“You would not dare!”
“Go, lick your wounds. Lick Grash. I don’t care.”
Mavritte turned. “You can’t do this.”
“And yet I do.” Lore shut the door in her livid face.
He held the door handle a long moment, as if expecting her to burst back into the room.
Talia remembered to close her gaping mouth. “What did she just say? She wants to fight you?”
Lore held up his hand, signaling her to wait. After a long minute, he dropped his hand from the door. “She’s gone.”
Talia grabbed his arm. “What the hell is going on?”
He put a hand over hers, squeezing it gently. “Mavritte is angry. No one refuses her, and now I have. Her pride is wounded. She will get over it.”
Talia wasn’t so sure. “I think she wants to kill me. Is she going to try to kill you?”
“She won’t hurt either one of us.”
“How can you be so sure?”
The look he gave her was matter-of-fact. “I am Alpha. She can’t change that.”
Talia let him take her hand, warming it between his own. He seemed so utterly certain of his powers.
He was sure of her, too. He took her hand, pulling her to the pool of lamplight. The movement drew them into the bedroom. Talia could see raw scratches snaking down his arm, following the swell of his muscles. Suddenly, she wanted him. She wanted her tongue on those wounds, tasting the spicy blood she always sensed just under his skin.
He was wearing another one of those tight T-shirts that showed off every one of his chest muscles. Doesn’t he own anything else? she thought irritably. Her fangs began to ache, matching the slow burn deep in her belly. She wanted to kiss the place just under his ear, where even on a work-hardened hellhound, the skin would be soft as apricots. Tasty. Yielding.
She wanted her mouth all kinds of places, and the very thought of them was making her squirm. This can’t happen. He has to know the truth of who I am. What I’ve done.
“What’s the matter?” Lore asked, cupping her face in his hands.
“No one’s ever come looking for me before. In a good way, that is.”
He took a step closer, sliding one hand behind her back. “Never?”
“How do you think I ended up a vampire?”
“Tell me.”
She shrugged, wishing she had the strength of will to put distance between their bodies. It was as if she had to leave room between them for the story she didn’t want to tell. Lore seemed to feel her movement, because he stopped her with a soft caress.
Talia bowed her head. “I . . . I was with some people who were having vampire issues. We were ambushed. It turns out the easy kill we thought we were going to make was a trap. I was covering our retreat. Back of the pack was a bad place to be.”
With the lightest brush of his fingers, he tipped up her chin so that she looked at him. His dark eyes seemed to absorb all the light in the room, drowning her in their soft, deep brown. “That makes no sense. Was no one watching out for your safety? Hellhound guards go in pairs.”
That was Tom’s job. “My partner was able to get away. I wasn’t.”
“No one stopped to help you.” It wasn’t a question, but a conclusion.
“Mission is more important than people. That’s what we were taught.”
Lore pulled her to him, closing the embrace. “No, no. People are the mission. Survival is a battle won one child at a time. Any loss means the whole pack is weakened. We live and die together.”
Talia closed her eyes. He had just risked himself for her sake, facing down one of his own people. No one had ever done anything like that for her. She couldn’t stand hiding from him one second longer.
And yet she hesitated, swamped by the sensation of a free fall into the unknown. He’ll hate me. He might even kill me.
But he deserved to know who he’d saved. And maybe, just maybe, she deserved the right to stop hiding.
The giddy feeling continued, reminding her of that leap of faith through the hospital wall.
“The man I was chasing, Max. He’s my brother.”
“So Errata said.”
“We were raised Hunters.”
He pushed her away enough to look down on her. “When Errata looked into your background, she thought that was a possibility. When your brother showed up at the hospital, she knew it wasn’t for a family reunion.” His voice was quiet, but tight with apprehension.
She felt as if her insides were falling away faster than the rest of her, leaving her hollow and empty, as desolate as the tunnels beneath the city streets. She pulled up the sleeve on her right arm, showing him the tattoo. “I was born a Hunter. Raised that way. My father taught me to kill anything that wasn’t human.”
She could see him putting the pieces together, his gaze moving back and forth over her face. “Which made you a tempting target for someone like Belenos.”
“Revenge.”
“And your father never tried to rescue you?”
“If he ever finds me, he will kill me. That was the whole point of Belenos’s little joke. You should have seen the look on my brother’s face. He was . . .”
He was a recovering addict, terrified that she’d return him to that hell. Talia choked on the memory of Max’s anguished plea not to bite him. “The Hunters are here and they’re using magic and I think it’s something to do with the election.”
Lore studied her face, his brows drawn together. His expression said that he’d taken in her last words, but he let them go. He kept his focus on her, as if she were the only thing that mattered.
“From the very start, I should have guessed what you used to be. Your past doesn’t surprise me.” His voice was careful, as if he wasn’t sure yet what her confession meant. “The way you fight. The way you handle a gun. New vampires usually have little experience with werebeasts and half demons. You’re wary around nonhumans, but you aren’t afraid.”
Talia waited for some sign of his rejection, bracing as if a surgeon were about to cut her flesh without benefit of freezing. “I guess I gave myself away,” was all she could manage.
Lore’s gaze was still fixed on her face. “Not to anyone else. Your cover is good. The clothes. The teaching job.”
“That’s not cover,” Talia said, a touch of heat creeping into her words. “I’m a girl. I like pretty things.”
His lips twitched. “You have a lot of clothes.”
“Paws off the closet.”
There was a small change in his posture as his muscles relaxed. “I wouldn’t dare.”
His easing off made it possible for her to unwind a little. “And I didn’t lie when I said that all I want to do is teach. I don’t mind kicking ass, but I’d rather do it in the classroom.”
“I’ve heard of the human male’s fascination with naughty schoolgirls, but I think they’ve overlooked the teachers.”
“You don’t hate me?”
“I don’t think so.”
Confusion crept up on her. “I have plenty of nonhuman blood on my hands.”
He ran his thumb over her brow, smoothing out her frown. “For that, I’m sorry. But I don’t think you would do the same things now, would you?”
“No. I’ll fight, but it will be for good reasons.”
He bent and kissed her. They’d kissed before, but this was different. A new seriousness charged the moment.
“You smell right to me,” he said, his voice suddenly husky.
“Mm.” His scent was perfect—the warm, spicy musk of him locking her attention to him and him alone. She drank him in, one long deep breath reminding her how wonderful the presence of a warm, solid male could be.
“I thought you didn’t do dead people.”
“I’m in an experimental mood.”