Page 29 of Guarded (Hopeless Blessed #3)

Noah

T o say I was dreading the conference was an understatement. Seeing Lyle, seeing my old home, seeing those I once called family…all of it had me in knots.

I hadn’t lied when I’d told Jem that I’d volunteered to come here with Micah.

Despite suspecting my relationship with Juniper had been permanently soured, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to find out once and for all.

I was happy with the Seraphim, but Juniper had been my family for six centuries.

I missed them. All of them. Except Lyle, of course.

The thought of never speaking to them again was abhorrent.

So, I’d volunteered. If I was able to salvage a relationship with them then I’d be thrilled. If not…well, maybe I’d get the closure I needed.

When I arrived, it became clear that something was amiss. Various members of Juniper were there to meet the delegations, but there was one notable exception.

Lyle was nowhere to be seen.

Believe me, I didn’t want to see him. If he never graced my path again for the rest of eternity I’d be nothing but grateful. But his absence as the leader of Juniper was noticeable. It would’ve been odd if Juniper was just an attending unit.

As the hosts though? It was downright concerning.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed, either. I watched Atlas, Juniper’s second, carefully as we joined the line to be greeted. Arch after arch asked about Lyle, confused as to his whereabouts. To each of them, Atlas gave the same answer.

“He’s been unavoidably detained.”

His careful choice of words didn’t escape me.

Atlas’s greatest virtue was his honesty.

It was one of the ways Lyle had managed to drive a wedge into our friendship.

Atlas couldn’t stand that Lyle kept our ‘relationship’ hidden.

Of everyone, Atlas was the only one who’d known what had gone down between our leader and myself.

He was the one who’d wiped my tears away every time I was kicked out of Lyle’s room after sex. The one who’d confronted Lyle, insisting I deserved better than being treated like a shameful secret. The one who’d begged me to stand up for myself.

The one whose friendship I missed the most.

I’d thought it would be hardest to walk away from Lyle, but I’d been wrong. Leaving Atlas had been the worst. Thanks to Lyle, our friendship had been so fractured at that point that I hadn’t expected it to be as difficult as it was.

With time and distance, I could see how much Lyle had taken from me. Not just a piece of my heart, but my friendships. Those I considered my family. Who I’d trained, fought, and died beside.

Don’t get me wrong—I wouldn’t change what I had now for the world.

But it didn’t stop me missing those I’d left in the past.

Especially Atlas .

I hadn’t seen him since that fateful day on the beach. When I’d finally found my spine and ended things with Lyle once and for all. Atlas had given me a proud smile. I’d spotted it. Everything had been going to shit around us, but I hadn’t missed it.

I’d half thought that maybe he’d reach out after that. That maybe we could move past all the times I’d ignored his pleas to put myself first. Or the fact that, when I finally did put myself first, it was to betray Juniper by leaving them.

I had no idea what reasons Lyle had given the rest of them for my departure. I hadn’t told them. No, I’d taken the coward’s way out and left Lyle to explain for me.

It was the least he could do, considering it was all his fault.

Atlas knew though. He knew why I couldn’t stay. Being there had been eating me from the inside out.

Just like after the beach though, he’d never reached out. My number had remained blocked. I deserved it, I knew that. I hadn’t just walked away from Lyle, but all of them. If I hadn’t been so fucking weak, I could’ve put Lyle in his place and continued with Juniper.

That hadn’t happened though. I hadn’t been strong enough. Distance was the answer to breaking free of Lyle—I’d been certain of it. But even that hadn’t stopped me ending up in Lyle’s bed one more time. The night before the beach incident, he’d called and invited me over.

And, like the weak fool I was, I’d gone.

He’d fucked me and then kicked me out into the cold night. Just as he had a thousand times before. Unlike the other times though, I didn’t feel shame or heartbreak.

I felt angry. Furious that I was letting him treat me this way .

Seeing him attempt to attack Micah had been the final straw. Something in me snapped, and I knew it would never be repaired.

The scales had been ripped from my eyes, and finally I saw Lyle for exactly what he was.

Power hungry.

Selfish.

Cruel.

I’d been his fool for too long. Never again.

“You okay?” Micah murmured as we shuffled closer to Atlas. “There’s still time to pull out. I can have one of the others here in a couple of hours.”

“I’m fine,” I reassured him. It had taken a lot to convince Micah to allow me to accompany him. Being on the beach with him that day meant he’d had a front-row seat to the shitshow that was the end of me and Lyle. I couldn’t have hidden the truth from him even if I’d wanted to.

And I didn’t want to. There was no Lyle forcing me into silence. No shame or believing I was in the wrong. Just a concerned friend who wanted to know why I was hurting.

I’d opened up to Micah more than the others.

I mean, they’d all guessed I’d had my heart broken, that it was the reason why I’d left Juniper, but they didn’t have the twisted backstory.

Even Micah didn’t know everything, just enough to give him an idea of the bullshit I’d dealt with.

He’d been sympathetic, having gone through something similar with Dimitri, a former member of the Seraphim.

He thought our situations were different because Dimitri had never returned his feelings. That’s where he was wrong.

Lyle had never returned mine either. Not because he’d been in love with another .

He just wasn’t in love with me.

Micah shot me a final worried look before pasting on his diplomat’s smile as we drew level with Atlas. “Atlas. It’s good to see you again.”

Atlas shook his hand, smiling grimly. “In better circumstances this time, too.”

Yes. Because last time Atlas and Rowan had been ordered to capture both Micah and Nox and bring them in.

Orders they’d both refused to follow.

Atlas’s smile faltered as his gaze fell on me. “Noah. I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

My heart sank as I tried to cover my disappointment. “Leaving the unit wasn’t supposed to mean never seeing any of you again.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, you fucker,” he grumbled. “I wouldn’t blame you if you never came back here.”

My jaw dropped, but before I had a chance to respond, he grabbed me in a rough hug. With his mouth close to my ear, he whispered low enough that no one else could hear. “We need to talk. Meet me later. Eleven p.m. at the old church. You know the one.”

I nodded. I did. It was a place where Atlas and I had whiled away many an hour, although our relationship had never been anything other than platonic. Atlas was like my brother.

A brother I missed desperately.

This right here was why I’d insisted on accompanying Micah. Why I’d reluctantly told Jem I couldn’t miss this to meet him earlier.

What I had with Jeremiah…it was so different from what I’d shared with Lyle. He made me feel things Lyle never had.

Excited .

Safe.

Trusting.

Happy.

Wanted.

Being with him made me realise how worthless Lyle truly was. I’d thrown away everything and everyone in my life just to get away from him.

I didn’t regret it, not when it had led me to where I was now. The Seraphim and Jem…they were becoming my new everything. There’d be no replacing any of them. But that didn’t mean the others needed to stay lost. There was room in my life for all of them.

Well, all of them except Lyle.

That was why I was truly here. It was time to repair the relationships I hadn’t intended to break.

Starting with Atlas.

L yle didn’t stay absent for long.

He appeared halfway through the first session—a presentation about world leaders to be wary of.

They included this at every conference and I could never understand why.

It wasn’t like we were allowed to interfere.

They droned on about the latest fascist party crawling out of the woodwork, but apparently it was ‘interfering with free will’ to stop them reaching power.

I was certain that allowing them to do so interfered with the free will of the groups they targeted, but that logic seemed wasted on the upper echelons of Heaven.

How was it that angels had ended up with the reputation they had?

Most of the time,we were forced to watch atrocities unfold and forbidden to intervene.

Something told me Jeremiah, Nox, and their friends would have a thing or seven to say about it.

I doubted any of them would feel bad about bumping off a wannabe dictator.

I had to assume the only reason they didn’t was because they valued their immortality as much as every other supe.

Archs weren’t just guards, we were effectively God’s police force too.

There wasn’t an arch in this room who hadn’t been tasked with putting down a supe for interfering with free will—myself included.

It made me sick, if truth be told.

Every eye in the room turned to Lyle as he walked into the meeting. Staggered would be a more accurate term. Shock rippled through me as he bounced off a doorframe and tripped over a chair.

What the fuck is happening?

Atlas shot to his feet, darting between the murmuring assembly until he was at Lyle’s side. He grabbed his arm, speaking harshly and quickly into his ear.

Lyle shrugged him off with a sneer. Unlike Atlas, he didn’t bother to keep his voice down. “Remember your place, second. ”

Atlas flushed red, but that was the only trace of his embarrassment. His face was like stone as he released Lyle and stepped away to let him pass.