Layla was woken once again by the sound of the door opening. This time, she wasn’t alarmed. Hunter was sleeping right next to her, and he wouldn’t let anything happen. Still, she got up, thinking that if it was Penny, she wouldn’t react too well to finding the two of them in bed together.

Hunter’s eyes opened, and he got off the bed silently, his body tense. He took everything as a threat when on guard duty.

“HUNTER!”

“Crap,” Layla whispered. “Sophie.”

Sophie stormed into the room. She looked pissed. No, she looked beyond pissed. This mood could better be called lethal rage.

“How dare you touch her?” Sophie screamed. She didn’t give Hunter a chance to reply, but cast her hands out, beginning to shout an incantation that was unfamiliar to Layla, but which she was sure couldn’t be anything good. Layla’s spinning mind frantically clutched onto a spell, and she leaped in front of Hunter, shouting words out herself and praying they’d be enough.

A ball of fire hit Layla’s shield and bounced back at Sophie. Layla shrieked and tried to move to shield Sophie from her own fire, but Sophie simply withdrew her magic, and the fire fizzled out in midair.

Stumbling to the side, Sophie spat at Hunter that she didn’t need his help when he moved toward her. Then she sank to the ground, exhausted by the spell and staring at Layla in shock.

“You…you…”

“Are you insane, Sophie?” Layla was yelling now. “You could have killed him! What were you thinking?”

Hunter pushed in front of Layla, taking a defensive stance between the two witches.

“This could be seen as an act of war, witch,” he spat. “One word to the council and all your kind will pay for your decision tonight!”

Sophie paled even further, but her fury only seemed to grow. Despite still being on the floor, she suddenly seemed to loom over them. “My decision? How do you think your precious council will react when they find you’ve taken up with a witch?”

“Oh, don’t even try that one. The council would never dare try to tear a demon away from their mate. No demon would.”

“Your mate? Get away from her, you bastard!”

“Stop it, stop it!” Layla tried to tug Hunter aside, but he was standing firmly in front of her, as though convinced Sophie would attack Layla when it was clearly him she was after. “No one is starting a war, so get a grip on yourselves.”

Hunter growled softly under his breath, but didn’t say anything.

“You broke our agreement,” Sophie said angrily. “You left us vulnerable while you and Cord switched. You went against what I specifically ordered you to do.”

“Don’t try to pretend this whole trip wasn’t some sham to get me away from Layla. She’s my true mate, and you can’t take her away from me.”

“Like hell I can’t.”

Layla firmly stepped around Hunter. “Sophie, he’s right. We’re mated. I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but I’m not leaving him. Not for you, not for anyone.”

Sophie looked as though she’d just been slapped. “He’s—he’s a demon.”

“Well, I’m half demon! Did you know that? Penny told me, and she knows who my father is. So what now? You’ll kick me out of the coven? Treat me like something nasty on the bottom of your shoe? I’ve seen the way you look at demons, and I’m sick of it! Either you accept Hunter and me, or we’re both walking out of that door forever.”

If Sophie had looked shocked before, it was nothing compared to how she looked now. Layla had never disagreed with her so adamantly, let alone raised her voice to her high priestess.

“He broke the agreement!” Sophie persisted. “He can’t be trusted.”

“You’re a bad liar, Sophie. This isn’t about any agreement you made, and you know it. This is about you hating demons and trying to control me. You never wanted me to be with Hunter, but that’s not your choice to make.”

“As for our agreement,” Hunter said, his voice icy, “we agreed to protect you. We did not agree to be your servants. Our job is to protect you, not follow your every command. As we are working for you, we will abide by your wishes unless there’s a good reason not to, but that doesn’t mean we’re breaking anything at all if we disagree with you on something completely unrelated to our job.

“No one was hurt. Phoenix and Fisher knew about the switch. They would have made sure you were all in the same house when it happened, with all the doors and windows locked and guarded. We didn’t leave you unprotected for a moment.”

Sophie grimaced, which Layla took to mean that Phoenix and Fisher had done exactly as Hunter had said, and she had no argument left to make on the point.

“Look, I don’t care how—” Abruptly, Sophie stopped speaking. Her eyes closed, and she slumped against the wall.

“Sophie?”

Layla started to go to her, but Hunter held her back.

“She could be faking. Let me check.”

“She’s not going to hurt me.”

“Oh, was that not a fireball, then?”

“Yes, but it was clearly aimed at you.”

“I don’t care. We’re not taking any chances.”

Layla followed close on Hunter’s heels as he warily knelt down in front of Sophie. He lifted her eyelids and checked her pulse.

“She’s unconscious.”

“She’s okay, though?”

“As far as I can tell, but I don’t know why she passed out.”

“Maybe we should call someone?” Layla suggested.

“Let’s give it a few minutes. It could just be the effect of her casting the spell on top of the stress of the situation.”

Layla reluctantly agreed. She’d have been happier calling Penny to come check up on her, but if Penny saw Sophie in this state, she’d probably assume it was Hunter’s fault, which could only make things worse.

Together, she and Hunter carried Sophie to the bed and tucked her in. There didn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with her, but Layla hoped she would wake up soon. She still wasn’t sure that they shouldn’t be taking Sophie to a doctor.

Ten minutes, she decided. If Sophie wasn’t awake in ten minutes, she’d call an ambulance. She had no idea how she’d explain things to a paramedic—she obviously couldn’t tell them they were witches and that Sophie was possibly suffering from a bad side effect of a spell. Come to think of it, did immortals even use traditional hospitals?

“Come on, let’s sit here,” Hunter said, pulling her onto a couch on the opposite side of the room, shooting suspicious looks at Sophie.

“I can’t believe she did that.” The implications of what had just happened were only now starting to hit Layla, becoming clearer as the adrenaline wore off. “She tried to kill you! I knew she’d be mad, but I can’t believe she’d go that far. Surely, witches have laws against murder? She’d spend the rest of her life in prison, or whatever our equivalent is, right?”

Hunter shook his head. “I should have expected something like this, to be honest. You don’t know all the history that I do. She probably thought she was protecting you, and witches will do anything to protect their sisters.”

“That’s insane. You can’t just go around killing people, no matter who they are!”

“I agree, but I doubt other witches will see it like that. Even if she had succeeded in killing me, I doubt her punishment would have been harsh. You don’t quite understand just how much mistrust there is between our races, and that can easily turn to hate, what with our histories, at the slightest provocation.”

Layla just shook her head. She’d been worried about Sophie kicking her out of the coven, but did she even want to be in the coven anymore? By human law, attempted murder was essentially considered murder, whether or not it succeeded. Did that make Sophie a murderer? It certainly would if she were in the human justice system…

Trying not to dwell on the question, she watched the clock, waiting for either her ten minutes to expire or for Sophie to wake up. Ten minutes passed first.

“Right, that’s it, I’m calling an ambulance. She could be seriously ill.”

“Call Penny,” Hunter said reluctantly. “Humans will be too difficult to deal with. We still have to keep the secret. Penny will know better than them what to do anyway.”

Layla couldn’t argue with that, but she recited the shield spell a few times in her head, just in case. No one was going to hurt Hunter. She sent a quick message to Penny then, asking her to come to her room at once for something important.

Penny came quickly, bursting in. Her gaze automatically went to Hunter, who was sitting calmly on the couch.

“What did you do?” she snapped.

“Nothing,” Layla said quickly. “Sophie came and both of us did spells. She’s usually drained from her magic, but she was conscious afterward. We were talking, and then she suddenly passed out. It’s like something else happened to her, but I don’t know what.”

Penny went and performed a similar examination to the one Hunter had before.

“What spells did you both perform?”

“Does it make a difference?”

“It might. What did you do?”

Layla glanced uncertainly at Hunter. She could feel his anxiety as well as her own. “Um, Sophie cast a fireball, and I cast a shield. The bounce-back kind.”

Penny’s eyes widened. “You could have killed each other.”

“It was the first thing that popped into my head. I didn’t have time to think. I should have used an absorbing shield, but I just acted on instinct. Sophie withdrew her magic from the fire before it could hurt her.”

“Why on earth would Sophie throw a fireball at you, though?”

“She didn’t. She threw it at Hunter.”

There was a moment of shock, and then Penny laughed. Laughed. Layla shot her an angry look. “She could have killed him!”

“Well, if I was your high priestess, I’m not saying I wouldn’t do the same.”

Layla glared at her, but Hunter only shot Layla an ‘I told you so’ look in response to the declaration.

“So what’s wrong with her?” Layla asked shortly.

“She’s definitely unconscious because of the magic, though I’m not sure exactly why. She’ll probably be able to tell us when she wakes up. Only she knows exactly what went on in her body before she passed out.”

“She’s going to be okay, though?”

“Yes,” Penny said confidently. “The side effects of spells are never permanent. I just don’t know how long it’ll take her to wake up. Do you want me to stay and watch her?”

“That’s all right; I can do it. Just as long as she doesn’t need help.”

“No, she’ll wake up on her own. Call me if you need anything else.”

“I will.”

Penny walked to the door and then gave Hunter a pointed look.

“I’m staying here,” he said. Layla took his hand and turned defiantly to Penny, who simply sighed and closed the door behind her.

“Maybe we should leave.”

“What?” Layla looked at Hunter in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“I mean we can just leave. I could call Cord to come here and protect Sophie, and we could disappear. You’ve seen Sophie’s reaction. You may eventually get her and the other witches to tolerate our relationship, but that’ll take months of solid effort and for what? Let’s just go, just the two of us.”

Layla couldn’t deny that she was tempted. They could just go. She had enough savings to last a little while. They could both get jobs, get a place together. It would be wonderful, but…

“No. If it comes down to it, and I have to choose between you and the coven, we’ll go, but I don’t want to leave unless I absolutely have to. I feel like I belong with them, Hunter. I’ve never had a group of people I feel a connection to like this. If it’s at all possible, I’d like to stay.”

He smiled, if somewhat sadly. “I feel the same way about my clan. We get each other. I don’t want to particularly leave them, either.”

“Maybe we should have told Sophie in person, rather than letting her find out from Cord.”

Hunter snorted. “When she had the rest of the coven to help in her attack? I don’t like those odds.”

Layla shuddered to think what would have happened if the whole coven had attacked Hunter at once. She could never stand against all of them; she wasn’t strong enough. She would have lost him.

“I’m still not sure. I mean, I want to stay with the coven, but do I really want to stay with people who could so easily commit murder?”

“You have to understand, they don’t see it as murder. They see it as self-defense—or, at least, defense of another.”

“That doesn’t make it true.”

“No, it doesn’t, but what I’m trying to say is that they’re not bad people. If we weren’t mated, many demons would react the same way to hearing we’re together. Relationships between demons and witches just aren’t done.”

Just then, Layla’s phone started ringing. “Hello?”

Damaris sounded freaked out. “Layla, are you okay? Is Hunter?”

“Yes, we’re fine, what’s wrong?”

“Is Sophie there?”

“Um, yes. She’s kind of passed out, though.”

“Good,” Damaris sighed in relief. “I just woke up and saw the note she left for me. It sounds like she was furious. I was worried she was going to do something stupid.”

“So, you wouldn’t have done it?” Layla asked hopefully. “Attacked Hunter?”

“Attacked Hunter? Why on earth would I do that?”

“Oh. Sophie didn’t tell you the reason she was leaving, did she?”

“She just said there was trouble in Miami, but from the way she was writing, I got the feeling that she was going to be the trouble. What happened? Do you need me to come down there?”

In a moment’s notice, Layla had decided it was probably better to break the news over the phone, given what had happened when Sophie found out.

“Sophie’s mad because she just found out that—that Hunter and I are mated.”

There was a beat of dead silence, and then Layla jumped as she heard something exploding in the background on Damaris’ end.

“What! What has he done to you, Layla? No, never mind, I’m coming down there. Just stay right where you are, and I’ll be there in a few hours.”

“No, Damaris, stop! Seriously, don’t come. Everything’s fine, all right? Sophie’s already here. Besides, you’d split the demons even further if you left now. You wouldn’t want to weaken the protection around the others, would you?”

This argument seemed to work, at least. “No,” Damaris said grudgingly. “I want to talk to Sophie, though. Call me the minute she wakes up.”

“Okay, I will. Bye.”

Layla wearily hung up and turned to Hunter.

“I’m reconsidering running away.”

He pulled her into a hug and they sat together, waiting for Sophie to wake up.