Arawn knocked on the wooden door off a side tunnel in the innermost part of his underground dominion, making sure to keep the sound low. A few seconds later, the door swung open to reveal a woman with tawny skin and untamable brown curls, her eyes just a shade lighter than her hair.

“My lord,” she said, inclining her head.

Stepping back, she opened the door further and bid him inside.

“Simone,” he greeted her and entered the room.

His hands in the pockets of his pants, he glanced around the warmly decorated interior. The door to the bedroom stood ajar.

“Do you have everything you need?” he asked.

“Yes, sire.”

“How is he?”

A beat of silence, the face of the female bluotezzer demon drawn with pain. “I’m afraid he won’t make it.”

His power coiled in the pit of his stomach. “What does he need?”

Simone shook her head. “It’s not—” A sigh of defeat. “He was so malnourished when he came here… I think he lay there too long before you found him, and from the looks of it, he’s been neglected even longer.” She pressed her lips together, her eyes shimmering. “I’ve been feeding him, but he’s just getting weaker.”

“Let me see him.”

With a curt nod, she went into the bedroom, came back with the swaddled algos demon in her arms. His eyes closed, the babe was barely breathing, his skin even paler than when Arawn picked him up yesterday.

“Has the healer seen him?”

“Yes, my lord.” Simone’s voice was but a whisper. “She says there’s nothing she can do. His body is just shutting down.”

He touched the babe’s cheek with a finger, listened to his faint heartbeat. His magic, that curling darkness inside him, wasn’t of the healing kind…but there was something else he could try. It might be enough to save the child.

Forming a claw at the tip of his right index finger, he pierced the pad of his left thumb, brought that finger to the babe’s mouth. The infant’s lips parted only after he prodded him, but he wouldn’t even suckle on his finger. Arawn had to squeeze a drop of his blood into his mouth.

Slowly, the babe smacked his lips, drew the tiny amount of liquid in.

Arawn stared. And waited.

Simone didn’t say a word, her eyes flicking between him and the infant, her hold on the babe full of unconditional care. She was one of the few trusted foster mothers in his service who lived and breathed for this purpose, the desire to nurse and raise the young a part of her, blood and bone.

He once offered her a different job, thinking it might be hard on her after all those decades.

She’d huffed in his face, told him she wouldn’t give up her babies for all the money in the world.

He stroked his finger over the infant’s cheek again, noting the skin gaining warmth. The color deepened infinitesimally.

His blood didn’t have healing qualities per se, but it carried such potent energy and power that it could very well catalyze a body’s self-healing ability. And it might just be enough.

“Do you need anything else?” he asked of the tiny bluotezzer female, whose heart was still so big after all these years, soft and strong enough to take in even the hopeless cases. He knew how many babes she’d been forced to let go because they didn’t make it, when not even his blood was enough.

He knew every single one.

“I’m fine,” she replied, her focus on the sleeping algos demon. “I’ll be with him, either way.”

And the babe would know warmth, would know love, even if these were to be his last hours.

Arawn nodded at Simone, turned away—and the infant uttered a sound. Not a whimper. Not a cry.

A quiet burp.

Arawn pivoted slowly, studied the darkening skin of the babe, now a shade much closer to the red it should be. Simone met his gaze for a second, and a small smile lit her face, her eyes.

“Thank you,” she said.

He nodded again, his throat uncomfortably thick. “I will return tomorrow.”

He made his way back out of the heartland of his underground domain and ascended to the surface, into the forest misted with rain. The sun hid behind a layer of clouds, the air a humid kiss on his skin, but the foliage kept most of the drizzle from reaching the ground. A light winter shower in the Pacific Northwest.

Even so, rain made it harder to follow trails, as it washed away most scents. So when he came to Maeve’s cabin, found it empty, and neither Kelior nor Maeve around, he ditched his clothes and changed into his bear. His nose now more sensitive than in his human form—though nothing else of him was human, to be precise—he had no trouble tracing the wildfire scent of Maeve to the stone bench on a knoll overlooking the crystalline blue of Moon Pond.

Kelior lingered nearby, out of sight, but departed at a signal from Arawn. The fae male had apologized profusely to him after setting off Maeve the day before. Arawn had already given him precise instructions not to go near her unless asked, but the protective instinct of the male when he saw Maeve tumble overrode Arawn’s instructions.

The fact that Kelior’s intervention saved her from possibly breaking a few bones was the only reason Arawn hadn’t broken any of his.

Well, that and the fae’s elemental affinity for fire, which made him the best daytime guard for Maeve.

Still in bear form, Arawn approached the stone bench where Maeve sat, her face turned toward the serene beauty of Moon Pond. In the light of day, the name made no sense, the water a deep blue that had nothing to do with the celestial body. At night, however, it revealed a splendor that more than explained the reason behind its naming.

He should bring Maeve here again sometime, after sunset.

She didn’t notice his presence until he stood a few feet behind her, and he might have been a bit too sneaky, having moved too quietly. When she did realize she wasn’t alone anymore, she stiffened, turned to look over her shoulder by minute degrees, until her eyes landed on him—widened.

He had to give her credit. She didn’t scream. Most humans would when suddenly faced with a giant grizzly.

Maeve, however, just swallowed hard, the muscles in her throat working underneath that creamy skin. Those copper lashes fluttered yet again over eyes of smoky amber as she beheld him with a calm that appeared to be an integral part of her, despite the bursts of fire every now and then.

“Your eyes,” she said in her husky voice, “in this form are different.”

If he were in his human shape, he would have smiled. So perceptive, she wasn’t fooled by his masks, probably knew it was him due to the beacon of his power inside her. It called to his own, the bond between them a constant pulse.

He prowled up to her, sat down next to the bench, the area dry thanks to the dense canopy of the tree overhead. Maeve’s gaze on him was a brand on his senses, her attention a palpable thing, like a fluttering bird gracing you with its presence…as long as you didn’t move.

He didn’t move.

Keeping his eyes on the pond in front of him, he let her look her fill. When the fire kiss of her focus would have wandered away from him, he changed his shape.

Maeve jerked, gasped. “Merle told me about this one,” she murmured.

He flicked his left wolf ear in a lazy gesture of dismissal.

“How many shapes do you have?”

So he showed her, shifting from one animal to the next, then back to those forms that elicited the most delighted reactions in her. The wolf and the panther seemed to be her favorites. The snake made her yelp.

When he finally changed back to his human shape, he didn’t bother to withdraw into the undergrowth for modesty’s sake. Her attention was still fully on him as he shifted, since she probably expected him to show her yet another animal form, and for a glorious two seconds, her eyes were glued to his naked body.

Then she startled, choked off a high-pitched sound, and turned her reddening face away. “You did that on purpose.”

“I thought I should correct a few assumptions from your dream.”

She massaged her temples, muttered to herself, “It just keeps getting worse.”

“If you need a closer look at my backside for better detailing—”

“Stooooop,” she groaned, her face buried in her hands.

“You did get the chest hair right.”

“Would you please put on some clothes?”

He sighed. “You bruise my ego, Wildfire.”

Half hidden behind her hands, the corners of her mouth twitched up.

His chest feeling light with some amusement of his own, he called forth a dryad from a fir a few yards away, and the tree nymph brought him a pair of loose black pants, retreating again with her head bowed.

Maeve was studiously staring at the pond as he got dressed, and when he stepped in front of her, she frowned. Her eyes flicked to his bare torso, drank in the display of muscles and skin before she blinked and glanced away again, her cheeks darkening once more.

“Are all your shirts in the laundry?”

Such bite to her this morning. He liked that. Much better than the overwhelming despair and broken sadness that still haunted her at times.

“You seem tense,” he said, keeping his voice at a sensually low level. “Did you not sleep well?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, pressed her lips together. He wanted to lick them open.

“I wouldn’t have expected the Demon Lord to be so childish about this.”

“Trust me,” he purred, “my feelings concerning your fantasy about me are very much adult.”

She shifted on the bench, cleared her throat and glanced away again. Human as his form might be, his senses were still sharper than those of a man, his nose picking up the faint note of her interest. His power hummed under his skin, wanting to tangle with her fire.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” she said, her back straight, her posture prim. “Did you let Merle know I’m okay?”

“Should I?”

With an irritated huff, she rolled her eyes. “Yes?”

“And what, exactly, would you like me to tell her?”

“I don’t know,” she grumbled, raising her hands and letting them fall back into her lap. “Just let her know you…haven’t eaten me yet.”

“Much to my chagrin,” he murmured.

She froze, color flushing her cheeks once more.

“I need to look at the spell,” he said, watching how the wind blew a strand of her hair across her face until it got tangled on her lashes. Those lashes.

She pushed the hair off her face, only to pull some of it back again the next second in yet another futile attempt to hide her scar. “No.”

“I will not see more of your…charming dreams if you refrain from hurling them at me.”

She spoke through her teeth. “I did not—”

“Although I feel like I should have the right to look, seeing as they feature me in a leading role.”

“One. It was one dream.” A slanted glare up at him. “And I don’t want you in my mind again.”

“Even at the expense of your life?”

She folded her arms, raised her chin.

“Now who is being childish?” He mirrored her pose, cocked a brow.

He could have simply waltzed into her mind at any given moment, her shields so flimsy he wouldn’t even have to break them down. Yet he waited for her consent.

Sighing, she closed her eyes. Uttered a sound of frustration. Glowered at him. “Fine.”

“Good,” he said, and entered her mind on a whisper of thought.

Embers in the night, velvet darkness glittering with sparks. Of anger, of amusement…of lust. He itched to touch his mental fingers to those sparks, caress them into a blaze. Another time, he promised. To himself, and to the woman who harbored such fiery potential, if only she’d let it free from the tight leash she kept it on.

He followed the traces of her magic before she could sidetrack him with another unruly thought. Not that he’d mind being run over again by the freight train of her fantasy. If she were to offer… But this exercise was not about his pleasure, or sampling hers.

Studying the spellwork was a necessity. Twice now in as many days, her powers exploded out of her and onto others, both times in situations of high stress and panic attacks due to her lingering trauma. The risk that her magic might hurt her with the next eruption was only growing. He needed to study the spell and figure out how to dismantle it safely, and to coax her beast out in a way that wouldn’t obliterate all that was Maeve in the process.

He went deeper, descending into the stygian blackness of her innermost core, the soft threads of her magic his only guide. Rowan MacKenna had taken great care to incarcerate these ancient powers so they didn’t even surface in Maeve’s darkest hours, the witch’s spell a mighty bulwark against a force from the dawn of time. The late Elder witch likely had no real idea of what she was up against, the knowledge of the true existence of the Old Ones long forgotten, but one thing she grasped—how destructive these powers could be, how much of a threat they posed, not just to the people around Maeve, but to Maeve as well.

She made damn sure to weave a spell of tangled intricacies and adamantine strength, and as Arawn beheld the first layers of Rowan’s work, he paused in admiration.

And sighed.

This was going to take some time.

Minutes stretched to what felt like hours as he studied the spell without touching it yet. As with one of those towers of blocks children played with, moving one piece at the wrong point could bring the entire structure crashing down. Which could prove fatal.

So he examined and scrutinized and analyzed the interlocking magic, until one part of his consciousness noticed the decline in Maeve’s energy. His other senses, the ones he kept alert to the outside world, picked up on the way Maeve’s posture slumped, her breathing becoming too shallow.

She needed to eat and drink, and rest. He’d been studying the spellwork for far too long, and all the while she sat there patiently, not a word of complaint or deliberate signal of distress. When in reality she was drained.

He saw as much in the slow, erratic pattern of her thoughts as he ascended from the depths of her core, despite trying not to look. Like he told her, it was hard to keep his mental attention averted from what bombarded him without his active involvement.

And it was likely because of her exhaustion that she let so much slip, let him see—though inadvertently—what normally must have been tightly guarded thoughts. Each of them a blow to a part of him that ached, that bled, that raged on her behalf.

Broken. Weak. Disfigured.

You think anyone would want this, want you? You’re not attractive. Not anymore. I made sure of that. Made sure you’re too ugly for any other male to desire.

Broken beyond repair. Damaged goods. You can’t even touch a man without puking your guts out.

And you dare think a male of power like the Demon Lord would look at you and feel anything but revulsion? You think his teasing is real?

He pities you, like everyone else. Any attention he tosses your way means less to him than breadcrumbs off his table, and whatever interest he shows is a pity fuck in the making.

I broke you. You like to bask in the knowledge that I’m dead, that I’m gone, but I took the best parts of you—

Arawn drew back, out of her mind, before his power leveled the woods.