Angels of Darkness

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    These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for authors or third-party websites or their content.
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Copyright © 2011 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
    â€œAngel’s Wolf” by Nalini Singh copyright © by Nalini Singh.
    â€œAlphas: Origins” by Ilona Andrews copyright © by Andrew Gordon and Ilona Gordon.
    â€œNocturne” by Sharon Shinn copyright © by Sharon Shinn.
    â€œAscension” by Meljean Brook copyright © by Melissa Khan.

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    PRINTING HISTORY
    Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition / October 2011
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    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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    Angels of darkness / Nalini Singh . . . [et al.].
    p. cm.
    ISBN : 978-1-101-54490-7
    1. Paranormal romance stories, American. 2. Fantasy fiction, American. I. Singh, Nalini, 1977–
    PS648.F3A66 2011
    813’.087660806—dc23
    2011024566
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Angel’s Wolf
    Nalini Singh

CHAPTER 1
    N oel had been given a promotion in being assigned to the lush green state of Louisiana, but the position was a double-edged sword. Though the area was part of Raphael’s territory, the archangel had assigned the day-to-day ruling of it to Nimra, an angel who had lived six hundred years. Nowhere close to Raphael in age, but old enough—even if age alone was not the arbiter of power when it came to the immortal race.
    Nimra had more strength in her fine bones than angels twice her age and had ruled this region for eighty years; she’d been considered a power when most of her peers were still working in the courts of their seniors. Hardly surprising when it was said that she had a will of iron and a capacity for cruelty untempered by mercy.
    He was no fool. He knew this “promotion” was in truth a silent, cutting statement that he was no longer the man he’d once been—and no longer of use. His hand fisted. The torn and bloodied flesh, the broken bones, the glass that had been driven into his wounds by the servants of a crazed angel, it was all gone courtesy of his vampirism. The only things that remained were the nightmares . . . and the damage within.
    Noel didn’t see the same man he always had when he looked in the mirror. He saw a victim, someone who had been beaten to a pulp and left to die. They’d taken his eyes, shattered his legs, crushed his fingers until the pieces were pebbles in a sack of flesh. The recovery process had been brutal, had taken every ounce of his will. But if this insulting position was to be his fate, it would’ve been better not to survive. Before the attack, he’d been on the short list for a senior position in the