Pine whooped, filled with a completely unfamiliar emotion, but he didn’t even try to analyze it. It was a beautiful day, and a beautiful woman had challenged him to a race over hills and trails he'd roamed for his entire life. This time he'd claim the forfeit he'd asked for during that battle nearly a month ago, now.

He grinned and leaned low over Minotaur's neck, giving him his head. This time he'd duck if she tried to punch him.

They raced over the beautiful signs of spring in the highlands. It was still cold at night more often than not, but blooming plants and newborn lambs told the world that yes, indeed, spring was nigh. It was his favorite time of year, and he was more than pleased to share it with April.

Well. If he could only catch up to her, he'd be pleased. "Minotaur, speed, my friend."

The stallion stretched out on a long straightaway and slowly but surely pulled even with April, who rode like a dream of flying, as if she and the mare were twin halves of the same wild spirit. When she saw him she laughed and slowly drew Darling to a canter and then to a walk. When they reached a stream, they dismounted to let the horses drink, and April perched on a rock overlooking the water.

"It's so beautiful, your home," she said, turning her face up to the sun. "You were lucky to have grown up here. Were your parents the alpha pair?"

It took a moment for her words to register, because the sight of the sun on her bright hair, on the pale, luminous skin of her face, stole his speech.

"I—yes. They were. Until only a few years ago, actually, when my Da lost his battle with cancer and Ma followed him soon after. Nyn said she died of a broken heart, after fifty years together. She didn't know how to live without him."

April's eyes flew open. "I'm sorry. I know … I know how hard that can be. My parents died together, too, although it was something they brought upon themselves," she said, so bitterly that he was afraid to ask her about it.

"I'm sorry," he said instead, and she lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

"They brought it on themselves. They decided that Atlantis was boring, so they managed to smuggle themselves through the portal and started an illegal fight club somewhere in Eastern Europe, always coming home with bruises and broken bones sometimes. They angered the wrong people, though."

She looked away from him, then, so he couldn't see her face, but he clearly heard the pain in her voice that she tried to hide. "One day they never came home at all."

"How old were you?" They hadn't ventured into personal topics on their trips, but it hadn't been because he hadn't wanted to talk to her about more than treaties and borders. He'd just been careful not to cross her borders until she allowed it.

April blew out a breath. "Does it matter?"

"It matters to me." He sat down on the rock next to her, carefully not looking at her, and took her hand. She tensed, but didn't pull away. Instead, she sat quietly and looked out over the sparkling water while the horses cropped at some new grass nearby.

"I was six years old, and I had no one."

His hand involuntarily tightened around hers, but he forced himself to relax his fingers. Six years old. A baby, really.

"But it was Atlantis, right? Don’t they have programs to take care of--" He stopped, unsure how to continue.

"Orphans? Sure. But I didn't know about them, and my parents' friends were more worried about getting in trouble over the smuggling and the fight club than they were about one dirty, starving kid running around stealing food and sleeping in hidden corners. I finally found friends, and their parents took me in," she told him, a smile touching her sensual lips. "Lucas's mom became like a mother to me. But as wonderful as they are, there's always that feeling that you're a guest in someone else's home, even when they want to adopt you."

"Did you let them? Adopt you?"

She pulled her hand away and stood, walking over to Darling. "No. No, I couldn't quite bring myself to do that. I had nothing left of my heritage but my name, and I wasn't going to give that up. Stubbornness or stupidity, I guess. I grew up clutching that hurt to me; that I was the one nobody really wanted."

Pine followed her, drawn as if steel to her magnet. "For me, it was the other side of the same coin. I grew up as the heir. The alpha-in-training. Everybody wanted to be my friend, if only on the surface. Some girls, even … well. A few of them pretended to care about me, but it was never about me, if that makes sense."

He stopped, realizing what he was doing. Wanted to punch himself in the mouth. "Ha. Poor little rich boy. What a joke. You tell me your painful truths, and I whine that girls wanted to be with me for my money. I'm a fool."

April swung around, and he saw no condemnation in her eyes. "No. Don't say that. We all grow up and live with our own pain, and I learned a long time ago that I have no monopoly on it. Not being able to tell who your true friends are is just as hard as having none at all. At least when I did make friends, I knew they had no ulterior motive. You didn't have that."

A harsh reality he'd told nobody welled up in him and ripped its way out of his throat. "I still don't."

"You don't?"

"I still don't have any friends that I can completely trust to only want to be my friend for me, not for what I can bring them."

April froze, her fingers moving gently in Darling's mane as she plaited flowers into it; an odd choice for such a warrior woman. It made him smile.

When she finished, she took a step toward him and placed her hands lightly in his. "Pine. Here is my truth, today: You do, now."

It took him a moment, because he was lost in the realization that she was touching him of her own initiative and volition, but then understanding bloomed within him on a wave of warmth that swept through his body. She was telling him that she was his friend.

She was his friend, and the gods themselves knew that she wanted nothing from him. Not money or power or position.

She was his friend, and his heart, shriveled and cold and dead for so long, tentatively started to open to the sunlit warmth that was April.

"I want to kiss you," he confessed, but he made no move toward her. For now, friendship was enough. Was more than enough.

Was everything.

"I know," she said lightly, glancing ever-so-swiftly at his lips and then away. "I might even want to kiss you, too, sometime in the future. But for now, let's be content at friendship."

"You have no idea how content I am." He shouted out a laugh and then swung her into the air.

Luckily for him, she laughed too instead of flattening him or shooting him.

Warrior, he told himself.

Friend.

He carefully put his friend back down on the ground and swung up onto Minotaur's back. "I bet it 's time for lunch, and then maybe we can get in on the soccer game. Everybody plans on Saturday afternoons. You'll love it, except the rules are more like guidelines."

She grinned and leapt lightly onto Darling's back. "Werewolf soccer? I love it already."

"We prefer wolf shifter," he told her, pretending to be offended.

She laughed at him, and he loved it.

He clucked to Minotaur, and then he and his friend rode leisurely back to find lunch. Suddenly, he was starving. Apparently happiness worked up quite an appetite. He even felt like whistling. Or singing. It was ridiculous, but he hadn't felt truly happy in longer than he could remember, except for scattered moments with Annie. He hoped this amazing feeling would last forever—or at least for a very, very long time.

Instead, it only lasted ten minutes.

Then they found the first two dying shifters.