“You’re important to him, lass,” he murmured. “Why is that so hard for you to ken?”

“Why do you ask me questions you should be asking yourself?” He should have remembered how intuitive she could be, even in a torn-up emotional state. Opening her eyes, she stared up at him. “I’m going to die, Niall. I know Evan wants me to be something else, but perhaps it’s better for me to be what I’ve always been. Just like you told him in the beginning. Because when Stephen dies, and I wake on the other side and find myself . . . bound to him . . .”

Her voice started to shake, betraying the fear, the dread. She’d let it loose on the mountain that one time, when a stressful situation had pushed her to breaking, and he saw it again now. She was like that little lad with his finger in the dike, always aware of the great wall of water waiting to overcome her on the other side.

“What will help me endure it for all eternity?” she whispered. “The training that says anything he does to me, I deserve, or Evan’s world, where I have no idea what I am? Who I am?”

Closing her eyes, she turned her face away. “Please leave me alone. I just . . . let me be alone. I’m afraid . . . and so tired . . .”

Tears spilled anew over his fingers, but now the sobs were held inside, with such effort her ribs might break from it.

When he slid off of her, giving her the ability to breathe, she turned toward the wall. He didn’t leave her, though. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her, bent his thighs under hers to cradle her, keep her together.

As she made a plaintive noise of pain, he merely held her closer. “I’m nae going to leave you. Cry, be afraid, whatever ye need to let it out.”

The sobs burst forth, though she turned her face to the pillow to muffle them. She couldn’t muffle the shudders, though, the jerking of her muscles. She was so reserved, so self-possessed, he’d overlooked how truly young she was. Not even out of her twenties. Her upbringing had forced great maturity on her, but she’d brought great maturity to it. A young woman facing the certainty of her death, and the terrible uncertainty of what came after.

Age didn’t offer much in the way of comfort, though. Here he was, nearly three hundred, helpless to do anything to make it better other than holding her like this and wishing like hell something could be done.

Male fingers caressed him, sliding down the bare curve of his back to rest on his arse. Glancing up into Evan’s somber eyes, Niall wasn’t surprised to see his anger was gone. Like him, the vampire’d had time to recover from the fright she’d given them both. Evan tilted his head, indicating he intended to take his place. Reluctantly, Niall slid off the bunk. Alanna, oblivious to them, caught in her own misery, remained hunched in a ball, quivering.

Go pack up the cottage. I’ll deal with things here.

Niall nodded, but as he slid past Evan in the narrow space, he gripped the male’s hip, still uncertain about leaving the lass. Evan touched Niall’s face.

All will be well, neshama.

Absurdly enough, the vampire’s words brought him comfort. It was a reminder that, even when such a reassurance was all that could be offered for an impossible situation, sometimes it was enough.

Alanna was lost in an exhausted haze, body twitching with stress. A part of her was desperately glad Niall hadn’t left her alone, but then he shifted away. She stilled as a body she well recognized slid behind her, hand settling on her hip.

“Alanna. Turn over and look at me.”

In her entire life, she’d never considered ignoring a vampire’s command, but this time, she wanted to. When his long fingers tightened on her, a warning, she let out a shaky sigh, turned over on her back. She had enough vanity to swipe at the strands of hair plastered to her cheeks by her crying, but he pushed her fingers away, did it himself. His gray eyes were so close, the sculpted mouth and jawline. He had such an interesting face, she thought tiredly. Not classically handsome, but an ironically artistic appeal, a charisma that had told her from the beginning he was a resourceful and exceptionally intelligent male.

“Yes, I am exceptionally resourceful. I wish you’d believed that an hour ago.”

Her mind was clear enough to recall Niall’s words. You didn’t trust him enough. Looking at the tightness around Evan’s mouth, the lingering disappointment and frustration in the vampire’s gaze, it clicked, what Niall had been trying to tell her. The realization horrified her enough she would have scrambled off the bed and knelt in penitence, but Evan was in front of her. Instead she tried to genuflect as much as the narrow bed allowed, even with his grip on her upper arm. “Master, I’m so sorry. The last thing I ever intended was to make you feel . . . Of course I trust you to care for me. Always.”

At least as much of “always” as fate would give her. “I just wanted to care for you, and Evan, and the guests . . . it never occurred to me that you would think . . .”

“I know it didn’t.” Those gray eyes were quiet, accepting. If anything, that hurt her heart worse. Putting his fingers on her mouth, he stopped the rush of words. “I am in your mind, if not in your soul, Alanna. Now that my heart isn’t racing like a train, certain Colin was going to drop your bloody corpse at my feet, I know what you were thinking. I expected you to respond to me the way Niall does. It was unrealistic to expect the intuitive understanding he and I developed over centuries.”

He stroked through her hair, caressed her ear. She wanted to lean into that touch, needed to do so, but she didn’t deserve that. She forced herself to stay still, to simply listen and ache, wishing she could do so many things differently.

“Ah, yekirati. Your political and sexual skills, your incredible beauty and training; you base your decisions on those things. You’ve never had a Master value you for more than that. When one does, it introduces a whole different set of decision-making variables.”

Her brow creased, but he touched her chin, guiding her tearstained face back to his. “I’ve been trying to help you know what that means. Remarkable student that you are, I think you’ve just about figured it out, despite the short time we’ve been together. Perhaps what confused you is that I intended my participation to be as a teacher, a guide. I didn’t realize I was going to become a living example of what I was trying to show you.”

Her heart fluttered uncertainly when his lips curved, a faint smile. “Though I regret the events of this night, if it helps you make the connection, it was worth it. Do you understand it yet, Alanna?”

She couldn’t breathe, not with the way he was looking at her now. He slid his knuckles to her cheek, waiting for her response.

She’d never been much of a movie watcher, but she remembered one she’d seen, a long time ago in her mother’s kitchen. She’d been sitting in the corner, practicing her patience and waiting skills, and the small TV on the counter, left on by her sisters, had been showing the black-and-white version of The Miracle Worker. Annie Sullivan’s struggle to help a blind and deaf child communicate had caught her attention.

By the time they reached the climactic scene at the well pump, Alanna had been captured by the story line. Helen finally made that connection, learning something everyone had expected to be beyond her reach. The simple link between a finger sign made in her palm and its actual meaning. Words. Connection. It had opened up the entire universe to her.

Now Alanna truly understood it, the momentous shift when Helen spelled water in her teacher’s hand. She swallowed. Evan had forced her to face the fact that she’d wanted to love Stephen and had wanted him to care about her. Not for her skills or the political prestige she’d brought to him. Not even for her unconditional service to him. She had wanted him to see past all that, see her. Value her. Her unconditional service was more than training—it was key to every need, desire and vulnerability she had. Everything she truly was. She thought of her brother kissing his Mistress’s foot, the look his vampire had given him. Devotion, caring . . . love. Perhaps vampires didn’t feel it the same as humans, but she’d seen it in the Mistress’s face, and the desire to find that, to earn it, had burned in Alanna’s heart like acid.

But there were two parts to it. It wasn’t only about finding someone who would value her, who would let her serve them as she desired. It was also about finding the Master who captured her heart, who she wanted to serve with everything she was.

Evan was still holding her wrist. Slowly, she put pressure on his grip, reaching for his hand with straining fingers. When he loosened his grasp, she let out a tremulous breath, closed her fingers over his wrist, reversing their positions. Then, shifting her hold, she brought her face down to his hand, pressing her cheek into his palm, her lips. He allowed it. Allowed her to show her affection, her regret, and accepted it. Accepted her.

He cared about her. Not like a passing thought, a favorite toy. She, Alanna, had emotional value to him. Enough that putting herself in danger had enraged him, because she hadn’t been where he could protect her.

She had no words for how she was feeling, only that she was feeling so much, she had to press herself as hard as she could against that contact point. He gathered her in closer to him, so her face was between his palm and chest, her ear pressed over his heart when she heard him say something so remarkable—for a vampire—she thought she’d misheard it.

“I am sorry, Alanna. I shouldn’t have said what I said. It was cruel. I said it because I was furious, not because it was true. Brian said you were the best of your InhServ class, the example all others wished to follow. No, let me finish. I think that happened because you exceeded the program, representing the true spirit of it. InhServs should be assigned to vampires worth serving. Which is part of why you told the Council what Stephen had done. You served the well-being of all of us. You thought like a Council member, not a servant. Just the same way you did today.”

“It wasn’t that noble. My brother—”

“Was the catalyst,” he inserted. “Stephen was betraying his own people. When he showed such disregard for your brother’s death, and you knew he was planning Lord Daegan’s death, it helped you make the right decision, no matter the circumstances.”