Beth opened her eyes, turned her head to the right on the pillow, peered at the pale yellow wall across from her and then closed her eyes on a sigh as she recalled the last time she’d woken up. She’d been groggy and in pain then. Scotty had been holding her in his arms, his expression one of deep concern and caring, and then Rachel had appeared and said something that she hadn’t been able to understand. She’d then passed out again.

This time Beth wasn’t in pain, but she was angry. She was sick to death of pain, of the attacks and of Scotty’s shilly-shallying. First he was mean to her and then sweet, and then he was banging her like a bass drum, but she wasn’t good enough to claim? Oh, and the best part—he still thought he could boss her around like he had claimed her when he hadn’t. Not that she’d let him boss her around had he claimed her, but—

“How do ye feel?”

Opening her eyes again, Beth turned her head the other way to find Scotty seated in a chair next to the bed. There was no sign of the laughing lover, or even the concern she’d thought she’d seen earlier. He was leaning back as far as he could possibly get from her and had his distant face on . . . which annoyed the hell out of her. “I feel like I got run over by a semi.”

“No, ye don’t,” he countered, unperturbed. “Ye’re mostly healed now. Rachel refused to take the tranquilizer IV off until ye were.”

“If you knew that, then why’d you bother asking?” she muttered and then raised an eyebrow in question. “What happened?”

Beth had no idea what had landed her back in bed. The last thing she remembered was bawling out Scotty on Magnus’s phone, and then pow! A semi had hit her from behind. Or that’s how it had felt.

Running a weary hand over the short hairs growing from his now healed skull, Scotty grimaced. “While he waited for you to get off the phone, Rickart decided to use his remote to start the car. The Mustang blew up.”

“He has a remote to start the car?” Beth asked skeptically.

“Is that all ye have to say?” he asked with disbelief.

“No,” she assured him, eyes narrowing. “I also want to ask, how do I get one? It would come in handy on cold days.”

Cursing, Scotty shot to his feet and paced the length of the bed and back. “Ye could have been killed, Beth. Ye got lucky. Again! Ye were no’ supposed to leave the house. We agreed—”

“You decided,” she interrupted, suddenly calm now that he wasn’t. Smiling, she continued, “I agreed to nothing. And really, all your stomping about and bellowing is only convincing me you maybe need some anger management training or something.”

Scotty’s eyes widened even as his mouth tightened, and for a minute Beth felt sure he was going to explode, but then he dropped to sit in the chair again and merely glowered at her, so she asked, “How are Magnus and Rickart?”

“Up and about and back to their normal selves,” he answered shortly. “Ye were standing between Magnus and the car and shielded him with your body, and Rickart always was a fast healer.”

“Lucky for them,” she said mildly, and then asked, “The explosion wasn’t a malfunction of the remote or something?”

“It was a bomb,” Scotty said heavily. “It was rigged to explode when the car started. The person who rigged it obviously didn’t know about the remote. Or maybe they were hoping he wouldn’t use it. Who knows?”

“So it must have been set at the apartment building while I was packing,” Beth said thoughtfully. “I think there are security cameras in the parking lot. I know there are in the parking garage.”

“Fake,” he said succinctly. “Both in the parking lot and garage.”

“Seriously?” Beth asked with shock.

Scotty nodded. “They’re only there to scare off potential criminals, not to record them. They’re empty casings.”

“Damn. Then there’s no way to know who was behind the attack. Again,” she added grimly. Beth scowled over that briefly, and then sighed and said, “Well, if nothing else, this had told me that if I stay in Toronto, I should move to a new building. One with real cameras.”

“What do ye mean, if ye stay?” he asked sharply. “I thought ye’d moved here to be close to Drina.”

“Yes, but she spends most of her time in a little town south of here. It’s supposed to be quite nice. Small town, everyone knows everyone, people can’t follow you around and spy on you without someone taking notice,” Beth added dryly.

Scotty scowled.

“On the other hand,” she continued, “Toronto has its charms. Lots of nightclubs, even immortal clubs, and so many more people. I think I read somewhere that the Greater Toronto Area has more than six million people. That’s three million men to play with, which is important to a single girl like me,” she added sweetly.

Scotty’s face went expressionless.

“And then there’s the business I’m thinking of starting,” Beth added.

“Business?” he asked with surprise.

“Hmm.” Beth nodded. “I was thinking we should have a matchmaking service for immortals. I hear Drina’s Aunt Marguerite is very good at recognizing possible life mates for immortals. So all that really needs to be done is to set up parties in different cities for all those interested in finding their mate, have Marguerite attend and meet everyone, and then she can tell us who are potential matches for whom. It might even turn out that some of us have more than one possible life mate. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Nay, it wouldn’t,” Scotty snapped, standing up to pace again.

Beth raised her eyebrows as she watched him, and then sat up in bed. “Why not? You don’t want me. Isn’t it better if we find me someone else and find you someone more to your liking?”

Scotty frowned and turned to stare blindly out the window of her room. He didn’t want someone else. He wanted Beth. But arriving at her apartment building to find her broken and bleeding from the blast had nearly killed him. He’d almost lost her again, and she was suffering again. He couldn’t bear to see her in such pain. Scotty had sat here watching her sleep as she healed, and all he could think was that he wanted to take it all away for her, all the hurts of the past that he hadn’t been there to spare her from, including this latest attack.

He knew it might mean losing Beth. That taking away her past might alter her to the point where he might no longer be a possible life mate for her and he would lose all that he’d just found. After all, she wouldn’t remember him. He would remember her, though, and Scotty was quite sure he would love her to his dying breath no matter what. That he would spend the rest of his life alone and miserable, looking out for and yearning after a woman who saw him as a stranger. But he was willing to suffer that for her, to give her a chance for a life free of all the pain and misery she’d been dealt and so didn’t deserve.

Turning abruptly, he asked, “Have ye ever really considered what it would mean to have yer memories erased?”

Beth reacted as if he’d hit her, her head going back and her expression going blank with shock. Finally she asked with disbelief, “What?”

“A three-on-one mind wipe could remove all the horrors o’ yer life to date,” he said, trying for reason. “Would ye no’ like that?”

Beth shook her head and closed her eyes. “I can’t believe this.”

“What?” Scotty asked warily.

She opened her eyes and peered at him sadly for a moment, and then said, “You suggested that the night you saved Dree and me from Jamieson.”

Scotty blinked in surprise at the change of subject.

“You dragged her away to talk, and I knew you wanted to talk to her in private, but she’d left her shawl and it was cold and . . .” Beth paused briefly and then cleared her throat and admitted, “And after what had happened I was terrified at being alone, so I used the shawl as an excuse to join you both. I headed toward the pair of you, but I could hear you arguing as I approached and stopped to listen.”

Beth glanced down at her hands as she continued. “You were saying you should be reporting our presence at the house to the Council, that I was obviously mad and they’d want me executed rather than set loose on the world. You said at the very least I should be wiped using a three-on-one.”

Scotty stiffened. Was there anything she didn’t know?

“But,” Beth continued solemnly, “Dree wouldn’t let you. She said she’d take responsibility for me, that she was taking me back to Spain with her that very night, and if you tried to stop her, it would have to be at sword point. She’d not go quietly. She’d drag her brother and uncle into it and start a war if needs must, but she wasn’t letting you touch me.”

“I did no’ ken ye heard that,” Scotty said when she fell silent, and then added gently, “But ye were half-mad that night, lass. Perhaps wholly mad. The Council would ha’e insisted on putting ye down, and I thought if they wiped yer mind o’ all the bad memories . . . I thought ye’d be better off without all the horrors that haunted ye.”

“But it wasn’t just the horrors that would’ve been removed, was it?” Beth asked softly, lifting her head to look at him again. “If you erased my memories all the way back to when I was ten, it could’ve removed my personality as well.”

“When ye were ten?” he asked with confusion.

“Did you think the bad memories started with Jamieson?” she asked dryly. “He was just the first immortal monster in my life. There were many mortal ones before him.”

Scotty frowned. The night he’d met Beth, he’d thought his inability to read her was due to madness brought on by the traumas she’d suffered under Jamieson. After what he’d seen inside the charnel house they’d saved her and Drina from, that had seemed the most likely explanation. It wasn’t until Drina and Beth had already set sail for Spain that he’d realized his hunger for food was reawakening . . . and that his mind was suddenly easily read. Two sure signs that an older immortal had met their life mate.

Unfortunately, Scotty hadn’t connected it with Beth. Mostly because he hadn’t felt any sexual desire for her. He realized now that the situation and the bloody mess she and Drina had been at the time, literally, had not been conducive to sexual desire. Aside from that, they hadn’t made physical contact of any kind. But he hadn’t considered that then, and Scotty had looked closer to home for the life mate he knew he had recently encountered.

It wasn’t until months later that Scotty had realized she was the one. He got news that Drina considered Beth recovered from her trauma and ready to train as a hunter. For some reason he even now didn’t understand, he’d traveled to Spain to warn the Spanish Council that the woman was mad and shouldn’t be allowed to train. And that was the only reason he’d realized the error he’d made.

It was the first night he slept on Spanish soil. He was staying at Drina’s brother’s home, and Drina and Beth had been in attendance, visiting before they left for training. He’d arrived late, just a couple of hours before dawn, but the Council had been waiting there for him, and he’d spent those hours before daybreak closeted with them, trying to convince them not to allow the woman to train. He hadn’t fought that hard, though. Drina’s brother had insisted Beth was sane and couldn’t be judged on her reaction to one traumatic night, and it wasn’t really his problem anyway. He’d already been questioning why he’d come all that way. If the woman was mad as he suspected, it would be the Spanish Council’s problem. He had given them his assessment and that was all he could do.

It was dawn when the meeting ended and Scotty was shown to his room. He’d retired at once, but rather than restful sleep, when he lay down his night had been filled with erotic dreams full of a beautiful redheaded stranger. Scotty hadn’t known they were shared dreams until he woke up and went in search of his host to thank him for his hospitality before leaving. He’d spotted Beth hurrying for the front door as he came down the stairs, and recognizing her from his dreams, had frozen halfway down. It was when she’d opened the front door and he’d heard Drina call out, “Hurry up, Beth. We will be late,” that he realized who she was. Scotty had then stood there for several minutes in shock, unable to believe that she was the bedraggled and blood-covered madwoman he’d rescued.

When Drina’s brother Stephano had found him there on the stairs moments later, Scotty had begun asking questions about Beth. That was when he’d learned that she’d been a prostitute before she was turned, that Drina had been her pimp, and that she was angry and bitter and still dealing with the horrors of her past, but Stephano hoped her working as an Enforcer would help her heal.

Scotty had been in a state of confusion when he left Spain, his thoughts and feelings torn in all different directions. He’d felt shock that she was his life mate, not someone in England, as he’d first assumed. He’d felt concern for her well-being, a desire for her to heal from the horrors of her past and, yes, even discomfort at her chosen career as a mortal. But Scotty had buried that discomfort under his other concerns for her, and had tracked her progress in training, and then as a hunter. He’d also sent Magnus to watch over her, and had interfered as he saw fit, trying to keep her safe.

When Magnus had questioned his actions, Scotty had admitted that she was a possible mate and had told him that he felt she needed to heal from her past before he could claim her. And he had actually believed that to some degree. At least, he had hoped it was true. Beth back then had been hard, angry and lashing out at the world, and he’d thought perhaps with time she could heal, and with time he could learn to accept her past. Unfortunately, rather than admit to his issues with her past and deal with them, he’d pushed them under and focused only on her struggles.

Sighing, he sat down and met her gaze. “Why would your memories have to be erased all the way back to the age of ten?”

Now it was Beth’s turn to frown, and then she lowered her head and peered at her hands.

When she didn’t speak, Scotty said, “I heard ye telling Rachel about yer childhood. About yer mother and sisters and the market and yer father being a drunk with a temper. Ye stopped when yer mother and Ruthie died when ye were ten. What happened next?”

Beth was silent so long, Scotty began to think she wouldn’t answer his questions. But just when he was about to ask her again, she raised her head and spoke.

“When I was telling Rachel about it, I said that I sold all my pies the first time out at market after my mom died,” she said quietly, and he couldn’t help noticing that her accent had thickened again. Whatever she was about to reveal was emotional for her, he deduced.

“And that was true,” Beth assured him earnestly, and then kept her head up but dropped her eyes as she continued, “But what I didn’t say was that I didn’t take home the coin I made.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “I was far too clever for that, or at least I thought so, certainly smarter than my mother. I determined that, unlike her, I wasn’t going to let father get the money that he’d always beaten off my mother. I wouldn’t let him drink all my hard work away. So, as the day passed, I paid some of the money to those we owed and bought the supplies for the next day on my way home. And then I tucked what little was left in one of Ruthie’s old stockings and put it in a hiding place I had. Behind a brick in the wall, that I’d worked loose years ago,” Beth explained before lowering her head again.

“I thought it was ever so clever,” she repeated sadly, and then sighed and admitted, “I soon found out not. My father explained it to me. Mother too had paid bills through the day, and bought her supplies along the way home, but she’d always made sure to keep a couple coins behind for him. Just enough for him to have his tipple, and she let him slap her a time or two ere she gave it up, so he’d think that was all there was. He knew it wasn’t, but didn’t mind so long as he had what he needed.”

Beth shifted on the bed so she could rest against the short headboard and then leaned her head back over the top of it and stared at the ceiling as she said, “The first time I came home with no money at all, he beat me something fierce. I couldn’t walk let alone work for near a week.”

Scotty clenched his hands at the thought of a grown man beating a young Beth so severely, but he kept his mouth shut.

“But the second time I came home without coin he merely said, ‘You’ll be sorry. You’ll see.’” Raising her head again, she said sadly, “But I didn’t see, because nothing happened until the third time I stubbornly hid the money and came home with none. That day he said, ‘Now you’ll see,’ and then he grabbed my arm and he dragged me out of the house. He dragged me for blocks and blocks, into the worst part of the city. A part where Mother always said good girls didn’t go. The house he took me to was quite nice compared to most of the others, and I had no idea what was coming until it was all but over and he’d sold me to a brothel owner.”

Now it was Scotty’s turn to lower his head, and he had to work to hold back the sound building in his aching chest for the ten-year-old innocent she’d been.

“It seems I wasn’t so smart after all,” she confessed dryly. “You see, when he didn’t beat me the second time, I thought he was giving up. That all Mother had had to do was refuse him once, take one horrible beating, and he’d stop trying. But the truth was he hadn’t beaten me the second time because he’d already decided what he was going to do, and he knew the brothel owner wouldn’t pay much for me all black and blue and bruised.”

Scotty raised his head in time to see her quickly wipe a single tear from her cheek, and then she cleared her throat and continued, “As it was, the bruises from the first beating hadn’t completely faded yet, so she didn’t pay as much as he’d hoped, but it was still quite a penny. More coin than I’d ever even imagined seeing.”

Turning her head, she peered at him and said dryly, “It seems young girls under twelve, even common girls like me, were valued for our virginity. Lords and fine lairds would pay a high price for a young, untried girl. So the brothel owners bought us from greedy parents or other relatives to auction off to the highest bidder.”

Returning her gaze to the ceiling, she shrugged. “As I say, though, they only paid my father mildly well. I still had some fading bruises, which meant they would have to wait for those to heal, feeding and clothing me the whole while before they could auction me off. Da wasn’t pleased by that, but there was naught he could do.

“So for a week I was locked in a room, fed and bathed and taken care of until the day of the auction. That was scary,” she admitted. “The first part wasn’t so bad. I was bathed and perfumed, my hair washed and dried and brushed to a fine sheen, but then I was put in a white gown and paraded in front of a room full of what to me seemed like scary old men. The way they looked at me . . .”

Beth shuddered and Scotty had to swallow the bile in his throat.

“But then they told me to strip,” she announced in a quiet voice. “I refused, of course, and struggled when they tried to forcibly remove the gown. In the end, it basically had to be torn from my body, and I was left to shiver and weep in front of those hungry-eyed men as they bid on me. After that I was rushed off by two of the brothel owner’s women, force-fed a horrid-tasting drink and placed in a bed.

“The whole while the women were telling me how lucky I was that the man who’d bought me was kind and didn’t wish a struggle or to have me screaming so was having me drugged instead. They said, ‘A good many of them fine gentlemen like a fight, and even like to hurt a girl, ye see.’ But I didn’t see, and I didn’t understand what was happening and I don’t know what they gave me, but it made me feel all queer and I had little control over myself. I tried to get out of bed when the women left the room. The window of the bedchamber they’d kept me in prior to this one had been boarded up so I couldn’t escape, but this one wasn’t, and I thought if I could just get to it and climb out . . .”

Beth shook her head. “But I couldn’t seem to master my arms and legs enough to even get out of the bed, let alone make the window, and then the ‘kind gentleman’ was escorted in and there was no escape.”

She lowered her head to stare down at her hands as if they were the only thing in the world at that moment, and it made Scotty want to pull her into his lap and hold her until all her pain went away. Part of him wanted to tell her to stop talking, not to tell him any more, but he didn’t and simply waited.

“He may have been a kind man, but no man likes to be laughed at,” Beth said finally. “And I don’t know if it was whatever they’d given me, or maybe hysteria, but when he stripped off his clothes and straightened, I thought him the funniest thing I’d ever seen.”

Grimacing, Beth glanced up briefly as she admitted, “I’d never seen a naked man before. The closest was me father in his nightshirt, but even that hid everything except his hairy feet. But this . . .” Beth shook her head and lowered her gaze again.

“He was like a rooster, a sagging chin, narrow shoulders slouching into a big fat belly over short skinny legs, and for some reason, I just started to laugh. And then I couldn’t stop, which infuriated him. He wasn’t particularly kind or gentle because of it, I suppose, but at least he was quick and left me to cry myself to sleep.”

Scotty watched her take a deep breath, and she seemed stronger as she said, “Of course, once I’d been bought and raped, my value dropped considerably. In fact, I was no longer useful to the brothel.” Glancing his way, she explained, “This particular establishment only kept the most beautiful women.”

“Ye’re beautiful,” he said almost too softly for her to hear him, but she did.

“Nay. I have red hair,” Beth told him as if he might not have noticed.

“Yer hair is beautiful.”

“The English don’t like red hair,” she countered.

“The English are idiots,” Scotty growled.

“They also found my freckles unfortunate.”

“I love yer freckles.”

Ignoring that, Beth said, “I simply didn’t measure up. Unfortunately, I also wasn’t behaving myself.”

Scotty couldn’t help noticing she said that with satisfaction.

“Much to their displeasure, I kept trying to escape,” she announced with pride, and then grimaced and added, “So I was auctioned off again, this time to a roomful of bullies.”

“Dear God,” Scotty breathed.

“The winning bidder was a man named Danny Olsen. He had three girls already. I was number four. He broke me in, which translates to he raped me for three days straight, and then he locked me in a room that he only unlocked for customers. I wasn’t a very willing girl, ye see, despite his breaking-in. So he sent in the ones who didn’t mind the fight in me . . . and for an extra quid they could bruise me as they liked so long as they didn’t scar me permanent-like.”

Scotty fisted his hands and briefly stopped breathing as rage flowed through him. He was angry, and hurting for her, and feeling so damned helpless because it was too late to change what had happened. Yet she was now telling it all rather emotionlessly, like she was recounting some tale she’d heard. It was as if Beth had separated herself from the events she was describing, and that just made the hearing worse.

“We girls were warned not to run away. Danny said he’d told the children on the streets that he’d pay a quid if they warned him when we ran away and told him where to find us. I was very nice to those children,” Beth assured him. “I gave them whatever coin I could manage to squirrel away. The men would tip on occasion, you see. Usually it was the rougher ones. The rougher they were, the more the guilt, and the more likely they were to toss a coin or two extra on me battered body on the way out. I gave every one of those coins to the children on the street. I was hoping that when I tried to run away they would keep their mouths shut.” Grimacing, she shrugged. “But it’s cold on the street, and those children were always hungry, and in the end, a quid is a quid.

“Every time I ran away, they got a quid and I was dragged back, beaten viciously and locked in the room again. Still, I continued to try. I think I was seventeen when I made my last attempt.”

“Seventeen,” Scotty breathed with dismay. She’d been locked in a room, beaten and raped for seven years, he realized with horror, and then blinked and asked, “Ye think?”

“Time began to blur in that room,” Beth explained with a shrug. “I’m not sure how old I was that last time I managed to escape. Seventeen is my best guess.”

Scotty swallowed again.

“Anyway,” she continued, “Danny’d had enough by then. He was tired of hunting me down, tired of the trouble I caused. Besides, by that time he had thirteen of us girls and figured he’d hardly miss one . . . and I would serve as a fine example to the others of what to expect if they caused him too much trouble. So, when he caught me that night, he told me flat-out that he intended to beat me to death and leave my corpse in the alley for the rats to feed on, right where the girls would see me out their windows.

“Fortunately,” Beth continued as Scotty buried his face in his hands, “Dree happened along then. She didn’t know me, and didn’t know Danny intended to kill me, but she saw him beating me and intervened. She tore him off of me like he was little more than a toddler, which infuriated him and probably scared him spitless. Foolishly, he pulled his knife and . . . well, that was a mistake. Dree just grabbed Danny and tossed him away up the alley like he was so much trash. He landed on his own knife and died almost instantly.

“When Dree then scooped me up and asked where to take me, the only place I could think was the brothel where the other girls were. She carried me there.” Smiling wryly, she said, “I expect she thought she could just leave me and someone would tend my wounds, allowing her to go about her business. Instead, she found a house full of beaten and broken women, most of whom were younger than even me at that point. None of them knew what to do about my injuries. She had to stay and tend me herself.

“I think the other women shocked her,” Beth admitted. “Dree probably thought they’d be grateful to be free of the man. Instead, they were frightened and panicky. They were terrified by the fact that our pimp was gone. Even a bad pimp was better than no pimp to their minds, and they blamed her for his absence. Instead of thanking her, they ran around crying, ‘Who will protect us now?’”

Beth paused, pursed her lips and then said, “Except for Mary. Mouthy Mary, Dree used to call her, but affectionate-like,” she assured him. “That first night Mary just stood up and announced that, seeing as how Dree had killed our protector, she’d just have to take his place.” Beth grinned at the memory and admitted, “Basically the girls guilted Dree into acting as our protector and, by the time I healed enough to get out of bed, everything had changed.”

Scotty peered at her curiously, noting that she was more animated now and seemed almost chatty as she said, “Dree at first tried to convince us all to leave the house and return to our families, or find a different line of work. But most of us didn’t have families, and I wasn’t the only one who had been sold into the business by family members. None of us had an education, or training. We would never be maids or shop girls—none of us knew the first thing about either—so we did the only thing we did know.”

Scotty frowned at the realization that she’d stayed a prostitute even once she could have left it.

“But it was better now. No one beat us, not even the customers. Dree wouldn’t let them. She lived with us, protected us . . . She even put her money into fixing the house for us. Everything was fine. Well, at first anyway,” she muttered, her expression changing to dissatisfaction. “I suppose I knew things were going too well and it couldn’t continue.”

“What happened?” Scotty asked when she paused and stayed silent for several minutes.

“Oh.” Beth glanced to him with surprise, as if she’d been so lost in thought she’d forgotten he was there. Giving her head a shake, she said, “Well, the girls were afraid Dree would leave us. And why not? Nothing was holding her there. She wouldn’t take our coin. She wouldn’t take payment in trade even from the girls who were willing. There wasn’t anything keeping her with us, and none of us understood why she hadn’t already just up and left. The girls were scared and started to . . . act up,” she said finally.

“Act up?” he asked, now curious.

Beth grimaced. “Getting all catty, and nasty and fighting . . .” She rolled her eyes. “Dear Lord, the fighting!” She shook her head with remembered disgust, and then said, “But then one night, three drunk men attacked one of the girls as she was coming home. Dree was there at once to protect her, of course, but was terribly injured in the doing.

“All of us rushed out when we heard the cry and carted her back inside. We got cloths and water and such and the like, but every minute we were all sure she would die. We had seen the wound she’d taken. It was a wonder to us she’d managed to finish off the attackers before she died, and then a wonder she didn’t die before we got her back in the house. But we were all positive she would die there with us . . . only when she didn’t and we finally got around to cleaning the wound, it was already healing.

“Uneducated we may have been, but we knew there was something wrong with that. It just plain wasn’t normal. We surrounded her and demanded answers. What we didn’t know was that she was weak from blood loss and we smelled like mighty fine steak to her at that point. Desperate to get us away from her so that she could go find blood, she told us everything, all about immortals and that she was one.”

Beth grinned. “I suspect Dree expected us to all be horrified, consider her a monster now and flee. No doubt she figured that later, after she’d found a blood source and recovered, she’d have to hunt us each down and wipe our memories. But not a one of us ran away, or screamed or even fainted. Instead, we were all oddly relieved.”

“Relieved?” Scotty echoed with surprise, and she nodded with amusement.

“Yes. You see, finally here was a way we could repay her. She had taken care of us, and taken nothing in return. But she needed blood to heal, and we could give her that. When Mary asked, Dree admitted she needed to feed on blood regularly and hunted to get it, and again, we could give her that and save her the need to hunt. It could be an exchange instead of us being beholden to her and terrified she might up and leave one day. Dree would continue to keep us safe and we would keep her fed. Everyone was happy,” Beth said as if it was simple logic. “And so we went for the next nearly twenty-five years.”

“Ye were happy selling yerselves?” Scotty asked with a sort of bewilderment. That hardly seemed to fit with a woman who had repeatedly risked being beaten to death to escape.

Beth hesitated, but then blew her breath out and finally said, “No. I mean, it was not the life I expected to lead. As a child I thought I’d be like my mother, grow up, marry and have children,” she admitted and Scotty suspected from her expression that it might have been the first time she’d ever admitted that, even to herself.

“But of course,” Beth assured him, “I’d marry a good man, not someone like my father. I’d marry someone like our neighbor Mr. Hardy, who was always ever so kind.”

“Then why did you not do that once Dree had saved ye from Danny?” he asked with confusion. “Dear God, ye risked being beaten to death to escape, and then simply settled into the life afterward. Why?”

“Because, as you know, no good man would want a whore for a wife.”