Slowly, he eased himself out of her grip. The curiosity etched in her expression made him squirm. She was here because she loved him, but would she believe he loved her after he told her about the imprint? He hesitated, wanting to stretch this out, because it might just be the last intimate, happy moment they had.

“Well?” she prompted, and pressure built in his chest.

He cleared his throat, stalling for more time. Finally, when she started tapping her foot on the mattress, he asked, “You believe I fell for you before you turned, right?”

“I do.”

“You’re sure?”

She scooted back, eyeing him warily, and he hated that he’d done that to her. “What’s this about?”

Gripping the hem of his shirt, he peeled it off over his head. Her gaze immediately dropped to his chest, and he had to admit he enjoyed the way her eyes grew hungry. He tore open his fly and pushed one flap aside to reveal the new feather glyph pulsing on his skin.

Frowning, Nicole leaned forward, and then she straightened so fast she nearly fell off the bed. Might have if he hadn’t grabbed her.

“Oh, my God . . .” Her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. “Is that . . . an imprint mark?”

“It was the night you got pregnant,” he said in a rush, stupidly, because when else would it have happened? They’d only had sex once since she’d turned into a vampire. Trying to sound a little less addled, he added, “I think it’s why you felt chest pain. Vampires can sense emotions in others through scent or physical manifestations, but they have to be in close proximity . . . unless the male is imprinted. It’s rare, but sometimes the female can actually feel the male’s strong emotions even when they’re miles apart.”

“So you’re saying I was feeling . . .”

“My pain,” he finished.

Her long sable lashes flew up as her eyes shot wide open. “Oh, my God. If I’d known earlier how much you were hurting, I’d have come sooner.”

He leaned over and kissed her, going again for the tried-and-true distract-and-evade strategy. “I guess we just have more time to make up, then.”

“I’m being manipulated, aren’t I?” she murmured against his lips.

Laughing, he eased them both back down on the mattress, eager to get her out of her clothes. She seemed on board with that plan, reaching for his fly.

But instead of going where he thought she was going, her fingers found the raised crimson lines that defined his imprint. An intense, almost orgasmic shock shot straight to his groin, and he hissed with pleasure. An impish smile twitched at the corner of her mouth.

“I do believe I could have fun with that,” she murmured.

He thought she could, too. “As often as you want.”

She nipped his bottom lip as she traced the glyph, each feather-light stroke of her finger making him breathe faster. Between his legs, his erection ached, wanting the same attention.

“I also believe,” she said, in a husky, intimate rasp, “that I’ll take the timing of your imprint and my pregnancy as a sign.”

“A good one?”

She slid her hand to his cock, and he groaned.

“What do you think?”

Think? That ability had just gone AWOL. Drawing

air into lungs so tight they felt like fists, he relieved her of her sweatshirt. She was gloriously braless, and he showered kisses on each breast before blazing a trail with his lips and tongue to her abdomen, where his child was growing.

“I’m so glad I found you,” he said against the soft expanse of skin between her hip bones. “I gave up on life when Terese died, but you gave it back to me. You also gave me a son, and now you’re going to give me another son or a daughter. I can’t thank you enough.”

“This again?” she teased. She shoved her fingers through his hair and forced his head up so their gazes met and held. “I’ll let you thank me over and over, several times a day.” Her smile grew wicked. “Maybe I’ll demand it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

It was his turn to get naughty, and he ripped open her jeans. She wasn’t wearing underwear.

“I got tired of the granny panties,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”

He let out a purr of approval and tugged her pants down her legs. “Are you ready for some serious thanks?” he asked, as he prowled up her body from the foot of the bed.

“Oh, yes,” she breathed. “Thank me. Thank me hard and fast. And then hard and slow.”

He did. Over and over. And afterward, as they lay together in a tangle of arms and legs, he knew without a doubt that he could never thank her enough.

But he’d sure as hell try.

Epilogue

Hunter stood outside  the ceremonial teepee he’d erected near clan headquarters decades ago, his heart racing. Every year on his birthday he came to this rocky cove to seek guidance from the demon that had started all this. And every year he came out of the buffalo hide tent with no answers. He’d never once seen the legendary demon, and bit by bit, doubt chipped away at his beliefs.

This time had to be different. It wasn’t his birthday. And this wasn’t about answers or proving the demon’s existence. It was about a curse that was going to activate the  moment he took a mate. A curse he knew he wasn’t strong enough to survive.

Baddon and Myne flanked him, daggers drawn, waiting for his signal. Myne was the most bullheaded, disobedient son of a bitch on the planet, but even he didn’t shirk ceremonial duty. He was a born vampire through and through, and Nez Perce honor flowed thick through his veins. He respected tradition and ritual.

He also liked making Hunter bleed. So yeah, this was always great fun for him and the only time Hunter could count on him to show up when ordered to.

Fresh from Riker and Nicole’s mating ceremony, Hunter squared his shoulders and let the ceremonial robe pool at his feet, leaving him na**d in the biting cold night. Signal given, Baddon swung around in front of him. His silver blade flashed in the moonlight as he slashed a shallow cut across Hunter’s chest. The sting from Baddon’s knife was fleeting, but Myne’s wouldn’t be.

Baddon stepped aside, and Myne took his place, an eager smirk curving his lips as he jabbed the tip of his dagger into Hunter’s sternum. Pain made Hunter clench his teeth as Myne took his time carving a deep gash all the way to Hunter’s navel.

Myne was such an ass**le.

Satisfied that Hunter was bleeding enough, Myne stepped back. “May your spirit quest bring you good fortune,” he murmured, the genuine sentiment behind the words leaving Hunter slightly astonished.

Baddon bowed his head. “Spirits be with you.”

Hunter acknowledged them both with nods. But he wasn’t here to talk to his totem animal or to contact any spirits. As third-generation born vampires, they wouldn’t know about the demon, and Hunter couldn’t tell them. They probably wouldn’t believe it anyway.

Sometimes even Hunter wasn’t sure what to believe.

He strode inside the teepee, his bare feet coming down on the soft animal pelts that lined the floor. In the center of the tent, the small fire Baddon had prepared crackled, its flames beckoning him closer.

Nervous energy made Hunter’s hand shake as he dragged his palm across his bloody chest and then gathered a handful of herbs and grasses from the plain wooden box placed near the fire. kneeling, he tossed the herbs, coated in his blood, into the flames. Almost instantly, the tent filled with a fragrant fog that teased his nostrils. Hunter closed his eyes and breathed deep, taking the smoke into his lungs.

“Come to me,” he whispered.

A grayish mist clouded his mind, and the ground fell away beneath him. Pressure built in his chest, a crushing, squeezing sensation that turned every breath into a searing whip of agony. At the same time, an intense buzz vibrated every cell in his body. He felt as if he could come apart at any moment. He hated this part of the ritual, when he was torn between wanting to throw up and wanting to scream with the ecstasy of it. This was the point where his totem animal, a grizzly bear, would often appear to him, but that wasn’t what he’d come for, and through a thickening haze of swirling colors in his head, he called out again.

“Samnult. Show yourself.”

Damn you, demon, if you exist, now’s the time to prove it.

In the dim recesses of his mind, he heard a voice.

He called to it, and then he cried out as a tidal surge of euphoria washed over him. It was as if he was floating, cradled by warmth while a million hands caressed him both inside and out. He was sex. The air touching him was sex. The smoke he breathed was sex.

“Hunter.” The impossibly deep voice rolled through him like an orgasm, and he moaned with the pleasure of it. “Open your eyes.” Hunter obeyed, found himself standing across the tent from a man draped in plush furs. Iron rings circled the rich reddish-brown skin of his arms. Crimson paint streaked his face from the corners of his mouth to where it disappeared into hair so black it absorbed the light from the fire, leaving the man surrounded in a swirling, pulsing shadow.

The world around Hunter lurched.

Demon. And not just any demon. This was the demon.

As if a secret door inside Hunter’s head had been unlocked, hundreds of years of history flipped through his brain like a movie on fast-forward. The very origins of the vampire race came to vibrant life in his mind.

Everything he’d learned about the twelve original chiefs was exactly as he’d been told.

The chiefs, guided by visions of war between tribes and an invasion of white men, had summoned a demon they’d believed to be a god. Samnult had promised them unmatched strength, speed, and immortality in exchange for allegiance, obedience, and the firstbornchild of every mated first-and second-generation vampire.

Flames flickered in the demon’s ebony eyes. Actual flames that singed everything they touched. Including Hunter’s skin. “You summoned me.” It wasn’t a question.

In the dim recesses of Hunter’s mind, he knew he should be more shocked and terrified than he was.

Should be agonizing over whether this was real or not.

But as the herbal smoke swirled around him, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

“I summoned you,” Hunter said, inclining his head a fraction of an inch. “As I’ve attempted to do every year since my twentieth birthday, Samnult.”

“Call me Sam.” Sam bared a mouthful of teeth that would be better suited to an orca. “And don’t try to shame me again. Not if you enjoy having your organs on the inside of your body.”

Right. Sam. And yep, Hunter would rather not be turned inside out. “Noted. I summoned you because I’m taking a mate—”

Sam cut him off with a sharp gesture. “I’m aware. A union with ShadowSpawn. The eldest of karshawnewuti’s twin daughters. “ He yawned, as if this was all too boring to be bothered with. “You know the deal.”

The first stirrings of fear and anger broke through the agony/ecstasy haze of the ritual. “I’m not handing my firstborn child over to you.”

Hunter would sooner slit his own throat than deliver a baby into the hands of a demon.

Sam’s voice degenerated into a serrated growl.

“Then you and your mate will watch your child suffer before it dies a horrible, miserable death.”

Hunter really wanted to give Sam a horrible, miser- able death. “Not if you lift the curse.”

“Few make that request.” Sam folded his arms across his chest. The furs, some of which didn’t look like they’d come from any animal Hunter had every seen, parted, revealing a patch of black scales overlapping his rib cage. “Why do you think that is?”

“It’s because anyone who doesn’t ask you to lift the curse is an ass**le who doesn’t deserve to have children.” Hunter moved closer, determined to make the demon understand how serious he was about this.

“I’ll do anything.”

Sam’s maniacal, sharp-toothed grin was like something straight out of an alien movie, and Hunter was the dumbass character who thought negotiating would be a good idea.

“So,” Sam said in a voice that made Hunter’s hair stand up, “if I asked you to kneel before me and take my c**k in your mouth, you’d do it?”

Hunter dropped to his knees. He’d have to drown himself in vodka later, but he hadn’t been lying when he said he’d do whatever it took to save the life of his child.

Sam’s smile faded as he shifted his gaze to the fire, which flared as if he’d thrown gasoline on it.

“If you want to be released from the bargain I made with the twelve chiefs, you must first negotiate a series of tests.” Sam gestured for Hunter to rise. “And one of them isn’t to suck my cock.”

Thank the spirits. Hunter wouldn’t be nursing a grizzly-sized vodka-blowjob hangover later. He rose. “I accept.”

“Fool.” The shadow surrounding the demon seethed like a living thing, and Hunter wondered if it was a measure of Sam’s irritation. “You don’t even know what the tests involve.”

“I don’t give a shit what they involve.”

Sam reached out and dragged one hideously long, black-lacquered nail down the gash Myne had made.

Hunter sucked air as fresh blood streamed from the newly opened laceration.

“Before your trial can begin, you must choose one of the twins to accompany you. You can’t pass through the membrane into my realm without either your intended mate or her sister. It doesn’t matter which, since their veins run with the same blood. But consider this.” He paused his finger’s downward path just above Hunter’s navel. “No matter who you choose, you will die.”