When April swam back up to consciousness, she had a pounding headache and the smell of demon in her nostrils.

Neither made her particularly happy. She reached for her bow, but it was gone. Her knives, too, she could tell by slightly flexing certain muscles.

Ah.

They'd missed the one strapped to her left thigh. They'd be sorry about that, she promised herself. Then she opened her eyes, to find Pine standing over her, staring down at her. Her first confused thought was that he'd changed clothes into black pants, black shirt, and black boots.

Her second thought was that he smelled like demon.

"You're not Pine," she rasped out through a throat that burned with thirst. How long had she been out? Or was it the head injury?

"Smart for a human," Not-Pine said, his face expressionless.

It was bizarre. She knew he wasn't Pine, and yet the resemblance was uncanny. "Scary duplication demon magic?"

The demon blinked his blue eye, and then he blinked his green eye. She realized they were wrong. Reversed. On Pine, the right eye was blue. On the demon, blue was the left.

"Close, but not exact," she taunted him. Angry opponents were more likely to make mistakes.

Or kill you, her rational side reminded her.

You win some, you lose some, her irrational side chimed in.

She might possibly have a concussion. One didn't suddenly develop split personalities while lying on the cold floor of a … cave?

"I'm not a demon," he offered, still studying her. "If that's what you think."

She rolled her eyes. "Sure. You only shop at Demon Perfume for Men boutique, right? The stone and sulfur smell is so trendy these days."

He scowled at her. "You should be more afraid of me. Either I'm a demon, and I'm lying to you, or I'm the long-lost twin brother to Pine, and I'm a terrifying Dire Wolf come to eat you."

"Will you huff and puff and blow me? Wait. That's not right." She tried to think about the new children's story that the queen had brought to Atlantis, but her head was definitely fuzzy.

"I'm a Dire Wolf," he suddenly screamed, and his voice was so unlike Pine's that she actually breathed a sigh of relief before nearly passing out from the pain of his hideous voice ringing through her poor broken skull. "You should fear me!"

Another voice rang through the cavern. "She fears nothing. Try me on for size, Demon"

It was Pine. She'd known he'd come for her. She'd have done the same for him.

April tried to sit up but nearly fainted from the spike of pain that shot through her head, before she remembered that she was one of Poseidon's Warriors and far too tough to do anything as pathetic as faint.

Instead, she rolled over and retched. In a totally non-pathetic way. But even while she was doubling over in pain, she managed to get her hands on her knife.

Pine froze when the demon turned to face him, because the demon's face … was his.

An exact mirror image, even down to the eye color.

How?

"It's not what you think," April called out to him. Her voice was weak and hoarse but she was sitting up. There was blood in her hair, though. The bastard must have hit her. He was going to die.

"He's a demon. It's a trick. You need to believe me this time."

The demon—or his twin—screamed again and aimed a kick at April, who managed to half-roll, half-fall out of the way, but by the time the demon pulled his foot back again, Pine was charging across the cavern, launching through the air at the demon who dared to attack April and wrenching his body in mid-air into the fastest shift he'd ever done.

When he landed on the demon who looked like him, Pine was a quarter ton of raging fury in the shape of a Dire Wolf. He swatted the thing so hard that it flew twenty feet across the cave and smashed into a stone wall.

So much for puny demons who pretended to be princes.

He bent his head to April, praying that she wouldn't be afraid of him—she hadn't seen him shift shape before—but she started shouting, and he backed away, saddened and discouraged, before he realized she wasn’t afraid of him. She was telling him that the demon was coming back.

Before he could move, the demon, still wearing its human-Pine shape, slammed into him with the force of a freight train. Pine flew through the air and crashed into a different wall, but he bounced right back up as soon as he hit the floor. Dire Wolves were hard to kill.

The demon wasn’t trying to kill him, though. It had other ideas.

It had yanked April up off the ground and tossed her over its shoulder, and now it was racing toward the back of the cave, where Pine only just now noticed a gathering mass of darkness that was blacker than black.

An inter-dimensional portal.

If the demon succeeded in getting April through that opening, Pine would never see her again.

He roared so loudly that the walls of the cave shook, and then he chased after the demon, but it had too much of a head start. April was screaming, something about ice daggers? What?

From behind him, a tornado of arrows and ice daggers, both, sliced through the air on either side of Pine and smashed home into the demon, somehow—miraculously—missing April. The demon screamed again, a noise that sounded like hell itself, and hurled April against the stone floor before lurching forward toward the portal.

Like hell he would. Pine would be damned if he'd let the hell beast escape, so he could recuperate and return. He gathered his feet and pushed off in a powerful leap, soaring through the air so high and so far that he landed between the demon and the portal.

"Nooooo," the demon screamed, his Pine-face melting into swirls of blackened red and purple that were so hideous Pine almost closed his eyes before he flattened the thing's head with one paw.

When the demon died, the portal winked out like a snuffed candle, but Pine had no time to care about it. He ripped the magic of the shift through his body again and shifted into human in seconds then raced over to April's limp form huddled, unmoving, on the stone floor.

"April. Come back to me, now," he commanded her, hoping, praying that just this once she'd listen to a command. He gently lifted her body off the floor and into his arms, right there on the floor, and realized that the tears dripping onto her face was coming from his own.

"I love you. Don't you dare leave me," he begged her, but she was so still and so pale, and he started to despair, but then another man crouched down next to them.

Pine started to snarl at the man, but then he recognized him. The unmistakable long, white hair and silver eyes. This was Griffin, the Atlantean mage.

"Heal her," he demanded.

Griffin snarled right back at him. "I take no orders from you, Prince. You should have taken better care of our ambassador."

The words hit Pine with the force of the blow they'd been. Griffin was right. If she died, it was his fault. He would die with her.

But another person ran up to them, and as if in a daze, Pine heard his sister's voice. "Heal her or die yourself, mage."

He looked up to see Nyn pointing her bow, arrow cocked, at Griffin's head. The mage spared an irritated glance at Nyn, but then his mouth fell open and he fell back from the crouch to land on his ass on the stone.

"You—who--" The mage reluctantly tore his gaze from Nyn, sentence unfinished, and spread his fingers, palms down, inches over April's still body. Immediately, a super-charged version of the blue healing light April had used earlier spread over and around her, and within seconds she opened her eyes and smiled up at him.

"That was a funny dream," she told him. "I think you should kiss me now."

"I think I should kiss you forever," he said, but instead he tightened his arms around her and nodded his thanks to the mage while April dropped off into sleep in his embrace.

"Nyn, this is April's fellow warrior, Griffin," he told his sister, knowing it would be useless to ask her what the hell she was doing putting herself in danger.

The mage stood and bowed, deeply and elegantly, to Nyneve before staring down at her as if he'd never seen a woman before. After several long, silent moments, Griffin inclined his head. "I have no need to be threatened with death to help those in need, fierce one."

Nyn lowered the bow and stumbled back a step, her gaze locked on the mage. "I'm sorry—I'm … I didn't--"

"We need to get April back to the manor," Pine said, not liking the looks of whatever was happening between his sister and the mage.

"We need to get all of you home," Sean called out, leading a team of their people into the cave. "Whatever black, demon magic was holding us out finally disappeared."

Pine blinked. "You came, too? You all came?"

Three more of the Atlantean warriors, including team leader Denal, flew into the cavern just then on clouds of glistening mist. They landed next to Griffin.

"We always come for family," one of the Atlanteans said. Denal, Griffin, Nyn, and Sean all nodded.

Family. He and April had family.

They were family.

Forever.

In his arms, April stirred and opened her eyes. "Hey, Denal How do you feel about werewolf soccer?"

Denal tilted his head. "Sounds fun. But what is that noise?"

"What?" Pine looked around, and then he heard it.

"Oh, no," Nyn said.

The Atlanteans pulled ice daggers from the air itself and crouched into battle readiness. Griffin moved his body to protect Nyn so smoothly that Pine didn't think his sister even realized it was happening.

"What is the danger?"

"No danger, Griffin," April said sleepily. "Annie's just coming to murder me again."

Then the woman Pine had finally realized he was in love with fell back asleep, leaving him to explain to several dangerous Atlantean warriors that the murderer was, in fact, his niece.

Again.