PROLOGUE : "Before She Woke"
PROLOGUE:
"Before She Woke"
SAMUEL Pov
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The clash of two brute forces of the universe doesn't sound like thunder.
It sounds like the end of something.
Steel-edged wings cutting fog. Blade against blade. The low, guttural crack of a headstone shattering under the weight of two beings who had no business being anywhere near a Baptist church off Route 775. The graveyard swallowed the sounds the way Ohio swallows everything — slow, quiet, indifferent.
"What the fuck did you do, you piece of shit?!"
Azrael's voice split the night like a blade. His white wings snapped wide, catching the fog, making him look exactly like the divine executioner he'd always fancied himself to be. He hit me again before I could answer — open palm to the jaw, the kind of hit that rattled teeth and made stars bloom behind your eyes.
I hit the ground hard, skidding across wet grass and old grave markers, my black wings folding against my back on instinct before one of them could get snapped off at the root. Again.
"Shit." I spat dirt. Possibly a piece of someone's 1887 granite memorial. "My bad, Gerald."
Azrael landed six feet away — because of course he did, clean and perfect like the self-righteous bastard he is. White wings folded like he was posing for a Renaissance painting. Not a single feather out of place. His jaw was set, eyes cold, silver blade still humming in his grip.
I hate him. I genuinely, profoundly, want-to-carve-his-face-off hate him.
"Get up, Samuel." His voice was that calm, measured tone that made me want to drive my fist through a wall. Or his face. Mostly his face.
"You went against your orders, Samuel. You were supposed to kill that girl."
He was practically shaking. In all the centuries I'd known Azrael, I could count on one hand the times I'd seen him lose his composure. Tonight he was burning with it — wings fanned out, silver blade humming, eyes blazing like two chips of cold holy fury.
"Give me a second." I pressed a palm to my ribs, felt the hot throb of something probably cracked. "I'm communing with Gerald here. Show some respect, we're on holy ground."
I gestured to the damn broken gravestone. The one Azrael had the decency to make me eat. As the Gravestone casually reads. "Gerald Arthur Hoffmann. 1944–2019. Beloved Husband and Father." In carved letters at least what was left of the damn thing. It did take a beat down. Where my fat ass landed on it .
"Sorry, Gerald," I wheezed. "It's partially my fault that you're grave got caught in this bloody fight between bro's."
Azrael took a step closer, his voice dropping to something low and sharp — the kind of tone that wasn't a shout but landed heavier than one. "Don't get too cocky with me, Samuel." His eyes cut into me like the blade still humming in his grip. "You know you fucked up."
I laughed.
It was breathless. Low. The kind of laugh that crawls out of you when everything hurts and you're too tired to care. I pushed myself up onto one elbow, spat blood into the wet grass, and looked up at him.
"Ye — yeah." I wiped my split lip with the back of my hand, smearing red across my knuckles. "Well. The rule book and Heaven's orders can go ahead and suck a dick."
"Samuel!" His voice cracked like a whip across the graveyard. "I'm not in the fucking mood for your damn attitude right now — don't play coy with me. We have rules for a reason. To keep order and balance between the realms."
"Azzy." I grinned up at him from the ground, blood on my teeth. "You look tense. Has anyone ever told you that you need to get laid? Because I'm saying it now, as a public service. Free of charge."
His eye twitched. Barely. But I caught it.
Good.
I rolled to my feet — slower than I'd have liked, not that I'd admit that under any form of torture — and shook the mud off my wings. One of the primary feathers was bent at a bad angle. I'd deal with it later. I'd deal with all of it later. Right now I needed to focus on the six-foot-something divine pain in my ass currently deciding whether to finish this or keep posturing.
"You can't keep disobeying orders like this." Azrael's blade dimmed, just slightly. Not a retreat — a warning. "One day it's going to get you killed."
I swung.
My scythe cut a hard arc through the fog, black blade singing — and Azrael stepped back just enough to let it pass, the edge grazing the air an inch from his chest. His eyes didn't even widen. Infuriating.
"Well." I pulled the scythe back, chest heaving. "You sick bastards over there in corporate didn't really give me much of a fuckin' choice."
Something snapped behind his eyes. That cold composure cracked, just at the edges — jaw tightening, white wings pulling in sharp.
"You had a choice." His voice was low and furious, the kind of controlled rage that was worse than screaming. "You had a job. Reap the girl's soul, bring it back, lock it up in the Garden — end of fucking story."
The golden spear came out of nowhere.
It caught me dead center — a wall of divine force that lifted me clean off my feet and sent me hurtling backward across the graveyard. I hit the tree line hard, spine cracking against an old oak at the edge of the woods, bark exploding around me on impact. I slid down it slow, the world tilting, lungs refusing to cooperate for one long, wretched second.
I collapsed at the base of the tree.
Everything hurt. My ribs. My back. My pride, most of all.
But I didn't move. Just sat there in the dirt and the dark, one hand braced against the roots, breathing through it. Waiting for the stars behind my eyes to clear.
End of fucking story. I almost laughed again.
It was never going to be that simple. And somewhere, deep down in whatever passed for a conscience in a being like me — he knew it too.
"You asked me to reap and kill and lock up a little girl." My voice came out ragged around the edges but steady at the center. "No older than sixteen. Because she could be — not is, not confirmed, not even close to guaranteed — the possible reincarnation of dear old Eve." I pushed myself up onto one elbow, let the pain in my ribs roll through me and settle. "You hear yourself? You actually hear what you're asking me to do?"
Azrael's jaw was clenched so fucking tight I sworehe was about to pop a blood vessel. "It was an order."
Silence. Just the fog and the distant croak of something in the dark. Before I opened my big god damn fucking mouth again. Which I honestly don't know when to shut up. Main damn reason why I'm in this mess in the first place.
"Like. Seriously." My voice dropped, flat and cold underneath the sarcasm now. "That's a bunch of bullshit and you know it, Azzy. Why can't that holy prick just admit he fucked up? Admit he was the reason she left in the first place?" I laughed again, but there was no humor in it anymore. "No. Instead we get to listen to him go on and on about how he's God's favorite. His chosen right hand. His most trusted blade — while he sends us out to murder a possible, not guaranteed, reincarnation of his own damn wife."
"She is a threat." Azrael's voice cut hard and cold. "You know damn well why you were sent to do it. She was classified as a threat and an anomaly. A soul that should have never been born — kept locked away in Heaven where it belongs. A human being that was cloned as a replica for the Eden Project."
"She's a teenager, Azrael." The laughter was gone now. My voice dropped, quieter and harder than before, the kind of quiet that cost something. "A sixteen-year-old girl in some small town who has no idea what she is or isn't. And he wants her dead on a hunch. That's what we're doing now? That's the righteous play?"
Silence. The fog moved between us, slow and indifferent.
Every part of me that wasn't broken wanted to finish this. Wanted to drive my scythe through that self-righteous composure of his and remind him — remind all of them, every holy bureaucrat sitting pretty up there in their gilded halls passing down death sentences on children — that there was nothing righteous about what they were asking. Nothing sacred. Nothing just. She was sixteen. Sixteen, and they'd drawn up paperwork on her soul like she was a line item. Like she was a problem to be filed away and forgotten. I wanted to make every last one of them bleed for that.
Azrael's blade dimmed. Barely. But I caught it.
And then my blood went cold for an entirely different reason.
Oh. No. No no no — not now.
She was there.
Standing at the edge of the yard next to the graveyard, bare feet in the wet grass, a white silk nightgown catching the breeze. Snow-white hair spilled over her shoulders, catching the moonlight like she'd been made from it. Skin pale as porcelain. Eyes — even from here — wide and searching the dark like some part of her already knew, on a level she couldn't name, that something was wrong.
Get back inside, I thought, jaw locked, not daring to move a muscle. Turn around. Go back to bed. Don't you dare look this way.
Azrael hadn't seen her yet.
I needed to keep it that way.
"So yeah." I cracked my neck, winced, pressed a hand to my absolutely destroyed ribs. "Don't stand there with that look on your face expecting me to go jumping into action over a fucking hunch, Azrael. That's not happening. Not from me. Not for her."
That's it. Right here. Eyes on me, you righteous fucker. Keep your ass focused on me. Don't you dare turn around. Don't you dare look toward that house.
He stared at me for a long, heavy moment. Something moved behind his eyes — not agreement, never that, but something. A fracture. A crack in the cold.
Good. Stay there. Stay mad at me. I've got all night. I'll say every stupid thing I've ever thought, I'll push every button you have, I will stand here and bleed on Gerald's grave until sunrise if that's what it takes — just keep your eyes on me.
Then it closed back over and he was stone again.
His gaze slid slowly — deliberately — over my shoulder.
Shit.
"This isn't over," he said.
"It never is."
And then I saw where his eyes had gone.
She'd drifted. In the time I'd been bleeding and arguing and making a general ass of myself across this graveyard, she'd drifted — bare feet carrying her forward through the wet grass without her even knowing it. Sleepwalking. Eyes half-open and seeing nothing, white nightgown trailing, white hair lifting on the breeze. Walking straight into the middle of it.
No.
Azrael's wings snapped open. He was airborne in a single beat — shooting upward into the fog, white wings cutting the dark, golden spear already pulled back in his grip. High above the graveyard. Aimed down.
Aimed at her.
I didn't think.
I moved.
Every broken rib, every cracked bone, every screaming muscle — none of it registered. My black wings drove me off the ground hard, propelling me across the graveyard in the space of a heartbeat, and I hit the space in front of her just as the spear came down.
The impact was — white.
Pure, searing, divine white, punching through my left shoulder and driving me down to one knee in the grass. The sound it made woke the dead. Literally, probably. Heck if I know. But ow.
The girl's eyes flew open.
She stumbled backward, fully awake now, a sharp cry caught in her throat as she took in the scene in front of her — me, on one knee in the graveyard dirt, a golden spear buried in my shoulder, black wings splayed wide, bleeding. And above us, Azrael hovering in the fog, white wings spread, face unreadable.
Her eyes were wide. Terrified. Locked on me.
I looked back at her over my shoulder.
Fuck. Ow. FUCK.
The spear had gone clean through — pinning me to the earth, or more specifically, pinning me to what remained of poor Gerald's headstone. Which honestly felt like adding insult to injury for the both of us.
I groaned through my teeth, one hand bracing against the broken granite, the other refusing to touch the spear on principle.
Azrael was already gone. Of course he was. The second she'd seen his face clearly — vanished into the fog like the coward he was underneath all that divine posturing. Centuries old and still couldn't face a sixteen-year-old girl.
She crouched down in front of me. Bare knees in the wet grass, white nightgown pooling around her, those wide eyes searching my face like she was trying to figure out if I was real.
Don't do that, kid. Don't be kind to me right now. I can't handle it.
If Azrael had just — if he had listened — I could have explained it properly. Could have sat him down and shown him what I'd seen the moment I'd laid eyes on this girl's soul. The golden thread. Thin as silk, bright as dawn, trailing from somewhere deep in her chest and running — unmistakably, impossibly — straight to me.
A string of fate.
A fated soul. My fated soul.
She was mine to protect. Not to reap. Not to cage. Mine to guard — and heaven had sent me to kill her instead. So yeah. I'd taken the spear. I'd take it again.
Worth it. Absolutely worth it.
"Hey." My voice came out wrecked and quiet. I met her eyes — those pale, searching, terrified eyes — and made myself hold her gaze steady despite the spear currently doing what spears do in shoulders. "Listen to me. Go inside. Lock your door." I swallowed hard. "Live a happy life. A loud, messy, beautiful, happy life."
She didn't move.
"You are loved," I said. Quieter now. "You are so loved. And you are meant for this world — don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Not ever."
Her lip trembled.
I reached into the dark with the hand that still worked and pulled two things from the place where I kept what little was sacred to me. A black rose, petals soft as shadow. And a single feather — long, dark, unmistakably mine — pulled from the bent and broken wing at my back.
I pressed them both into her hands.
Then I pressed two fingers gently to her temple.
"Forget," I whispered.
The gold left her eyes. Replaced by the soft, empty peace of someone slipping back into a dream they'd never remember. She blinked once. Twice. Then she stood, turned, and walked back toward the house — steady and unhurried, like a girl who had simply wandered outside for a moment and was going back to bed.
I watched her go.
Watched the door close behind her.
Watched the light in the upstairs window flicker on and then, after a moment, off again.
Then I let go.
I hit the grass face-first beside what remained of Gerald's headstone, the spear still buried in my shoulder, and laughed — wet and broken and genuine — into the dirt.
Worth it, I thought, as the darkness started closing in at the edges. Every cracked rib. Every broken feather. Every second of it.
Protect that little girl.
My mate.
The beam of light that pulled me upward was cold and clinical and absolutely did not care about the sentiment of the moment.
But I was smiling when it took me.
