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to find that she felt immense disappointment.
    Oh no
, she thought.
I’m crushing on him bad
. No, it was worse than a crush. Sophie actually felt an ache in her chest as she stood there and scanned the faces of the men before her. She just wanted them to be Azrael. She would have traded them all for his tall frame and golden eyes.
    My God
, she thought as she swallowed hard.
I just met him!
One night—a few short hours—and I’m obsessed. I need to get out of here.
She could feel her smile slipping, and just as she knew her friend would, Jules noticed. Out of the corner of her eye, Sophie could see Jules do a double take.
    “Soph?” Jules asked, her tone concerned. “You okay?”
    “I’m fine,” Sophie swore, feeling at once guilty for the lie.
I need to get back to the States and move to San Fran before I start stalking him
, she told herself. She glanced up from Juliette to find Michael’s impossibly blue eyes pinning her to the rock upon which she stood. He seemed to be looking right through her. She remembered that he was a cop. It fit him because she felt as if he were reading her for clues.
    “I just forgot to eat, that’s all,” she insisted.
    “Well, we can’t have that,” said Michael. He came forward, as did Uriel, and the two men hooked their arms in Sophie’s. She could have inhaled her tongue right then and there. It was an immensely strange feeling to be touched in such a friendly manner by two men of their stature. Not only were they gorgeous—they were archangels.
    And yet . . . they weren’t Az.
    Still, she couldn’t help the deepening of her blush as they pulled her away from Juliette, whom Sophie could hear laughing and softly speaking with her new husband where they left them overlooking the North Sea.

Chapter Three
    A zrael watched the exchange in silence. He went unnoticed where he waited in the shadows above Slains Castle’s highest crumbling turrets. He crouched low and still as a gargoyle and allowed his power to surround him like a shroud. It protected his presence from his brothers’ detection. And from Sophie’s.
    He listened to the news about her scholarship, which he was already aware of, having pulled the information from her surface thoughts as she’d stood opposite him at Gabriel and Juliette’s altar. He made a mental promise to himself then and there that at some point in the very near future, Sophie Bryce would dance for him. He would make sure of it.
    And then he entered her mind once more, stepping onto the complicated grid of her consciousness as if he couldn’t stay away. He couldn’t. She was a drug to him already.
    And it was there that he tasted her desire for him—and heard her self-deprecating guilt over those emotions. He listened as she vowed to flee to California in order to get him out of her head, and he tried not to laugh. As if there were any location on the planet to which she could flee to escape him.
    But that was beside the point. The fact of the matter was, she didn’t
want
to escape him. She just had no idea that her feelings were completely natural. She was his archess. He was her archangel. There was no fighting that kind of fate.
    “Okay, Sunshine,” he whispered to himself from where he remained hidden atop the castle walls, his black trench coat flapping about him like a cloak in the cold wind coming off of the sea. “If you want to go to Frisco, then to Frisco we will go.”
    He watched as his brothers led her off toward the reception hall, and for the first time in his existence he met the green-eyed monster of very real, very possessive jealousy. This he tamped down with a steadfast resolution. He wasn’t going to lose control. Somehow, he’d managed to hold it together all night. He wasn’t about to let go now, just when he was starting to get a handle on the situation.
    He waited until Sophie and his brothers disappeared over the rise and Juliette and Gabriel wandered away from the castle wall. Then Az leapt down from