Cassidy fought her way to consciousness. Rianna—she had to save Rianna.

Her hand touched a small foot. She closed her fingers around it as she struggled to wake the rest of the way up.

She was in a bed, and Rianna was next to her. And Nic.

Thank the Goddess. Nic had found them. They were safe for now.

Then Nic asked what he was going to do with them.

No.

Alarm made her force open her eyelids.

Nic wasn’t going to take over—they just needed somewhere to hide. She told him so, her voice hoarse from swallowing seawater.

“Cassidy.” Nic met her eyes over Rianna’s curly head. “Take it easy. You’re both safe.”

Tears leaked from her eyes. She’d been running for so long. Even now, she knew they weren’t safe. Still, maybe, just maybe, they had a fighting chance.

She knuckled the tears away. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Nic’s brow furrowed, but before he could act, a big, square-faced man with a long black braid moved into view. “Shh. Don’t try to talk.” He held out a metal cup of water.

She struggled to sit up, the sheet clutched to her bare chest. Besides Nic and the big man, two other men were in the room, standing at the foot of the bed, eyeing her with varying degrees of suspicion.

The big man held the cup to her lips and she gulped the water down. It was heaven—cool and fresh, soothing to her scratchy throat.

“Here.” He refilled the cup from a canteen, and she drank that down, too.

“More?” he asked, and she shook her head.

“No, thank you.” Her gaze went to the quartz around his neck. “You’re an earth fada?” She couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. Water and earth fada were natural enemies.

“I’m Ben,” he said by way of reply as he took the cup from her, “and I guess you know Nic.”

She gave a last sniff and nodded. “I do.”

“These two are Marlin and Joe.” He pointed first to a wiry man sporting long blond dreads and colorful board shorts, and then to a shorter, unsmiling man with warm brown skin and black hair. “I’ll get you something to eat.”

“Thanks.” She pushed herself back against the headboard.

Nic sat cross-legged nearby, Rianna asleep in his arms. His wavy dark hair was longer than it had been four years ago and he’d grown a mustache, but the rest of him was exactly as she recalled. Same hard, sculpted face. Same stormy green eyes, a few shades darker than Rianna’s. Same powerful, rangy body.

He’d wrapped Rianna in a wool blanket and was holding her as if she were the most precious thing on Earth. Cassidy’s heart turned over. She’d wanted this so badly. Rianna deserved to know her daddy.

Rianna moved in her sleep and he crooned something soft in Portuguese. He’d been born into Maryland’s Rock Run River Fada Clan, but the founders of Rock Run had been from Portugal and the clan still spoke Portuguese at home in their caverns along Rock Run Creek. Nic spoke perfect English, although with a faint accent. But when they’d made love, he’d murmured to Cassidy in Portuguese…

His gaze turned to Cassidy and hardened. “What’s going on? Why were you out in the ocean in the middle of the storm?”

She tucked the sheet closer around her body. Fada were casual about nakedness, but she felt too vulnerable with a group of men she didn’t know.

Nic wouldn’t let them hurt you.

She knew that in her bones. Nic do Rio would protect her to the death. It was why she’d run to him.

“Cassidy?” he prompted. “What are you doing in America? Why would you need to hide out for a few weeks? And why did Rianna ask me to stop the bad fae from getting her?”

She held up a hand. She was tired and her chest ached from swallowing what felt like half the Pacific, but he deserved answers. “I’ll tell you everything. But first, is she okay?”

She touched her daughter’s back. She would’ve demanded Nic hand her over, but Rianna looked so comfortable.

“Yeah.” Nic gathered the girl closer. “I checked her out. She’s fine—just worn out and in need of a few good meals.”

Cassidy nodded, aware of Nic’s Gift for healing. She moistened her lips, trying to think where to start.

When she glanced up, Nic’s gaze was fixed on her mouth. A hot, hungry look. Their gazes snagged, but Cassidy jerked hers away. She wasn’t here for that. She needed somewhere to hide with Rianna, and that was all.

She looked around at the other three men. “Can we have some privacy?”

Nic held up a hand. “They can stay. If I’m right, you want protection, and we’ll need them, too.”

Cassidy rubbed her forehead. Her brain felt rusty; she was so damned tired and weak. But she wasn’t sure Nic knew what he was saying. “Do they know about—?”

“Yes. We don’t have secrets from each other.”

Cassidy’s brows shot up. The Nic she’d known had been so close-mouthed that even she hadn’t known he was a sea dragon until almost the last day.

“If you’re sure….”

“I am. They’ll guard Rianna with their lives.”

“Hell, yeah,” said Marlin while the other two nodded.

“Okay, then.” Cassidy glanced at Rianna again to make sure she was sound asleep. The three-year-old knew something was wrong, of course, but she didn’t need to know the nightmarish details.

“Rianna’s a sea dragon,” she said in a low voice. “And she’s right. Some bad fae are after her.”

“No.” It wasn’t easy to startle Nic, but his eyes went wide. “It’s not possible. Sea dragons—”

“Are incredibly rare,” Cassidy finished. “And they jump generations. The odds of you fathering another sea dragon are a million to one. But you did.”

Nic’s strong throat worked. He smoothed a hand over Rianna’s head.

“I didn’t know myself until a couple of months ago,” Cassidy said. “She’s young, and she hadn’t shifted yet.”

The men nodded. Fada rarely shifted before their first birthday, and with some, it took several years.

“We were playing in the estuary. The Shannon Estuary,” she added for the benefit of the other three men. It was at the mouth of the Shannon, where the big river emptied into the Atlantic. “She likes to ride on my back when I’m a dolphin. She slipped off, but I wasn’t worried. She’s a good swimmer, and I was right there. But a motorboat went by and before she could get back on, the wake smacked her in the face. She got scared and shifted.”

Ben returned with a plate of food—fish and salad wrapped up in a large piece of fried bread. “Thank you,” Cassidy said as he set it on her lap. It smelled delicious. She eyed it longingly and tried to ignore her growling stomach.

“Eat,” Nic told her. “We can hear the rest after you get some food in you.”

She was too hungry to argue. She lifted the fried bread and took a bite. Meanwhile, Marlin passed around cups of red wine, and then took a seat with the other two men on the edge of the futon.

The food was delicious. Cassidy tried not to stuff it into her mouth, but she’d been hungry for too long.

While she ate, she took in her surroundings. The cavern was huge, a good forty feet in diameter, with a saltwater pool on one side, and an arched entrance to another cave that appeared to be a living room. The walls were a rough, dark gray basalt except where someone had carved out shelves. Three fae lights floated near the ceiling, casting a soft aqua light over the sparse furnishings.

Cassidy glanced at the pool. She’d learned the value of an escape route over the past few weeks. “You can reach the ocean from here?” she asked Nic around a mouthful of food.

“Yeah, but this is my quarters. Our main entrance is down that passageway.” He indicated a door in the outer room.

Cassidy set down the fried bread wrap. She’d only finished half, but her stomach felt uncomfortably stretched.

“I didn’t realize it at the time, but the men in the boat must have seen Rianna’s sea dragon. Word got out, and suddenly, it was like that summer you were in Ireland—‘scientists’ were everywhere. Some were human, but I’m sure some were fae pretending to be scientists. A couple of our own people disappeared. The alpha put the Shannon base on lockdown.”

“Does Gallagan know?” Chas Gallagan was the Shannon alpha—and Nic’s grandfather on his mother’s side.

“Your granddad? No.” She stared down at her plate. “Not that I don’t trust him, but there are a couple of men I’m not so sure of. You know how people can be about sea dragons.”

“I know,” came his grim reply.

“I suppose you do.”

Sea dragons were universally feared, even by the fada. Very few alphas would tolerate a clan member more powerful than them, and it didn’t help that sea dragons tended to be cold, ruthless creatures.

Humans were even worse. They hunted and killed dragons on sight—or chained them with iron in secret labs for “study.”

But worst of all were the fae, who would do almost anything to obtain a dragon’s heart. When consumed, a dragon’s heart increased a fae’s natural magical Gifts by five or ten times. Fortunately, dragons had a natural immunity to fae magic; otherwise none would ever reach adulthood.

Joe turned his cold black eyes on her. She’d bet good money he was a shark. “How do you know they’re after her?”

“I’m a Gifted tracker,” she told him. “But my Gift is a wee bit unusual—instead of tracking others, I can sense danger to me or the clan. The Shannon alpha uses me as an early-warning system. I knew those ‘scientists’ were really fae.”

She turned a stark look on Nic. “They’re wanting my baby’s heart.”