PROLOGUE

New Zealand, 1994

Breathing hard, Everleigh struggled against the sheer power pinning her hands to the wall behind her. She twisted. Pulled. Arched.

Nothing happened.

Similarly, her inner demon writhed and squirmed and fought to surface. It was trapped inside her, unable to be of any aid.

Feeling a flush of anger heat her face, Everleigh glared at the strangers fanned out in front of her . "What the fuck is this shit?"

One male took a step toward her—tall, lean, imposing, his hair so blond it was almost white. "There's no need to panic. You need not fear us."

Was he serious? "You kidnapped me." She'd been in the middle of a wickedly hot kiss when … it was as if her senses had shut down. She'd been conscious, but she hadn't been able to see, hear, smell, or feel a thing.

She'd been distantly aware that she was being moved. Taken. When her senses had rushed back to her, it could have been minutes or hours later. And she'd found herself here, in what appeared to be some kind of abandoned warehouse.

The only other people present were the six males who were evenly staring back at her, their eyes twin blue gems—striking eyes she'd only ever seen in one other person.

Everleigh swallowed. "Where is he?" She had the distinct feeling that they'd taken him, too.

"That isn't important," Blondie told her.

She felt her nostrils flare. "It is to me."

"He is nowhere near here. We have plenty of privacy for what we're about to do."

Everleigh's heart stuttered. "What does that mean? What have you done to him?" And why couldn't she telepath anyone? Whenever she tried, she hit some kind of psychic wall.

"He is safe. Unconscious for the moment, but safe."

Her instincts stirred. "You're members of the Seven archangels." Powerful beings who could, in fact, collectively do something as difficult as knock the seventh of their unit out cold. Few would manage such a feat.

A dark-haired, clean-shaven celestial inclined his head in confirmation. "Be assured that our intention isn't to make you suffer. We will simply put you to sleep. That is all."

Everleigh tensed, her heart banging against her ribcage. The word ‘sleep' sounded so very final. "Why do I get the feeling that you don't intend for me to wake up?"

"Your body will not wake up, but your soul will," Mr. Clean-shaven told her. "Your life will start anew in another body, just as it has many times before."

Her gut twisted. He'd said it like it was nothing. Like she'd merely be changing outfits. "In other words, you're going to kill me. Let's just call it what it is." They could dress it up all they wanted, but it was murder.

"You could view it that way. We all see it as saving you both."

She felt her face scrunch up. "From what?"

He observed her like she was clueless. "From what will become of him if he falls."

"He has not told you?" Blondie pursed his lips. "He probably fears you would otherwise reject him. I doubt those fears are senseless, to be fair."

"No one would care if you were just a toy to him," cut in a dark-skinned, brawny male. "But you've become an obsession. He is prepared to fall from our realm to stay with you."

Everleigh knew that much. She'd been shocked when he offered to fall—it wasn't a small thing, and it meant leaving his life behind. She'd even objected at first, not wanting him to give up so much for her; not wanting him to suffer the consequences. But then he'd told her a little about his life, about how the darkness of it weighed heavily on him, and she could see how it was eating at his soul. So she'd ceased protesting—and no, it wasn't at all a selfless decision. The fact was that she loved him and didn't want to be without him.

He had wished to first say his goodbyes to these archangels he'd considered family. Falling meant leaving them behind. Going by their reaction, that had been a mistake.

"An archangel should never fall," Brawny added. "One of the Seven? That cannot happen. If you knew what it would do to him, you would agree with us."

She licked her lips. "I know about the curse. I know what he'd have to do to survive."

"For one of the Seven, that is only the tip of the iceberg," said Brawny sadly. "He would change. We cannot bear the thought of him becoming that . We care for him too much."

" Care for him? You really see killing someone he loves as ‘caring'?" Everleigh ran her gaze along the line of archangels. "He spoke of you. Each of you. You're all important to him. How shitty for him that it doesn't go both ways."

Mr. Clean-shaven's brow pinched. "This is not a betrayal on our part. We look out for him as he does us. This is for his own good."

"And yours," Blondie chipped in. "A being with the volume of power he possesses … It is not good for such a person to love. It only makes them more unstable, more dangerous."

Her pulse skittered as Blondie moved closer, the set of his jaw telling her there'd be no changing his mind. Helplessness battered at her, amping up her demon's anger. "You may not see this as a betrayal, but he will," she said. "That doesn't bother you?"

Blondie waved that away. "He will not believe we were responsible. He will suspect our superiors. He would be right to do so—they would have come for you if we hadn't. They wouldn't have settled for hiding you, they would have obliterated your soul to rein him in."

Her head swimming, she shook it. "Hiding me? What does that mean?"

"When he claimed you as his own, he placed an imprint of himself on your soul. It allowed him to know where you were. But we will take away that imprint. He will not feel you, and so he will not know that you have been reborn. When time goes on and your soul appears to have not been reborn, he will assume it is either in hell … or that it has been destroyed."

Oh, fuck.

Right then, all six of the archangels began to close in on her.

Panic wrapped around her throat and squeezed. Everleigh shook her head. "Don't do this."

Blondie stared at her, his expression implacable. "As we have explained, it is for your own good as well as his," he stated with such unbelievable arrogance and condescension … like she was a child who knew no better.

Her panic gave way to a fury that heated her skin. "He won't be fooled, he'll find me," she swore with a snarl. "Maybe not straight away. Maybe not for a while. But eventually, he'll find me."

Brawny shook his head. "No, no, he won't. He's exceedingly powerful—one of the most powerful of our kind. But without the imprint, there is no way for him to track you." It was said with such assurance that her belly flipped. "He will never find you. No one will, not even us."

"There will be no need for him to search for you anyway because, as I said, he'll presume your soul now dwells in hell or no longer exists," Blondie reminded her.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"Now be still," Blondie told her, all business. "We shall put you to sleep—there is no need for you to suffer as you die."

A cold force delved into her mind, and she cried out with the shock of it. The force spread, turned even colder, seemed to numb her thoughts. She felt herself fading; felt a thick, gray cloud move through her mind.

"I am not so sure there is truly a point in this," said one of the archangels, his voice seeming so far away.

"This is the only way to save him from himself," Blondie insisted.

"But it will only work if he believes she hasn't been reborn. We will then have time to talk him out of falling. But if he does not believe it—"

"He will be blind to her location without the imprint, so it matters not."

"Perhaps. But we know our kind can be very obsessive when they want something—she has brought that out in him. Do you honestly think he will cease looking? That he will accept she has gone?"

Other words were spoken, but she couldn't make them out. The archangels were too far away. Or she was. And she just kept fading and fading and fading until, finally, it all went dark.