Page 62 of Awakened Ash and Alchemy

TWENTY-FOUR

Holding Angela’s small hand was a war Zarek had never trained for.

He had faced battlefields, ambushes, centuries of blood and strategy—but this? Her palms, pressing against his, had never felt more comfortable. Along with the steady eye contact, he wanted to examine each eye to find out what made one a bright blue and the other such a vivid green.

Not to mention the negotiation with a mortal female who had overturned his chamber like a storm. If anyone else had dared lay waste to his quarters in a rage, he would have thrown them against the wall.

And yet she had not burned, and her mind did not fracture for staring at his eyes for too long.

All of this unattainable by anyone in his entire existence—until her.

The Claiming, they called it. The thing to blame for all of this. He hated the word, and the implication that this thing could not only alter his judgment but also hijack his magick. Over a female full of grit and grace, filled with fire and the scent of flowers, who held both strength and softness to make him place her first over his brothers.

Without hesitation.

That was what had unsettled him. How did this stranger become so important? He had sworn to protect her, even if it meant breaking the Accords, breaking from his brothers, for the fire-breathing dragon within his blood that somehow beat down the captain he was on the outside.

His magick was so dangerous that to lose control was catastrophic. She had no idea that she was holding the hand of a beast.

Zarek kept his breathing measured as he guided Angela down the corridors of the Vanguard’s Keep, where stone walls rose around them, lined with portraits of warriors long gone.

Beside him, she moved like some myth, a mortal who was already reshaping the axis of his world by bending the Accords just to have her here.

He felt her fear through that impossible link between them, where emotion brushed against emotion, not thoughts or memories but feelings. He didn’t do feelings. And vulnerability was never his thing, either. Yet her feelings flooded his normally stoic system.

This wasn’t magick the way he understood it. This Claiming tugged at his instincts and made his self-control become impossibly thin around her.

But as he approached the dining area to meet the warriors who had fought beside him for centuries, those who had trusted him to lead, that if any of them harmed her, he would respond.

He knew it.

They knew it.

And that was the problem.

The Claiming bent loyalties and shifted priorities without permission in a way he despised. It placed a woman he had known mere days on the same scale as brothers he had bled alongside, across battlefields and realms, for centuries.

He detested it, loathed the magick that stirred beneath his control and how it made him unpredictable and as undisciplined as a neophyte soldier yet to wield a sword.

He knew bringing her before them was necessary. If positions were reversed, he would demand to see the anomaly disrupting their order, whose presence altered magick itself.

The doors to the officers’ dining chamber loomed ahead.

Thankfully, no other soldiers or males were in sight.

He opened the door.

The last surviving members of the Sworn Exarchs waited. Five men who carried the power of the Vanguard. Lord Gellar sat at the head of the table. Martar, their Sergeant at Arms, stopped polishing his buckles, to share his usual amused grin. Bellus, their historian, peered over the rims of his glasses with an open notebook in front of him. The only blessed thing was Condorr eating like normal and Rocharde fidgeting with his gold earring.

Zarek stepped in first, placing himself between Angela and every threat in the room—real or imagined. “Angela, this is Lord Gellar, the Commander.”

Gellar’s gaze landed on Angela then dropped to Zarek’s hand, holding hers. Surprise flickered for just a second before the Commander quickly masked it.

“This is Angela Duboise,” Zarek said.

“Welcome, Angela Duboise.” Gellar bowed with formal restraint. “Meet the Vanguard’s highest officers. The Sworn Exarchs.”

One by one they rose, and one by one they bowed. Wary eyes moved over her with the careful assessment of men trained to read a threat in a heartbeat.