She never offered to heal him, either, when she had been Death and he was her servant. She didn't understand what pain was at that point. Her greatest warrior, Gabriel had experienced his fair share of battle wounds. The idea he'd gone through something like this, and she didn't know to help him made her sad.

She never wanted him to suffer.

"No pain," she murmured, pulling her attention back to him.

"So you just made a random deal with Darkyn." His thumb brushed her jaw line. Back and forth, back and forth, in a way that left her skin tingling and her feeling as if she was falling under some sort of spell.

"Sort of," she replied. "You didn't used to ...touch me without asking."

"You didn't seem to mind me holding you for hours last night on the beach."

"I don't mind. I ..." She shook her head. "I can't think when you do."

"Tell me what happened," he said and dropped his hand. "I'll wait to touch you until after." He was amused.

Deidre's brow furrowed. He didn't say he'd ask to touch her. Just said that he would.

"I made him a deal to take the tumor out. He made the two of us one," she said slowly. It wasn't coming out the way she practiced it, maybe because Gabriel was sitting close enough that she wanted to lean against him instead of the bed and place his large hands on the parts of her body hidden by clothes.

"You are past-Death and ... Deidre?" Gabriel asked.

"I'm both Deidres," she replied with some offense. "We are the same person."

"In some ways, maybe," he allowed. "The tumor is gone?"

"Yes."

Her first thought was that he wasn't buying it. His gaze remained steady.

"Turn around."

She frowned. "Why?"

"I want to make sure you're my mate and not a shape-shifter demon."

"Do I look like a demon?" she retorted.

"You can show me your marking, or I can hold you down and look myself," he warned.

"You wouldn't ..."

Gabriel shifted towards her. Deidre sprang back.

"Okay," she said, uncomfortable with the idea she had no control whatsoever over the man before her. He didn't answer to her anymore, as he had for thousands of years.

Did she expect him to?

Confused, she turned her back to him and pulled her shirt up to expose the marking. Gabriel placed a large hand on her back. She gasped, the heat and energy of his touch making her shiver. Fully splayed, it would almost cover the width of her pet.i.te frame. The thought of letting him run those hands wherever he wanted thrilled the human in her and terrified the former G.o.ddess.

She pushed her shirt down and moved away to break contact, facing him again when half the bed was between them.

"Just when things seem to be going well," he said and stood. Fire flashed in his eyes.

"What's wrong?" she asked uncertainly.

He crossed his arms, dark gaze hard, towering in the bedroom that suddenly felt too small for her.

"What's wrong," he repeated. "Do you have any idea what he could've done to you?"

She was quiet.

"Why the f.u.c.k couldn't you come to me first?"

She flushed and looked away. She'd seen him upset but never angry. Neither she nor human-Deidre thought to involve Gabriel in their plans. They were more alike than Deidre realized; they both sought out Darkyn for quiet deals they hoped would result in ending up with Gabriel. Only one of them made it out of h.e.l.l, though.

"My mate trusts the Dark One over me to help her. It's a s.h.i.tty way to start things off." Furious, he started towards the door.

Deidre swallowed hard, wanting to chase after him but unsettled by his anger and the changes in him. She waited her whole life for this moment, and all she was able to do was watch him leave her. The human emotions were crippling the cold logic that brought her to this point. She couldn't lose him now, because of human weakness!

"Gabriel, wait!" she called.

He stopped at the door but didn't turn.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"To do my job. Right now, I need to kill some demons."

"I thought ... I thought this would make you happy."

"You know what would make me happy, Deidre?"

"What?"

"Being able to trust my own mate. Neither Deidre ever understood that."

She stared after him. She had to say something to keep him from leaving her, but she was too stunned. He waited. She screamed at herself silently, afraid he meant to walk out the door forever.

"Did that go the way you expected?" he asked quietly.

"N...no," she whispered.

"Last night you were ready to trust me. What happened?"

Deidre thought back, struggling to remember what human-Deidre felt, if not the events. Gabriel had held her on the beach. They'd sat for hours, until human-Deidre's distress faded and turned first to disbelief then hope then resolve. It was the same sequence Deidre went through before making the private deal with the demon lord, the one that resulted in her reincarnation and condemned human-Deidre to become the mate of the Dark One.

"I knew Darkyn could give me a second chance with you," she said. "Clean slate."

"Everything would be different better, perfect overnight."

"Yes."

"Did it work?"

"I don't know."

"I wouldn't be walking out right now if it did."

She sighed. Her eyes grew blurry, and hot wetness slid down her cheeks. Deidre touched them, surprised to find they were tears. She'd never cried as a G.o.ddess. Ever. Why was she crying? There were too many emotions for her to identify them, but one of them or all of them? caused the tears. Frustrated, she realized she wasn't able to control whatever it was.

Gabriel left. The door closed behind him. Her Gabriel was gone.

The pain settling into her was of a different kind. It had no physical source, but it hurt her physically nonetheless. She was hardly able to draw a deep breath through her tight chest. A new emotion formed. It felt much like dread. She rested back on the bed and cried.

The tears stopped of their own accord after a while, and the calm of her mind brought back her focus.

She gave up her power, her domain, and her entire life for this opportunity. She didn't factor Gabriel's transition into Death into the equation. She didn't factor her transition into a human, either. The overload of emotions, the inability to read Gabriel's mind to find out what he thought, so she knew what to say or do.

How did she win him, if she had to guess what he was thinking? How did she win him, if she wasn't able to control the human feelings?

Trust? As a G.o.ddess, she had no need for those around her to trust her. They feared her, and this was what kept them in check.

Gabriel didn't trust her. This made her hurt more. After all their years together, he didn't trust that she would do what she had to in order for them to be together.

Chapter Three.

The night before, he'd left his dying mate, praying he was able to save her life. This morning, he left a perfectly healthy woman who looked like his mate and wore the Immortal mating tattoo and yet was distinctly different.

Gabriel was still reeling from the sudden, inexplicable changes in his mate and the admittance by Deidre that she had made a deal with Darkyn. Maybe he should've felt it. He noticed something ... missing the night before, soon after he left her. The instinct was nothing more than a tiny warmth at the edge of his mind. He barely noticed it was gone until this morning, when it abruptly reappeared. He was able to sense her presence once more without knowing she'd been gone from his reach for an entire night.

What if she was in danger? What if Darkyn hadn't let her go? If he noticed her absence soon after it occurred, would he have been able to follow and stop her deal with Darkyn?

Right now, the only thing that made much sense was killing s.h.i.t.

Gabriel hacked at the demon before him then straightened. Chest heaving, he gazed around the meat locker to a.s.sess how many bodies were present. Immortals and death-dealers battled the remaining demons at the warehouse-sized storage facility where the demons had been gathering the human dead.

There were hundreds of them. He sheathed his weapons, grim at the discovery. Rather than taking souls and risking a run-in with him or his dealers, the demons s.n.a.t.c.hed the dead or killed whomever they wanted and brought them here, where they'd have more time for soul extraction.

"Clear!" one of the Immortals shouted from the far end.

"All good," Landon, Gabriel's second-in-command, told him.

"Count and collect," Gabriel ordered.

Landon issued the orders through the mind message system. Gabriel moved through the meat locker, unaffected by the cold after the half hour battle.

"Fifty four dead demons, three hundred dead mortals," Landon reported after a few minutes. "Fifteen dead Immortals, three dead dealers."

"d.a.m.n." Gabriel's attention was caught on a faint green glow on a table in the middle of the stacks of dead bodies. He crossed to it and saw a shallow bowl filled with water. The glowing green gems on the bottom were souls the demons had extracted. "This isn't three hundred souls. Maybe twenty." He lifted a small soul-tracking device off the table, a round compa.s.s whose edges were lined with symbols from a dead language too old for him to read.

"They're picking and choosing the ones they want," Landon said.

"Darkyn's after someone in particular," Gabriel said. "They got another compa.s.s. Unlike me, they can read it to find who they want." He studied the compa.s.s. It was a new one, recently made by the Ancient Immortal that Gabriel hired to help, indicating another of his dealers had defected. "Find out who this one was issued to."

Landon accepted it. Gabriel drained the bowl of water and placed the souls in his pocket.

"Darkyn doesn't have the numbers to set up a facility like this in too many places. He's not in much better shape than we are," Rhyn, the leader of the Immortals and Gabriel's best friend, said as he approached. The half-demon rippled with power. His silver gaze was wary and his muscular frame only slightly smaller than Gabriel's.

"Whatever he wants is around Atlanta." Gabriel's thoughts drifted to Deidre. He initially suspected the soul in Deidre's tumor was what Darkyn sought. But the demon lord had Deidre in his clutches and let her go.

At least, it appeared that way. The woman Gabriel touched today wasn't the one he touched last night. The mating bond present last night formed anew the moment he healed her from the demon attack. She looked like past-Death. She had the haughty edge of past-Death.

She was human like Deidre. Gabriel hadn't wanted to believe her story of Darkyn combining the two Deidres into one, but it certainly seemed possible. The extent of the Dark One's powers on his home turf in h.e.l.l was beyond anyone's ability to know. It was said he had no limitations. Could he then merge two souls together into a single body?

Why would he do it?

"Meanwhile he distracts us with a f.u.c.king goose chase across the world chasing the demons raiding human schools." Rhyn's gaze was stormy.

"Your brother found this place, right?" Gabriel asked, focusing once again on his surroundings. The five remaining death-dealers he brought with him were quickly extracting souls.

"Yeah. No word yet on whether or not there are more."

"They are way too comfortable in the mortal world right now."

"No s.h.i.t."

At the half-demon's frustration, Gabriel glanced at him. "Not your fault, Rhyn. You're doing everything you can."

Rhyn grunted in response, his fury clear. As the head of the Immortal Council That Was Seven, Rhyn was charged with protecting the human population from demons. In the course of a few months, the old understanding between Immortals and demons that humans were off-limits crashed to the ground. Rhyn's Immortals were struggling to recover from battles with the demons, while he struggled to keep the Council together, let alone focused.

Gabriel understood why the old standard was gone. He wasn't allowed to tell Rhyn, due to Immortal laws governing the dealings between deities. The Dark One that ruled h.e.l.l since the time-before-time had fallen to a ruthless demon lord whose goal had long been to take over the mortal realm. Forged by war and hardened by exile to the bowels of h.e.l.l, Darkyn understood only violence, war and bloodl.u.s.t. He honored nothing but laws from the time-before-time, deals he made and the occasional Demon Laws, which he auth.o.r.ed. An understanding was not worth acknowledging and definitely not binding to the new Dark One.

The thought of the Dark One reminded Gabriel that he lost three death-dealers to him in the course of a week, not to mention the deal Deidre made.

"If it makes you feel better, I've got another traitor," Gabriel said in cold anger, motioning to the soul compa.s.s the demon's had obtained.

"Morale is low. The dealers think we'll never get home," Landon supplied.

Gabriel and Rhyn eyed him. Gabriel bristled at the reminder that his own underworld had shut him out.

"I'll check in with the lake," Landon muttered.