“Wrath.” Shade touched his shoulder, but Wrath shrugged him off.

He sat there like a puppet as Ramiel scooped Haziel’s broken body into his arms.

The impact with the earth had shattered her wings and broken several bones in her body. And Ramiel was to blame for each and every injury. He had knowingly exposed her to the risk, and now she was going with him.

This was so fucking wrong. Every part of him wanted to snatch her away and take her to his demesne and heal her there. Ramiel had knowingly placed her in harm, yet Wrath sat here on the ground and could do nothing but watch the archangel take her from him. And all because of one word, please. Nothing could have persuaded him to give her up but Haziel herself. He would have fought the combined forces of heaven, hell, and earth if they had tried to take her from him against her will, but she had asked him to let her go.

A sharp pain reverberated through his chest, and he had to put his fist against the bone to assure himself his chest hadn’t cracked wide open.

“I will take care of her,” Ramiel said.

Shade stepped between them. “Just fucking go.”

Wind from Ramiel’s wings washed over his face, and still Wrath couldn’t move. The desire to protect Haziel pounded through him like war drums, but she’d asked him to let her go. He would not dishonor her. It was all he could do for her. And somewhere deep inside him, he remembered another female who had also begged him to let her go. You could not make a being stay with you when they did not want to be there.

“What happened?” Sophia was facing off with Gabriel.

“We had to see if the horsemen were really waking.” Gabriel looked at Sophia as if pleading with her to understand. “The only way to truly know the extent of the problem was to expose another supernatural being to their power.”

“You’re a bitch.” Sophia’s slap echoed around the clearing.

Gabriel’s hand flew to her reddened cheek, but eyes wide, she nodded. “I deserved that. I should never have consented to Ramiel using her like that.”

“Why did you?” Michael stood beside Sophia, condemnation written over his features.

Wrath didn’t give a shit. All he could feel was the aching void inside him left by Haziel.

“Let’s go.” Shade put a hand on his shoulder. “Let these assholes deal with Ramiel and Gabriel.”

And Wrath hauled himself to his feet. There was nothing for him here now.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Eddie may not have known Shade or Wrath for long, but she knew they were hiding shit from her. Three days ago, Shade had up and vanished on her—literally poofed it out of there. One minute, they’d been sharing eggs and bacon—with maple syrup, of course—when Shade had sat upright and his eyes had gone glassy. A blink later, his fork had hit his plate with a clatter, and it was no more hell prince in her kitchen.

An interrogation of the hounds had turned up that Shade had gone to help Wrath with something, and that poofing was a thing with hell princes and archangels, and she shouldn’t worry about it. She’d tried to track down Sophia, and—surprise, surprise—Sophia was nary to be found. Seems the theatre had suffered from an all-hands-on-deck poofing event, and Sophia had a rehearsal that night and needed to poof her ass back to the theatre before it started.

Sophia had arrived in time for her rehearsal, looking grim and not wanting to answer any of her questions. Shade had appeared next, looking furious and exhausted, and then Wrath had arrived, looking like he wanted to rip the world off its axis. She’d tried to talk to him, but his answers had been monosyllabic and terse before he’d stepped through the hell gate and disappeared on her.

Eddie had waited outside rehearsal for Sophia, but she had disappeared immediately after, and when Eddie had shut down the theatre and gone upstairs, she’d found Shade fast asleep in her bed.

For the first time since she’d known them, the supernaturals had circled the wagons and had not told her anything.

The next morning, Shade and Sophia looked concerned about something, and Wrath had reappeared looking devastated, which being Wrath, meant grumpy as fuck. If she’d known him better, she might have pushed for answers, but in that mood, he’d been way too intimidating for her to dare.

And Eddie had let it go. She didn’t like people prying when she had shit on her mind, so she didn’t pester them. Secretly, she’d been harboring the hope that one of them would share sooner or later. It hurt more than she liked to admit that they had excluded her.

Two days later, she was out of patience, and none of them were breaking the cone of silence. She went for the weak underbelly of the three, and the hell prince who would tell her anything—Shade.

He was in the workshop hammering nails into God alone knew what but doing it with an enthusiasm that spoke of a being with shit on his mind.

Eddie propped her shoulder on the workshop doorjamb, crossed her arms and waited. He was the one who had forced himself into her life. He didn’t get to shut her out anymore, not after all they’d shared and all the beautiful things he’d said to her. She was worried as fuck about Wrath, as well.

Looking up, he gave her a tight smile that she didn’t buy for a second. “Eddie.”

“Shade.” She gestured to the pulverized wood in front of him. “Whatcha doing?”

Shade frowned at the wood and then the hammer in his hand. “Hammering nails?”

“Uh-huh.” When wrangling divas, it was important to give them the space to fill the silence. And as far as Eddie could ascertain, hell princes and divas shared a lot of characteristics. One being their inability to leave a silence uninhabited.

Shade tossed his wood victim on the pile at his feet and grabbed another.

Bam, bam, bam.

He punched a four-inch nail into the wood before glancing at her. “Are you okay? Do you need something?”

She strolled, super casual, over to his workbench. “I was wondering the same thing.”

“Huh?”

He did great confused, but she was on to him. “You disappear from my kitchen and come back with something on your mind. You’ve spent the last two days hiding in corners and whispering with Wrath and Sophia. I think you might be the one who needs to talk.”

“Eddie.” He got his growly hell prince thing on.

Damn, that was so inappropriately sexy, but she needed to focus. “Yes?”

“You should be resting.” He folded his arms in a bicep-bulging smoke show.

“And you should be talking.” Eddie removed the hammer from his hand. “Not punishing innocent pieces of wood. And not pushing me away.” She leaned closer to him. “I don’t like it.”

Shade growled.

Her ovaries fluttered, but she kept her steely stare locked on him.

“The four horsemen are waking.” He sighed.

“And?”

“That’s bad.” He braced his hands on the workbench and dropped his head. “Very fucking bad.”

“End of the world bad?”

“Yup.”

Okay, now she was getting somewhere. “Is that where you and Sophia went the other day?”