The Unforgiven by Joy Nash Page A

to his will. He’dbeen forced to surrender to hers. His wrists still bore the scars of his frenzy.
    Every adept of Clan Samyaza had endured a similar transition. Each of the others, however, had grown up aware of what was to come with maturity. Each of the others had actually sought the brush with death that triggered his or her change.
    Cade had believed he was human. Then he’d been flung from the precipice of death toward something far more terrifying. It would be the same for Maddie, and Cade wasn’t at all confident of his ability to guide her through the experience.
    He knew next to nothing about the role of anchor. Due to the imbalance in the ratio of males to females in Watcher society, few Watcher men were required to act as anchors. As far as Cade knew, of the surviving male members of Clan Samyaza, only Artur had ever performed the role. For Cybele.
    Morgana—mature, wise, beautiful Morgana, slaughtered by DAMNers—had anchored Brax, Lucas, Niall, and even Artur himself. Cybele had anchored Cade. She’d been as inexperienced then as Cade was now.
    She’d acted solely on instinct. Cade didn’t fully trust his instincts. He wanted a plan. He wanted objectivity. He had neither.
    When he thought of the coming days—when he imagined what Maddie would endure—pity warred with lust. His mind balked, even as his body hardened in anticipation. The Watcher pheromones her body was throwing in his direction made it impossible to think clearly. Impossible to set a course, to anticipate obstacles. There was really very little he could do to prepare Maddie for her crisis. He could hardly describe it to her. If she knew what was going to happen, she’d be paralyzed with terror.
    She was well acquainted with fear, he imagined. She thought she was dying of cancer. Most likely she wondered, as allhumans did, what the afterlife would be like. She had no idea that for her, as for all Nephilim, there was no life beyond this earthly one. After death came Oblivion.
    Cade wondered what Maddie would choose if she were free to do so. Would she endure the crisis for the chance to live out a cursed Nephilim life? Or would she escape that fate by flinging herself into immediate, eternal nothingness? Which would
Cade
have chosen?
    He thought she’d choose life. He sensed she was a fighter. She’d certainly battled her cancer like a warrior. But, it was a moot point. From the moment Cybele found him in that alley—shuddering, raving, half-mad—she’d taken control of his body and his life essence. She’d birthed his demon nature, as Cade would birth Maddie’s.
    But, not here. Not atop the very soil upon which Samyaza, Azazel, their brother Watchers, and so many of their first-generation Nephilim offspring had met their doom. Cade would not anchor Maddie in the very place where his defiant ancestors had forfeited their souls.
    It troubled him more than he liked to admit that Maddie had collapsed in the pit this afternoon. Could her transition have caused the episode? An awakening dormant was subject to bursts of intense energy alternating with periods of intense fatigue. But somehow Cade didn’t think Maddie’s fainting spell was related to her impending crisis.
    Her weakness had been caused by this land; he was sure of it. Incredibly, the stench of the Watchers’ curse still clung to the desert rocks, even if five millennia had passed since the archangel Raphael delivered it. The odor festered in Cade’s nostrils, a foul brown burning that coalesced in the back of his throat.
    He needed to get away. He needed to get
Maddie
away. Quickly. Because if her crisis broke in this cursed place, only God himself would be able to save her.
    God, Cade knew, wouldn’t bother.

Chapter Seven
    Lolo National Forest, Montana
    He hadn’t eaten in seventeen days.
    The hawk’s sharp cry preceded its earthward streak. A flurry of feathers and fur, a panicked squeal, a rustle of dry grass—then the kill was over, the raptor rising with its