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Zara pointed at her upper right arm. “There was a mark on her about here. I asked Rasmus what it was. He said it denoted ownership.”

“No oneowns my daughter.”

Rasmus blew out a breath. I’d learned it was his way of summoning the patience to explain something to me.

“Fiona is the guardian of the second sacred ring, Aran. Her angel mentor is making sure she is protected until she finishes her training. Then he will remove his mark, and she will have to protect herself. It is their way. I verified it with Orlin. He said I’d gotten it right.”

“Tony never told me he owned her. He’s full of all kinds of shit, but I know for sure he would have told me that. He’s more arrogant than ya are, Rasmus.”

Rasmus lifted a hand. “He may have assumed you recognized his symbol and accepted it as a necessary step. I looked the symbol up to see who it belonged to, but I kept getting distracted. I finally found the answer while you were recuperating.”

“Are ya saying ya know Tony’sactual angel name? Did ya tell everyone but me?”

“You were unconscious and visiting with the beings in the Dagda stone. I had to wait until you were whole again. In the meantime, I had to tell Conn because he’s your family’s second-in-charge. He told Mulan. Zara was with me when I found out, and Dylan helped me do the research. I’ve not told Henry yet because he seems to hate all angel-kind.”

“Bloody hell,” I said. And I didn’t even believe hell existed. But if I believed, I'm sure I would classify this situation as hellish.

Sighing, Ramus pulled a small notebook from his pocket and a pen. I needed one of those myself. Then I remembered Rasmus liked to draw. He flipped forward in the notebook, wrote something on a blank page, and then ripped it out. I took it cautiously when he passed it across the table.

“Do not say the name aloud, Aran. To call an angel’s sacred name aloud is to summon him to your side. It will give himthe right to ask you for something in return. We don’t want to do that. Keep calling him Tony. I’m sure he gave you that fake name so you would not call on him for real.”

I stared down at the paper clutched in my fingers. On it, Rasmus had written ‘Semyaza’with his pen. Though my pagan roots hadn’t demanded it, learning about the existence of guardians prompted me to study the original watcher legends. That study revealed the names of the fifteen original leaders who had gotten remanded to eternal punishment for copulating with human females and creating offspring that nearly destroyed the earth.

Those leaders now served as powerful overseers with no end of their enforced penance in sight.

The rest of the original two hundred watchers were required to clean up the mess as their path to seeking forgiveness.

The task of making things right was also given to the others who came after the originals. It had taken little effort to figure out why the guardians—formerly known as watchers—had been so hard on the females of their kind. Guilt about what they had done to their human females had been a powerful motivator.

The personal story Rasmus told me about the fall had been heart-wrenching to hear. The Earth unleashed its fury upon the hybrid children, drowning them in a cataclysmic flood that brought both relief and devastation. My guardian’s painful memories of that time still haunted him. I would never forget how devastated he’d been when he’d confessed it to me.

But he hadn't shared with me about his leaders—the ones people of many religions referred to as fallen angels. What I knew about them came from the Book of Enoch.

A watcher namedSemyazahad been the primary leader of the watchers. He andAzazel—whom some believed were the same being—were the first of the watchers to suggest that they all take human women as wives.

Semyaza was a womanizer of the heavenly sort, and now he had marked my daughter as his property.

And to think I’d been concerned about Fiona’s lusty admiration of a centuries-old fairy male. What if the watcher-turned-angel decided Fiona was too tempting a human female to pass up?

What if she returned his interest? Because how could she not?

Power like the angel had combined with his stunning looks was hard to resist. Hadn’t I learned that the hard way in my own life?

Jack didn’t have guardian power, but he’d inherited something that drew me to him. I still felt the occasional lustful tug in his presence. It made me extra snippy until hate washed it away.

But Rasmus wasexactlythe powerful kind of male Fiona was now stuck dealing with—Goddess help her. I couldn’t seem to stay mad at Rasmus, nor had I ever sent him away without eventually taking him back.

The guardian drove me mentally crazy, yet I still wanted to keep him around. And I still wanted to crawl into bed with him every night.

If Fiona succumbed to her angel, I would love any hybrid grandchildren she might end up giving me. But I hoped things never went that far. My daughter was too young to be a mother.

While that was ironic of me to think, looking back on my life, I could see that I’d been too young when I’d had her. Loving Jack had overruled every self-preservation instinct I possessed. That made a woman vulnerable in ways that it took a long time to recover from. It took eighteen years in my case.

In my heart of hearts, I wished fervently for my daughter to avoid making the same mistakes I had made. I’d done the best Icould to shield her from poor decisions, but a mother shouldn’t always be lying to her child’s father. Or vice versa.

I rested my head in one hand and stared at the name on the paper I held in the other. “Fiona doesn’t know she’s been marked by her angel mentor, does she? There was no sign of attraction between them. She talked so hateful to him that Tony kept using his magick to shut her up. Maybe she’ll be smart enough to do what he says, so he’ll leave her alone.”

“When you first explained her training, I thought perhaps your angel might be a jinn. They are angelic-like beings from King Solomon’s original culture. Some consider them demonic, but their power is not related to the kind demons wield.”