salythereader

WARNING: SPOILER AHEAD

This is the start of a new spin-off series and features Zacharel, a warrior angel we have met before. Zacharel feels no emotion and that has made him kill innocent humans while hunting demons, something his deity doesn't like, so he made his wings feel ice and then:
"For one year, Zacharel would lead an army of angels just like him. The ones no one else wanted under their command. The rebellious ones. The tortured ones. His assignment: to teach them the respect that he himself had yet to demonstrate—for the Deity, for the sanctity of human life. And to ensure that he took his responsibility seriously, he alone would bear the consequences of his warriors’ actions.
If any of his angels killed a human, he would suffer a whipping.

At the start of the book his warriors are still acting out and he doesn't realize the cost of human life, doesn't care really because he cast out his emotions thousands of years ago when he killed his twin brother. His brother was all that was good, pure and love but when his brother was captured by demons, he returned a changed man, wanting to die, harming himself, until Zacharel had to give into to his demands. He also made sure there was no chance of an afterlife for him, so he melded his essence with his brother's ashes, something that is causing a black spot on his chest, meaning death.

All this changes when he meets the heroine on a mission. The heroine's life changed when she got up on her eighteenth birthday, something attacked her, killing her parents and she was blamed and put in a mental institute for the past four years, no-one believed her, not her brother, not her boyfriend and since then her life has been hell, she is kept drugged, creatures come to attack her and she is abused by the doctor but she still hasn't broken and then she sees Zacharel and he tells her demons are attacking her and she is a demon consort. Zacharel who doesn't feel, feels something around her and brings her to his cloud.

There is a lot of distrust between them which is a given because of the heroine's experiences and Zach's mindset about humans, still he is kind to her and desires someone for the first time in his life. He also finds himself promising her, to teach her how to kill demons. He doesn't know how the demon got to her since she never invited him in later they find out her brother did unknowingly(and her dream) and that the High Lord(fallen angel) Unforgiven marked her because he knew she was Zach's mate and even melded a portion of himself in her, which was suppressed due to the drugs but comes out later, making her take demon form.

I loved how Zach lost control the first time he kissed her, scaring her and having to work for her trust and with her he came to see his mistakes and why the Deity punished him. He fights with himself about her but in the end wants to keep her and also emerges as the leader of his group, determined to make sure none of them fall. Ooh and guess what he is a virgin.

The group contains Thane, Bjorn and Xerxes , Koldo, Axle, Jamila. The first three more than brothers, bonded by the torture the demons put them through and broken inside, slave to the weird sexual desires they have to submit to. Then there is Koldo, who helps them and has no wings courtesy of another angel, his mother, who he is determined to kill. Jamila, who kisses Zach and then is captured and tortured by Unforgiven.

I must admit I was quite surprised by the twist at the end Unforgiven is actually Zach's twin brother, who didn't die instead was sent into hell re-tortured by those who broke him and hated Zach for not saving him, in the end he was killed and to save the heroine, Zach put the part of his brother he had saved into her and am looking forward to Koldo's book.