The bed had damask hangings.

At least, that’s what Ivy suspected the richly-embroidered gold curtain-thingies were. The only place she had previously encountered carved four-poster beds was in fairy tales, where they had inevitably been described as having ‘damask hangings.’ She had a sudden mad urge to search for a pea underneath the two-foot-thick mattress.

Hugh put her battered suitcase down on the oriental rug, where it immediately lowered the tone of the entire room. Closing the door, he leaned against it as though barricading out the whole world.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For all this?” Ivy gestured round at the preposterous surroundings. Excluding her suitcase, she was fairly certain she was the youngest thing in the room by several centuries. “You know, I don’t know why I’m surprised. You’re a unicorn. Of course you come from a castle.”

He let out a long sigh, raking a hand back through his hair. “I still should have warned you. I was just terrified that if I told you the truth about my family, you’d refuse to come.”

“Well, I probably would have done,” she had to admit. “Hugh, your mother is much more gracious about the whole thing than I could have hoped. But I can’t possibly stay here.”

“Why not?” He took a step forward, a hopeful, entreating light in his eyes. “It’s private. Secluded. The estate boundaries are secure, and we carefully vet everyone allowed into our territory. There aren’t any shifters apart from ourselves. You’d be free to be yourself, without having to worry about endangering anyone.”

She knew that what he said made sense. A dangerous freak like her should be locked away in a remote castle, where she couldn’t hurt anyone. But to narrow her world down to one house, and a bare handful of people…something deep in her soul recoiled in horror from the thought. A cage was still a cage, no matter how beautiful the bars were.

Hugh would be here, she tried to reason with herself. It wouldn’t be so bad.

And maybe it wouldn’t be…if they could touch.

“What about you?” she asked. “Could you be happy here? I got the impression you don’t come home very often.”

His shoulders tensed a little. He went to the window, brushing back the brocade curtains in order to stare out into the dusk. On this side of the house, the trees crept close to the walls, their tangled branches black and bare. There were no signs of other human habitation, or artificial lights. They might have been the only two people in the world, surrounded by forest older than time.

“I ran away from all this,” he said quietly. “I told myself that I was going out into the world to use my talents, that it was my duty…but in some ways, I was just running away from my other duties. Maybe it’s time for me to work out a way to balance them both.”

He turned back to her, a forced smile stretching his face. “My mother’s renowned for her charity work. I’m sure she could find a role for me in one of her projects which would give me an excuse to visit the local hospitals. I could still go out and heal people. I’d just be working undercover. On my own.”

She thought of the tight camaraderie of Alpha Team—before she’d ruined it all—and her heart broke for him. But he was standing so straight and tall, so determinedly putting a brave face on things, that she couldn’t bring herself to argue with him.

He was willing to sacrifice everything for her. How could she tell him that she didn’t want him to?

“Okay,” she forced out, through her tightening throat. She matched his smile, attempting to make a joke of it. “But I honestly have no idea what I’m going to do here. Unless your parents could use another maid.”

“We do have a lot of toilets,” he agreed solemnly. “If you’re truly missing your old job, I’m sure I could find you some bleach.”

She threatened him with one of the tasseled pillows. He raised his hands in surrender, his smile finally reaching his eyes.

“More seriously,” she said, tossing the pillow back on the bed. “If I am going to stay here, there’s clearly a few secrets you still need to tell me. Like just what’s up between you and your father.”

“Ah.” He dropped down into a richly-upholstered armchair, wincing. “Yes. Though that’s not so much a secret as just dirty laundry. Not something the family airs in public.”

“I’m not public.” She perched on the bed opposite him. “And believe me, your family can’t possibly be more dysfunctional than mine.”

He raised a wry eyebrow at her. “Want to bet?”

“My mom’s in shifter jail for murder,” she said simply.

He stared at her, his mouth half-open.

“Right,” he said, after a beat. “You win. Good Lord. Who did she murder?”

“Hope’s dad.” The words came easily, the plain facts worn smooth by time. She’d long ago abandoned any anger or sadness about this part of their past. “We don’t have the same biological father. Our mom always just shacked up with a guy for a few months and then moved on. She did it for their own good—she could control her venom pretty well, but she was worried about small doses building up over time.”

“I can only imagine that prolonged intimate contact with a wyvern shifter isn’t good for one’s health,” Hugh said. “Present company excepted, of course.”

“Anyway, she didn’t exactly have good taste in men. Mostly they were just deadbeats, but Hope’s dad was different. Dangerous. A viper shifter, and a crime boss, kinda like Gaze. He’d use visitation rights to Hope as an excuse to try to pressure Mom into making him poisons and stuff. Sometimes she’d do it, sometimes she wouldn’t. Then, one day when Hope was ten, our mother said no to him once too often. There was a fight.” Ivy shrugged. “And she killed him.”

“In self-defense, though, one assumes,” Hugh said, looking rather wide-eyed by this tale. “Yet she was still jailed for it?”

“Oh, she deserved it,” Ivy said, shrugging again. “She could have just paralyzed him if she’d wanted to. But she always had better control over her venom than her temper. Anyway, it was just lucky that I was eighteen and a legal adult by then. It took some fighting, but I got custody of Hope. It’s been just us ever since.”

Hugh stared up at the ceiling for a long moment. “Suddenly my family dramas seem rather pathetic.”

“Well, I told you mine, so now you have to tell me yours.” She lifted her eyebrows at him expectantly. “So come on. Why do you hate your father so much?”

He blew out his breath. “You may have noticed that my mother doesn’t give me a headache.”

Now that she thought about it, it was a bit weird how casually he’d accepted his mother’s embrace. She’d seen enough of him by now to know that he was nearly as jumpy about touching people as she was.

“I’m assuming you weren’t a miraculous virgin birth,” she said. “So I’m guessing that just means that your mother, uh, isn’t that into certain activities at her time of life.”

“She hasn’t given me a headache since I was a very small child.” The corner of his mouth twisted. “Being in the same room as my father, on the other hand, gives me a splitting migraine.”

She blinked at him for a second, not getting it. Then the penny dropped.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

“Precisely.” His mouth tightened into a tense line, an old anger shadowing his eyes. “She’s chaste. He isn’t.”

“Ouch. They aren’t true mates then.”

“One can only assume not. But that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t love him, though God only knows why.” His lip curled. “I suppose I should be grateful that he at least has the decency to be discreet about his infidelities. If it wasn’t for my sensitivities, I doubt I’d know about them. My parents have always led mostly separate existences. Mother and me up here in the main house, Father off on the other side of the estate in the Dowager House. His absence spared me from constant headache…but not my mother from constant heartache. I will never forgive him for that. Never.”

The ragged catch in his voice tugged at her own heart. More than anything, she wanted to go over to him, hold him tight and kiss away the pain of the past. But she didn’t dare. She was all too aware that they were alone together in a bedroom, just one temptation away from disaster.

From the heat kindling in Hugh’s eyes as his gaze swept over her, he was having much the same realization. He adjusted his position, abruptly stiff and awkward.

“Anyway.” His practiced, ironic smile flashed like a knife, killing the intimacy trembling between them. “That’s why I avoid my father. At least the feeling is mutual. He can’t stand to look at me either. But don’t worry. He’ll love you.”

She couldn’t tell from his bitter tone whether he was being sarcastic or not. “That would be a first. Why?”

“Because you’re his big chance. This is the man who took me to a brothel the day I turned eighteen, Ivy. He’s tried a thousand ways to pressure me into losing my unicorn. He claims that it’s a matter of necessity, that it’s my duty to sire an heir to ensure that the family line will continued unbroken. But I think he’s just jealous.”

“Because you’re a unicorn shifter?”

“I have what he lost, and it must eat him alive that I won’t give it up.” He grimaced. “To be honest, there have been times in my life when I only clung onto my unicorn out of sheer spite. I wanted to keep on hurting him, the way that he keeps on hurting my mother.”

“Hugh, this is bad,” she said, real fear gripping her stomach. She knew how to face down criminals and lowlifes, but an Earl? Under his own roof? “He’s going to work out what we are to each other eventually. What am I supposed to do if he starts pressuring me?”

“I won’t let him do that,” he said with fierce intensity, all his black, barbed humor dropping away. “Don’t worry about it.”

“But—“

In a single swift movement, he crossed the room. His hands cradled her face, and her half-formed words fell away, burned into ash by the heat of his touch.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said again. “I can handle my father. He won’t bother you.”

He was so close that she could feel his breath on her lips. She had to close her eyes, fisting her hands in the coverlet to stop herself from reaching out to him.

He released her again, though she could feel the effort it cost him. “Trust me, you won’t even have to meet him. It’s perfectly possible to avoid someone for years in this place.” His tone was light, but his eyes were still dark with desire. “It’s rather a big house.”

She let out a shaky laugh, sliding off the bed. “That’s the understatement of the century. Come on. Your mother will think we got lost.”

“Don’t joke. It’s a genuine hazard.” Hugh held the door open for her. “Once when I was seven, I took a wrong turn in the attic and went missing for two days. They eventually found me trying to make a fire out of an eighteenth century escritoire and a vintage Chanel ballgown. My mother was livid about the ballgown.”

She hesitated as she passed, looking up into his face. Despite his light-hearted manner, a cold sense of unease still lurked in the pit of her own stomach. Her wyvern arched its barbed tail, ready to strike.

Defend, her beast snarled. Protect our own. Kill any threat.

“It’s all right, Ivy,” Hugh said softly. Leaning down, he brushed the lightest, gentlest of kisses on her forehead. “You’re safe here. I promise.”

* * *

Far away in Brighton, a dot blinked on a satellite map, marking a location deep in the Wye Valley. Gaze leaned back in his office chair, regarding his laptop thoughtfully.

“Well now,” he murmured to himself. “Isn’t that interesting.”

A few clicks confirmed that the GPS tracker he’d had planted in Hugh Argent’s car hadn’t moved for several hours. A few more clicks revealed further information about their final destination. Some very interesting information.

He idly turned his mirrored sunglasses over in his hands, thinking. A slow smile spread over his face.

Picking up his cellphone, he dialed his personal assistant, the one that he used for his legitimate work under a squeaky clean fake identity. He’d talk to his other assistants later.

But first…he needed tickets to a ball.