Page 2 of Pretend Wife (Angels of the Secret Order #4)

TWO

Danielle

They say life is made up of moments. Sometimes you know a moment is important, but most of the time you have no idea how it will change your life.

The moment I met Nate and Sierra was like that.

I had no clue when I first laid eyes on them that my whole life was going to head in a different direction.

Two and a half years ago, they came to Heaven after a fight with a duke of Hell.

Nate had lost his wings in that fight, and Sierra had gotten pretty beat up too.

I’d been asked to heal her and I did, but afterward the urge to heal didn’t fade like it normally would.

My fingers still tingled in a way that usually only happened when I saw humans who were hurt.

But Sierra claimed she felt perfect. I realized the feeling must have been a response to Nate’s injuries, but that shouldn’t have been possible.

Angels of the seventh order could only heal humans.

The whole experience freaked me out, but I learned that I was special. Or a freak depending on who you ask, I guess. And within a couple of days, I’d been moved to the secret order—a group of angels that didn’t quite fit in any of the other orders.

The first job I’d been given was to help Nate’s wings grow back. There was no way to instantly fix them, but with my help, he was completely healed within two months.

That’s when it became real to me.

I didn’t belong anywhere really, but the secret order had become my family. Micah, Nate, Sam, and Joriel were my brothers. Their wives were my best friends, and their daughters called me their aunt.

It only took a moment to alter the course of my life. And I never saw it coming.

Just like I had no idea when a young man burst through the doors of the hospital I’d been working at for the past few years that he was going to change everything.

He didn’t look much more than twenty. Rainwater plastered his dark brown hair to his forehead and ran down his bare shoulders and inked chest in rivulets to where he was carrying another man in his arms… a man who was a bit older and a lot more familiar.

I’d only seen him a handful of times in the year and a half that Sierra had been working for him, but I’d recognize Hayden Blake anywhere. Heir to Blake Hotels and the richest bachelor in Boston, his picture appeared in the news quite a bit.

Black curls fell over his forehead, and his trim beard added to his rakish appearance. He’d always looked like wicked desires wrapped up in a suit. And right now that suit was stained with blood and soaking wet, making the white dress shirt cling to his muscled arms and torso.

My fingers twitched at my sides, the urge to heal making them tingle. I was a healer through and through. Every instinct screamed at me to lay my hands on this man, to feel his skin knit back together under my touch.

“Danielle,” the young man snapped, his brilliant blue eyes locking on mine. They looked ancient, in stark contrast to his otherwise youthful appearance. The grief and wisdom in them implied he’d lived a thousand lives and none of them had been easy.

“How do you know my name?” I’d been caught up in the pain of the bleeding human in his arms, and it was only now that I realized there was no aura of colorful emotions around the man who carried him. He wasn’t human—didn’t have so much as a drop of human blood in him. “Who are you?”

“We can discuss who I am after you heal him.” Heal him. Not treat him. It seemed this not-human didn’t just know my name, he knew that I was an angel of the seventh order, that I could heal with a touch.

I glanced around the empty lobby, double-checking for witnesses before waving the man into an empty exam room. It wasn’t exactly following policy, but if I could save Hayden’s life, I was willing to stretch the rules a little.

“What happened?” I asked as I approached the bed where the young man was gently laying Hayden down.

“Car accident. He hit a tree.”

I nodded, unbuttoning his shirt and placing my bare hand flat on his chest. My power flowed through my palm and into his body. Bones mended and punctures closed under my touch. Bacteria cleared and the swelling went down. And the worst of the gray anxiety and black pain left his aura.

I pulled back when everything life-threatening had been taken care of. “He’s going to be fine.”

The other man didn’t take his eyes off the bed. “He’s still hurt.”

I sighed. “He was in an accident. If he wakes up without so much as a scratch—”

“They’ll call it a miracle.”

“Real life doesn’t work like that.” And I’d learned that sometimes it was better to let a person heal naturally. Sometimes taking all the pain away made things worse for them mentally in the long run.

The nonhuman man moved so fast I could barely track the movement. The next thing I knew, fingers were digging into my arm and a hand slapped over my mouth just as my back hit the wall of the exam room.

“Try to fight me and we’re going to have some serious problems, little angel.

” His voice was deep and melodic, the kind that you could listen to all day…

if it were saying something other than threats.

“You wanted to know what I am.” I felt his body tense, and then black leathery wings extended from his back.

I’d never seen anything like them before, but I knew exactly what they meant.

Only twelve beings in the universe had wings like that.

This was a grand prince of Hell—one of the original Fallen who’d been cast out of Heaven after Lucifer’s rebellion .

This was bad. No, this was worse than just bad.

I didn’t even try to reach for a weapon. I knew it was useless. I could barely hold my own against low-ranking demons. I wouldn’t win a fight against one of the most powerful demons in existence.

He was different than what I would have expected.

He looked so young and wild and human. He was dressed in nothing but a pair of leather pants that looked like something Nate would wear, and ink decorated his chest, arms, and some of his fingers.

A silver chain hung around his neck with a small canister dangling from it, the kind people put ashes of their loved ones in.

“Now, you’re going to finish healing him,” he said, his voice low and full of dangerous promise. His hand lowered from my mouth to wrap around my throat. “Do you understand?”

“It’s not that simple,” I whispered.

Frustration twisted the demon’s expression, making him look more like a caged animal than a deadly prince of Hell who could easily kill me if he wanted to. His hand tightened around my neck, and I couldn’t help wincing at the shock of pain.

He let go with a growl. “Explain.”

“That accident was serious. He would have died if you hadn’t brought him to me. That kind of trauma isn’t so easy to get over. The process of physically healing can be good for his mental healing.”

“Fine. If you can’t heal him, we’ll make a deal.”

Yeah, I had no intention of making a deal with a prince of Hell. I’d rather have let him kill me.

“You are going to ensure he makes a full recovery, not just this time but every time I command you to heal someone in the future. You fail to save any of them or tell anyone about our deal, and I’ll go after your family.”

“Go after?”

“Even the best-trained angels in the world can’t fight off an infinite number of demons.”

I went cold all over. I had no doubt he could make that happen. He was a ruler of Hell—I bet he had legions of demons at his command. “And if I don’t agree to your terms?”

He chuckled darkly. “It’s not that kind of deal, angel. It’s more of a… choice. You can either be at my beck and call when I need a healer, or you can say goodbye to the angels you call brothers and their families. You decide.”

No. No, no, no, no, no. This could not be happening.

Horror choked me more effectively than any hand around my throat ever could.

I couldn’t let anything happen to my family.

The very idea of a demon hurting my nieces was unthinkable.

But taking the deal meant lying to my family…

forever. Keeping a secret like this could get me kicked out of the secret order.

I could be stripped of my halo and barred from Heaven.

But I didn’t have a choice.

I glared at him. “Why?”

Strong fingers grasped my jaw, holding me in place. “We all have people we would do anything for, cross any line to protect. I would become my very worst if that’s what it takes to keep the ones I care about safe. Now the question is, what would you do for the ones you love?”

Anything. The answer was anything. I’d keep secrets, lie to people I loved, ruin my own life if that’s what it took to keep my family off this demon’s hit list.

“I’ll do it.”

His expression didn’t change as he dropped his hold and plucked my phone out of the pocket of my scrubs. After a few seconds, he handed it to me with the contact app still open. “When I text you, you answer. And I expect updates on Hayden’s progress.”

I glanced down at my phone. “What does Z stand for?”

“I’m sure you can figure it out.”

I quickly ran through the list of names every angel knew. Only one had a z anywhere in his name.

“Beelzebub,” I breathed.

The Prince of False Idols gave me a cold smile that didn’t reach his ancient eyes.

“A pleasure to meet you, little angel. I hope we never have cause to do so again after tonight.” There was a pause, and I thought he was going to leave, but then he spoke again.

“And one more thing—Hayden and the rest of his family are never going to hear about what happened here. As far as they know, angels and demons don’t live among them, and it’s going to stay that way. ”

He didn’t give me a chance to reply as he turned and headed for the door like he hadn’t just blackmailed me into a weird partnership with him.

“Wait,” I called before he could leave the room.

He glanced over his shoulder and raised his brows at me.

“How do you know who I am or about my family?”

“Your so-called brother isn’t the only one with a network of humans working for him. I know everything that happens in this city.” And then he was gone.

Only a few minutes later, my phone chimed with a new text.

Z

Don’t forget about the updates.

Me

I won’t.

It went against every patient-privacy law in existence, but so did threatening a nurse’s family to force her to heal said patient with angelic gifts no one on Earth besides my family was supposed to know I possessed.

Time ticked by until I was starting to relax back into the normal routine of the night shift. I could almost forget the deal with Beelzebub had happened.

When all was said and done, what I did for Hayden wasn’t any different than what I would do for anyone if I thought I could get away with it.

It was why I’d taken the job here in the first place.

I liked healing people. It made me happy, fulfilled.

And the emergency room was never in short supply of injured who could use my help.

When I returned to Hayden’s room at the end of my shift, there was a guy sitting there with his head tipped back against the wall and his eyes closed.

He looked so much like Hayden it was almost eerie.

He was younger, probably in his early twenties, and his hair was shorter, but otherwise they could have been twins.

I tried to be quiet as I checked on Hayden the human way before curling my fingers around his and using my healing powers to assess his injuries .

He looked so peaceful with his eyes closed and lips lightly parted. It was so different from the other times I’d seen him. From the moment we’d met, Hayden had always worn a look of cool disinterest. Like everything and everyone was beneath him.

“Is he okay?” Hayden’s look-alike asked.

“He’s going to be fine,” I assured him. “I assume you’re family?”

“I’m Miles Blake. Hayden’s my brother.”

I gave Miles a rundown of the injuries Hayden still had after I’d taken care of the worst and life-threatening ones. “There’s a button by his bed if he needs anything.”

“Thanks,” Miles said without looking away from his brother.

“He really is going to be fine,” I promised as I headed for the door.

“Wait, what’s your name?”

“Danielle.”

Miles’s lips quirked up, and the hint of a dimple peeked through the light scruff on his cheeks. “That’s a pretty name.”

I didn’t return his smile. Flirting with a patient’s family wasn’t professional, and I was professional to a fault. I didn’t want to give anyone a reason to question my work or notice that sometimes my patients made recoveries that were a tad bit too miraculous.

“Mr. Blake—”

“Miles. Please. I’m way too tired to deal with formalities right now. And honestly, whenever someone says Mr. Blake, I have to fight the urge to look around for my father. ”

I shouldn’t have smiled, but I couldn’t fight the grin that overtook me. Miles was one of those people it was impossible not to like.

“Good night… Miles.”

“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” His laughter filled the room, and in that second I was almost glad for the events that happened earlier. If I’d been a human nurse, if Beelzebub hadn’t brought Hayden to me, Miles would be mourning the loss of his brother right now instead of joking with me.

I shook my head at him.

“Wait, you said good night. Are you coming back?”

“I’m done for the night, but I’ll be back tomorrow evening.”

Miles’s shoulders slumped like the news had just added a giant weight to them.

“How are you holding up?” I asked.

“I’m not the one who was in a car accident.”

“That doesn’t mean this isn’t hard. Sometimes it’s harder to watch other people go through pain than it is to feel it yourself. I’ve been there.” Feeling Nate tense under my hands, his face tight with agony, still haunted me. I hate watching pain. Always have and probably always will.

“Did they get better?” Miles asked.

“Yep. And Hayden will too.”

“Will you stay?”

“What?”

“The rest of my family is all out of town. You said you’re done working, and I really don’t want to sit here with my unconscious brother as my only company all night.”

Maybe I should have said no, but it was a good excuse to stay close to Hayden so I could give Beelzebub the updates he’d requested. And there was something about the anxiety in Miles’s aura that made it impossible to refuse him. “Okay.”

He gave me a relieved smile, and he looked even younger in those seconds. Too young to be dealing with this alone.

“Hey.” I reached for his hand and squeezed. “I promise everything is going to be fine. Do you believe me?”

“Should I?”

“I wouldn’t make the promise if I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I was right.”