Ink & Dagger (Sins of Eden #1)

5. Chapter V

Chapter V

Jaxon

I should’ve just called. I most definitely shouldn’t have invited myself back tonight, but here I was, standing outside her studio with a bag of Chinese food as promised. A bit later than I intended, but I’d seen her car in the back parking lot when I drove around the block, so I knew she was still here.

Swiping at the dried blood on my pants, I sighed. Fucking Angels. I’d never get this gold stain out of my favorite denim jeans.

While following up on a lead in the town over, I walked my ass into a motherfucking trap. I’d felt drawn to that area and had to check it out, but the bloody brawl that ensued took longer than I’d planned and I missed my promised arrival time with my Sweet Witch. I lifted my hand up to the new split in my eyebrow and grimaced. It would heal quickly, but fuck did that bitch hurt.

I wasn’t sorry for killing them though, that’s just what we did. Angels and Demons had been on opposite sides since shortly after the fall of man and nothing was going to change that. Besides, one of those Holy fuckers had been tailing my girl for months, so ripping his still-beating heart from his chest was well worth all the damn blood I’d spilt tonight.

He wasn’t the only one, though. From the very beginning, she’d been watched, followed, and stalked, by just about every fucking supernatural out there. Angels, Witches, Spirits. Hell, even a pack of Lycan’s were tailing her.

I’d been picking my way through them one by one for the last year after witnessing an Angel following her soul on Earth as she Astro projected through the in-between. The living weren’t meant to go to the in-between. Hell, not even the most powerful Angels or Demons dared to go there. What the fuck she kept risking her life and returning to that forsaken realm for, I had no clue, but I vowed to be her silent protector and slaughter anyone who posed a threat to her since realizing just how badly they wanted my girl.

Grinding down on my molars, I thought about how close I was to missing our date tonight. Truth be told, I probably would have shown up at her house if she’d gone home, but that would have raised a lot of questions that I wasn’t ready to answer just yet.

I’d been following Emily for a little over a year now. What began as just gathering information and digging into her background, quickly blossomed into a deep burning obsession and the need to see her constantly. Shit, I couldn’t sleep without dreaming of her or her perfect body, and it was driving me fucking mad.

At this point, I knew everything about her. From the small things, like her favorite bands and junk foods to the police reports of the fire that took her mother when she was ten. What little information I could find on it at least.

Father believed that her mother’s coven, the Dark Hearts , held powerful secrets. Secrets so immense that according to him, they could shatter realms if they turned out to be true.

My latest task had been to look into them, while myself and the others searched for my youngest brother. Over time though, I’d become distracted by the unexplainable pull to this woman and to my dismay, my father found out and forbade me from pursuing her.

At any point I could have just used my powers to bend her to my will and get the answers I needed, but oddly enough, I couldn’t bring myself to deceive her in that way. For months, I did my best to honor my father’s wishes and keep my distance, only allowing myself to get close enough to catch glimpses of her as she went about her daily life, but it was never enough.

Emily Cross had a darkness inside of her that I craved.

Regardless of my father’s orders, introducing myself to her meant bringing her into the chaos that was my world and I wanted to keep her as far away from that as possible. She wasn’t the type of creature that belonged amongst the sinners of my realm, but my need for her was becoming all consuming. That, and too much time had passed with no answers.

My father’s patience was running thin and everyday that passed without any new leads felt like we were losing all possibility of ever locating my baby brother.

Desperate times had called for desperate measures. So here I was, darkening her doorstep and dragging her into shit that I had no business bringing her into.