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  ORIEL (Fallen Angels 2)

  ASA (Fallen Angels 3)

  RAZAEL (Fallen Angels 4)

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  Tempted (A Fallen Angels Story)

  Copyright © 2017 by Alisa Woods

  September 2017 Edition

  All rights reserved.

  Sworn Secrets Publishing

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author. For information visit:

  Alisa Woods

  Cover by Steven Novak

  Tempted (A Fallen Angels Story)

  Paranormal Romance

  Tajael is an angeling of the light—a cross between human and angel. He strives for Virtue, but his human body is vulnerable to all the Sins... Lust most of all. Growing up cloistered among the angels, he must now go on walkabout in the human world to prove his Virtue. If he can keep from Falling, he'll be allowed to return and take his vows. But it's an angeling's nature to love and protect humanity... and nothing he's been taught prepares him for the Temptation ahead...

  ~*~

  Tempted is the standalone backstory of TAJAEL, an angeling in the Dominion of the angel Markos. It contains sexy hot angels of the light—and shadow—and only readers over 18 should dip into the sinfully delicious world of the Fallen Angels series.

  FALLEN ANGELS is the follow-on series to FALLEN IMMORTALS. It's recommended that you read FALLEN IMMORTALS first, but the series can be read independently.

  **TEMPTED can be read independently of the novel series**

  I was born in Sin.

  But I need not choose Sin.

  These words inhabit my mind like demons and angels in constant battle. Of all my cohort of angelings—all five of us, readying for our walkabout—I suspect I am most likely to Fall.

  I do not speak this.

  Yet, somehow, Erelah sees it on my face. “Tajael, don’t worry. We’re all coming back from this. And making our vows then. Within a week is my guess.” Her voice is strong and confident, as always. She’s the most righteous among us—more Warrior Class than Protector Class—but I doubt she knows it. And besides, angelkind is at peace, and the warriors are dormant. Erelah’s strength comes from her patronage—a daughter of a True Angel of Light, according to the rumors, not a shadow angel or angeling rutting in Lust and seducing a human, as the rest of us were formed. Her wings flex snowy white behind her, and her toga gleams with the soft glow from the crystal walls of our Dominion. She shines with angel energy, more than the rest of us halflings, even if our wings are just as white. It’s her soul that’s most brilliant, a beacon of Righteousness.

  Erelah is an angeling of light to her core.

  I was born in Sin. But I need not choose Sin. The words have become a prayer.

  “A week!” Sajit scoffs. “I would be back within the day if Markos would allow it.” Our faction leader, Markos, is the angel who rescued us all from the certain Sin of our births, whisking us away from the shadowkind who spawned us. His rules are not magical law, but they might as well be. None of us will return before the appointed time five days hence.

  Sajit is in a pout over it. She’s tightening the bindings of her training toga more roughly than necessary. The white fabric glows and covers a minimum of her body for maximum flexibility in a fight. We’ve no need for armor. We are angeling—a mixture of angel and human, to varying degrees—and Sajit’s angel nature will protect her from any natural harm. It’s the unnatural harm—demons and shadow angels and their kind—which angelings need guard against on their walkabout. And there’s no armor against a shadowkind’s blade. But we must go forth and test ourselves against the temptations of the mortal realm before we can return to make our vows. Angelings of light are sworn to protect humanity, and we cannot serve unless we’re sure of our Virtues.

  Sajit grunts frustration as she shoves her angel blade into its thigh sheath.

  “Patience is a Virtue,” Halo whispers, so quietly I almost can’t hear her. I suspect it just slipped out, an automatic beatitude. Halo is almost reflexive in all the Virtues—Temperance, Charity, Chastity, Diligence, Humility, Kindness, and, most of all, Patience. Quarreling differs from the Sin of Wrath, but with Halo’s meekness, one would think they are the same. Patience has always been her strongest Virtue.

  Whilst mine is Diligence. Perhaps. Such discernment is the purpose of the walkabout—for an angeling to discover the strength of their Virtues. Or lack thereof. Only then can they return to take vows in the most suitable faction.

  “You should take your vow in Patience,” I say quietly to Halo as I secure my own angel blade—blessed by Markos himself and humming with angel energy—into its sheath. Markos’s faction is Chastity, but we are all free to switch. We could even stay in Chastity but make vows to a different angel, joining a separate Dominion in this nether space that’s set apart from the human realm and its temptations. Markos would take no offense. He expects us to discern and choose once we return.

  If we return.

  Erelah is ready, humming with energy just a bit stronger than the others. She flexes her hands as if impatient to put our training to use slaying demons. Not that demons plague humanity now, not like in ancient times. My cohort was only spawned twenty human years ago, but it’s been hundreds of years since a proper slaying. Although some angelings are still called to Guardian duty, on occasion, just in case.

  Sajit is a picture of agitation, likewise ready to slay and return to the angel realm. Or simply bide her time among the humans, remaining in the light, resisting temptation, not succumbing to the Vices and Falling into shadow. As alluring as humanity supposedly is—none of us have seen an actual human, not since being taken from our mothers—I don’t think Sajit is in danger of Falling from Lust. For her, it will be Wrath. Or perhaps Pride.

  A scowl flashes across her face and then vanishes—a silent and missed rebuke to Oriel, who is still, slowly and methodically, putting right the straps of his rugged training toga. The rest of us—myself, Erelah, Halo, an
d an impatient Sajit—are ready.

  But it’s Halo who speaks. “Do you need assistance?” she asks Oriel. She means it with love. I can see it in the wide luminescence of her blue eyes.

  “No.” He continues his methodical practice.

  “Just magic it,” Sajit says, her frustration climbing up into words.

  Oriel doesn’t answer, just wraps the last binding into place. He is covered more than the rest—rugged white-leather boots, a harness of similar white leather wrapped around his chest and bound with toga fabric, plus stiff gauntlets on either arm. He’s dressed for combat as if the entire ensemble might stop a shadow blade.

  It will not.

  Oriel swipes his dark hair back from his face. “I was practicing Diligence,” he explains gently. Then he frowns. “In Truth, I suppose I was delaying. I fear my Fall will come all too quickly once we’re outside the safety of Markos’s Dominion.”

  My heart stutters in recognition—this is my fear as well.

  Sajit snorts. “Hardly. You’ve yet to meet a risk you felt worthy of taking, Oriel.”

  His frown grows darker. “There are no true risks in this realm. What temptation have you ever felt—”

  “I feel the temptation now to prod you with my blade,” Sajit replies sharply. “Are you ready?”

  But Erelah speaks before he can respond. “Oriel’s right. We haven’t faced any serious temptation here.”

  “I’m tempted to skip our weekly Penance,” Halo pipes up cheerily.

  “You hardly have need for Penance,” Oriel chides her, but again, it’s a Kindness, not a rebuke.

  “I most certainly do.” Halo’s sunlight expression falls into seriousness. “I have wicked thoughts. Very wicked. You would be shocked to know my temptations.”

  I’m intrigued enough to ask. “For which Sin?”

  She pauses dramatically, looking at us each with those wide eyes. “Gluttony.”

  A laugh seizes hold of us all, echoing off the tall walls of the training room. I grin wide at her. No angeling has ever Fallen from the Sin of Gluttony. And for a moment, the tension is released, and it is like all the times we bantered together before in training or in the gathering room while we were growing up together. Angelings don’t have family, not like the humans we study and protect when we come of age. Markos is our leader, not our father. Our cohort are our closest friends, not our brothers and sisters. But this… this laughter feels like the echo of a family I never had.

  Yet when we depart, there’s no guarantee we’ll ever be together again like this.

  “I am serious,” Halo attempts, fighting through her own laughter. “I have desires to eat nearly every day.” This bursts another round of laughter. We are all partially human—some more than others, depending on our lineage—but our angel natures reduce the need for human things like eating and sleeping to a fraction of what humanity requires.

  Halo smile broadens, and I give her a wink. I see what she’s done, flushing us with the joy of laughter instead of the sadness of tears or the spoken-aloud fears of Falling. If only the ability to perceive the intent of angelings were a Virtue, I’d be guaranteed never to Fall.

  “Well, if Halo can Fall from Gluttony,” Erelah says, still smiling, “then I am doomed.”

  “Which one for you?” I ask.

  She narrows her eyes as if contemplating the question. “Pride. I’ve always been more talented with a blade than you could hope to be, Tajael.”

  “Truth,” I say, grinning wide again. “And I shall Fall from Envy of your superb demon slaying skills.”

  “As is right and just,” she says solemnly.

  This wrenches another chortle from me and the rest. Oriel leans on Sajit, fighting for breath from his laughter.

  “And you, Sajit?” I ask, purposely tempering my smile. Perhaps she will be honest.

  “Sloth, of course.” She scowls at Oriel and sloughs him off her shoulder. “I will lay about in my cell, indolent with too much sleep, and one day…” She flicks her hands, a smirk settling on her face. “Poof. I will go to shadow.”

  Oriel has recovered himself somewhat. “I do not believe there is any poofing involved.”

  “How do we know?” Sajit counters, and suddenly the mood of the entire group grows darker. “We’ve never been outside these walls.” She gestures to the softly glowing crystal of Markos’s Dominion. “All we know is what we’ve been told. The stories. The legends. The warnings. What is it really like out in the human realm? We won’t know until we get there. And then we’re on our own.”

  What she’s saying is Truth. And it sobers us. Although we are leaving as a group, we will each pick a different part of the human realm for our walkabout. We will truly be alone among humanity.

  “Markos wouldn’t lie to us,” Halo says softly.

  And while I suspect that is Truth, one never knows with angels. “He’s told us what we need to know,” I say. Or at least what we need for whatever lessons he has in store for us. Angels are inscrutable at the best of times, even for an angeling like me, who has a dangerous Pride in my ability to read faces and intent. But angels are not earthly beings, and the form they take—including facial expressions and body language—is purely the form they wish you to see.

  “I pray that it will be enough,” Oriel says softly.

  A hush falls on the group once more.

  No one has mentioned the Sin from which we all came. The one to which we are all most vulnerable in the human realm. Lust. We were raised in Chastity faction—it should be our strongest Virtue—but Sajit tells the Truth. We know only what Markos has told us.

  Erelah lays a hand on Oriel’s well-clad shoulder. “You will return, Oriel. I have faith in you.”

  He smiles gently. “You are born of an angel of light, Erelah. Your faith is like breathing. Unlike the rest of us.”

  This wounds me, to hear it spoken aloud. And the look on Erelah’s face says it wounds her, too.

  Oriel seems stricken. “I only mean—”

  “No, it’s all right,” Erelah cuts him off. She squeezes his shoulder and releases him. Then she turns to the rest of us. “It’s proper to feel some concern. This is the greatest test of our lives. It is a test of our righteousness, and any one of us could fail. We could Fall into shadow… but we will not. Because we are angelings of the light, and we live to serve.” She makes a fist and holds it to the center of our small group.

  My hand is first on hers, but Oriel and Halo quickly follow. Sajit waits, but then she clasps hard on the top of the pile. “We live to serve.”

  Then she nods, just once, and twists away, disappearing in a flash of light. She has opened an interdimensional portal between Markos’s Dominion and the human realm and stepped right through. Gone. Until we see her again.

  “I live to serve,” Halo says, and she’s the next to travel.

  Oriel holds my gaze for a long moment. “I’ll see you at your vow-making,” he says calmly, and he goes next.

  Erelah and I remain. She is my fast friend, more than the others, even from the time of our first lessons in the training room.

  “You will come back, Tajael,” she says. It’s a command.

  “I live to serve,” I respond.

  And then she’s gone.

  I wait a moment longer, gazing at the echoing heights of the training room, soaking in the vibrant hum of its walls, the clean, pure energy of its angel light.

  Home. It’s the only one I’ve ever known.

  I was born in Sin. But I need not choose Sin.

  I turn, open an interdimensional door, and walk through to the world of Sin where I was born.

  It’s only been three days, and I already understand the allure.

  The human I’ve been watching over has a soul that shines with Kindness. She tends to children during the day and her sickly father in the evening. In spare moments and at the end of the day, she sits at a small desk in the apartment she shares with her father and reads. I can tell by the way she handles the bo
oks—with soft caresses and gentle page turns—that she reveres them. Or perhaps it’s the stories inside that she treasures. I peer over her shoulder sometimes—cloaked so she won’t be terrified—and read about vast voyages and daring heroines and… love. It’s then that the physical nearness affects me. The scent of her, delicate and scrubbed clean. The slow rise and fall of her bosom under her lightweight nightgown. The ease with which she sprawls on her bed, alone in her room, legs and arms tossed with a carelessness she doesn’t have when out in public, where the decorum of her time requires a prim, high-necked dress, stocking-covered legs, and a straight, dignified posture. But here in her bedroom, it’s as if all her physical parts have loosened. Her hair. Her limbs. Even her lips move in a way that’s set free from the social rules of her world, silently reading out the stories she’s taking in.

  The freedom of that—all while shining goodness from her soul—is breathtaking. It holds me captive, lurking and waiting for the moment in the day when she releases like this. It’s when her humanity shows in full flower. There’s no question she’s lovely in face and form, as well, with long dark hair and deep brown eyes and slender feet and legs that peek from beneath her nightgown. It’s nothing like the eternally perfect beauty of angelkind, but her human imperfections are no impediment to the rising attraction I feel. If anything, they make her more alluring in her uniqueness.

  I find myself watching a little too long when she undresses. The male and female forms were created in love by God, so there is no shame in them. I’ve seen my cohort in various states of dress and undress, male and female, countless times. Never was Lust even a simmering on the distant horizon. There’s a built-in revulsion when angelkind touches angelkind—a repelling of like from like. The understanding of Lust as Sin is fundamental, so there is never even a thought to the shapeliness of a breast or the curve of a hip or the arch of a cheek. Never do I wonder about the texture of an angeling's hair or the softness of their skin.