“It’ll be most intriguing to ascertain the exact meaning of that term.” Though Raphael was in no doubt it had to do with the heartbond that tied him to his hunter.

“You mean you don’t know?” Wide eyes. “The Primary was crystal clear.”

“Yes, how very unintelligent of your consort not to comprehend him.”

Convulsing with laughter at the way Raphael had said that without cracking a smile, Elena shook her head but couldn’t get the words out. It made him smile, then throw back his head and laugh, the sight causing passing Legion fighters to pause, watch in what appeared to be shock, while the Tower troops grinned and continued on their way.

God, but he was beautiful. And he was hers.

Moving into his arms because she needed to be with him, unable to forget how close they’d come to never again touching, never again laughing with one another, she smiled and tucked her wings close as he enclosed her in his.

Cupping the side of her face with one strong hand, he held her gaze with eyes of wild, impossible blue. “I may not understand all of the Primary’s words, but I know this with everything in me—the Legion would not have woken for who I was before you.”

His thumb caressing her cheekbone, his face close to her own. “You have never, and will never, weaken me. You make me a better man and a better leader than I would’ve ever been without you.” He shook his head. “You said once that you couldn’t do this without me. Well, I can’t do this without you, Guild Hunter.”

Her eyes burned from the potent power of his words, so raw and honest and necessary. She hadn’t known it until he spoke, but she’d needed to hear that, hear that he didn’t blame her for the changes within him. “Did you know,” she confessed, as the snow began to fall again, soft flakes that caught on his eyelashes, “I wake up terrified some nights and just watch you sleep?”

“No, I did not know.” His cheeks creasing, his lips brushing against her own as he bent his head. “I must trust you a great deal indeed to allow myself to sleep so deeply.”

That was when she understood the painful vulnerability inside her was forever. So long as Raphael existed, he’d have the ability to hurt her by getting himself injured or worse—and that was okay, because she wasn’t afraid anymore, wasn’t scared to live life with an open heart. Because the flip side to that awful vulnerability was an indescribable emotion that filled her up, made her happy to be alive and here, in the now.

“It’s true,” she murmured, as the joy of playing with her consort, her lover, her friend and mate, turned her blood to champagne, “I could’ve totally cut out your heart before you knew what was happening.”

Their foreheads were touching now, his hand still cupping the side of her face, his chest a wall of muscled warmth against her palms. “What stopped you?”

Lowering her voice, she whispered, “I thought Montgomery might’ve been pissed off at all the blood on the sheets.”

“Montgomery would never be something as uncouth as pissed off. Annoyed in an icily genteel manner, perhaps.”

Elena knew they should get back to helping their people rebuild their city, but she reached up to trace the mark on his temple with fingers rough from the work they’d all been doing. He turned slightly into her touch as he always did, her archangel who’d never wanted her to be anything but what she was. “It looks like we’ve got one heck of a scary adventure coming up.”

“We’ll certainly not be bored.”

His kiss was a branding, his wings folding back to leave them exposed, and when he wrapped one arm around her waist and lifted them into the snow-kissed sky, their mouths still locked together, she didn’t protest. Though she might’ve smiled and blushed into the kiss at the wolf whistles that floated up, followed by the cheers.

The Cascade was in full progress. The world was becoming an insane place where rivers turned to blood and the dead walked, while archangels gained powers that made it manifest they were part of the very fabric of that world. The monsters might yet get loose again and the wicked witch was probably going to come cackling back to life to join arms with her disease-spawning best friend.

Despite all of that, at this instant, with the snow falling softly around her and her consort, their city alive, Elena didn’t want to be anywhere or anywhen else. And neither, she knew, did the archangel who kissed her above Manhattan, his arms holding her safe.