It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his clan members to behave while he was gone. If anything, Riker would keep everyone in line with a firmer hand than Hunter used. But Hunter didn’t like unknowns… and Rasha was an unknown. Worse, humans were encroaching on vampire lands in numbers he hadn’t seen since the white man had hunted Native Americans into the ground. If anything happened to MoonBound while he was gone, he’d never forgive himself.

If his clan was to be destroyed by humans, he wanted to die with them. And he wanted to take out as many of the enemy as possible before he went. He had priorities, after all.

Aylin checked the supplies on the floor as he moved to the cave entrance and peered out, careful to not step past the threshold. Beyond the opening, stretches of rocky ground and flat-topped hills defined the landscape. Cactus plants twice as tall as Hunter sat next to strange, twisted trees with skinny black leaves. Sagebrush and tumbleweeds dotted the land, and little critters scurried back and forth under the cover of the vegetation.

It was all relatively normal… except for the trail of clawed footprints in front of the cave. Footprints as long as Hunter’s arm.

That couldn’t be good.

“Hey!” Aylin called out. “Look what I found!” She held up a hatchet and a pocketknife, and he damned near let out a whoop of excitement.

“Toss the hatchet to me.” She started toward him, but he shook his head. “Don’t hand it to me. Throw it.” He made a come on gesture with his fingers. “Do it.”

With a shrug, she hefted the hatchet and launched it, but in the follow-through, her eyes shot wide. “Duck!”

The hatchet spun hard and fast at his head. He ducked to the side, felt a brush of air across his ear. The distinct thud of metal meeting bone rang out, and Hunter wheeled around in time to see a bald dude with a mouth full of sharp teeth hit the ground, the hatchet buried between his eyes. His fist was wrapped around the handle of a blood- and gore-stained machete.

“He slipped in behind you,” she said breathlessly. “He was going to decapitate you.”

“Holy shit. Thank you.” He glanced between the dead creep and Aylin. “You’re good. Real good.”

“When you have a bad leg, you learn to excel at fighting in other ways.” She was breathing hard, but her blue eyes glowed with predatory excitement in the smoky light. He liked that in a female. “Glad you ducked. I’m not used to not having to compensate for the unsteadiness of my right leg.”

“It was a damned good throw. Better than anything most of my warriors could pull off.” Crouching, he collected the machete from the dead guy and did a quick pat-down of his ratty clothing, which appeared to be fashioned from the skins of dozens of different creatures. “I’m going to get rid of him.” Standing, he wrenched the hatchet free of the dead thug’s skull and tossed it next to the machete.

While Aylin cleaned the weapons, Hunter disposed of the Neanderthal. Without crossing the threshold, he heaved the body outside and watched it tumble down the brush-covered incline and disappear.

Trash dutifully disposed of, he used a stick to draw a line in the earth from one side of the cave opening to the other, and using a simple protective chant he’d learned from the clan’s mystic-keeper, he set up a basic proximity alarm. Anything trying to enter the cave would now trigger a warning that Hunter would feel on his skin like an electric shock.

When it was done, he went over to Aylin, who was sitting with her back to the cave wall, using a wet cloth to wipe the machete clean.

“Never thought I’d be fighting battles – in a demon realm, no less – and cleaning weapons.” Something in her voice was off, but he couldn’t tell what.

He moved closer, inhaling, seeking her scent. Bitterness wafted from her in a massive wave, and his stomach clenched. She’d volunteered to come on this journey with him, but he couldn’t blame her if she wasn’t exactly happy about it.

“I’m sorry you’ve had to do this. It should have been Rasha.” Should have been, but some secret, shameful part of him was glad it was Aylin he was dealing with. And that made him a real bastard, didn’t it?

“You think you need to apologize?” Aylin set aside the machete, stubborn bits of gore still clinging to its rusted and chipped blade. “Don’t. Right now, in this dangerous freak show of a realm, I’m the most free and the strongest I’ve ever been.”

He wasn’t sure he’d heard that right. “Are you saying you like it here?”

“Oh, hell, no. But I don’t really like our world, either.” She reached for a bottle of water and twisted the plastic cap off with more force than was necessary. “I mean, I hate it here, and I’m dreading whatever we have to face tomorrow, but I think I’m dreading going back to the real world afterward even more.” She smiled thinly. “How screwed up is that?”

Hunter had been around for centuries, knew that other clans had different customs, values, and regard for life, and he’d learned not to interfere or, frankly, give a damn. But he was too involved with Aylin now, and what she’d just told him broke his heart wide open. How sad was it that the shit they were dealing with now was better than the shit she had to deal with at home?

“Aylin?” He went down on his haunches in front of her, draping his forearms across his knees. “What happens after we get back?” After Rasha and I are mated.

Her smile was as bitter as her scent. “I’m supposed to be mated,” she said, and a burning sensation spread through his gut, along with a healthy dose of anger.

Sure, he had no right to be jealous. None at all. And yet every fiber of his being screamed with it, as if he was being torn apart at the cellular level.

Mine.

“To whom?” He hoped she didn’t hear the murder in his tone.

“No one in particular,” she murmured. The way she said it didn’t quite ring true, but he didn’t know why she would lie. “But now that my leg is strong…” She trailed off, her smile and scent both losing the bitter edge. “I have options. For the first time, I’ll outrank every female in my clan, and most males. I don’t have to let everyone walk all over me.” The predatory light lit her eyes again, but this time, Hunter didn’t like what he saw.

“You’re thinking about revenge, aren’t you?” He cursed under his breath. “Don’t waste your time on it, Aylin. Your father —”

“Is a monster!” she snapped so viciously that he rocked backward, surprised at the sudden rage that practically vibrated her body. “You have no idea what it was like to grow up at ShadowSpawn. To be thought of as a curse on the clan and the murderer of my mother. To be told every day that I should have been drowned at birth. To be reminded that Rasha was the worthy twin and heir, while I was not even useful as a spare.” She threw down the bottle cap. “Well, now I’m whole. Now I don’t have to put up with shit. If I want to leave, I can. And this time, I can run. I can escape my father’s warriors when they come after me.”

“This time?”

She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a growl. “I tried to run away once. A couple of decades ago.” Her voice was soft, but it carried an undertone of fury that was tinged with cobwebs, as if her anger had finally broken free from the dusty box she’d carried it in for so long. “I was coming to you. To MoonBound,” she added quickly.

His mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. “To me? Why?” As soon as the question crossed his lips, he knew. “Sanctuary. You wanted to escape from your father.”

“Bingo.” She downed half of the water, as if doing so would douse her anger. Instead, it only seemed to fuel her ire. “My sister and half a dozen warriors caught me before I could go ten miles. My father whipped me so badly that it took a week to recover. For three days, I thought I was going to die, and I was glad.” She locked gazes with him, her eyes flat with what the Elders called the “warrior’s wall,” a hardness that couldn’t be faked or broken through. When you saw it, you knew that the person you were looking at didn’t fear dying. “Have you ever prayed for death, Hunter? Have you ever hated your life and what you were so much that death looked like the better option?”

He had, but he hadn’t thought about it in a long time. He’d never spoken of it with anyone, either, but he suddenly wanted to. Maybe because here in a land where he might die tomorrow and with no alcohol or video games to distract him, he had no other way to silence his father’s voice or the cries of his dead children. “I grew up with a father who lived the Way of the Raven. And I lost three children, any of which I’d have given my life for,” he said. “So yes, I’ve been there.”

The pity in her blue eyes was almost too much to bear. “I’m sorry.” There was a long pause, and then, “What happened? Where are the mothers?”

A knot of sorrow twisted his gut. “Two died in childbirth, along with my son and daughter. One seventy years ago, the other more than a hundred and fifty.” Closing his eyes, he let himself feel the pain of those losses, for the first time in… hell, he didn’t even know.

The females had been skilled warriors and valuable clan members, and he’d loved both. But he’d known deep down that they weren’t suitable mates for him. As a clan chief, he needed to mate only a born female he imprinted on, or he had to save himself for a mate taken for strategic reasons – like Rasha.

“What about the third?” Aylin’s voice was a soothing balm on those raw wounds. “What happened to her and the child?”

Lifting his lids, he stared into the steam created by the hot springs at the back of the cavern. “Technically, she was the first. Standing Willow was the female my father sent to guide me through my salisheye when I was fifteen.”

He’d been enamored of the born female’s dark-haired beauty, had begged his father to let him mate with her. But Bear Roar had refused, had even forced Hunter to listen to the sounds of her making love with other clan males, hoping his infatuation would die.

His father need not have bothered; Standing Willow’s behavior after the death of their newborn son had done that all by itself.

“She gave birth nine months later, but my son didn’t live through the night.” His throat closed. “He died in my arms. The next day, she seduced the visiting son of DeathMist’s clan leader. She left with him that eve.”

“Oh, wow,” Aylin murmured. “That’s… heartless.”

“She did what she had to do.” Hunter could still feel the weight of his son in his arms, could feel the scars on his soul rip open at the memory of watching the boy’s life slip away. “I couldn’t protect him. I couldn’t protect any of them. So believe me, I know what it’s like to hate my life and what I am so much that I want to die.”

Her hand came down on his, her slender fingers stroking his knuckles lightly. “But you also want to live, or you would have given up on clan life a long time ago.”

“Only because my father is dead, and MoonBound deserves a better leader than he was.”

Sometimes he wondered if he truly was any better. Oh, Hunter didn’t mete out harsh punishments for minor infractions, and he didn’t allow anyone to abuse anyone else, but he’d also made enemies out of clans that followed the Way of the Raven, and many had paid the price. The death of every MoonBound member at another clan’s hand weighed on Hunter as heavily as the deaths of his children, because those, at least, had been preventable.

“From what I’ve seen,” Aylin said, her fingers warm on the back of his hand, “you’re a fantastic leader.”

Her touch was as soothing as her voice, and he realized how selfish he was being, taking comfort in her when she was in more need than he was. His past was a murky mire of trauma, but the key word there was past. Aylin’s future could very well be as bleak as her past.

“I wish I’d known you were coming to us back when you ran away. I could have done something —”

“If you’d helped, my father would have crushed you. It was stupid of me to try. I should have headed for Seattle. I could have hidden with other free vampires.”

“You’d have lived like a rat with them,” he pointed out. “You’d have been hunted by humans and forced to sleep in sewers.”

“But I’ll be free.”

He sucked in a harsh breath. I’ll be free. Not I would have been free. She was planning to run away again, and this time, she was fully capable. The suffocating sensation of panic squeezed his chest, and he blurted, “You can’t do that!”

“I can’t?” She leaped to her feet in an astounding blur of motion. Clearly, she was getting used to her new, improved leg. “Do you know how sick I am of being told that I can’t do something?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “You’re resourceful, determined, intelligent. I have no doubt that you can succeed at whatever you put your mind to.”

She jammed her hands on her h*ps and pegged him with a withering stare. “Then what did you mean?”

I meant that I don’t want you to be far away from me.

Shit. That was dangerous thinking, given that he was due to mate Rasha in less than a month’s time. But the truth was that he wanted Aylin. Even now, as she abandoned the scolding female pose and paced the thirty-foot width of the cave, he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. The flex of her leg muscles with each silent step drew his appreciative gaze, and the mesmerizing sway of her h*ps made his body tense up in all the right ways.