge to hit her back was almost overwhelming, especially when she jammed her finger in his sternum.

“You don’t threaten me,” Gwyneth said. He tried to step back, but she grabbed his chin in a crushing grip and jerked his face down to look at her. “I once shot a man who held my life in his hands just because he threatened my family, and I’d do the same to any other. I couldn’t care less if you’re an angel or Lucifer himself. You watch your mouth and show some respect.”

Nash didn’t have a mother, but if he had, he imagined that a scolding from her would have been very much like being in Gwyneth Gresham’s sights.

He pushed her arm away, but she didn’t back down.

“For the record,” she said, a little calmer than before. “I respond perfectly fine to please and thank you.”

Was this mortal joking? Please and thank you?

The ethereal energy built around him. The computer monitor fuzzed, the lights dimmed, and something distant gave an electrical pop. If he didn’t calm himself, he was going to knock out the power in his entire house.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The energy went with it, and the lights came back on.

“Explain how your current appearance is identical to these photos,” he said. And then, with no small effort, he added, “Please.”

“I’m a zombie. Necromancy. You know how it is.” She shrugged. “The other side’s gotten ugly. There are people in the government trying to regulate things like us. They wanted to take babies away from preternatural parents. Split families. Register, divide, recruit. So we planned to come here in order to stay together.”

“The other side,” Nash echoed.

“Earth,” she said. “You think I don’t know where I came from? I know this world is a Haven.”

In truth, he had assumed that Summer’s family must have been natives to the area, and as clueless as she was about the other side. An idea blossomed inside him—a tiny, hopeful spark that was in danger of consuming him. “That doesn’t explain why you’re in the photo,” he said.

Gwyneth gestured to the monitor. “This computer belongs to a group called the Union. They must have been spying on us as we planned to move over.”

“So you came here deliberately,” he said. “Which means that you know how you got here.”

“Sure, I do,” she said. “The real question is, how did you get here?”

“I chose the wrong side in a war. I was betrayed and exiled by my kind.”

“So you’re a victim.” But the old lady wasn’t stupid. She tilted her head to the side to study him. “Why do you want Summer, Nash? She told me how you talked her into the internship. The dresses, the scholarship. You wouldn’t have done that for just anyone.”

“I hoped that she could tell me where the doors to Earth are located. Obviously, if she had come through, she must know where to go back,” he said. “But I was wrong. She knows nothing.”

“That’s because she was only a baby when I brought her over.” Gwyneth sighed. “I think I should show you something.”

thirteen

Following Gwyneth Gresham’s directions, Nash drove out to the hills beyond Hazel Cove, beyond MU, beyond the forest. She was quiet for the entire drive, as though distracted by the deepest recesses of her thoughts.

When the road ended, she climbed out of the car just as quietly, and he followed her into the hills.

Nash didn’t recognize the area. He hadn’t bothered exploring since he was first locked away, and he doubted he had so much as flown over those hills in centuries. So he was surprised when she pushed aside a cluster of thorny bushes to reveal a steep tunnel behind it.

“What have you found, Gwyneth?” he asked.

She gestured at the opening in the hill. “See for yourself.”

It was a steep climb down the tunnel, and a dark cave waited at the end. Nash scanned the empty chamber. It was dark, dusty, dry. White chalk was smudged on the left-hand wall. The stones at the back were marked with ancient petroglyphs.

It was an interdimensional door.

He crossed the cave in three long strides and pressed his palms to the wall.

Nash still remembered being exiled like it had happened just days earlier. During his last argument with Leliel, they had been standing beside a door just like this—though it had been on the Earth side, not the Haven side. He had woken up in the forest, naked and alone, so he had never witnessed an intact door in the Haven.

But it was here. It was whole.

“Can you open it?” Gwyn asked from behind him.

He ran his hands over the smooth surface. “Is this how you entered?”

“Yeah. More than twenty years ago, carrying two tiny babies in my arms.”

Nash spread his palm over one of the largest marks. “Close your eyes,” he warned before releasing his ethereal energy into the wall. Gray light flooded the entire cavern—but the petroglyphs didn’t respond.

“What was that?” Gwyneth asked, squinting against the sudden darkness.

“I was knocking, but there was no answer,” Nash said. He slammed his fist into the wall. Stone cracked, and his knuckles ached with the force of it. “Damn it all!”

Gwyneth frowned at the petroglyphs. “No answer? What does that mean?”

He took a few deep breaths to calm himself before speaking. “The other side must be damaged. But you may still be capable of opening the door.”

“What are you talking about?”

“These are one-way gates, intended to contain humans to their native dimensions,” Nash said. “A human from the other side should be able to operate it.”

“But we originally opened it from the other side,” Gwyn said.

“Did you?” Nash asked, lifting an eyebrow. “What mechanism opened it?”

“Computers. Like the ones in your office.”

He scowled and paced, arms folded tight across his chest. “Meddling. Tampering. Perhaps those idiot humans have broken the door entirely.” He gestured. “Try it anyway. Touch the petroglyphs.”

“I’ve tried before. Nothing happens.”

He bore down on her, letting her feel the full weight of his intimidating gaze. “Try.”

Gwyn didn’t look impressed to have him looming over her, but she touched a hand to the wall anyway. As she had said, nothing happened.

The disappointment was immediate, crushing, and final.

The door was broken.

Nash sank to one knee, bowing his head in a moment of silent prayer. “I am dead, you know,” she said from above him. “Might be the problem.”

“That shouldn’t matter,” he said, struggling to pull his composure around him like a cloak. “If anything, the door should respond more readily to the native magic keeping you animated.”

“So nothing’s passing either way, is it?”

“Not through this door.” He was tempted to punch the wall again, but instead, he channeled his frustration into pacing the chamber. “But Leliel didn’t bring herself to the Haven through force of will, and she would not have allowed herself to be confined even if she had. See this?” He jabbed a finger at a symbol near the top of the arch. “This says ‘three’.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that this is the third entrance to the Haven,” Nash said. “Indicating that there are at least two more. The other marks indicate where to look.” He traced his fingers over the petroglyphs. Even though he couldn’t readily read the arcane ethereal language, his fingertips recognized it, like some kind of strange muscle memory.

“What else does it say?”

“The glyphs describe a map,” Nash said, eyes unfocused as his fingers continued to read. “A sphere five hundred thousand cubits in circumference—that would be the Haven. A single land mass. A body of water…most likely the lake beside which I built my home…”

“Why would they describe a map? Why not just draw one?” Gwyn asked.

“An illustration can be interpreted by anyone with eyes. A description can only be interpreted by someone who understands the language. This isn’t meant to be read by mortals.”

Nash fell silent and focused on reading for a few more minutes.

He had already known about the first gate—it lay underneath Wildwood, and it had been destroyed before he even arrived, most likely as a casualty of the war. But the description for the second one was most interesting. It was underneath Lake Ast. “Fascinating,” he murmured, mind spinning with ideas.

But how would Leliel and her “friends” have passed through the second door? They would have emerged from the lake beside his house, and his security cameras would have caught that.

The petroglyphs didn’t describe any more doors. It had to be the lake.

“Let’s speak outside,” he said. He couldn’t stand to be in the cave for a moment longer.

The forest looked huge from his perspective on top of the hill, but he had flown around the entire world too many times to fall for that. The open sky was no more than an illusion of freedom.

He was so close.

Nash took Gwyneth’s hand to help her climb out of the tunnel. Her skin was warm and dry, but something about her didn’t feel quite human. “When I reach the remaining door, I will take Summer and Abram back to their family,” he said, and he was surprised how fiercely he meant it.

“But I don’t want to take them back, angel man. I want to find that other door and bring my family over here.”

He scoffed. “To this prison?”

“To this sanctuary,” Gwyn corrected gently. “You’ve been locked away a long time, so maybe you don’t remember what it was like on the other side, but…it’s nothing like this place. We’re in a place that should be Heaven, Nash. The only thing that makes it Hell is being away from those we love. As long as we’re together, anywhere can be home.”

“Will you think that when you’ve spent millennia of your eternal life in this bubble?”

“So long as I’ve got my family,” Gwyn said. “Tell me what we’ve got to do to send you back.”

“Well, I don’t believe that Leliel entered our world through the second door,” Nash said. “There is one more possibility—the fissure.”

“What’s that?”

He locked his fingers together like the coupler between train cars. “There are physical junctures at which the universes touch, and if you know what to look for, you can walk through it. I once searched for this fissure, but it doesn’t respond to me—it requires a mortal from the other world.”

“You want me to go find it for you,” Gwyneth said. “That’s an awfully big order. I don’t even know where to start looking.”

“Ah, but we do.” He pointed at the cave they had just exited. “The third door.” He pointed to the lake, and then in the direction of Wildwood. “The second, the first. They form a triangle. The fissure will most likely be at the center, in the forest north of Marut University.”

“The forest is awfully big.”

“But you know it better than anyone else. In any case, you’ll know the fissure when you see it. You’ll only need to get within perhaps a thousand meters of it to hear the humming.”

“What will you be doing while I’m off looking for ‘visual artifacts’?” she asked.

“I will find the second door, just to be certain,” Nash said, capturing one of her hands in both of his. “I must ask you to do this for me. If Leliel’s guarding it, then I dare not send Summer there. It’s too dangerous. But you…”

“Do you love Summer?” Gwyneth asked.

He lifted an eyebrow. “Is that relevant?”

“Maybe.”

Nash dropped her hand.

Did he love Summer? Love was a mortal thing. It incited fights, created new life, caused pain and splendor. If someone had asked him if he loved Leliel in the days they were married, he most likely would have denied it. Angels were above such silly emotions.

He had no definite answer for Gwyneth, but he could see that it mattered to her—it mattered very much.

“I am fascinated with her,” he said finally. “She fills the hollow spaces in my mind.”

Gwyn grinned. “I’ll see if I can find this ‘fissure’ thing for you, so long as you promise to keep an eye out for Summer while I’m gone. Whatever’s going on in your head, I certainly love her, like she’s my own daughter. I don’t want none of them nasty things eating her.”

“I’ll care for her until your return,” Nash said. “I’ll lay my life at her feet if I must.”

She snorted. “Don’t be getting all dramatic now. Let’s go find the way out of this world, huh?”

Something about Nash’s gardens had a tranquilizing effect on Summer’s mood. She stretched out on the damp soil underneath an apple tree, closed her eyes, and let the misty drizzle of rain sprinkle on her skin. It washed away all of her stress.

But the peace of the garden did nothing to solve Summer’s problems. There was still no sign of Abram. Gran was keeping secrets from her. And her parents didn’t even love each other.

The bushes rustled. Someone sat beside her.

“Where’s Gran?” Summer asked, rolling onto her side to look at Nash. He had a black umbrella propped on one shoulder again.

“She’s agreed to run an errand.” At her look, he amended that to, “Actually, she’s doing a favor for me.”

“Must be a heck of a favor to convince Gran to do it for you.”

His smile did funny things to her stomach. “You have no clue. She’s an incredible woman. You’re blessed to have her.”

“That’s the truth,” Summer said, sitting up. She wiped clumps of damp dirt off of the back of her arms.

“I must say, I enjoy your grandmother’s company. You have a lot in common. A certain fire.” Nash’s hand brushed over her back, wiping off more dirt. Even that casual gesture made her body ache. “She also possesses great humility. I believe she is truly happier living in that forest hovel than in the grandeur of my manor, and I suspect you’re much the same.”

Her mouth suddenly felt dry. His gaze dropped to her lips when her tongue darted out to wet them.

“So why did you want that scholarship in cash?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“That was one of the terms of your internship that you insisted upon,” Nash said. “A cup of coffee, and fifty thousand dollars in cash. Very uncharacteristic of Gwyneth Gresham’s granddaughter.”

She had completely forgotten about that stipulation. She had been so busy with the attacks and the mystery that the computers presented that money seemed utterly unimportant. “I don’t know.”

His eyes sharpened. “Don’t lie to me. Why do you want the money, Summer? What do you plan to buy?”

She swallowed hard. She couldn’t lie when he was looking at her like that. “A bus ticket.”

His surprise quickly turned to anger. “You want to leave,” he said in a low growl, his hand closing over her hip. His fingers dug into her side.

“I want to explore. I’ve never been beyond the forest outside my cottage, or Hazel Cove, or Lake Ast. Your house is the furthest south I’ve ever seen. Gran said…well, she always told us that our parents were traveling. Exploring the world, doing good deeds, saving people. I just thought…”

“You hoped to travel so that you could find them.”

It sounded a lot stupider to say it aloud than when she had originally thought it. Summer blushed, but she lifted her chin high, stubborn and defiant. “Yeah. I want to travel around and find them. Is that so crazy?”

“There are no other cities,” Nash said.

“What are you talking about? I saw names on the computer. Denver, Chicago—”

“They’re not here,” he interrupted. “Gwyneth may want to keep you sheltered in the safety of your ignorance, but I am not so cruel. I’m not the only one imprisoned in this puny world. You are, too.”

Imprisoned? Summer gave a shaky laugh. “I don’t think—”

“How clearly can I say this? You’re the only werewolf in the world because the world you know isn’t real. This is a construct built by angels.” He waved his hand at the forest, the sky, the truck inching down the beach. “There is no world beyond Hazel Cove.”

Was this what going crazy felt like? If the world wasn’t real, then what about everything she had done in her life? Exploring the forests, learning about art and science and history, her education at the university.

“But if the world’s so small, then where does out-of-season produce come from?” Summer asked. “Or—or the designer imports the Tri Delts wear? Or—”

“You’re trying to force logical rules on a place that is magical,” Nash said, stepping close enough that she could shelter under his umbrella again. “There is a need for food to sustain the populace. Food appears. Fashion changes on Earth, and this place eventually follows.”

“So why doesn’t anyone talk about it?” she demanded. “I’ve been in college for two years and nobody has mentioned any such thing.”

“This place bewitches you,” Nash said. “This is a Haven—a place of peace. The very air has a soporific effect on mortals, particularly those born here.”

She pressed a hand to her forehead. It felt like her brain was going to explode out of her temples. “I have travel catalogs,” she whispered.

“And you’ve seen pictures of rainforests, deserts, oceans, frozen tundra.” His cold exterior had melted away to something resembling sympathy. “All constructs, Summer. It’s Leliel’s magic, Leliel’s rules. She built this place a very long time ago.”

And that was what Gran had been lying about for so long. Wasn’t it? Her parents weren’t just gone. They were in another world—a place where other shapeshifters, immortals, and angels were common.

It was beyond absurd. Totally ridiculous.

But there was only one way to find out if it was true.

“I’m leaving,” Summer said. “And you can’t stop me.”

“I wouldn’t even try,” Nash said.

Summer had been certain that she would find Abram at the cottage when she got back, but all she found waiting for her was the faint smell of balam and a very hungry cat. Only Sir Lumpy attacked when she stepped inside. There was no sight of the balam, so they must have only been snooping. Well, let them snoop—in her current mood, Summer was pretty sure she could take a dozen of them at once.

Sir Lumpy yowled at her and wrapped around her legs, almost tripping her on the way to his food bowl.

“You’re real,” she said, stroking him as he chowed down on pureed salmon.

She read the label on the can. Processed in Wildwood. But that didn’t mean anything—all of the food they ate was locally grown and processed.

Summer sat down at her computer and ran a few searches. Vacation websites claimed that they had cruises to far-flung places. There were blogs talking about world events, too—fashion, politics, scientific discoveries. That couldn’t all be a magical fabrication created by Leliel. It couldn’t be.

Sir Lumpy finished eating and curled around her neck, tickling her cheek with his tail. She stroked the paw that rested over her collarbone. “Either way, someone is lying to me,” she told him as he nuzzled her ear. His wet purrs were like a jackhammer.

Summer had been fantasizing about leaving ever since the day she started college, yet she had never tried to explore beyond the boundaries that Gran had set for her as a child.

The river to the east. The hills to the north. The town to the south. The gully to the west. That was Summer’s hunting ground, her territory, her home. She had only ever dreamed of what lay beyond.

Even though the woods were large enough for a normal person to get lost inside, claustrophobia crept up her spine and gripped her heart. Every article she had read about the outside world on the Internet suddenly seemed flimsy, like poorly-constructed fiction.

Summer was trapped. She had been trapped all along, and never realized it.

This place bewitches you, Nash had said.

That unsettled her in so many ways, not least of all because of the truth that rang out in his voice.

Had she been content to stay within her territory because she was really happy there…or was it because she had fallen under the spell of this “Haven”?

Carefully, she dislodged Sir Lumpy and set him on her bed. He glared at her.

“I need to know,” Summer said, rubbing the bald spots over his eyes. He gave a short, grudging purr. “I’ll come back for you.”

He jumped to the floor and disappeared under her bed.

Summer stripped naked and stood in her doorway, poised on the edge of a precipice. The familiar trees looked like the walls of a prison instead of open arms. It was a challenge.

She swallowed her fear.

“I need to know,” she said again, more firmly this time.

Summer stepped into her second skin, and she ran.

fourteen

Night fell quickly in the forest. The trees were dense enough in some places that she had to backtrack to find her way around them, and it became dark for hours before the sun disappeared completely.

At first, she tracked time by the passage of the archer constellation through the gaps in the trees, just as she always did. But eventually, the branches grew too thick for that, too, and all she could do was run.

She reached the ravine where she had found the bear with Abram and raced along the edge. It was a deep gash in the earth that only grew deeper as she moved away from the territory she recognized. There was no way across but through.

Summer jumped carefully down the rocks, and she kept alert for the scent of wildlife as she lapped at a trickle of water dribbling into the gorge. The animals around her cottage knew better than to mess with her, but this was unfamiliar territory. She knew nothing here.

Climbing out of the other side was much harder, and by the time she hit the hills, night turned into day.

She ran and ran.

The sun moved across the sky. Morning, noon, evening. Clouds gathered. Rain began to fall again. The hills were endless.

She found Wildwood—a bigger city than Hazel Cove, and totally foreign to her. She could barely make out its skyline through the rain, but there was one tower that stood above the others. She had seen pictures of Adamson Tower on his website. The tower was real. Wildwood was real.

Summer ran again with new energy.

When the second night arrived, Summer stopped in the mountains for a nap. It was brief and restless, no more than an hour, and tormented by nightmares. As soon as she woke up, she was running again, cutting through a valley and splashing along a river.

The slopes were steep going down the other side of the mountains. There was more forest waiting for her when she reached the foothills. Unfamiliar trees. Summer had to be getting somewhere.

But when she stumbled out of the forest into civilization again, she was standing near The Cracked Teacup—the coffee shop in Hazel Cove.

Summer froze in the shadows of the alley, caught between forest and town.

No way.

People stood outside the shop to talk about their classes at MU. She even spotted Yolanda, the teacher’s assistant.

How was it possible? Had she gotten turned around?

She must have gone the wrong way.

Summer whirled and ran back into the trees before someone spotted her.

She didn’t take any shortcuts through the mountains this time. She climbed the steepest trails she could find, and when those vanished, she scrambled up the cliffs.

The rocks crumbled beneath her paws, slipping and sliding and holding her back. But she dug her claws in. She wouldn’t stop until she reached the top.

And then Summer hit the highest peak.

Her lungs heaved for breath as she studied the world around her. Wildwood was on one side, a distant line of sparkling buildings. Hazel Cove was on the other, nestled against the side of Lake Ast’s shining waters. Everything was bathed in warm, golden light from the setting sun. There was curve to the ground—almost as though her mountain range was nothing more than a ridge on a small sphere.

The exhaustion of running for two days caught up with her, and Summer collapsed.

“Do you have your answers?”

Nash stood nearby, arms folded and features composed. He wore a charcoal gray suit without a jacket. His hair fluttered in the wind.

Summer was tempted to remain in her wolf skin. She didn’t have to talk to him as long as she didn’t have lips. But her emotions were too big and too human for her to remain a beast, and her skin rippled as she changed.

When her muzzle vanished into her face and her hair grew back, there were tears on her cheeks. Summer couldn’t even find the energy to be humiliated by her nudity.

“Gran never told me,” she said.

“That’s because she wanted you to be happy.” Nash offered a bundle of clothes to her. It was a tank top the color of fresh spring grass, denim shorts, and even a pair of underwear. “Margaret sends her regards.”

Summer gave a weak smile and pulled the shirt over her head. She didn’t look at Nash as she stepped into the panties, but she could feel him watching her. His gaze was so hot that she thought it might burn permanent scars onto her skin. “What about the sun? The stars?” she asked.

“They are illusions meant to comfort the mortals that dwell here,” Nash said. “I can show you.”

He took a step toward Summer, but she held her hands up to stop him. “Don’t touch me. How can you expect me to be okay with this? You’re saying that everything I’ve always known is a lie! This is supposed to be my home.”

But the words fell flat. He was right. It wasn’t a home—it was a prison.

A tear streaked down her cheek. “I can’t escape this forest, can I? I will never escape this forest.”

Nash finally wrapped his arms around her, and she sank into his embrace, shutting her eyes to savor the warmth of his body. Even his comforting gestures stirred a reaction deep within her, as if his hands had strayed much lower than her back.

“You will escape,” he said.

“But I ran all day, Nash. It just loops back around.”

“There is still a place beyond this world. We only have to find the way there.” He tipped her head back with a knuckle under her chin. His face blurred in her teary vision. “Would you like to see more?”

Summer could only nod.

Nash removed his shirt. The fading sunlight lit the ridges and valleys of his muscles with a warm glow, and she had the mental image of that broad chest pressed against hers, her fingers digging into his arms. Even when it felt like her life was over, Nash made her blood burn.

He rolled his shoulders out and breathed a sigh. The wings didn’t seem to appear so much as blossom, like flower petals opening to the sun. The tips appeared over his shoulder blades and stretched wider and wider. Fully extended, his wings dwarfed them both, and the light was more brilliant than the sun.

She had seen dozens of hawks in her life and been awed by their grace. Shirtless and winged, Nash was far more impressive. His pectorals were covered in a fine brush of brown hair, almost like down.

“Are they…real?” Summer asked, wanting to touch the feathers, but too afraid to ask.

“They are indeed part of my physical form, if that’s what you’re asking.”

With a flex of the muscles in his chest, the light dimmed until she could see real feathers. Some were as big as her forearm, and the smallest were the size of her thumb. Some were white shot through with gray, but where they grew dense near his shoulders, they turned a darker shade of gold. She walked around him so that she could see where they attached to his back. They were definitely as much of a part of his body as one of his arms.

She reached out to place a hand between his shoulder blades. Summer wanted to bury her face in his back and breathe his musky, masculine scent. But she forced herself to circle around him again.

“Where do they go when they’re hiding?” Summer asked.

“They’re always there,” Nash said.

“But you can wear shirts.”

He smirked. “They hide well.” He pulled her against his chest, and she melted into him, locking her hands at the back of his neck.

“I think you have a sense of humor, Nash,” Summer said. “A very well-hidden one.”

He dipped his head and his lips were just centimeters away from hers. His breath smelled like s’mores and campfires, like chocolate rolling down her throat. “If you tell anyone, you’re fired. Now hold tight.”

Nash’s wings pumped, and he lifted them both into the sky.

A tiny shriek escaped her before she caught herself. She was a wolf, a beast of the earth, and it felt wrong to watch the ground falling away. Her every instinct cried out for her to get back to the safety of the forest.

Her arms tightened around him, fingers digging into his shoulders. The muscles tensed and released as his wings moved. “It’s okay,” he murmured into her ear. “I won’t drop you.”

Summer couldn’t look. She buried her face in his neck, expecting to fall at any moment.

But the fall never came.

She felt weightless, as though drifting in the shallows of Lake Ast. Water sprinkled against her skin in gusts, cool and pleasant. And Nash’s arms remained secure around her body. After a few minutes of hiding her face without anything happening, Summer peeked.

Hazel Cove was far below them, and the clouds just above. Nash held her vertically, their legs tangled together, and it seemed to take no effort to remain aloft. His knee slipped between her thighs. The way his slacks rubbed against her bare skin almost made her forget that they were flying.

“More magic?” she asked, forehead pressed against his cheek.

“A unique kind of physics,” he said. “I won’t let you fall.”

He folded his wings behind him, and they drifted toward the lake, slowly at first. Their speed increased as the waters grew in her vision. All of the breath rushed out of her lungs as they plummeted.

At the last moment, Nash snapped his wings wide, catching the air and stopping their descent. They skimmed just a few feet above the surface of the lake, and Summer’s gasp turned to a giggle as a cresting wave splashed her bare legs.

They soared over the lake, looped around the beach, and climbed again.

Summer did trust that he wouldn’t drop her. There was no fear in her. No fear of being seen, no fear of injury, no fear of death. Only pure joy. It bubbled out of her chest in a laugh.

She closed her eyes and faced the wind as they flew.

It was like being free.

“It gets better,” Nash said.

They rushed toward the clouds.

She knew what would come once they reached too high of an elevation: the atmosphere would thin, the air would grow cold, and the curve of the earth would become more pronounced beneath them. She had learned these things in her science classes, and knew it had to be true.

Yet as they rose, the air grew thicker, warmer, denser, like slipping into a bath. Moist wind splashed over her cheeks as they entered the haze of clouds.

They erupted into clear night on the other side.

The stars were clustered above them like shimmering gems, and as Nash lifted them higher, she was shocked to see that the stars were almost within reach. They glowed with internal light as they blanketed the sky. Their diamond shimmer was cyan, navy, pink—a vibrating rainbow.

Part of her wanted to tell Nash to stop. Take her back down and let her keep believing that the world was real. But she couldn’t find the strength to speak.

Another pump of his wings, and they were among the stars.

Each one was smaller than her fist, almost like the colorful river rocks she had found in the brook near her cottage. The nearest of them seemed to sing in a low hum.

Nash’s arms relaxed around her, and she turned in his grip so that her back was to his chest. His hips pressed against her. Normally, her brain would have prioritized that sensation above everything else, but she had found one thing even more distracting than his body. “This isn’t possible,” she whispered.

“No?” he asked as they drifted closer.

Summer tapped a finger against a star. It chimed softly, and waves of light spilled through the air like ripples on a pond. It stroked over her hand, her arm, and dissipated in smoky lines.

She tapped another, and another. The second made a sharp sound that almost hurt to hear. The third was deep and melancholy. And then they floated toward a cluster, and she realized that it was the archer that she always used to track the time as a wolf.

Summer ran her fingers over each star. The music that spilled forth vibrated up her fingertips, into her shoulders, knotted in her heart. The tones were in perfect harmony.

“It’s so beautiful,” she whispered.

Nash’s arms tightened around her as he buried his face in her hair. She could feel the warmth of his breath as he smelled her. “Everything angels craft is beautiful, in a way. But even though these look like stars from a distance, they are just another part of the bars that contain Leliel’s prison. We can go no further than this.”

She dropped her hand. “Where’s the sun?”

“It hides at night,” Nash said. “Magic.”

“Magic,” Summer repeated.

She didn’t want to play with the stars anymore. Not when Nash sounded so sad. She turned and wrapped her arms around his neck again.

They swayed gently in the darkness for several long minutes, bathed in the soft hum of the stars and the warmth of the air.

And then they began to fall slowly, so slowly, and sank into the clouds.

Everything felt different when Summer and Nash landed on the mountain again. The world was tiny and insignificant. Hazel Cove was nothing more than dots of light in the darkness. The surrounding forest wasn’t her home—it was no more than a dream.

But for now, it wasn’t a dream she was willing to leave.

She spilled to the grass, unable to stand. The view from the mountain was amazing, but she didn’t care about the valley spreading beneath her, the swaying trees, the silver river snaking through the foothills, or even the clouds above and the stars that peered through. Summer only had eyes for Nash.

He rested on his elbow beside her, and she traced the line of his rippling arms up to his shoulders, his throat, his square jaw, the dimpled chin. Summer was convinced that there was no way she would ever get used to Nash’s beauty. Even the five o’clock shadow on his cheekbones and the tiny scar on his forehead only seemed to exist to accentuate his perfection.

“Am I dreaming?” she whispered.

“Can you feel this?” One of his fingers stroked between two of hers, drawing a seductive pattern from fingertip to fingertip. “And this?” He brushed his lips over the pulse point on the inside of her wrist.

She couldn’t nod this time, so she responded by reaching back to tangle her hand in his hair. His hand trailed down her elbow to her side. Nash stroked her from shoulder blade to hip, detouring with a swirl over every rib, and letting a finger dip briefly into her navel before it finally stopped at the hem of her shorts.

“Could you feel that? Was that real, or a dream?” Nash murmured.

Summer used her grip on his hair to pull him down. “I don’t know what’s real anymore. Everything I’ve known is a lie.”

“Not everything…” His warm breaths puffed over the juncture of her shoulder and neck. Summer’s eyes fell closed. “I know dreams, Summer. I’ve lived for such a very long time, but it’s as though I walked through a dark dream. But now…I’m awake.” He kissed the inside of her wrist again. His lips tickled against the soft skin. “You have woken me.”

“But I’m nothing special,” Summer said.

His eyes flashed. “You will never say that again. Understand?”

She bit her bottom lip and nodded.

“It should not be so shocking for us to go to the other side,” he went on, laying a soft kiss on her shoulder. “Though it has been twenty years since you and your brother came to this Haven, time flows differently on Earth. Only a week has passed as far as your parents are concerned. It will be the same world your grandmother left behind.”

“You mean, they’re still young,” Summer said.

“Indeed. Furthermore, this Haven was born of Earth, and they are closely tied in many ways. The culture and technology bleed over. When we explore Earth, I suspect you will be pleasantly surprised to find it is very similar to the town in which you grew up.”

“When we explore Earth?”

“Of course, you will come with me.” His gaze heated as he traced the line of her jaw with his thumb. “There is an entire world for us to discover. Vast cities and wildernesses. An ocean that you cannot imagine. And perhaps together we can chase the moon.” A flash of doubt crossed his features, but only a flash. “If you would want to come with me.”

“You’re not going to threaten to fire me if I don’t go?” she asked, her hand creeping to the back of his neck.

“Not this time. I want to have you, Summer, but only if you wish to have me, too.”

Did he have any clue how hard it was to breathe when he talked like that? Her heart beat like a trapped animal. The blood coursing through her veins was hot. And she felt like she was falling into the expanse of his eyes, vast and eternal.

Did she want to have him? It felt silly that he even had to ask.

“Of course,” she said, pulling him to her.

Summer had only kissed a couple of guys before, aside from Sir Lumpy’s persistent attempts to love on her face, and the experiences hadn’t been remarkable.

This kiss left all others in the dust.

Lips and tongue tangled, drawing Summer’s breath away. She clung to him, struggling to close whatever minute gaps were left between their bodies. He was cool in comparison, and far from frantic. Like he had all the time in the world.

When they finally broke away, Summer had to struggle to remember to breathe on her own. His face filled her vision. She could see herself reflected in his eyes, and she thought that there was nowhere else she would rather be.

Summer could no longer resist the allure of his wings. She ran her fingers through his feathers, savoring the way that the soft tufts felt against her skin. They were thicker toward his back, but softer, too, almost more like fur. Her fingers found their way to the outer edges of his wing, where the feathers were longer and the ribs were firm.

“They’re amazing,” she whispered.

The wings circled around her like a veil, walling them off from the rest of the world until there was nothing but their bodies and the space between them.

He stroked her body as he kissed her again, tongues warring gently with one another. His hand slipped down her midriff. It tickled her abs, and she had to pull away to giggle. She couldn’t help it.

Amusement sparked in Nash’s eyes. “Ticklish?” he asked.

“No.” It was a lie, of course, but Summer had a brother, and she knew better than to admit such a vulnerability. But his fingers only skimmed higher, trailing to the side of her breast, and that tickled, too. She pulled her arm to her side. “Hey!”

“I like it when you writhe,” he said, lips dropping to her jaw. He nibbled gently at the soft skin of her neck. The hard edge of teeth made her head swim. His hand pushed the hem of her shirt over her breast, exposing her to the cool night air.

“There are better ways to do that,” Summer said.

“Yes,” Nash said, “there are.” And then he sucked her nipple into his mouth, hot and wet, and she felt him gently bite the flesh.

His cool fingers slipped underneath her shorts, skimming the soft, smooth skin below her belly button. He was careful and slow, and Summer hated it. She grabbed his wrist and pushed him lower. His hand slipped between her legs.

Nash’s index finger drew patterns on the outside of her panties, drawing moans from Summer’s throat. Her hand seized against the back of his head. “Better ways indeed,” he said. That smirk was all devil, even when his face was framed with the arch of his wings.

She lifted her hips, allowing him to push the shorts down. She wasn’t embarrassed anymore. The way he looked at her flooded every inch of her body with heat.

When she locked her leg around his hip and pulled his weight on top of her, she was rewarded with a satisfying groan, a sound that was much more man than angel. Summer wanted to find all the ways she could get him to make noises like that. She wasn’t going to stop until she found them.

His wings shielded them from the rest of the world, forming a canopy of feathers. The night was dark, and they were alone, but all Summer knew was light.

fifteen

Nash used to be friends with an angel named Samael. Such relationships were looked down upon as the kind of petty nonsense that mortals enjoyed—angels didn’t forge friendships; they forged alliances. But what they had shared was impossible to describe in any other way.

They brought swift and righteous death upon those who deserved it, side by side as allies, and then spent long hours discussing things that had nothing to do with Heaven, God, or the unfolding war. They flew together, enjoyed companionable silences when there was nothing left to be said, and continually sought one another out even after years apart. They had been birthed from the same seed in the garden many eons past, and Nash thought that it almost made them brothers, in a way—but family wasn’t something angels did, either.

Once, after a battle that spilled mortal blood like crimson waterfalls, they sat upon the roof of a great library to rest. They spoke of many boring things, but eventually, the conversation turned to angelic politics.

“Have you seen Gabriel lately?” Samael asked.

Nash lifted his sword to study it in the fading sunlight. There was still blood on the metal from his last encounter with the Spartans. “No. Hasn’t she been stationed in Dis?”

“Supposedly,” Samael said. “But nobody has sighted her in months there, either. Rumor says that she’s become fascinated and is hiding somewhere on the mortal planes.”

Nash laughed as he wiped his blade on the leg of his trousers. “Gabriel, fascinated? With a mortal?”

“I know, I know. It’s hard to imagine.”

“How did you learn of this?” Nash asked.

“Because I’ve been ordered to locate and kill her.” Samael let out a sigh. “The hunt for treason within our ranks has become absurd. Killing one of our finest archangels for becoming fascinated with a human—it’s absurd. Wasteful. The mortal won’t live longer than a blink anyway.”

“Will you do it? Will you kill her?”

Samael had only shrugged, and Nash never found out if he did the job or not.

That had been the last time they met before the search for treason turned an accusatory finger toward Nash. Just weeks before Leliel betrayed him.

The war meant more contact with humans, and more of the ethereal ranks falling into fascination. Their greatest warriors were the most vulnerable. None of them seemed to have control of themselves once they sank into such a state.

As for Nash, he was already wedded to Leliel, and an angelic partnership was irrevocable. He believed himself to be immune.

For millions of years, he was right.

Summer had exhausted herself by trying to run away from her life in the form of a wolf, and it was amusing how quickly she went from vibrant, responsive, and moaning to a limp body snoring within the circle of his arms.

Nash had no clue if such a soporific effect was normal for mortals after consummating with an angel, but he decided to take it as a compliment.

Her eyelashes were lace fluttering on her cheeks with every twitch of her closed eyes, her lips were still plump from being kissed, and her hair was filled with grass. He had never seen anything so beautiful.

“I have fallen,” he whispered to Summer’s sleeping face.

She snuggled closer to his body, smacked her lips, and remained asleep.

Nash abandoned their clothing on the mountaintop and gathered her into his arms. A shame that she should sleep through their second flight together when she had so enjoyed the first. The joy of her laugh was permanently tattooed on his heart.

Summer remained asleep while he carried her back to the house in which he had lived for some number of decades. He alighted on the balcony, pushed the doors open, and settled her gently on his bed. She never once stirred. Her body was limp and trusting.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood over Summer, his wings hanging behind him and a strange sensation curling through his heart.

So many thousands of years alone. So much heartache, misery, and sadness. He had spent almost all of his life writhing in hate and thinking of nothing but retribution. Yet standing over Summer, all of those thoughts were impossibly distant. There was no desire to hurt left inside of him.

He almost didn’t feel like he was exiled anymore.

Nash might have stood over the bed all night if a scraping noise hadn’t drawn his attention. It came from outside the window, and he was instantly on high alert.

He pulled on new slacks and concealed his wings as he walked onto the balcony. There was no need to panic his guards—not yet. But his senses told him that there was something ethereal nearby, something other than him.

If those balam had returned for Summer, he would slaughter them.

Nash’s eyes skimmed his property. Members of his security team were farther down the hill, doing their usual rounds with no sign of alarm. It looked like there was another charity function at his gazebo, too. He wondered, with sick amusement, if he hadn’t known about it because he had told his assistants that he didn’t want to know about those, or if it was because he wasn’t in charge of Adamson Industries anymore.

A flash of white skin up the beach drew his attention. A gibborim? It was too distant to tell.

Nash glanced at Summer’s sleeping form again. Given infinite time, he would have climbed back in bed with her and seen how much it would take to rouse her again. But he only closed the doors, jumped off the balcony, and drifted gently to the lawn below.

As he drew closer to the lake, the sensation of an ethereal presence vanished.

One stretch of the beach was illuminated by spotlights. A team of men were shouting to each other indistinctly, some of them in scuba gear, others with snorkels pushed to their hair.

“How’s the search going?” Nash asked.

Everyone stopped to stare at him. He drummed his fingers against his hips impatiently, waiting for them to get through the typical shock that all mortals had when encountering him for the first time.

Eventually, one of the men in wetsuits spoke. “We’ve searched about twenty-five percent of the lake,” he said. There was a name tag sewn on the breast of his gear. Edwin.

“I wanted it done by tonight.”

“With all due respect, Lake Ast is huge, sir,” Edwin said. “And considering the weather—”

Nash silenced him with a gesture. At any other time, he would have fired the lot of them for the failure and hired people who had a more appropriate sense of urgency. But he was still buzzing from his evening with Summer. He felt unusually gracious.

Worst of all, her voice was whispering at him from the back of his mind. He knew what she would say if she heard what he was thinking. These guys are just trying to support their families, Nash…

Was consideration contagious? He hoped not.

“Please bring in another shift to continue working through the night,” he said. “It’s urgent. You may name your price.”

“We’ll do our best,” Edwin said.

“Thank you.”

Nash stepped around them and continued walking, searching for the ethereal presence that he had felt.

But the only person he found was Summer’s brother walking along the shore, hands jammed in his pockets and that perpetually brooding expression darkening his eyes.

Abram Gresham looked more like Gwyneth than his sister did. The twins were as different as the water was from the shore. Where Summer glowed with warmth, and an internal light that Nash found irresistible, Abram was forged from stone.

When the young man saw Nash approaching him, he stopped cold.

“Don’t you think that it’s a beautiful night?” Nash asked.

“Leave me alone,” Abram said.

And this was why Nash usually didn’t bother trying to be kind to mortals. “Where have you been?”

Abram picked up his pace and sped toward the house.

As the young man walked past, Nash noticed a bulge at the small of his back. It had been a long time since Nash had been a warrior, but he still knew a concealed weapon when he saw one, and Abram walked like a man prepared to shoot.

Nash snagged the gun out of Abram’s belt in a single, swift motion. It was the kind of gun he equipped his guards with. It must have been stolen.

“Summer is into trespassing and you’re into theft,” Nash said, double-checking the safety. “The Gresham family is filled with charming quirks.”

Abram didn’t try to take the gun back. “What do you want?”

“Only to speak with you.”

“Why? Do you want to use me, too?”

So Abram had learned what Nash had planned. But it sounded so much worse coming from the young man’s lips—Nash only wanted to “use” Summer as much as she would allow it.

Nash dropped the magazine from the pistol. “Harming Summer has never been my intent. You must understand, I’ve been alone for a very long time, and—”

“That heartbreaking crap might work on my sister, but I’m not as nice as she is,” Abram interrupted. “I don’t care how long you’ve been alone or how fashionable it is for angels to think humans are useless pieces of crap. I’m going to tell you this once: You fuck with my sister, you fuck with me.”

“Big words from a vegetarian artist,” Nash said.

Shock slackened Abram’s features. “How did you—?”

“You ordered a ‘tofu dog’ on the day you were meant to interview for my internship. You hoped to get the job so that you could convince me to build a new gallery.” Nash hooked a finger in the trigger guard and spun the gun through the air. “I spoke to your teachers.”

“Why?”

“I don’t welcome people into my home that I don’t already know.” He stopped spinning the gun, popped the magazine back in, and then held the weapon out.

Abram didn’t hesitate to take it back. “What do you want from me?”

“Cooperation,” Nash said. “We will have to work together to escape this place. Furthermore, during my last visit to Adamson Tower, I made some arrangements. You see, that building has a foyer that would work well as an art gallery. Invitations for an event tomorrow night have been sent to virtually everyone in Hazel Cove and Wildwood.” He lifted his shoulder in a shrug. “Everyone who matters.”

“You can’t buy me,” Abram said.

It was so similar to what Summer had told Nash at the coffee shop that he had to laugh. “You’ll be only one artist featured among many. I’ll give you no special treatment. It will be the responsibility of your paintings to speak for themselves.”

“Why?”

“It’s not unusual for a wealthy man who has invested in MU before to encourage education by—”

“No. Why do you care about whether or not my art gets displayed fairly?”

Nash lifted his chin. “To be frank, I don’t. I’ve seen too many great artists fall under the waves of time to care. But it matters to Summer. You matter to Summer. She loves nothing more than you and Gwyneth, and I must learn to care about the things she does.”

“That’s fucking pathetic,” Abram said, but there was no ire in his voice. He folded his arms and considered Nash for several silent moments. Finally, he said, “I have a painting that’s six feet tall and twelve feet wide. It would be hard to display well.”

“My engineers are fully capable of handling anything you have produced.”

“And you want to have this gallery thing at your business, which Leliel has completely taken over in a matter of days,” Abram said. “You’re insane.”

Nash spread his arms wide. “She can have the house, my company, my life. But she can’t have my dignity. Consider it a final gesture of revolt.”

The men studied each other in the night, the silence broken only by water lapping over the beach.

When Summer’s brother gave no response, Nash simply walked away.

He was hopeful that the boy would come around in time for the gallery opening, but the silence was not promising. Nash tried not to walk quickly as he returned to the house, but he still couldn’t help but imagine a bullet embedding between his shoulder blades.

Nash spent the rest of the night watching Summer sleep. But once the sun rose, he extracted a suit from his closet and left without disturbing her.

It was unusual for him to be working at the same time that Margaret performed her morning chores, since Nash was subjecting himself to his sunrise vigil at that hour. But Margaret didn’t remark on his presence in the kitchen. She only gave him a very small smile, helped him find the strawberries, and pushed him outside again.

Summer was still sleeping by midmorning, when he started to dress for the day. He brushed a kiss over her forehead and went to his office.

There was only one knock on the door of Nash’s home office before it opened. Gwyneth Gresham stepped in, her knees covered in mud and hair frazzled.

He studied her as he slipped his cufflinks into place. She was weighed down by exhaustion and frustration. “Did you find it?” Nash asked, even though he already knew the answer.

Gwyneth shook her head. “I searched every inch of that place, high and low. There’s nothing there but trees and dirt.”

“Then my estimation of the location must have been wrong. The fissure is elsewhere.”

“I don’t know, Nash. I’ve lived here twenty years and been all over the place. The kids know the woods outside our cottage better than anything. If there was something strange, someone would have seen it by now.”

He couldn’t keep the edge from creeping into his voice. “Then you must have missed something. You’ll have to look harder.”

“There’s only so many places to look,” she said. “It’s not there, son.”

Yelling at her wouldn’t make the door magically appear, although he was tempted to give it a try anyway. There were few things in his life that yelling at someone hadn’t resolved so far. But he tightened his jaw and focused on his cufflinks. “So the door under the lake is our only chance now,” Nash said, glaring at the churning water. The divers were still working. They had explored a full half of the lake and come up with nothing of interest.

He smoothed his hands over his hair and faced Gwyneth again.

“This bears further discussion, but for the time being, I need to get to Adamson Tower to finalize arrangements. Please, make yourself at home—Margaret will be happy to bring you fresh linens for a bath. And when you’re done, this is for you.” He patted the garment bag hanging from the door by a hanger.

Suspicion darkened Gwyneth’s eyes. “What for?”

“For your grandson’s debut at the new Adamson Industries gallery, of course.”

Her features melted into a smile, and she unzipped the bag. Margaret had selected the outfit inside. It was a designer pantsuit, expensive but simple. Nash already knew that she would look superb in it.

“Thank you,” she said, and he could tell that she wasn’t referring to the suit.

Summer woke up in Nash’s bedroom feeling pleasantly sore and very warm, although it took her a moment to remember why. As soon as she did, a furious blush rose to her cheeks, quickly followed by a feeling of smug satisfaction.

“Bet the Tri Deltas have never partied like that,” she said to the empty room, and then she clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle her own giggle.

She was punch drunk. Nash had rendered her stupid.

Summer hadn’t even realized that it was possible to feel the things that he evoked in her. Sure, she had been involved with a couple of guys before, and she thought that it had been good—but Nash had completely reset her standards to an impossibly high level. Not that it was exactly fair to compare the computer nerds she had dated to an immortal angel.

Her arm stretched out to the bed beside her, feeling for his warmth, but there was no indication that Nash had been in bed at any point. A quick sniff of the air told her that she was alone. Nash must have dropped her off and left again.

Nash.

With a little giggle, she flopped back in bed again. Oh, man. Flying through the air. Touching the stars. And the most amazing sex of her life.

Exiled angel or not, he sure knew how to show a girl a good time.

The curtains were open, illuminating the room in a hazy glow that hinted at more rain to come, and a cup of coffee and a tray of strawberries sat on the table beside the bed. There was also a note. Considering that Summer couldn’t smell any other visitors to the room, Nash must have prepared that tray and dropped it off himself. She rolled onto her stomach and dragged the note into bed. The envelope was made of a thick, glossy material that was silken under Summer’s fingertips, and her name was written across the front in red ink.

She removed the letter. There was something heavy weighing down the bottom of the envelope, but she couldn’t wait to read what Nash had written for her, so she left the other contents alone.

You are cordially invited to the opening of the Adamson Gallery, it said. Her eyes skimmed over the description to the bottom, where the featured artists were listed. Abram’s name was at the very top. She hugged the invitation to her heart.

So Abram was going to get the gallery display his secret project deserved, and Nash was going to be the one to give it to him.

Her heart swelled in her chest, and she felt her chin begin to tremble as tears pricked at her eyes. She sniffled and wiped them away. It was silly to get so emotional over an invitation—it wasn’t like Nash was proposing to her or something.

But this was so much better.

She reached into the envelope to extract everything else and was surprised to find a bundle of money wrapped in another piece of paper. Summer didn’t have to count it out to know that it was fifty thousand dollars. The second note was written in the same looping script as her name on the front of the envelope.

Summer,

I keep all of my promises. All of them.

With love,

Nash

Fifty thousand dollars. It was everything Summer could have hoped for—enough money to relocate, start a new life, become her own person. Yet now it only felt like the bars of a prison that she had been living in her entire life.

There was nowhere she could go that would be far enough away. Not in this world.

She thought of the promises that he had whispered to her the night before, and shivers rolled down her spine. He had promised to explore the universe with her. And with that kind of money, Summer could certainly explore the entire world as she knew it for a couple of months—but what was the point?

The money was nothing more than a gesture. Just one way to show her that he meant his promises.

Summer snagged a strawberry and nibbled on the end as she contemplated the note, the gallery opening, the money. There had to be something she could do with that kind of cash, even if it was useless to her.

An idea struck, and she grinned.

Her clothes were conspicuously absent—probably still on a distant mountaintop—so she donned one of Nash’s clean shirts and ventured out of the bedroom.

His house was quietly busy with people wearing uniforms and wearing white gloves. It hadn’t even occurred to her that he might have staff other than Margaret, but it looked like he had a small army going over the windows and mopping the floors.

A quick word with one of the cleaning crew directed her to the spare bedroom, where Summer found Margaret herself washing the windows.

“What are you doing?” Summer asked, leaning her shoulder against the doorway.

“Mr. Adamson has requested that all of the windows in the house have a thorough washing,” she said, dropping the rag into the bucket and facing Summer. The old woman was smiling. “Apparently, he thinks it’s too gloomy in here now.”

“You should make him wash his own damn windows,” Summer said.

“It’s my job, miss.”

“Oh, don’t call me that. Have you always wanted to be a maid? Is that, like, your dream job?”

“I enjoy it. Managing a house this size is quite the challenge, though I must say, to be honest…” A smile crossed her lips. “I’ve always wanted to be a musician. I play guitar.” She showed her callused fingertips to Summer. “Unfortunately, that’s not much of a career.”

“Yeah, I guess not.” Summer toyed with the edge of the envelope. “Do you think you could help me pick out something to wear for Nash’s gallery event tonight?”

“Happily,” Margaret said. They abandoned the half-washed window and opened up the wardrobe. The maid didn’t even look through the dresses before pulling one out. “This will be perfect.”

“You sure? How do you know?”

“I know,” Margaret said.

That was Summer’s cue to take the dress upstairs and get ready, but the envelope of money weighed her down. She bit her bottom lip and watched as Margaret prepared to get back to work.

“I like guitar,” Summer blurted out.

“It’s a wonderful instrument,” the maid agreed, picking up the bucket.

Summer took it from her and set it on the windowsill again, slopping water over the side. “Well, artists need patrons, right? I’m not going to say you should quit or anything, but…” She pushed the envelope into Margaret’s hands. “Maybe this could help you follow your dream.”

Before the maid could open the envelope, Summer planted a swift kiss on her cheek.

“Thank you for everything,” she said.

Then she took the dress and ran.

Margaret’s taste was impeccable. The dress was a bright gold equivalent of the quintessential little black dress, with simple lines and a wide neck that emphasized her slender shoulders.

Summer was tickled to find that Nash had left her another present in the master bathroom: a jewelry box with earrings and a necklace. The earrings were like little sparkling chandeliers, but the necklace was much more modest. It was a simple gold chain with a single charm in the shape of a wing.

She loved it.

The phone in his bedroom rang. “Hello?” Summer asked, cradling the receiver between her shoulder and ear as she struggled to zip up the back of the dress.

“This is the chauffeur, ma’am. We’re ready for you.”

“Chauffeur?” she asked.

“To take you to the gallery.”

“Oh. Oh! Yeah, I’ll be down in a second.” She dropped the phone and redoubled her battle with the dress. Summer was pretty bendy, but she just couldn’t get the zipper any higher than mid-back.

“Need help?”

Gran stood in the doorway, her eyes crinkled by an amused smile. She looked super sharp in a white pantsuit that was dignified without making her appear too old, and her hair had been tied back in one braid, instead of the usual two. Summer hadn’t seen her since they talked over the photos in Nash’s office, and for a moment, she was struck speechless. But then she remembered her manners, and she nodded.

“Yes, please.” She turned to give Gran access to her back. “What favor were you doing for Nash?” Gran’s skin was cool and smooth against her back as she operated the zipper.

“Trying to help him find his way out,” Gran said. “Didn’t go as well as planned.”

Summer bit her bottom lip. There were a thousand things she wanted to say to her grandmother, and she had no idea how to start. “The other side,” she said hesitantly. “Nash told me everything. How this place isn’t real.”

“Does it matter if this world isn’t real?” Gran asked, picking a few stray hairs off the shoulders of Summer’s dress. “The people who live in Hazel Cove are real. They’re the descendants of the settlers that angels placed here so many millennia ago. You and I are real. The education you’ve received is real, your cat is real, and so is the cottage.”

“But the news. The cities that don’t exist.”

“Those things don’t matter, babe. What matters is here.” She pressed her hand to Summer’s heart. “We’ve been safe and happy for so long. Who cares about anything else?”

“I do,” Summer whispered. “Don’t you want to go back?”

Gran gestured for her to sit. “Let me do your hair. It’s a mess.” Summer sank onto a footstool, and Gran ducked into the bathroom. She returned with a bottle of oil. “I’ve thought about going back, sometimes. But Haven is beautiful and safe. This is our home. I don’t want to leave it.”

“And that’s why you’ve been keeping secrets from me?”

She rubbed the oil over her fingers, then began working it through Summer’s hair. “At first, I thought I’d let Rylie tell you the story herself. After all, it’s only been a few days since we left Earth, as far as they’re concerned—there’s plenty of time for her to follow us. But as time went on and she didn’t show, explaining everything to you seemed harder and harder.”

Privately, Summer thought that keeping secrets was bound to be much harder. But now that Gran was talking, she didn’t want to interrupt.

“I never had children of my own. Didn’t really want any when I was young enough, and by the time it sounded like a nice idea, I was too old. The most time I ever spent around kids, before you, was the occasional summer with Rylie.”

“My mom,” Summer said.

“That’s right. But raising you and Abram has been the best experience of my life, and it’s…” She sighed. “I stayed awake with you and your brother for a lot of long nights, giving you goat milk in a bottle and cradling away your hurts. You weren’t born to me, but you’re both my babies.”

Her hands had stopped moving, and Summer turned to face her. There was a single tear on Gran’s cheek.

“It was wrong of me to lie to you. I thought if you didn’t know the truth about your parents, you’d be safer and happier. But really, I was just being selfish.” Her voice broke. “I’m sorry, pumpkin.”

Summer couldn’t stand to see her looking so sad. She wrapped her arms around Gran’s waist, pressed her ear to her chest, and held tight. It was hard to get over the hurt of realizing that she’d been lied to, but it was even harder to stay angry at Gran. “I love you,” Summer said without letting go.

Gran patted her back and gave a single sniffle. “You about ready to see your brother’s painting?”

“I can’t wait.”

sixteen

Nash had anticipated an impressive crowd would gather for the night of the gallery opening. It was a given. Any time he made a public appearance, people flocked to him. Whether or not these humans knew it, they had the same origin as the mortals on Earth, and some part of them longed for his ethereal light.

But even that anticipation didn’t begin to match the reality that faced him when he arrived in his limousine to help prepare for the gallery event. It was still hours before the doors would open, and the entire block was packed by milling bodies.

The limousine came to a dead stop, unable to creep forward through the crowd.

“Sorry for the delay, sir,” said the driver, peering at him through the tinted window. “Let me make some calls.”

“No hurry,” Nash said, trying to restrain his annoyance.

There weren’t many humans in the Haven, relative to the numbers on Earth—a half a million at most. Yet most of them appeared to have turned out for the event. It was even worse than the Marut University catastrophe had been. Stepping out of the vehicle would have been like begging to get mobbed, so Nash simply waited until the security team reached the vehicle and forced people to make a path.

His limousine inched forward. Hands slapped against the tinted windows.

“And I thought that being king had been bad,” he muttered, glaring at the faces pressed to the other side of his door. In truth, he barely remembered the many times that he had served as king to the citizens of the Haven, but it felt good to complain. He knew that Summer would have found it funny.

Eventually, the limousine reached the entrance to the underground garage, which was blocked by more guards. “We’ll have to go under,” the driver said. “Sorry.”

Nash waved a dismissive hand. Normally, he had his drivers let him out by the front door, but he didn’t feel like having his clothes ripped off that afternoon. Not until later tonight, he thought with a lazy smirk.

When they finally parked in the garage, Nash was greeted by a different kind of mob—a half-dozen men in suits who desperately wanted his attention.

“There are sixteen urgent messages waiting for your attention, three memos, and the university president trying to get a hold of you,” said one of the men, who Nash thought was probably his assistant. He didn’t pay much attention to these things.

“I’ll address it tomorrow,” Nash said, striding for the elevators. The suited men paced him like particularly obnoxious ducklings.

The lobby was still in the process of being converted into a gallery. Nash kept his eyes open for any sign of Leliel or her “friends,” but he saw nothing aside from human faces and a lot of paintings. The last few pieces were still being arranged.

Nash caught one of his entourage by the sleeve. The young woman looked like she was going to hyperventilate just by having him glance at her.

“Where’s the centerpiece?” he asked.

“It’s veiled on the west wall, just like you ordered,” she said.

He released her and strode across the lobby. Despite what he had told Abram, his painting had been given special placement away from the others. The wall had been redone to provide the most ideal backing for his piece.

A woman rushed forward to unveil Abram’s painting.

It was a triptych. The left panel featured Gwyneth Gresham, who Abram had captured perfectly—her inner fire, determination, strength. Thick braids fell over her shoulders and swirled around her hands, which cupped a silver animal skull with agate eyes. The right panel showed Summer with a wolf tangled between her legs and joy on her face.

And in the center was the entire family. Summer, Abram, and Gwyneth. It was the largest piece of the three and depicted the family in exacting detail. They looked like a family of warriors, bound by blood and duty, and they were as beautiful and strong as they were frightening.

Nash found himself staring at Abram’s portrayal of Summer. There was just as much light and wonder in her smile in the image as there was in reality. Everyone was certain to fall in love with Summer when they looked at it, just as he had.

A jealous, angry part of him was tempted to have the painting covered for the rest of the event. But he stepped back and forced himself to take a deep breath instead.

Let them all love her. She belonged to him.

“A call, sir,” said his assistant, reappearing from the rushing crowd making final preparations.

Nash glared. “Later, I said.”

“But it’s from the diving team. They said you would speak with them.”

Ah. Well, that was different.

He took the phone. “Tell me when Summer Gresham arrives,” Nash said with his hand over the microphone, and his assistant nodded. He lifted the cell phone to his ear. “You’ve found it?”

“I don’t know about ‘it,’ but we found a cave,” said a voice that Nash recognized as Edwin’s. “It’s flooded. We’re taking the pumps down, so we’ll know if it’s the one you’re looking for in a few hours. But you said you’d want to know immediately.”

Nash had originally planned to immediately dive down and check out the cave himself as soon as they found it—pumping be damned—the event was going to start soon, and it was only getting so much attention because of his presence. If he left, nobody would see Abram’s painting.

“Let me know when it’s dry.” He hung up.

Escape could wait just a few more hours.

“Holy mother of God,” Gran whispered. Summer agreed, but she couldn’t seem to find words to express her awe at the sight awaiting them outside Adamson Tower. All she could do was gape.

Nash’s driver had brought them down to the gallery event after a short tour of Wildwood, which neither of them had visited before. But Summer immediately forgot everything she had seen when they tried to approach the gallery event.

A red carpet had been rolled out on the expanse of sidewalk between the road and the front doors, and there were cameras everywhere. Summer wasn’t exactly shy, but the sight of all those people made her feel like she was going to throw up. Judging by Gran’s stare, she didn’t think much better of it, either.

“Could you drop us off on the side?” Summer asked, leaning close to the window so that the driver could hear her.

“You don’t want to go in the front door?”

“Not really,” Gran said. “That many cameras give me a hankering for the company of my shotgun.”

“I’ll find a bare stretch of curb. It might mean a little walking,” the driver said.

Summer sat back, relieved. “That’s fine.”

They had to go two blocks to find space to park, and Summer and Gran got out to walk to the back door of Adamson Tower. Without a limousine and a red carpet delivery, there was no way to distinguish them from the rest of the citizens of Wildwood. Nobody even looked at them approaching in their fancy clothes.

Unfortunately, a little bit of snooping didn’t reveal a back door to the lobby. They were going to have to go through the front, whether they liked it or not.

Summer hung back among the crowd, stretching up on her toes to see over all of the heads through the glass doors. There was a banner on the wall with a list of artists, and Abram’s name was at the top.

The photographers stirred and shouted. Cameras clicked. Nash was walking across the lobby, and they were all trying to get a good shot of him. Just glimpsing his strong figure was enough to flush Summer with the memory of heat. She wanted to run through the doors and wrap herself around him, but she could just imagine the headlines the next morning.

“Let’s sneak in with the artists,” Gran said.

Summer was about to agree when the breeze picked up and a smell caught her nose. It wasn’t a human smell, nor was it Nash’s odor.

It was a gibborim.

“Go ahead without me,” Summer said. “I need to work up some courage.”

“All right. I’ll see you inside in a few.” Gran slipped the animal skull underneath her shirt, adjusted her jacket, and stepped through the glass doors.

Summer held her smile until her grandma was gone, and then she turned to face downtown Wildwood. She needed to change into her second skin and take advantage of her improved senses to find what was making that smell, but unlike back at MU, she didn’t know where the good hiding places were. In all of her twenty years, she hadn’t had the urge to visit the area—probably part of the idyll that kept everyone from asking any questions about why they could walk from Hazel Cove to Wildwood whether they headed north or south.

But she definitely smelled a gibborim now. The nearest alleyway would have to do.

Summer ducked under a photographer’s camera and slipped into the alley unseen. She whispered an apology to Nash as she kicked off her shoes, twisted her arms around to drop the zipper, and stripped naked in the alley. She folded the dress neatly and set it atop a clean, dry recycling bin.

Letting out a long breath, she slipped into her second skin. She dropped onto four paws and shook out her fur.

The instant that she had a wolf’s nose, she could tell that some of the gibborim’s stink was coming from inside the alley. More specifically, it came from one of the trash bags that had split open next to the recycling bin. Burying her nose in the garbage, she took a deep whuff of the odors.

She dug deeper, enjoying the strange smells of the trash in pursuit of the angel’s stench. But she stopped enjoying herself the instant she discovered what was stinking.

It was a piece of skin.

Summer shied away, hackles rising. No wonder she had smelled a gibborim. Someone had left part of one in the trash. It explained why that odor was so familiar, too—it belonged to the same gibborim that Abram had shot dead.

Once she had the smell in her nose, she couldn’t shake it. The odor left a burning trail out of the alley that Summer just couldn’t ignore.

It would be easy to track that smell back to its origin.

Maybe she could even find Leliel.

Slinking to the mouth of the alley, she peered around the edge of the building without leaving the shadows. People were still arriving to the party. Someone nearby checked his phone, and she saw that it was still a good twenty minutes until the event was due to start. Plenty of time.

Summer snuffled around on the asphalt until she picked up the smell again, and then she launched herself on top of the building next to Adamson Tower, paws scrabbling at the bricks.

The angel’s smell was close.

She trotted across the roof and leaped to the next building, soaring through the air for an instant before she landed. It wasn’t quite as exhilarating as flying with Nash, but it was close.

Summer took another sniff before dropping to street level again, trotting along the side of an antique store in the shadows where nobody would see her.

The trail led out of town toward the forest.

She hesitated on the sidewalk, glancing over her tail to the bright spire of Adamson Tower. Discovering a piece of gibborim skin in the trash outside the event was a little too convenient for her—especially when it led her to secluded wilderness. Summer wasn’t used to having mortal enemies, but she knew a trap when she smelled one. Better get reinforcements.

Summer turned to head back, but there was someone standing in her way at the end of the block. It was a beautiful woman, lean and tall, wearing a filmy white dress and looking so glamorous that she wouldn’t have been out of place at the gallery event.

She reeked of angels, and she didn’t look surprised to see a wolf loping along the sidewalk.

“Hello, Summer,” Leliel said.

Summer didn’t get a chance to run. Something hard struck her from behind, and she was unconscious before she hit the sidewalk.

Nash waited with a glass of champagne even though he had no interest in drinking. He had thought that Summer might want to enjoy the drink when she arrived, yet the gallery had been open for an hour now, and there was no sign of her.

“Where could she be?” Nash asked, pacing in front of the receptionist’s desk. He didn’t even notice the photographers’ flashbulbs anymore. He was just hours from escaping the Haven—they were welcome to have all the pictures of him that they wanted.

“Oh, don’t worry so much,” Gwyneth said, plucking the champagne out of his fingers. “She’ll be here.”

Nash balled his newly empty hand into a fist. “Perhaps she’s changed her mind about everything. Perhaps she’s…”

“Run off?” Gwyneth filled in. She took a sip of the champagne and smacked her lips. “Trust me. She wouldn’t run even if she could. Like I told you—she’ll be here.”

Whether it was true or not, there was something immensely reassuring about the confidence with which Gwyneth spoke. Nash managed to find a smile for her. “I forgot to mention that you look stunning,” he said. He wasn’t even lying. For a mortal, she looked fantastic.

She patted his arm. “You’re cute.”

Cute. Nash was fairly sure that he had been called almost every single adjective in his many long years—handsome, frightening, impressive—but never cute.

She vanished into the crowd, probably to stare at Abram’s painting some more. The triptych was the talk of the event, even though Abram also hadn’t bothered to show up yet. Neither of the twins were apparently concerned about punctuality.

Nash had received several inquiries about the cost of the piece, but without the artist present, it was impossible to say whether or not the painting was available for sale. It was one thing for Summer to let herself be distracted, but having one of the event’s headliners go missing succeeded in irritating him on a whole new level.

He was hanging in the back corner near the triptych when Abram finally arrived.

The young man cleaned up well, even if he had refused to wear the suit that Nash purchased for him. Instead, he dressed himself in a tuxedo that must have cost more money than all of the Gresham family’s savings. The lean lines accentuated his muscles and made him look like he could have been the billionaire owner of Adamson Industries, too. Women gaped at him as he passed.

“So you decided to come after all,” Nash said, waving a hand at a waiter, who brought the champagne over immediately.

Abram shook his head at the offer of a drink. “You said that you wouldn’t give my display any preferential treatment.”

“I didn’t. There just weren’t enough paintings to fill this end of the gallery.”

“Bull-fucking-shit,” Abram said.

Nash let out a sigh. “Shall I apologize for treating the brother of the woman I love well? Because if—”

Abram cut him off. “Don’t say that.”

“What? That I’m in love with Summer?”

“You know it’s not true. You’re an angel. You hate humans.”

“You have some curious ideas about what angels think,” Nash said. “Interesting bias for someone who has only known humans before.”

A woman wearing a sleek evening gown and an elegant chignon sidled up to them. To Nash’s surprise, she ignored him completely and put her hand on Abram’s arm instead. “I hear that you’re the artist of this gorgeous piece,” she said, gesturing toward the painting with her drink. “Do you do commissions?”

“No,” he said curtly.

“Let me know if you change your mind on that,” she said, tucking a business card in the pocket of his jacket before slinking away again. The sway of her hips made the dress swirl behind her.

“This event could make you rich, Abram,” Nash said as the young man ripped the card out of his pocket, tore it into pieces, and flung it to the floor.

“I don’t want to be rich. I’m an artist. I can’t paint on command.”

“And you can’t buy food on dreams.”

A man who had been standing nearby had apparently heard them speaking, because he faced them with a hungry glint in his eyes. “Did I hear that you’re the one that painted this triptych?” he asked. He had two chins and a round stomach, but the fine cut of his suit deemphasized his weight. “It’s gorgeous. I’d love to buy it for my private collection.”

Another wave of jealousy surged through Nash. “It’s not for sale,” he said sharply.

“What are you doing?” Abram asked when the potential buyer turned away, stung.

“I’m protecting my interests.” All it took was a word, and there was a checkbook and pen in his hand. “How much for it? Any amount. I don’t care.”

“There is no price you could pay me for this that would be enough. I know why you want it, and you can’t have it.”

“Why?” Nash asked. “What have I ever done to you, beyond protecting you from enemy assaults and sheltering you in my home?”

“You’ve lied to my sister. I told you that nobody fucks with my family.” Abram took a deep breath and composed himself. When he spoke again, it was much calmer than before. “I talked with Summer. She said that she knows you’ve been lying to her, and she doesn’t want anything to do with you.”

Getting shot point-blank in the face by a shotgun couldn’t have shocked Nash more than those words. “What in the seven hells are you talking about?” Nash hissed, glancing around to make sure his assistants weren’t close enough to hear.

“Summer has gone home,” Abram went on. “She’s not coming tonight. She doesn’t want anything to do with you. And if you’re smart, you’ll drop it. Okay?” He stormed away.

Nash grabbed his assistant. “Get the car,” he said sharply. “Now.”

seventeen

Nash abandoned the limousine just outside of city limits. He hadn’t wanted to be spotted flying away from Wildwood, but the road to the Gresham house was long and winding, and he would be much faster taking to the skies.

“But how will you get back?” his driver asked.

“Just leave,” Nash said, removing his jacket and tossing it into the passenger’s seat. He paid all of his employees enough money that they couldn’t argue with him, so the limousine left.

He waited to remove his shirt until the headlights faded into night. Then he opened his wings to the wind and took flight.

Abram had said that Summer knew the truth. What truth? That Nash wanted to escape at any cost? That he cared about her in a way that he had never cared about anyone before? There had to have been some kind of misunderstanding—a mistake that he intended to clear up immediately.

As he soared over the dark forest, he began to sense something amiss. Something that felt a lot like balam nearby.

He flew faster.

The Gresham cottage was harder to locate at night, and he had to spiral over the treetops for a half an hour before spotting the meadow. He dropped into the clearing outside the vine-covered building and pulled his wings tight against his back.

All of the windows were dark. There was no sign that anyone had been at the cottage in days.

He burst through the backdoor to the kitchen. “Summer!” he roared, voice shaking the entire house.

The only response was a clatter of pans as a black cat leaped onto the counter and stumbled on the dishes. What had Summer called that feline? Sir Lumpy? He defied every stereotype that said cats should have been graceful, as well as the ones that said cats were beautiful creatures. His eyes seemed to bug out as he opened his mouth in a croaking meow.

“Where is she?” he asked Sir Lumpy, reaching out a hand. The cat bumped into his fingers and purred. If the cat was still there, Summer couldn’t be far.

A twig snapped in the night outside, and he spun, searching for the origin of the noise. The forest was silent again, but it was the kind of silence that preceded a storm. He could feel eyes on him.

Someone was watching.

“This is a trap,” he whispered to himself, and the words fell flat on the air. A strange energy surrounded him—a sensation he hadn’t experienced in a long time.

He wasn’t surprised when the trio of balam emerged from the trees.

They were deceptively cute and childlike, but Nash wasn’t distracted by their wide eyes and innocent features. He knew that sharp teeth were hidden within their mouths, as well as a hunger that was unique to their breed. A hunger for flesh, blood, war. Miserable creatures.

“Where is she?” he asked.

The balam only responded by fanning out and surrounding him. Their deadly intent was clear.

Nash hadn’t had to get in a real fight for years. He dimly recalled engaging some mortals in a fistfight during his time in the Haven due to various unimportant circumstances—bar brawls, disagreements over property, that kind of thing. But such experiences were not common in the idyll of the Haven. Until his conflict with the last gibborim, he hadn’t fought an enemy that presented a real danger since he was forced to leave Earth behind.

Where his memory failed him, his body did not. His blood burned with a lust for violence. “What have you done with Summer?” he demanded, stretching out his wings to their full width to warm the muscles.

The balam spoke in a series of shrieks and whistles. It would have been impossible for a human to understand the language that spewed from their lips, but Nash had no problems interpreting it. We are going to kill her, they said.

Anger bubbled out of his throat in a roar, and he lunged for them, fists balled and wings stretched wide.

They clashed, and all Nash knew was the battle.

Summer woke up somewhere familiar, safe, and warm. She stretched out. Her hands pushed pillows off the bed.

She was in Nash’s bed again, with its fleur-de-lis comforter and the multitude of plush pillows. Starlight spilled through the windows, glimmering dimly through the clouds, and a smile spread across Summer’s lips. It felt right to be there. She would have been happy to wake up in that bed every single morning.

But reality crashed over her a moment later, killing the glow and her smile. Summer hadn’t gone to bed with Nash. It wasn’t morning, either. She had been about to go to the gallery and instead found herself trapped by Leliel.

Then what was she doing at the manor?

Summer pushed the sheets off to discover that someone had dressed her in the golden sheath Margaret had picked out, necklace and all.

As soon as her feet touched the floor, the door opened, and Abram stepped inside. “You okay?” he asked.

“Abram? What’s going on? What am I doing here? Where did the angel go?”

“I brought you back,” he said, catching her arms to steady her when she tried to stand. “Don’t worry, Nash’s not around.”

“What do you mean, don’t worry? Where is he?”

“I don’t know. Leliel’s taken over the manor.”

Summer’s mouth dropped open as everything fell into place.

Leliel had sprung the trap on her, but it was Abram who greeted her when she was awake. Now the enemy angel was in control of the manor, and Abram was obviously not incarcerated—which could only mean one thing. “You’re working with Leliel? But—don’t you realize what she’s done? She exiled Nash here. She’s been trying to kill us!”

“You’ve got the facts all wrong,” Abram said. “Leliel came to me a few days ago. She told me all about Nash’s plans. She wants to help us.”

“Help us? How?”

Before he could respond, Leliel appeared behind Abram. Even when she looked angry, she was gorgeous, and Summer hated her for it a little bit. “I’d like to have a few words with you, woman to woman,” she said, and then she glanced at Abram. “Preferably alone.”

Abram stepped back, and Summer’s heart dropped all the way to her feet. She swallowed hard, lifted her chin, and followed Leliel to the hallway.

The angel was the only woman that Summer had ever seen that was taller than her. In many ways, she resembled Nash—not that they had any similar features or anything. It had more to do with the way that they carried themselves, their dignity, the way that they looked down their nose at the world surrounding them.

Leliel was just as graceful as Nash, too. She seemed to drift rather than walk out the front doors. There was no sign of the cleaning staff or Margaret.

“Where is everyone?” Summer asked.

“We are alone,” Leliel replied, which was no kind of answer at all.

As Leliel continued outside, Summer searched the surrounding hills for any sign of the ever-present guards that had nearly captured her on her first visit. But the most recent smells she could find were hours old, and she couldn’t see anyone on the lawn or beach.

Leliel was right. They were truly alone.

It took a few seconds for Summer to realize that the smoke filling her nostrils wasn’t Leliel’s smell, but an actual fire. And as soon as they moved around to the opposite side of the hill, Summer saw why.

Nash’s garden was on fire.

Flames danced over the orchard, turning the bark black and shriveling the leaves. Smoldering branches lay scattered through the grass near Summer’s feet.

“What have you done?” she asked, her voice barely a rasp.

“This garden was a blasphemous abomination,” Leliel said. “I had to destroy it.”

Summer didn’t even think before reacting. She slapped the angel across the face—hard. It was like trying to slap the garden wall for all that Leliel reacted. Even a shapeshifter wasn’t strong enough to make an angel flinch.

Leliel stroked a finger down her cheek. The skin was pink where Summer had struck. “I’ll forgive you for that one,” she said. “You’re a stupid mortal. You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.” Her voice hardened. “Do it again, and I’ll rip your skull from your spine.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Summer said, her voice trembling.

Leliel seized Summer’s arm and dragged her toward the garden. There was a table just outside the wall, the kind of place that Summer could imagine having a tea party, and it was covered in the snowing ash. The angel forced her to sit.

“I’m not your enemy,” Leliel said. “Your brother understands this, and I hope you will, too. But we don’t have much time. An hour, perhaps two. You must listen to me.” She spread her skirts and sat at the opposite chair. “I’m sure Nashriel has told you nothing of the war, has he?”

Summer remained stubbornly silent.

“There is a being in our world more dangerous than any other.” Leliel swirled her fingertip through the raindrops on the tabletop. It was tinted gray by the falling ash from the orchard. “Not another angel, but ethereal in nature. He was born a man, and he was named Adam. Have you heard of him?”

Summer shook her head.

“Ah. Well, when the world was new, there was only one universe, and three people to inhabit it. One of them was Adam. He was the first human.”

“If he was the first, then who made him?”

Leliel gave an elegant shrug. “Nobody knows. Adam was accompanied by one ethereal creature, and one infernal. He fell in love with the angel. Her name was Eve.”

“Wait,” Summer said, holding up a hand. “If you’re saying that the world started out with three different species, then there would have had to be at least two of each at the start. And that’s not even considering how many pairs you actually need for genetic diversity.”

“Are you so incapable of thinking beyond mundane human terms?” Leliel swept the water off of the table and flicked her fingers to dry them off.

“I’m capable of thinking enough to tell when someone’s trying to force feed bullshit to me.”

“Set aside the limitations of your puny mind for now and accept it. There was one of each. Fact. Adam lamented that his life was mortal where Eve’s was not, and he craved power. Through a series of events, Adam became omnipotent, omnipresent—immortal. He elevated himself above all angels, such as Nashriel and I. And at first, it was good.” Leliel’s delicate eyebrows creased. “Then Eve died.”

“How?”

“Murder. Adam suffered deeply from this. Suffice it to say, he went insane and began destroying the universes one piece at a time. The factions fought—human, angel, and demon. But within each faction was additional division. Angels were split between those loyal to Adam, and those who were not.”

Summer bit her bottom lip. She had a feeling that she knew where this story was going, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it.

Leliel stood and paced beside the burning garden. Backlit by the fire, she looked like she was glowing. “Driven insane, Adam began to destroy humankind. His own children. And this war raged for many years until angels found a way to contain his fury.”

“How?” Summer asked.

The angel waved away her question. “Loyalists attempted to prevent Adam’s incarceration, even though his freedom would mean the death of humanity. This was the shortest, and bloodiest, period in our history. A civil war.” Leliel focused glowing blue eyes on Summer. “Tell me what side you think Nashriel took.”

“He was with the rebels,” Summer said. “That’s why you locked him away.”

“No, I was with the rebels. Nashriel was a loyalist. One of Adam’s greatest generals, and among those who slaughtered humans.”

No. It couldn’t be true.

Summer tried to think of a way to argue with Leliel, but nothing came to mind. Nash did seem extremely disdainful of humanity, but she had assumed that it was typical of angels. She never would have dreamed that Nash might have tried to destroy her entire species.

“You understand why I can’t let you open the door for him,” Leliel said, and her voice was gentler than before. She almost looked sympathetic. “He wants to return to the other side so that he can free Adam. For the sake of peace throughout the universe—for the sake of all humankind—we can’t allow it.”

“No,” Summer finally said. That one word rasped out of her, weak and pathetic.

Nash had promised to take her to every city, to fly her toward unreachable stars, to chase the moon. He wasn’t using her to get back to some ancient war.

“I’m not evil, and I’m not trying to hurt you.” Leliel’s eyes softened as she rested a hand on Summer’s shoulder. “Angels are not your enemy. We could be humanity’s greatest allies, if you’ll allow it.”

“I don’t need an ally like you.”

“Maybe not here,” she agreed, “but wait until you find out what’s waiting on the other side.”

That got Summer’s attention. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’m going to take you to Earth, you and your family,” Leliel said. “Right now. Today.” Leliel raised her voice. “Abram.”

He emerged from the night. Abram must have been watching from the distance, since he didn’t look shocked to see the state of the destroyed garden.

Summer gaped at him wordlessly. A thousand thoughts passed between them in silence.

“It’s time to finish what I’ve started,” Leliel said.

Summer walked down to the beach in a haze. She was barely aware of Abram at her side or Leliel’s back leading her down the hill. She couldn’t break free of her thoughts.

Several spotlights and a generator had been abandoned near the rocks. Leliel ignored the equipment and kept walking until she was knee-deep in the surf. Her dress floated around her on the waves.

“Behold,” she said.

She spread her arms wide, and the waters parted before her like a plow driving toward the dark depths of the lake. The waves crested and crashed in white arcs, spraying fine mist into the air. The moist sand underneath dried quickly in the air as the tunnel widened, until there was a path broad enough for three people to pass through side by side.

Summer didn’t realize that she had fallen to her knees until her fingers sank into divots where the tide had been moments before. “What the—?”

“A trick I learned from a friend some years ago,” Leliel said. “It’s a petty thing, but impressive to see.” She extended her hand toward Summer, who stared at it blankly. Hands that could split a lake couldn’t be safe to touch.

It was Abram who finally hauled Summer off of her knees. Her shins were covered in sand.

Leliel strode down the path she had created in the water, trailed by the gauzy train of her dress. Summer let Abram lead her into the lake, numb and disconnected.

Sand slurped between her toes as they walked between walls of dark water. It pulsed around her, swaying gently as the wind blew, and Summer thought that she could see fish darting through the waves.

The cave was a dark pit at the bottom of a rocky outcropping in the center of the lake. Water trickled over the doorway. “Come,” Leliel said, and they stepped inside.

The rumbling of the waters was quieter in the cave, and a tiny waterfall drummed out a rhythm over the doorway. Light began to radiate from Leliel’s back—not full wings, but a dim glow that came from everywhere and nowhere. It illuminated the cave with a wash of gold.

Summer could see petroglyphs at the black wall, much like the kind of images she had seen in her history books in her freshman year of college. They were caveman paintings. Primitive images of man chasing beast. And they were arranged in the shape of an archway. She realized with a jolt that she was looking at the way out of the Haven—a path that would lead back to Earth.

“Wait,” Summer said, grabbing Abram’s arm. “We can’t go through. What about Gran? What about Nash?”

“I didn’t bring you down here to use the door,” Leliel said with a pitying look.

The angel drew back her fist and punched it into the wall.

Stone cracked. A sound like a bell shattering on concrete snapped through Summer’s eardrums, and she clapped her hands over her ears, mouth opening in a silent cry. Beneath her feet, the earth trembled and rocked. Only Abram’s hand kept her upright.

Leliel punched again. This time, she struck a symbol that looked like a buffalo, and all of the markings on the wall trembled at the impact of it.

A whining noise pierced Summer’s skull, and then silenced abruptly.

The angel stepped back looking satisfied.

“There,” she said. “That should prevent anyone from passing through. Now we can leave.”

“How? You just broke the door,” Abram said.

“There’s still a fissure between the universes that we can reach. Once no more humans native to Earth are on this side, Nashriel will be incapable of crossing over again. Let’s go.”

Leliel whirled and walked through the cave’s exit without waiting to see if the twins would follow her.

Abram began to follow before Summer stopped him.

“Wait, you don’t understand. We have to get Nash to this thing, this—this fissure. We can’t leave without him!”

“You talked to her, didn’t you?” Abram asked. “You heard what she said that Nash had done. He’s a war criminal. He’s been using you!”

“Can we believe her? Can we trust anything she says?”

“Can you trust Nash?” he snapped.

“I would trust him with my life,” Summer said, hanging tight to her brother’s shirt. “Please, Abe. Listen to me. We can’t leave without him. He’ll be trapped forever.”

He hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he hauled Summer toward the door, and she didn’t have the resolve to stop him. Leliel was waiting for them on the other side, hand extended. There was a distant rushing sound, like a river echoing through a gorge.

The path to the beach wasn’t open anymore. Water rushed toward them, folding together like a deck of cards being shuffled.

Leliel was closing the path to the cave.

The last thing Summer wanted to do was let Leliel drag her away, but she wasn’t given a choice. Abram tightened one hand on her arm, and he gave the other to Leliel. All three of them soared into the air as the water sealed beneath them, crashing closed on the door—and Nash’s last chance for escape.

The balam were intimidating because of force of numbers, rather than raw strength, and they were good at what they did. They swarmed Nash like a hive of insects. Whenever he turned his attention to one, another would swoop in. Their teeth were like razors. Their fingers were tipped with blades.

But Nash had fury on his side, and desperation. He lost himself in the blur of battle.

Limbs flashed, blood splashed. Screams shattered the night.

Finally, he succeeded in seizing one of the little bastards, and he slammed the balam’s head into a rock. It died in his hands with a tiny wail.

The other two flitted into the air with banshee screams. Nash could only respond with a scream of his own, deeper and louder and a thousand times more pained. Though he couldn’t find the strength for words, they seemed to understand his sentiment.

The survivors flew into the night, leaving him alone with blood on his hands and a corpse at his feet. He struggled to stand.

“Bastards,” he hissed, touching the gouges on his chest and arms. His flesh was in ribbons, but his physical form would restore itself. He had much bigger problems at hand.

The balam that he had thought to be dead stirred beneath him. A low moan rumbled from its chest. “Where is she?” Nash asked. “Tell me, and I will spare you.”

A pale, long-fingered hand lifted. The balam pointed one bloody claw toward Lake Ast before going limp.

Nash took to the air, powering through the wind and night toward his house. He flew like a man possessed, and within a few minutes, his house appeared. All he could see was the dancing orange light of flame on the hillside.

His home was on fire.

Nash dropped beside his garden and stared in numb shock at the trees dancing with flame. The entire orchard was consumed. Every branch, every leaf, every blade of grass.

He didn’t care about the garden itself. He really didn’t. All of those hours he had spent maintaining it—they were barely a heartbeat in his long history. But it shattered his heart to lose that little piece of home, like he was watching the last scraps of his past become consumed by fire.

There was a folded piece of paper resting on top of the garden wall. Nash felt like he was moving in slow-motion as he reached out to lift and unfold it.

I have destroyed the door beneath the lake and taken custody of Summer and Abram. I know there is a third in their family. You will bring the last of the Earth natives to me, or I will wring Summer’s neck. Meet me where the sun rises.

Leliel hadn’t signed the note, but he still recognized her handwriting after so many years. No other could have written in the looping symbols of the ethereal language anyway.

He read the note again, and then a third time.

Leliel had Summer and Abram. She wanted Gwyneth. If she had all three of them—if she took all of them back to Earth—then the fissure would not yield to him. Nash would never escape. He would be trapped in the Haven for the rest of time.

Yet if he didn’t surrender Gwyneth to Leliel, Summer would be killed.

Just a couple of weeks earlier, the decision would have been simple. Nash would have gladly surrendered one mortal life or a thousand if it meant that he could escape the confines of the Haven. But now, the very thought of losing Summer was unbearable.

If Leliel killed her…

Nash unfurled his wings and took to the air once more.

eighteen

Flying with Leliel was nothing like flying with Nash. Summer had felt perfectly safe cradled in his arms, while being with Leliel made her dizzy with nausea. The lake and mountains seemed to spin below her. The fingers encircling her wrist were terrifyingly slender, just a tiny shift in grasp from dropping her and her brother.

A rock from the lake’s shore had been stuck to the bottom of Summer’s foot, and she felt it peel away from her skin. It spun through the air, turned tiny, and then disappeared. She watched it tumble with a rising sense of panic.

Summer would have a long time to regret her fall before she hit.

Cold air whipped over her face, and her shoulder ached as Leliel flapped harder, drawing them through the clouds. The world around them turned to a foggy haze. Then they broke through, and the stars were waiting for them on the other side. Their song felt discordant tonight, out of tune, as though disturbed by Leliel’s arrival.

The navy blue sky began to lighten. By the time the sun faded into view, it felt like Summer’s shoulder was going to wrench free of its socket.

And then the sun appeared.

It was so much smaller than Summer expected—no more than a pinpoint of brilliant light and heat. But it was so bright she could barely look at it without wincing.

They soared toward it. As they approached, the air looked like it rippled around them, swirling and fragmenting. The clouds trembled. A single, chiming note grew in volume, louder than the stars.

Summer realized belatedly that the sun wasn’t like the stars—just a mere illusion suspended in the sky. It’s the fissure!

Leliel released her wrist.

Fear rushed through her stomach in the moment of weightlessness, but Summer didn’t even get a chance to scream before her knees impacted something hard. She landed face-down on cobblestone.

Cobblestone?

Pushing herself onto her hands and knees, she stared at the ground surrounding her. It looked like an ancient road built of white stone. But it was no more than a fragment, barely half of a city block suspended in midair, and the clouds clung to it like a low fog. The angel had somehow summoned a platform for them to stand on.

Abram didn’t look surprised at all. He helped her stand.

“What is this?” Summer asked, shading her eyes from the harsh light of the sun. Her knees were shaking.

Leliel dropped beside them gracefully and folded her wings behind her. Feathers swirled around her feet. “Think of it as a scaffold,” she said. “A builder must stand somewhere when birthing her universe.”

“And that’s the fissure,” Abram said, lifting a hand to block out the light of the tiny, furious sun.

“That’s the fissure,” Leliel confirmed.

It seemed cruelly ironic for the way out to have been hiding in plain sight all these years. Abram took a step toward it, but Summer clung to his arm, trying to hold him back. They couldn’t go through. Not yet.

“You’ll like it on the other side,” Leliel said with a cool smile. She was either oblivious to Summer’s panic, or she simply didn’t care. “It’s much more interesting on Earth than it is here. Of all my creations, I must say, this Haven is the least inspired of them all.”

A buzzing noise filled the air, and a pair of balam soared toward them, grasping one another’s hands as they careened through the clouds. Their childlike faces were filled with fear.

The instant they landed on the edge of the platform, they began to chatter in shrieks. Abram tensed underneath Summer’s fingers, and his hand crept toward the small of his back. Judging by the smell of gunpowder, he was hiding a gun underneath his tuxedo jacket.

“What do you mean?” Leliel asked, her sharp gaze focused on the balam. They shrieked again, and she said, “Then he’ll be here soon. Well enough. I’m ready to end this.”

Before Abram could draw his firearm, the platform trembled under Summer’s feet. Another gibborim stepped onto the edge. Summer had almost forgotten how hideous they were. How could a Heaven that produced something as wonderful as Nash make creatures like that?

Abram drew a handgun from the small of his back. “Get behind me, Summer,” he said, lifting the pistol.

Leliel pushed his arms down. “Don’t shoot. They won’t hurt you.”

“But you said that Nash sent them to kill us,” Abram said.

“Ah.” Leliel held her hand out to examine her fingernails. They were perfect, just like every other inch of her body. “I may have prevaricated somewhat.”

“Prevaricated.” His voice trembled with barely-restrained anger. “You fucking lied.”

She flung her hands into the air. “What does that matter? The truth remains that Nash is a war criminal and must be contained.”

Her attempt at redirection was an utter failure. Abram’s eyes flicked between Summer and the ethereal creatures guarding the edge of the platform, and she saw a subtle shift in his features. His brow creased. Lines appeared on either side of his mouth.

Summer shook her head in a tiny motion, trying not to catch Leliel’s attention. “Don’t do it, Abram,” she mouthed silently.

But he was already raising the gun again—and this time, he turned it on the angel.

Leliel looked utterly unimpressed. The light from the sun caught the stray hairs drifting in the breeze, making it look as though she had a halo. “Does this really matter so much to you? Good Lord, mortals are such brittle things.”

He replied by squeezing the trigger.

Abram was only a meter from Leliel—almost within arm’s reach. He fired at near point-blank range. It should have been impossible to miss her.

But Leliel was suddenly gone.

He turned and dropped to his knees just in time for Leliel’s fist to swing over his head. She had darted around to his other side faster than the bullet had flown. Summer sucked in a gasp, clapping her hands over her mouth.

The gibborim lumbered into motion, and each time his foot landed, it made the entire platform tremble.

“Be careful—just restrain him!” Leliel said, darting away from a second gunshot. Her wings whipped behind her.

High, whining shrieks told Summer that the balam were coming, too. She needed to do something. She had to protect Abram, protect herself, stop the angels. But her body was locked up with terror. She could only watch as Abram fired at the charging gibborim. The first bullet deflected harmlessly off of its chest. The second punched into the gibborim’s face.

It roared and fell, and Abram immediately shot the balam out of the air.

Summer was on her knees now. When had she fallen? Why couldn’t she move?

“Stop shooting my angels!” Leliel cried, and she tackled Abram. It was a wholly ungraceful move for such a beautiful creature, but it was effective. They fell together beside the gibborim’s body as it struggled to stand once more.

Leliel leaned her weight on Abram’s throat. Abram’s struggle with the angel had rolled them closer to the sun, and his approach made the fissure burn brighter and sing louder. His pained gurgle was the tipping point for Summer—there was no time to be afraid when her brother was in trouble. Suddenly, the wolf was within reach.

Her human skin fell away, baring the beast underneath.

Summer’s paws pounded against white cobblestone as she lunged for them.

She launched onto Leliel’s back, and the angel took the momentum with the calm of an experienced football player. She barely even grunted. “I’m not your enemy, mortal,” Leliel said. She punctuated the statement by punching Summer across the face.

It was nothing like being punched by Abram in one of their many playful sparring matches. Not that he held back or was weak. Being struck by an angel was just in a whole new class of pain.

Summer yelped. Leliel pulled back to hit again.

I don’t think so.

Scrambling to her paws, Summer leaped around the angel and bit down on the base of her wing. Blood washed over her tongue, acidic and sour.

That got Leliel to scream.

Summer threw her full weight into the angel’s back, and they wrestled, rolling together in a tangle of limbs.

Another gunshot, and then a click. Abram was out of ammunition.

Leliel’s arm hooked around Summer’s throat, cutting off her air. Her paws scrabbled uselessly against the cobblestone.

“Hold him,” she told the gibborim, and it closed its massive hands on Abram’s arms, pinning them to his sides. Only when he was contained did Leliel release Summer again. “Change back and dress yourself, or I’ll have Abram thrown through the fissure now.” Her voice was so cold that Summer half-expected it to start snowing.

After struggling so hard to turn into a wolf in the first place, her body was reluctant to resume its other form. But Abram’s steady gaze was awfully convincing.

What would happen if he fell through the fissure alone? Would it close and separate them forever? Summer didn’t want to find out.

Her human limbs emerged and the fur fell away. Summer’s dress was still puddled near the heat of the brilliant sun, but she shivered as she slipped into it. “Please,” Summer said, swallowing down the bitter taste of blood. “Just let us go. Let Nash leave. None of us deserve this.”

The plea seemed to destroy what little remained of Leliel’s patience. “Deserve what? You don’t want to be sent to Earth? You don’t want to protect humanity from Nashriel’s assault?”

“He’s not the one threatening to hurt my brother!”

A dark spot appeared in the swirling color of the sky, and Leliel turned to watch it approach.

It was Nash. He soared through the sky with Gran under his arm, and she looked about as thrilled to be flying as Summer was to be at Leliel’s mercy.

Summer’s heart leaped into her throat as they touched down safely on the edge of the platform. With Nash’s wings exposed and his features twisted by rage, she could believe that he had once been a warrior to fear. But she wasn’t afraid of him. Whatever crimes he might have committed, he didn’t deserve to be punished for them after so many thousands of years.

Nash’s eyes met hers across the platform. There was a silent question in his gaze. Are you all right?

It took all of Summer’s strength not to immediately run into his arms, but she couldn’t leave Abram held by the gibborim. She restricted herself to a single nod.

Gran took one look at the situation and stabbed a finger in Leliel’s chest. “You let Abram go,” she growled, straight-backed and defiant.

“And who are you?” Leliel asked, surveying the old woman with a curled upper lip.

“I didn’t invite you to ask questions. I told you to let him go, or I swear by God that I will make you wish you’d never been hatched, bird girl.”

The angel looked at Nash over Gran’s head. “Is she serious?”

“Very,” he said.

Leliel must have given some kind of silent cue to the gibborim because its hands relaxed on Abram. Gran walked around Leliel as calmly as though it were utterly normal to be suspended on floating rocks near a tiny, flaming sun, and went to Abram’s side. The gibborim didn’t step away at Gran’s approach. It loomed over the three humans, a clear threat even as it remained motionless.

“I have to say that I’m surprised you surrendered the last of them,” Leliel said, addressing Nash as though the humans had suddenly, magically vanished.

Though he responded to Leliel, his eyes never left Summer’s. “I had no choice. You threatened to kill her.”

Any doubts Summer might have had about his intentions vanished instantly.

If he hadn’t brought Gran to the fissure, then he could have attempted to break free again later. His appearance didn’t just mean that he was trying to reunite the family. It meant he was giving up his freedom.

Summer’s hands flew to her mouth. “No,” she whispered.

“I’m going to take them to Earth now,” Leliel said, “but I have to know. Why give up so easily? Have you decided that you enjoy your time in this Haven? Do you want to be contained?”

“Not at all,” Nash said. “I would like nothing more to be free. I hate it here…and I hate you.”

“Then why?”

“Because I love Summer,” he said, and it was as though the rest of the world was gone in an instant, taking the oxygen with it.

Summer gripped Gran’s hands for support. Tears blurred her vision.

“You really have changed,” Leliel said softly. “Shame.”

She strolled toward the humans where they waited by the sun. Just a few more steps, and Nash would be trapped forever.

“No!” Summer cried.

She burst into a run, and she wasn’t sure what she was trying to do—whether she was trying to reach Nash or attack Leliel. It didn’t seem to matter. But it was obvious what the gibborim thought she was doing because it stepped in her path and raised a fist.

“Summer, don’t!” Nash shouted.

The gibborim struck Summer. It was like a sledgehammer to the gut, and it sent her flying.

Abram opened his arms to catch her, but her momentum was too much for him to remain on his feet. He stumbled back…and then he began to fall.

The light of the sun grew until it was blinding, and Summer realized that they had crossed the fissure’s threshold. The platform began to vanish around them.

“No!” Nash roared. His voice was distorted.

The last thing that Summer saw was Gran reaching for her—and then she and Abram were sucked into another universe.

nineteen

Light and heat built around Summer. She knew that she was screaming because she could feel the rawness of her throat, but the sound didn’t reach her ears. All she could hear was her heartbeat as it slowed. Each beat took longer than the last. Minutes passed between each thud.

She was blind, bloodless, dying.

Then there was solid earth beneath her feet again, and Summer smacked into the ground. Dirt scraped against her palms. Her hair hung in her face. She looked up, chest heaving with breaths. She was in another cave, much like the one under the lake, but this one was a mess of rubble.

Dust tickled her sinuses and made her sneeze. Summer wiped off her face and took a sniff. There was the smell of rain, just like she had left behind on the other side. She smelled gunpowder and blood, too. That couldn’t be a good sign.

There were so many new scents that it was almost overwhelming. The pictures it splashed through her mind were confusing.

A firefight. Injuries. There was saliva, pheromones, fur. Were those other wolves she smelled, too?

Summer sneezed again.

Once she got past all of those smells, there was also a familiar musk, something that reminded her of Gran. It was a feminine perfume, and just a whiff of it made Summer’s heart slow immediately as a calm settled into her bones.

And she smelled Abram. He had appeared beside her in the same instant that she had.

“You okay?” she asked, which triggered a bout of coughing. It felt like the dirt and dust had gotten into her lungs.

He didn’t respond, which probably wasn’t a good sign. He groaned and pressed a hand to his ribs.

Summer pulled his fingers away to take a look. There was no visible blood, so it must have been the impact of landing. Judging by the heat she felt in her knees and palms, she had probably hurt herself, too, but her shapeshifter body was already knitting itself back together again.

She twisted to look behind her. There was nothing but a blank wall and a handful of petroglyphs, which had been cracked down the middle.

No Leliel. No Gran. No Nash.

“Where are we?” Abram asked, sitting back on his heels and offering a hand to Summer. She used his grip to steady herself on her knees.

“I don’t know.”

The air in the cave was thick and dusty. It looked like there had been some kind of collapse, but people must have been attempting to clean it up because there was a path to a door on the opposite wall.

Between the sight of the rubble and all of those smells, Summer was getting a sick sense of being on the scene of a disaster. Death. Destruction.

“Where’s Gran?” Summer asked. “Where’s Nash?”

The grim look on Abram’s face was answer enough. If they hadn’t already crossed over, then something must have happened. Leliel changing her mind. Maybe another fight, or the fissure closing.

It was too terrible to contemplate, so Summer tried to put it out of her mind and focus on what she did have—a whole new world waiting for her.

“I guess we’re stuck here,” she said, trying to sound upbeat. It totally failed. Her chin quivered. “Now I’ll never get to see your painting.”

Abram pulled her into a hug. “I know,” he said, cheek pressed to her hair. “I’ll paint another one for you.” Using each other as leverage, they stood, and the shift in air brought that comforting smell washing over Summer again. He caught her expression. “What is it?”

“It kind of smells like…” She trailed off. She had been about to say “it smells like Mom,” but how could she know what their mother would smell like? They had never been in the same universe before, much less the same room.

But he seemed to understand what she wasn’t saying. His gaze sharpened. “Were they here?”

“I think so,” Summer said slowly.

She took a few steps forward. The smell was stronger toward the door.

Her heart sped. “Actually…I think they’re here right now,” she tried to say, but her voice failed her.

Abram took her hand and held it tightly. He might not have shown his emotion, but he was her twin, the other half of her soul. She knew that his nerves were ringing, too.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

She leaned her forehead into his arm and shut her eyes. Was she ready to see their parents? The people that she had been waiting to meet for her entire life? Was she ready to set foot in a new world, so much bigger and more dangerous than the one she had left behind?

“Yes,” Summer said. “I’m ready.”

They stepped through the door and climbed to the surface.

The forest waiting for them was sensory overload. Summer could hear squirrels, rabbits, the rustling of bushes, the swaying of trees. She smelled a dozen new people she had never met before. Summer felt a powerful sense of cognitive dissonance. This was the forest that she had seen in the photos on that archaic computer in Nash’s office.

There was a woman standing just a few meters away, facing the trees. She had long blond hair, skinny legs, and big eyes, just like Summer had seen in the photo. But even if Summer hadn’t seen her before, the smell would have been more than enough to identify her.

The woman turned to face them, and Summer was shocked to see how young she looked. Rylie Gresham must have been Summer and Abram’s age. Nash had been right—time did flow differently between the Haven and Earth.

Rylie’s eyes widened and her lips parted at the sight of them. Her irises were as gold as the sun. The straps of her dress bared the faint, silvery hint of scars over her breast.

“Hi, Mom,” Summer said, trying to smile.

Abram sucked in a hard breath beside her.

Rylie’s legs wobbled. Her hands flew to cover her mouth, and she glanced back at the car behind her. There were two men sitting there—both of whom had been in the pictures. They smelled dangerous, like gunpowder and leather, but there was something equally familiar about them.

Summer knew what all of it meant. She had found her family.

And then Rylie was moving forward, and so was Summer, and they all but fell into each other’s arms. Abram hugged both of them tight, and they were all a tangle of arms and tears and smells that Summer already knew. It was so much better than she had ever dreamed.

Rylie pulled back and cupped Summer’s face in her hands to look at her. There was so much heartache in her golden eyes. “You look just like him,” she whispered. Then she turned to Abram and gave a wet sob. “And you—you look like me.”

Abram’s chin trembled, almost imperceptibly. “I know,” he said. There was so much emotion in those two words. A thousand things that he wanted to say, but which couldn’t escape him.

“What did she…” Rylie licked her lips. Swallowed. “What’s your name?”

His jaw tightened. “Abram.”

“Abram,” she whispered, and tears tracked down her cheeks. “That’s perfect. It’s nice to meet you, Abram. I’m Rylie.”

There was nothing any of them could say to that. Rylie embraced him again, tighter than before, and Summer could hear his bones creak. He didn’t protest. He wrapped his arms around her and returned the hug with the same ferocity.

A deep voice spoke. “Summer.”

She turned. The men from the car stood a few feet away.

Summer drank in their features. The one on the left was shorter, and his hair was longer—a lot like Abram’s had been before he shaved it, actually. The one on the right was big and mean-looking. Gran had said that was Abel. Her father. Which meant that the other had to be his brother, Seth.

“Hi,” Summer said. She was strong enough to rip trees out of the ground by the roots, but she couldn’t seem to find the strength within her to say anything other than that. She had no idea how to speak to these men. And they seemed to feel the same.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Seth finally said, extending a hand.

Twenty years apart, and he wanted to shake hands? Summer burst out laughing.

She grabbed both of them around the necks and pulled the brothers close, hugging them with all the vigor she could manage. Summer planted kisses on their cheeks. “I have waited so long to meet you guys,” she said, dropping back on her feet. Abel touched his cheek. He looked stunned.

Seth raked a hand through his hair. “One week.”

“Practically a lifetime,” Summer replied.

Rylie was smiling as she watched them, but her expression slipped. “But where’s Aunt Gwyn?”

“Who?” Abram asked.

Something scraped within the tunnel before Rylie could respond, and Summer’s heart swelled. Hope and fear warred within her belly. Was it Leliel, come to take revenge after all?

But then she saw two figures rise from the dust, and the fear was instantly gone.

Nash stepped into the light, his wings curled protectively around both him and Gran, who looked like she was holding him up. Silver blood stained his arms. The sight of his wings elicited gasps of shock from the others, but she couldn’t have cared less—not when he looked like he might be on the verge of falling over.

Summer rushed to their side and grabbed one of Nash’s biceps. It wasn’t until she heard a yowl that she realized he wasn’t gravely wounded.

He was trying to hang onto a cat.

“Sorry for the delay,” Nash said, giving her a faint smile. “I had to get someone for you.”

He opened his arms…and Sir Lumpy jumped to the ground.

Sir Lumpy, unfortunately, didn’t seem to be quite as pleased by the transition between universes as Summer was. He was much too old and set in his kitty ways to put up with that kind of bullshit. She scooped him off of the ground before he could shoot off into the trees, and he thrashed in Summer’s hands, claws out and ears flat to his skull.

“It’s okay, baby, it’s okay,” Summer cooed, trying to cradle him to her chest to calm him down. Mostly, all that accomplished was getting twenty claws sunken deep into her flesh.

“The Chevelle,” Seth said. “Quickly.”

He opened the car door, and she practically had to throw her cat inside. His entire body was puffed up to three times its usual size, and he still hadn’t retracted his claws. After a few angry hisses, he darted under the passenger’s seat, tearing up the leather in his wake.

“Man, Abel’s going to freak about the upholstery,” Seth said.

Summer put her hand to the window, but there was nothing she could do for Sir Lumpy now. “We’ll just have to freak him out more as a distraction. I’m sure I can think of something properly shocking.”

He laughed, but cut off almost immediately. “Jesus,” Seth said, staring at her. Summer realized with a jolt that she was actually an inch taller than him—and he was wearing hiking boots. “It’s really you. You’re seriously here.”

Summer took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air.

“I seriously am,” she said.

The bonfire they built that night was huge. It probably wasn’t safe to have in a forest, realistically speaking, but the trees were still wet from the last rain, and Summer was grateful to have the light chase away the darkness.

The werewolf pack had obviously been camping by the cave for a while now, since they easily fell into a routine of collecting dry wood and preparing food. Summer sat back on the hood of the Chevelle to watch them work, drumming her heels lightly against the car’s bumper. She wanted to help, but she had no idea how to jump in.

“Join them,” Gran said.

Summer hadn’t even noticed her grandma creeping up from behind. She bit her bottom lip as she took in Gran’s body language—her pink cheeks, the smile affixed to her lips, the way she seemed to stand up straighter. It was like twenty years of weight had been lifted from her shoulders. “Someone has to keep Sir Lumpy company. I’m still waiting for him to come out from under the seat.”

“Sir Lumpy is fine, and if your brother’s not having any trouble jumping in, it should be easy for you, too.”

Summer scanned the clearing until she found Abram helping Seth toss dry branches onto the pyre. But Gran was wrong—it was actually a lot easier for Abram, since he didn’t feel like he needed to talk to people. Summer wanted to know them. She wanted to know them all. But she had no idea where to begin.

“I’m scared, Gran.”

Gran kissed her on the forehead. Her lips were cool and dry. “And the sooner you get past that, the sooner you can start catching up on the twenty years you’ve missed.”

“I don’t think there’s any way to catch up on that,” Summer said.

A figure broke away from the others and ambled toward them. Summer sniffed the air. It was another werewolf, and he smelled like gunpowder. It could only be Abel.

“Hey, son,” Gran said with a smile warmer than the sun. Abel stooped so that she could give him a hug around the neck.

“You had us worried there for a while, ma’am,” he said.

“You should have had more faith in me,” Gran said. “I’m going to have a talk with Rylie.”

She vanished, and Summer expected Abel to go with her. But instead, he sat next to her on the trunk.

Summer had been through some pretty awkward experiences in her life. Her first date with the guy that she met while troubleshooting a failed server, where they had no common interests except for programming? Awkward. Watching her brother heal after that incident with the bear when Summer knitted up in seconds? Super awkward.

But none of that beat the awkwardness level of trying to talk to her dad for the first time. There just weren’t any words to begin with.

“So you’re a werewolf,” Abel finally said.

Summer focused on toying with a tiny pinecone. “I guess so. I’ve always called myself a shapeshifter.”

“Can you change whenever?” he asked. She nodded. “Does it hurt?”

“Not unless I’m rushing it.”

“That’s good.” A pause, and then, “I don’t know if you know, but…”

“You’re my dad,” Summer said.

“Oh. Right. Yeah.”

Okay, enough of this. She tossed the pinecone into the darkness and hopped off the trunk. “I’m a computer sciences major. I like cats, the color yellow, and hanging out in the forest when I’m bored. Now you know me. Your turn.”

Abel’s eyebrows lifted. “I could blast a can off a fence at a hundred yards with a six shooter before I could drive a car.”

Well, it was a start. Summer chewed on her thumbnail as she thought. “I tried to rip off an angel’s wing with my bare teeth,” she said helpfully. “It wasn’t Nash’s.”

That looked like it impressed him. “What’s angel blood taste like?”

She dropped her voice into an exaggerated, monstrous growl. “Like suffering.”

Abel burst into laughter, so loud that everyone by the fire stopped to look at them. Summer grinned.

Awkwardness gone.

She was home.

epilogue

When Uncle Scott went to the hospital for the last time, Summer had only been twelve, and she hadn’t understood that he was finally dying of the cancer that had eaten at him for months. Her primary worry was that he would be lonely in the hospital.

Family breakfast was a daily ritual for the Greshams. They had never gone a day without eating together. So she grabbed her grandma and brother, half a refrigerator’s worth of food, and went to spend a few hours with her uncle. The whole family had spent hours together that morning, the adults laughing as Summer and Abram hurled mini muffins at each other, and Summer went home grinning.

Scott had died of heart failure the next day, but it didn’t take away from Summer’s memory of that last amazing family breakfast. She thought it might have been the happiest time of her life.

Sharing dinner around a bonfire with the werewolf pack was different—and it made her miss Uncle Scott an awful lot—but it took her back to the days of family breakfasts, and all the laughter they had shared over the years.

Everyone wanted to know what life had been like in the Haven. What it was like being a “werewolf” without a moon, which was apparently a big deal on this side. They asked about school, technology, and politics. Summer was lost among the multitude of voices, and Abram was even more overwhelmed. But he was smiling, too.

“Wait,” Summer said after the umpteenth question. She set down the bag of beef jerky and swallowed the bite in her mouth. “That’s enough about us. What about you guys? What’s everything like over here?”

And that just started off a whole new tirade.

Summer stroked Sir Lumpy as everyone’s voices washed over her. Her cat had calmed down after an hour in the car, and now he was asleep on her shoulders, claws locked into her shirt and head nuzzled under her chin. He was drooling, as usual.

She couldn’t help but stare at the new family as they all spoke.

There was another set of twins on the other side of the fire, named Bekah and Levi. They had cried together when they found out that Uncle Scott had died, but they were at peace now, sitting together on a log with their heads bowed together.

And then there was Seth. He was the only one who didn’t smell like a wolf, but he was still clearly part of the pack. Everyone got quiet and listened to him when he spoke. Even Rylie.

Rylie and Abel were the hardest not to stare at. Summer found herself searching for all the common features, picking out what parts of them made Abram and which parts had made her. Rylie’s smile was so beautiful. A lot like Gran’s.

Summer missed a lot of the conversation in her reverie, but that was okay. She was going to have an entire lifetime to get to know everyone.

But one person wasn’t joining in the conversation.

Summer watched Nash through the licking flames. He stood aloof from the others, wearing a borrowed shirt with his arms folded. Everything about his body language was unfriendly, and nobody was exactly going out of their way to talk to him. He had been like that ever since they walked through the doorway.

Maybe ending his exile was harder than simply escaping the prison.

“Hey,” Rylie said, drawing Summer’s attention back to her. She spoke in a low voice. “Can I talk to you?”

“Sure,” Summer said. They headed out to a quieter spot near the car, and she set Sir Lumpy on the backseat of the Chevelle before following Rylie to a fallen log. “What’s up?”

“The guy with the wings.” Rylie nodded toward the trees. “Nash. Is he…I mean, are you two…?”

“You mean, are we…”

Summer couldn’t seem to finish the sentence any more than Rylie could. They shared a laugh, and it made her feel like the gravity was so much lighter than it had been a few seconds earlier. Like she could just take a running jump and fly into the night.

“He’s hot,” Rylie said.

“I know, right? It’s kind of insane.”

“Smells good, too. Like buttered popcorn.”

Buttered popcorn? Summer didn’t know Rylie well enough yet to ask why she would associate that smell with angels. It was way too psychological.

Summer focused on her feet to hide her burning cheeks. “To answer your question, yes. We’re together. I think. He’s…complicated.”

“I’m familiar with that,” Rylie said. She swung her feet over the side of the log, clasped her hands in her lap, and stared up at the sky. A lock of blond hair slid over her shoulder. “Is this the part where I’m supposed to warn you about boys? Or go threaten him or something?”

“I don’t think he’d like that.”

“Guess not. I just have no idea what to do. I wasn’t prepared to be the mother of two babies, but I’m even less prepared to be the mother of adults. I mean…” Her laugh was mirthless. “There’s just no way to prepare for this.”

Summer reached out and pushed Rylie’s hair behind her ear. It was a habitual gesture, the kind of fidgeting she always did with Gran and Nash, but it came to her as naturally here as it did at any other time. Rylie’s smell was so much like her brother’s. “I don’t really need a mom anyway,” Summer said. Hurt flashed over Rylie’s face, so she quickly added, “But I need friends. And…we’ll always be family.”

“Friends.” Rylie bit her bottom lip and smiled. “We can be friends.”

A hot tear slid down Summer’s cheek and shivered on her chin. They joined hands, and both of them stared at the place that their fingers were laced together. Their wrists had the same curve, the same jutting bone.

“I have to ask something else,” Rylie said. “Were you happy? I mean…has life been good to you?”

Summer’s lips spread in a grin. “I grew up in an endless forest with my brother—my best friend. Gran and Uncle Scott loved us, took care of us, and taught us everything we know. I’ve gone to college. I drank a lot of coffee.” She laughed. “So, yeah. It’s been good. Really, really good.” She looked up to realize that Nash had disappeared. He wasn’t lurking anymore. “I should probably go talk to my…uh, my friend. He’s been quiet since we got back.”

Rylie released her hand. “Yeah, go ahead. I’m not going anywhere.”

Warmth flushed through Summer’s heart, but it quickly faded as she walked away from her mom and headed into the darkness of the forest, following Nash’s smell. She found him standing near a dirt road, and he stared at it hard, as though trying to decide something.

“Hey,” she said softly, and he turned.

His eyes still burned straight through her. Somehow, he had become more intense in the short time she had known him, instead of less. Familiarity didn’t take away the edge. “Summer,” he said, sending chills down her spine.

“Are you okay?” She stepped closer to him to enjoy his body heat. It was a cool night, rainy and wet, and Nash was like a miniature sun.

“Of course I am. I have everything that I’ve wanted for thousands of years. I’ve finally escaped exile, Leliel has no power over me, and I’m free.”

“You don’t sound happy to have everything you ever wanted,” Summer said. He didn’t respond, and she pressed her side against his in a silent gesture of solidarity. “What happened after we fell through the fissure?”

“Leliel and I sat down together, and we talked.”

“You…talked? That’s it?”

“We talked.” Nash managed to make that sound like a bad thing. “I don’t think we’ll ever agree with each other on anything, but…we came to an understanding. I also restructured Adamson Industries so that it will continue to function without me. So much of the Haven’s current economy depends on my company—it would have been a tragedy to let the world fall for the sake of my freedom.”

“But you only took fifteen minutes to follow me,” Summer said.

Nash finally gave her a faint smile. “A virtual lifetime.”

This was the man that she thought had cared about nobody but himself, yet he had taken the time to make sure his employees would continue having jobs, the cities would thrive, and nobody would be hurt. Summer snuggled against his arm. “I knew you weren’t a creepy jackass.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“Yes, and you’re going to take it.” Her smile quickly faded at the thought of Nash spending days with Leliel. “What did you talk about with her?”

“She told me some of what I’ve missed. The circumstances are worse than I thought. Though the war has ended, many of the people involved are still in motion, and tensions are rising. This entire world is in danger.”

Summer knew that should have worried her, but it was hard to get upset when she could still see the bonfire through the trees. The world seemed so small in comparison to that.

“But she let you go,” she said.

Nash nodded. “She let me go, and it only took minimal coercion.”

“So…what now?”

His lips drew into a thin line. “You’ve found your parents. I must likewise find my family.”

Summer blinked back a sudden surge of tears. “I understand. I mean, you’ve been away for a long time, and Leliel still loves you, so—”

“What are you talking about?” he interrupted. “There’s no love between Leliel and I. My exile was entirely her fault. She may have forgiven me, but that road doesn’t go both ways.” Nash caught her arm before she could walk away. “What are you doing?”

“Going back to the camp,” she said. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

His eyes searched her face, and his fingers tightened. “Do you want me to leave?”

Summer bowed her head against his chest. “I want you to be happy, Nash. If you need to go find that happiness…I’ll be happy for you. But the thing is…” She bit her bottom lip as she searched for words.

How could she begin to tell him that her happiness at finding her parents was only a single pine needle in an entire forest of trees in comparison to what he made her feel? Nash was the best thing that had happened to her in over twenty years. But whether or not she liked it, he was still a soldier in an ancient war.

“Human lifetimes are so short,” he said gently.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” Nash chuckled softly. “Everything. Can I show you something?” The last time he had asked her that, they had gone on the most amazing date of Summer’s life. She didn’t even have to think before nodding.

Wings unfolded from behind him. He must have been holding his power back, because this time they were just wings—no brilliant light or surges of energy. Just feathers.

Summer wrapped her arms around his neck, and they climbed into the air with a single flap of his wings. The trees quickly turned to formless black shapes. The air grew colder, and Summer snuggled against his chest for warmth.

They couldn’t seem to reach the stars here, but as the world sprawled out under their feet, she could see the pinprick lights of distant civilization. Houses, towns, places Summer had never seen before. “Now look at this,” Nash said, flapping his wings to turn them.

Summer gasped.

A huge sphere hung in the sky, blue-gold and cratered. It glowed like a cold sun and spoke to her like nothing else had before. The hair on her arms stood straight up. Chills washed down her spine.

She reached a hand into the sky. It was too far away for her to touch, even though she so desperately wanted to. There was also no sign of the archer constellation here, but she thought that she liked this sky much better—even if it didn’t sing to her.

“That’s the moon,” Nash said. His breath was so much warmer than the breeze, yet having it brush over her shoulder made her shiver again. “Legends say that the gods of the forest live there. They’re the ones that gifted humans with the ability to have the twin natures of beast and man.”

“It’s incredible.” She traced the line of his profile with her eyes—the strong nose and dimpled chin, the lips that made her blush just to look at them. As amazing as the moon was, it had nothing on Nash. “So what are you going to do?”

“I promised that we would discover the world together, and I never lie.” Nash hesitated. “But you’re with your family now. Surely you won’t want to leave them.”

“I barely know them yet. There’s a lot of catching up to do.”

“And I have so much to see and learn. There is much I have missed. I should rejoin my ethereal counterparts if another war is to begin.”

Summer’s fingers tightened on his chest. She turned her face into his arm, sheltering herself from the wind. “Maybe Leliel’s wrong about the war. It’s been a long time since you were exiled. The world must have changed a lot, and I bet people have, too. Nobody is going to want to fight.” Summer gave him a sideways look. “You don’t want to fight anymore, do you?”

“Given the choice, I would never fight again.”

“Well, peace has to start somewhere. If Adam’s mightiest soldier lays down his fiery sword, then maybe others will follow you.”

“You’re very optimistic,” Nash said.

Summer smiled up at him. The moon lit his skin with traces of silver. In the forest below, the bonfire was still burning, and if she focused, she thought that she could hear Gran and Rylie laughing.

She kissed Nash softly. Their lips lingered.

“It’s a good day for optimism,” she whispered.

This isn’t the end of the story!

War is coming. Which side will Nash choose? Can Abram step up to face his destiny as hunter? And will Sir Lumpy ever find the love of a lady cat that deserves him? Help me plan the next part of the story! We’re plotting it right now on my Facebook: smarturl.it/tshseries

And make sure to sign up for my mailing list so you know the instant the next book is out: smarturl.it/armyofevil

author’s note

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Sara (SM Reine)

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Table of Contents

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Epilogue

Author’s Note