“You cannot put this on me,” I argued. “Not when you’re the one holding me. This is your fault.”

“I can feel you.” His voice was just a whisper but it stretched my nerves tight. “The heat. The want. I can feel you. I find it hard to resist.”

My mouth dried. “And I can feel you. Did you think about that? Because I find it hard to resist.”

“Okay.” His warm breath made another pass over my lips. “How about we’re mutually at fault.”

“More like sixty percent your fault and forty percent mine but whatever.”

His chuckle was a rasping, seductive sound. “We need to get our heads in the game.”

We did.

And what Zayne had said a few seconds ago was right. Not the mutually at fault thing, but about us not being smart. We had no idea what the consequences would be if we were to be together, but I knew it couldn’t be anything warm and fuzzy. The rule had been created by the archangels, the highest order and most powerful of all angelic beings. They even oversaw the Alphas, who were responsible for communicating with the Wardens.

Not only were archangels notoriously strict and old school, they were often of the Old Testament variety, meaning they operated by an eye for an eye, literally. God only knew what kind of penalty they would whip up, having eons of experience behind them when it came to doling out punishment like it was candy and every night was Halloween.

Fear spiked, leaving my skin chilled, and it wasn’t for my own well-being. Considering how archangels often overdid things when it came to the punishment-fits-the-crime deal, they could hurt Zayne.

They could even kill him.

As fear turned my blood to slush, I thought of my father, of how unaffected he’d been by how Misha had turned out and by his demise. My heart tripped over itself. I doubted he’d step in if punishment were to be handed down, even with Zayne destined to be my Protector.

I was possibly overreacting about the whole killing-Zayne part. They needed me to find the Harbinger, and they needed me at peak performance to do so, and that meant they needed Zayne alive and whole, so maybe that meant we had the upper hand. Maybe—

A scream pierced through the distant hum of cars and people. We jerked apart, and I staggered away from the wall, turning toward the mouth of the alley. Another scream tore through the air, followed by shouts.

“What the Hell?” Zayne grabbed my hand. “Come on.”

Zayne took off, and with him guiding the way, I was able to easily keep up as we made it onto the sidewalk and dodged clusters of people.