I regained some control, finally, and scrambled for my robe. I put it on and tied the belt a little too tightly, and in seconds, the cloth was bright with fresh blood. I wasn’t sure, truthfully, that I’d survive the night. I kept losing blood and I didn’t have an endless supply.

Still, a bleeding wound was preferable to the screaming lust that had consumed me. I wasn’t embarrassed, not yet. That would come later.

Miriam arrived. She swept past me, her face tight with cold anger, and strode to the fighting men.

“Stop,” she said, her voice ringing with command.

Clayton stopped immediately. His fists fell to his sides and he stiffened, unable to even defend himself.

But Angus was not controlled by any magical compulsion to obey Miriam, and he took advantage of Clayton’s vulnerability by delivering a punch to the other man’s chin, followed by a devastating blow to his temple.

Clayton dropped like a stone and Angus backed up, wiped blood from his own gushing nose, and glared down at Miriam. “I should fucking kill him,” he roared.

Miriam ignored him. All her concentration was on Clayton. She kicked him in the face, hard.

“Get up,” she told him.

“He’s unconscious,” I said, aghast. “Angus sucker punched him.” I sank down to the floor beside him and stared up at her. “He may be dying!”

She curled her lip. “He’s not dying, you silly girl. He can’t die. He just needs me to command him to rise.” She grinned, but it was the scariest grin I’d ever seen. “Clayton,” she sang, causing me to jump. “Get up. Get up!”

His body twitched.

Miriam leaned forward. “Get up!” She pulled back her foot, clad in a black, pointed toe stiletto, and began kicking him in the ribs.

Kicking him. In the ribs.

I gaped at her. “Stop it, Miriam. Stop!”

But it was like she didn’t even hear me. She continued kicking him, and I heard his ribs crack.

I wasn’t putting up with that shit.

I grabbed her foot mid-kick and twisted, and when she hit the floor I pulled back my fist and punched her in the mouth. Hard.

“Here,” Angus roared, and grabbed me by the back of my robe. He yanked me to my feet, then jerked me back a few steps, away from Miriam. “What are you doing?” Then he focused on my bloody robe. “What the fuck happened to you?”

Before I could answer, he turned to Miriam, who was wiping blood from her rapidly swelling lip.

“You said Clay could protect her!” Angus roared. “He had her naked in his arms and she’s covered with blood. What the fuck, Miriam!”

“Is that all you can do is yell?” I yelled.

They both looked at me, then turned back to each other.

“I was trying to rouse him so he could explain, but Trinity took offense and punched me in the mouth. You saw her.”

“You were kicking him,” I said, enunciating each word slowly, carefully. “You made him stand still so Angus could hit him, and you were kicking him.” As though she didn’t know. I grew angry all over again and clenched my fists.

“Calm down,” Angus told me. “Miriam knows how to handle him.”

“You’re both assholes.” I knelt once more beside Clayton, unsure. I had no idea what to do for him, but neither Miriam nor Angus seemed overly concerned.

Not with Clayton, anyway.

Angus hunkered down beside me. “Are you okay, girl?” He reached out a hand to pull the bloody lapel of my robe away from my skin. “What happened here?”

I shrugged away his fingers. “It’s a long story—one I’ll tell you after you help Clayton.”

“Sweetheart,” Miriam said, her voice somewhere between arctic cold and the fires-of-hell hot, “you do not want to fight me for this thing.”

I jumped to my feet. “Oh my God. You—”

“I can see you’re beginning to care for him.” She shrugged. “You really don’t want to do that.”

But then Clayton groaned and sat up, and I was saved from having to reply. Care about him?

No.

Definitely not.

No more than I’d care about any other person being abused.

Miriam stood, then leaned over and buried her fingers in his hair. “Up you go.” If he hadn’t stood, she’d have ripped out his hair by the roots.

I wondered why she hated him, but I couldn’t ask. Not then.

I stood as well. Clayton glanced at me, then away.

“Are you well?” Miriam asked him.

He nodded.

She put her hands on her hips. “Explain.”

“I went to get a first aid kit to bandage her wound. When I returned, she was being attacked by a strange man. I pulled him off her and threw him against the wall.” He pointed his chin at the wall, and we all three turned to look at the dented plaster.

“Where is he?” Miriam asked. “Dead?”

He shook his head. “Escaped. I don’t know what he was.”

“So.” Miriam walked slowly around him, her heels clicking on the floor.

He stiffened, but didn’t move.

“How,” she asked, “did you go from fighting off a strange attacker to trying to fuck our little hunter?”

I recoiled, even as Clayton flinched.

In her voice was a dark promise of pain that she didn’t even try to hide. She was raging, but in a way I’d never seen from anyone. A deep, soul crushing, killing rage that meant someone was in trouble.

It meant Clayton was in trouble.

“It wasn’t him,” I said, quickly, despite my embarrassment. “The intruder rubbed something on me. Some sort of sticky lotion. Clayton, what did you call it?”

He blinked at my attempts to protect him. “The Foam of Aphrodite,” he murmured.

Miriam gasped and stepped back, her face paling. It should have been gratifying to see her lose her composure, to show some fear, but it wasn’t. It was just frightening.

Angus gaped at Clayton. “What did you say?”

Clayton nodded. “He hit her with a dose large enough for ten people.” He gestured at me without actually looking at me. “Her entire…chest was covered.”

Miriam walked to me and peered into my face. “How do you feel now? It’s gone, I take it?”

“Mostly,” I said. “Except for…” I swallowed, then hurried on. “Some lingering…um…heat.”

She and Angus traded glances. “I’ve never heard of someone recovering so quickly from even a few drops,” she said.

Angus shook his head, then shrugged. “She’s strong. She’s different.”

I pressed a hand to my poor abused chest, then went to sit on the couch. “I don’t feel strong at the moment.”

Angus frowned down at me. “Come. You’ll see our doctor. You need to be checked out.”

“I’ll be okay. If I can go for a few nights without being stabbed or bitten or bled, I’ll be okay.”

“Let us see the wound,” Miriam told me.

I sighed and pulled the edge of my robe away from the injury. “It’s healing. I need to rest, that’s all. I’ve lost a lot of blood.”

It truly did look better. It was swollen and discolored, red and purple and angry, but the ends were closing and it seeped only a little. Mostly, it was sore.

“The intruder splashed her with the foam and then stabbed her?” Miriam asked, skeptical.

“No,” Clayton replied. “The intruder didn’t stab her.”

“Then who gave her the wound?” Angus asked. He clenched his fists and took a threatening step toward the other man.

When Clayton remained silent, Miriam slid close to him, ran her fingers up his arm, and whispered, “Answer him, you fuck.”

“Silverlight,” Clayton said. “Amias gave her the sword. It tasted her.”

They gaped at him, then me, then him again.

“You lie,” Angus said.

“No,” Miriam disagreed. “He can’t lie to me.” She turned on me. “Silverlight, the sword. You have her.”

I slid my hand down to the pocket of my robe, to where the knife rested, half afraid they’d try to take her from me.

“It has her,” Clayton said.

“The blade accepted her?” asked Angus, doubtfully. “A human? Or,” he added, studying me, “whatever she is.”

“Yes.” Clayton’s voice was steady and deep, but the pallor of his skin remained, and he still looked a little less than steady. “Completely.”

“You can ask me,” I said. “I’m right here. Amias wants me protected. The sword will do that.”

The three of them stared at me, but only Angus’s face held something more than curiosity. ”You’re softening toward the fucking vampire,” he accused.

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t tell any of them what I’d learned—that Amias asserted some sort of terrible control over me, that it caused me enormous physical pain to hurt him, that I’d been turned on by him.

That he was my master.

Oh God, no. The shame. The awful shame.

My face heated and I looked away from Angus’s probing stare. “I hate him,” I muttered. I did hate him. But that rage, that wonderful rage, was dimming.

Then Miriam took control, and I turned away from the accusation in Angus’s eyes, eagerly grasping onto something a little less disgraceful.

“I’ll help her pack a few things,” she said, crisply. “She can stay with you, Angus, and soon we’ll get her into her own place in Bay Town.”

No one asked me a damn thing, but it didn’t matter. I was exhausted, drained. I had to find another place to live. If they wanted to take control and do all the work, I wasn’t going to argue with that.

“Let me see the sword,” Miriam ordered. She gathered her long, blonde hair in one hand and shoved it over her shoulder, then gestured abruptly at my robe pocket. “Hurry now. We don’t have much time.”

But I shook my head and backed away. “I’m going to get dressed, then I’ll pack a bag for my stay at Angus’s house.” I began to walk from the living room, but at the doorway into the hall, I turned around.

“Silverlight is mine,” I said, fiercely. “Mine.”

Her smile was puzzled. “I only wanted to see it. I wouldn’t take it from you.”

“That’s good,” I said. “Because if you tried, I would do more than punch you in the mouth. You shouldn’t forget that.”

And from the look on her face—from the looks on all their faces—no one was going to forget anything.