Craved: A Chosen Ones Novel by Nia Davenport Page B

spinning. He was deciding on something. I saw it in his eyes the moment he made a decision.
    “I know you probably won’t believe me, or might think I am crazy when I say it, but sometimes I think the Archangel may not be fighting on the same team as us Nephilim.”
      He was right, he did sound crazy. The Archangels created the Nephilim specifically to fight a battle on Earth which they could not. Furthermore, M-, the Archangel he spoke of was not just any Archangel. He was the Archangel. The oldest and most powerful of them all who led the charge against the Brethren when they initially rebelled against heaven and the Most High. He was their leader, holding the position equivalent to a General of the Most High’s. Even before he’d inherited the position from Lucifer when he tried to wrest control of Heaven and Earth for himself, he had been Lucifer’s Second and a Lieutenant to the Most High. Still…
    “That is quite an accusation given the Archangel in question. But I suppose if Lucifer himself, the righthand of the Most High, could turn against him, then it is possible for any of them to.”
    Shock colored his sapphire-blue eyes. “You digested that pill easily. My own mother gagged on it, then vomited it back up when I told her.”
    “Everyone who is supposed to be good isn’t always good. Sometimes they are just very good at tricking people into believing they are.” I said the words much more casually than the emotions they induced in me made me feel. But I shoved them back down. Stuffed them back inside the closet and buried them under a mound of earth…like Deacon and Danielle were. Damn it! Why wouldn’t my brain cooperate today? It kept trying to dredge up subjects that were stones better left unturned. I forced the thoughts of the twins out of my mind and they were replaced by a different one. This one was just as dark, but caused a hysterical giggle to bubble up out of me.
    Chase quirked an eyebrow at me, no doubt wondering at my sanity.
    “I promise I haven’t suddenly gone insane. I just thought about how ironic it is that Bennett forced me to partner up with you, thinking it would give me an added layer of protection specifically from the very Brethren it is your job to hunt down and kill.”
    Chase poured us a third shot. “So what are the chances of you telling me about the prophecy regardless of the Archangels’ threat?”
    The way he casually said it made me suspicious. He said he had doubts about the Archangel not being what he appeared to be, but what if he was the one who that sentiment really applied to?
    “Next to none,” I tell him straightforwardly. “I don’t know you and therefore I don’t trust you.”  
    In the quirky romance books I liked to read, whenever the girl was faced with the question of rather to trust the mysterious guy that had appeared in her life, the answer was always yes. And it was always based on nothing more than some gut feeling or instinct. I never understood that logic. It was stupid, and naive. People were rarely ever as they appeared and gut instincts could be wrong. I learned that the hard way. The last time I trusted someone blindly it came back on me to do a lot more damage than biting me on my ass. It resulted in the loss of lives. Innocent lives that— shit! The past really was refusing to stay buried today.  
    Chase raised the bottle of Jack Daniels to refill our shot glasses.  
    “I think I’ve had enough,” I said stopping him before he could pour more of its contents into mine.  
    He diverted the bottle to his own shot glass. “That’s understandable,” he said cooly.  
    I curiously eyed him as he threw back the last of the liquid that had been in the glass bottle. “That’s…a mature response. I expected you to be irked at my refusal.”
      His blue eyes sparked with something I would call facetiousness if the discussion we were having weren’t so serious. “Patience isn’t one of my better qualities, but I can muster a