He raised his head to the sky then held out his arm across what he’d figured out was the boundary of his buffers’ influence. Magic jolted through him like electricity, flinging him onto his back. His power spun through him, but it was nothing compared to what he would feel without the two buffers.
“Again?” a youth’s voice asked.
Rhyn lay still and folded his hands beneath his head, staring at the sky. He heard the angel, Toby, drop beside him, the glow of his Nintendo 3DS bright in the night. As one of Rhyn’s buffers, Toby was as trapped on the beach as he was.
“It’s gotta hurt,” Toby said.
Nothing hurts anymore, Rhyn thought.
“Kris wants to assign Hannah as my new mom,” the angel continued. “I don’t want her as my mom.”
“Why do you give a shit?” Rhyn asked.
“I want Katie.”
Rhyn’s jaw clenched, and he fought the raw feeling inside him, the one that betrayed him every time he tried to convince himself he’d survived worse. For the first time in his life, he’d thought he found his calling: protecting people as defenseless as his mate, Katie. And then, she’d died, and any purpose his life had died with her. Now, he just wanted to die-dead.
“Auntie Hannah says she’d be my mom for all time, so I wouldn’t have to have any other moms.” The angel sounded troubled. “Rhyn, can I stay with you?”
“No.”
“I know, I know, Kris says I’m an angel and angels are supposed to protect humans and you’re anything but human but I still want to stay with you. Please, Rhyn?”
“No.”
Toby sighed loudly and turned off the glowing 3DS. Instead of leaving like Rhyn wished he would, the angel lay down beside him.
“How long are we staying on the beach?” Toby asked.
“Until Kris figures out how to send me back to Hell,” Rhyn said, suspecting this was what his brother intended to do. He couldn’t be trusted free. As hard as he tried, he had no control over his power without the buffers. Kris and his mate, Hannah – Rhyn’s other buffer – weren’t about to live the rest of Immortality on the beach with him.
“You could kidnap us both and take us wherever you want to go,” Toby offered. “Then you’d be stable and you could leave the beach.”