Shade didn’t hate the council. He just didn’t like the fact that they held all the power and didn’t seem to do anything but hand out decrees and punishments that were enforced by the warriors. There were only three classes of angles: the council, the warriors, and the others. He didn’t like all the power on the top that trickled down to nothing, but who was he to speak out of turn?
“Enough of your pleasantries. We need you here, now,” Striker, the second-in-command, cut in. Dishwater brown hair and plain features made him look almost human. If it weren’t for the brown wings coming out of his back, he’d look like a mortal. Maybe that’s why the angel was always an ass.
“Okay.” Shade nodded. “What is it that you need?” He once again wondered why Ambrose was there? Why did they need two warrior angels? Tingles of dread filled his belly. Had the other faction of angels done something? They hadn’t destroyed the rebels completely in the war. It was always a cause for trepidation and concern that the others would come back and start something. Were they on the brink of another war? He’d not heard anything, but he couldn’t be too sure.
“We have been alerted to a breach of security,” Caine announced. “Our secrets may be unraveled soon if this is not fixed.”
“You mean the secrets of the supernatural?” Shade asked. “How can that be?”
Striker gave a laugh, filled with bile rather than humor. “You dare ask this when it is your fault we are in this predicament in the first place?”
Shade froze. “What?”
“Your dust.” Striker sneered. “Your oh-so-favorable blue dust has been collected by a human. If it falls into the wrong hands, do you understand what will happen? Everything that has been held secret for eons will be lost because you have a dusting problem.”
Oh, crap.
As a child, he’d had a problem with his dust. Whenever he got excited or angry, he’d sprinkle dust where he flew or stood. Beyond a few occurrences recently, he’d thought he’d conquered it years ago. How had someone gotten it? Did they even know what it was?
“I didn’t know,” Shade whispered.
But that was a lie. He did know. Just that morning, he’d seen a sprinkle of his dust flowing on the wind and thought nothing of it.
My God. What have I done
?
“We know you didn’t,” said Agnes, the sole female member of the council. Her piercing blue eyes filled with understanding.
Of all the council members, Shade liked her best.
“But,” Agnes continued, “you must fix it, Shade. Finish it. Find your dust and reclaim it before someone finds out what it is. We don’t have the power to wipe the memories of an incidence such as this from a human’s mind as we once did. The humans don’t believe anymore. Because they don’t, we’ve lost our ability to shield ourselves the way we should.”
Shade nodded, sadness and frustration setting root.
“I will fix this,” Shade promised. “You have my word.”
The council nodded and dismissed him. With a glance toward Ambrose, Shade left the room, his best friend on his heels.
The two friends didn’t speak once they reached the end of the balcony. They simply jumped off the edge, their wings catching the wind, and flew toward another mountaintop. Shade needed time to think. To calculate.
He was damned fine at his job. Strong and fierce. Yet a childhood problem of dusting could take down a civilization. He would have laughed at the ridiculousness of that statement if it hadn’t been true.
They landed, their feet settling on the soil. Shade looked behind him at the place he called home. They didn’t live in heaven because they weren’t godly angels, far from it. He wasn’t even sure there was a heaven beyond their time. Their world was in the same realm as the humans, but it was tucked away in a pocket of space between two mountain ranges, hidden from the eyes of the unknown.
A few raindrops fell from the sky before turning to a slight mist. The other angels who were at a lower altitude flew to the safety of their homes, the rain beginning to weigh heavy on their wings. Only the strongest could fly in anything more than mist, another reason they didn’t live on clouds, as most humans seemed to believe. One flight through a dense cloud could be dangerous; the moisture seeped into their feathers and threatened to drag the angel down. Without sufficient muscular back strength, the angel would plummet.
Most didn’t. Despite the vast strength they possessed, angels were weak in some respects.
“Are you going to stand there in the rain and watch others while everything falls around you, or are you going to fix this?” Ambrose’s deep voice cut through his thoughts, and Shade turned toward him.
Tall with white blond hair pulled back from his pale face in a braid, with white, almost crystal wings, Ambrose was the light to Shade’s dark. Yet, the colors masked the personality, for where Shade saw the humor and light in some things, his best friend was the dark, the edge to the blade. Shade, too, held his own fury; he just didn’t show it as often.
Dangerous and agile, his mentor had taught him everything he knew. Shade lowered his head in shame. He’d failed.
“You didn’t fail, Shade,” Ambrose whispered.
“I didn’t say that aloud.” Ambrose was always doing that. He was practically a mind reader
“You didn’t have to. We all leave trails of angel dust. You are no different from others except that you leave greater quantities. It’s not something to be shameful of.”
“I beg to differ.”
“It’s only different this time because it got into the hands of a human. I’m worried how it got there, which is why I was in the room when you came in.”
Intrigued, Shade lifted his head. “What are you saying?”
Ambrose shrugged. “I don’t know yet. Something just seems off to me, but I will work on finding out.”
“Okay, what else do you know?”
“Only that the dust may be in the hands of a woman.”
“A woman?” Interesting.
The motorcycle vibrated beneath Shade as he pulled off the side of the road and parked. The rain pelted him, the cold seeping into his bones, but he shrugged it off. He was in northern Washington, and this seemed to be the norm in terms of weather.
He lifted his leg and got off the bike, ignoring the stares of the women around him. They watched him stroll, his powerful legs leading to long strides. He’d tucked his wings into the slits in his back to hide the fact he was an angel, but he couldn’t hide his face or the fact that women seemed to fawn over it.
It had been a long time since he had a woman, not since that jaguar shifter a century or two before on a night of deep depression and loneliness. But the heat, claws, and desperation had served to fill only a physical need that left him even lonelier than before. From that moment on, he left his carnal needs up to his hand. Before the jaguar, it had been even longer, but he didn’t want to think about her. The one he’d lost. She was long since gone.
Shade walked into a nearby café, the smells of baked goods and coffee filling his nose. He ordered a small coffee then went back to sit at a table near the window so he could watch those who passed by. A male pixie, in human form, walked in front of the window and nodded toward him. There were so many supernatural beings hidden from view in the world that Shade couldn’t even count them.
All humans were diluted forms of supernaturals. For millennia, the supernaturals had bred with one another and mixed the species until, finally, their powers had dwindled in most, and they stopped believing in things that came out of fairy tales. Those with so little non-human blood running their veins that they seemed ordinary were now called humans, although each had at least something beyond human lying dormant in their DNA.
Council did not identify the name of the human who collected the dust, but Ambrose told Shade it was about to be in the hands of a woman who lived and worked nearby. Her name was Lily.
Who was this Lily? Shade wanted to get a look at her. She had the answers. She possessed the reason behind his shame: his blue dust.
A woman with expressive emerald-green eyes passed by the window; a slight smile graced her face, and she had those side-swoopy bangs women loved so much. She was of average height and held delicious curves. He looked over every inch of her—a small waist, large, perfect breasts to fit his palms, slightly wide hips that would serve well when he gripped them, and sexy legs beneath the hem of her brown coat…
Lily.
That had to be her. He didn’t know how he knew, but he was sure of it.
His groin tightened.
She was human. Not a lick of anything else came from her. Yet, why did he want her so from just a look? He’d never looked at a human this way before. Why now? Was it because she might be the one who held his dust?
Lily stopped under the awning right in front of the window, careful of where she stepped—
odd
—and brushed the hair out of her eyes, before smiling at a passerby. She was radiant. Absolutely gorgeous. Shade held back a groan and shifted uncomfortably in his seat when she bit into her lip. She smiled again then walked to what must have been her car, got in, and left before Shade even thought to stand.
Some warrior he was, completely frozen in shock by his reaction to her. He was, however, unrepentant. He didn’t want to follow her today anyway. A town small as this would know of Lily and aide him in his research. If the supernaturals were revealed, chaos would rain. Humans could feel threatened, start wars, do untold atrocities when they met with what they didn’t know and therefore feared. If the supernaturals felt threatened…Shade didn’t want to think about that. He had to know more before he did anything.
So many questions flashed through his mind. Who was she? Why did she have his dust? What would she do if she discovered his secret?
Most importantly, he wondered if she was single and how she would look underneath him, blushing in ecstasy.
Shade shook his head, dispelling those annoying thoughts. He’d find out what he needed to about Lily, get his dust, and save the entirety of the supernatural world. Maybe along the way he’d learn a little more about a pretty brunette whose very presence threatened to make his wings stretch to the sky.
Yep. Easy for a warrior angel such as himself.
Enforcer’s Redemption - Excerpt
Redwood Pack Book 4
Want to read a dark, sexy paranormal series about a family of wolf shifters? Try out Carrie Ann Ryan’s bestselling, Redwood Pack series!
Chapter 1
Adam Jamenson watched as Jasper swept Willow around the dance floor, which the family had built outside their den, delight on both of their faces. A sharp and familiar pang pierced his heart, rattled around his ribs, and then settled in his stomach like a rotting, dead weight. He took a swig of his Jack on the rocks, the burn not quite dulling the ache that had haunted him for two decades.
God, he missed Anna.
He rubbed a hand through his shorn, dark brown hair, trying to release some of the tension he’d felt over the past eight months. Well, if he was honest, it’d been much longer than that, but the intensity had increased dramatically since… No, he couldn’t and wouldn’t think about that.
Not again. Not ever.
He drained the last of his glass and wondered if he should get up and pour himself another. What he needed right now was to get blinding drunk, but his family was watching him. They were always watching him, and with this being Willow’s birthday party, the Pack was celebrating and trying to be happy.
Adam didn’t want to be happy.
He wanted to be fucking drunk, that way the feel of the spindly fingers wrapped around his heart in a death grip would dissipate to a dull clench. His body felt on alert at all times, as if, at any moment, something would come in and attack, taking away anything else he thought he had.
It wasn’t much, just a jumble of memories that wouldn’t fade away.
He was the Enforcer of the Redwood Pack. As such, he felt the threats to the Pack deep in his soul and held the duty to protect his family. Sometimes, though, he felt as if he were failing at every turn.
Willow’s laugh brought him out of his gloomy thoughts. She smiled, her face brightening as North took her from Jasper’s arms, and they two-stepped to the change in music. He loved Willow like a sister and would do anything for her. He’d almost taken her into his home when she’d had a falling out with Jasper. She wouldn’t have taken Anna’s place, but maybe her laughter would have warmed up his tomb slightly.
Did he even want warmth?
“You don’t want that other drink, man,” Maddox grumbled as he took the seat next to Adam without invitation.
“Damn it. Stay out of my head.”
“You know I don’t read minds.”
Adam held back a wince. Of all his brothers, Maddox was the one he did his best to avoid. As the Omega of the Pack, he could feel every emotion from its members, and Adam didn’t want Maddox to be privy to some of his emotions. Or, rather,
any
of his emotions. He didn’t even want to deal with them himself. But, Maddox knew everything. He’d seen the way Maddox looked after Anna’s…death. He knew too much, and Adam didn’t want to look his brother in his all-too-knowing gaze and see pity…or worse, understanding.
No one could understand.
He had been the first of his brothers to be mated. He’d met and fallen in love with Anna forty years before. He’d had twenty years with the love of his life and then had lost her and their unborn child. He gripped his glass tighter as the gaping wound bled just a bit more. Now, one by one, his brothers were finding their mates, in Reed’s case
two
mates.
Adam was left to sit back and watch. Alone.
He didn’t want to be around to watch the smiles on their faces, see the love radiating from their pores, watch the women grow full and ripe with their children.
Children.
He closed his eyes, the stinging increasing.
He didn’t want to see Finn, Mel and Kade’s son, and Brie, Jasper and Willow’s daughter, toddle and grow up. That was the worst part. The part he couldn’t ignore. They were the physical representations and proof of a mating bond so strong that the Redwoods had a chance of a future.