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He opened the fridge. A complicated web glistened in the back of it, gathering into a knot in the corner. An ice spider. It cost an arm and a leg. I, like most other normal people, had to buy friz-ice from the Water and Sewer Department to keep my fridge from getting warm when the tech failed and magic robbed it of electricity.

  Raphael pulled another steak and slapped it on the cutting board next to his. “Here.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  We stared at each other for a second, and then I took the saltshaker and began to season my steak.

  We glided in the small space of the kitchen, boxed in by the island and counters like two dancers, never touching each other, until we ended up next to each other searing our steaks on twin burners.

  “I would just like to know if I have a chance,” Raphael ground out. “I’ve been patient.”

  “And I owe you something because of that?”

  He glared at me. “I just want an answer. Look, it’s been half a year now. I call you every day—you don’t take my calls. I try to meet you and you blow me off. But you look at me like you want me. Just tell me yes or no.”

  “No.”

  “Is that your answer or are you refusing to tell me?”

  “My answer is no. I won’t sleep with you. I’ve never led you on, Raphael. I told you from the beginning this wasn’t going to happen.”

  Raphael’s eyes went dark. “Fair enough. Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Yes, why? I know you want me. I see it in your face, I smell it in your body, I hear it in your voice. That’s why I kept coming back after you like a fucking idiot. At least you can tell me why.”

  I unclenched my teeth. This talk was almost six months in coming. “Your mother is a good person, Raphael. Her clan is a good clan. But it’s not like that everywhere. My mother was the weakest of six females in a small bouda clan. The others beat her every day. There were only two males and my mother didn’t get to mate. Hell, if one of them looked at her, the others attacked her. In other places boudas don’t stick that strictly to the Code. There’s no Beast Lord to hold them to it and no punishment. They get to govern themselves, and the pack’s only as good as the alpha. You know what my first memory is? I’m sitting in the dirt and our fucking alpha, Clarissa, is beating my mother in the face with a brick!”

  He recoiled.

  “My mother didn’t want to mate with my father. They forced her to do it, because they got off on the perversity of it. He didn’t know any better. He didn’t understand the concept of rape. All he knew was that there was a female and she was made available to him. For three years my mother was raped by a man who had started his life as a hyena. He had the mental capacity of a five-year-old. And when I was born, they started beating me as soon as I could walk. I was beastkin. No rules applied to me. Under your precious Code, I was an abomination. Every bone in my body was broken before I turned ten. As soon as I healed, they started on me again. And my mother couldn’t stop it. She could do nothing. They would’ve killed me, Raphael. I was weaker and smaller than them and they would’ve kept beating me and beating me until there was nothing left, if my mother hadn’t gotten together what little shreds of courage she had left. I live now because she grabbed me and ran across the country.”

  His face turned bloodless, but now it was too late to stop.

  “When Kate drove me to the flare to your mother, I kept trying to get out of the cart, because I was sure Aunt B would kill me. That’s what ‘bouda’ means to me, Raphael. It means hate and cruelty and disgust.”

  I shoved my pan off the fire to save the half-burned steak.

  “So you refuse to be with me because of what I am,” he said. “You can’t be that shortsighted. What happened to you was awful. But I’m not them. I would never hurt you. My family, my clan, we would never hurt you. We protect our own.”

  “What you are is only a part of it. If you were a different man, maybe I could get over it. But you’re a typical bouda male. I want love, Raphael. I might not deserve it, after some of the stuff I’ve done, but I want it. I want security and kindness and a home. I want monogamy and consideration for my feelings. What do you have to offer me? You’ve slept with every bouda woman who isn’t related to you. Everybody had you, Raphael. They offered to give me pointers on what you like in bed. Hell, you didn’t stop with boudas. You played with wolves, and with rats, with jackals . . . To you, I’m just another weird thing to hump. For God’s sake, you got stuck inside a jackal girl while you were both in beast form and they had to call Doolittle out to separate you two. What were you thinking? You outweighed her by a hundred and fifty pounds and you aren’t even of the same species!”

  “I was fourteen,” he snarled. “I didn’t know any better. She wiggled her ass in front of me . . .”

  “You’re like a greedy kid in an ice cream store. You want everything and so you make this giant rainbow mess of a cone and gorge yourself on sweets until you can’t even think anymore. You have no restraint and no discipline. Why would I want to get involved with you? So the next time someone wiggles her ass before you, you’ll take off like a rocket? Please.”

  I grabbed a fork, stuck it into my steak, and marched out of the kitchen, carrying off my charred piece of meat. I got outside, climbed in my Jeep, and realized I had left my guns and my keys inside. There was nothing left to do but chew on my steak. I really wanted to cry.

  I was so screwed up. I tried so hard to be a human, and he unhinged me. I just fell apart like a doll. The beatings, the humiliation, the fear—I had left those things in the past. I had interacted with other boudas and never once had been bothered by them. But with him all of it came flooding back in a choking painful wave.

  Only Kate, the boudas, and the Beast Lord knew what I was. If the Pack found out that I was beastkin, the Beast Lord would protect me from physical harm. Curran had considered the issue of beastkin and come to the conclusion that he wouldn’t tolerate genocide against us. But at least some of the shapeshifters would still despise me. If the Order found out what I was, they would expel me. The Order took a dim view of monsters in their ranks unless they were fully human.

  Years of hiding, first in adolescence, then during the gruel ing training at the Order’s Academy, stressed to my limit, tortured physically and mentally, hammered into shape, into a new me, then service in the name of the Order. I had rigidly maintained my humanity and composure through it all, and what undid me? Raphael, with his blue eyes and warm hands and voice that made me want to press against him and purr . . .

  How could I have fallen for a damn bouda?

  I slumped forward and rested my head on the steering wheel. Why did I tell him all that? What possessed me? I should’ve just laughed off his dinner invitation. But it had been eating at me for months now and I just couldn’t help myself. There was this bitter emptiness inside me and it made me want to scream, It’s not fair! and I didn’t even know why.

  It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that I wanted to wake up next to Raphael. It wasn’t fair that he was a bouda. It wasn’t fair that for eleven years boudas tortured me and my mother.

  Half an hour later Raphael emerged onto the porch and held open the door. Remaining in the Jeep was childish. Even storming out in the first place was childish. I took my fork, hopped out of the Jeep, and went inside with as much dignity as I could muster.

  Raphael closed the door behind me. An odd light played in his eyes. He grabbed me by my shoulders and pulled me to him.

  The breath jumped out of my lungs.

  His stare was hard. “You will give us a chance.”

  “What?”

  “Things happened before I met you and before you met me. Those things don’t matter. You had no control over your past, but here, right now, you control the situation and you’re voluntarily giving it up. You’re punishing both of us because of something that happened half a lifetime ago. It makes no sense.”

  I tried to pull away, but he held me.
r />   “There hasn’t been anyone since I met you. I’ve been good, and don’t think for a moment it was because of the lack of wiggling asses. Have you ever seen me with another woman since we met? Have you heard of me being with another woman? The same women who wanted to give you pointers will tell you that I haven’t touched anyone since I saw you. Are you jealous of them? Is that it?”

  My face went hot and I knew I had flushed. I was jealous of them. Of all of them.

  “Andrea, you can’t be jealous of someone I met before I knew you. I didn’t know you existed back then. I don’t want anyone else now. Has there been anybody for you?”

  I shook my head.

  “I think of you a lot. Do you think of me, Andrea? Don’t lie to me.”

  “Yes!” I snarled, my face burning. “Yes, I do! All the time. I can’t get you out of my head. I wish I could!”

  He hugged me so hard, my bones nearly crunched. “You’ve made yourself into a new person and so have I. We deserve a fucking chance. I want you and you want me. Why aren’t we together? I’ll deal with your hang-ups if you’ll deal with mine, but if you’re still too scared to even try, then you’re not worth waiting for. I have some goddamn pride left and I won’t wait forever.”

  He let me go.

  I could either take control of it now or walk out. I clenched my teeth. This was my decision. I owned it, I took full responsibility for it, and no memories would make me cower and run away from him. I was worth it, damn it. He was worth it.

  I did what I had wanted to do since I first saw him. I dropped my fork and kissed him.

  We never made it upstairs to the bedroom.

  The problem with falling asleep wrapped in a comfy blanket on the floor between the coffee table and the sofa is that in the morning, when the phone rings and wakes you up, you forget the coffee table is there. At least Raphael did. There was a solid thud as he sat up, smashing his head against the table, and then a string of foul curses as he staggered into the kitchen and picked up the phone.

  “It’s for you!”

  I got up, wrapped the blanket about myself like a cape, and went to get the phone.

  “Aha!” Kate’s voice said on the other end.

  “Aha what?”

  Raphael must’ve recovered from his unfortunate connection with the table, because he set about trying to steal my blanket.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all,” Miss Innocence said.

  “How did you get this number anyway?” I smacked Raphael’s hand away.

  “Jim gave it to me a long time ago. I tried your cell, the Order, and your house. This was the next logical number. I’m a trained detective, you know.”

  “You couldn’t detect your way out of a shoe if someone lit the way with neon signs.”

  Raphael finally won the battle for the blanket and molded his body against mine, nipping gently at my neck. “Hold on a minute.”

  I covered the phone and turned to him. “About dealing with my hang-ups—this is one of them. I’m on the phone. Please let me be.”

  He sighed and went about the kitchen getting eggs out.

  “I’m here,” I said, pulling my blanket back up.

  “How did it go with Cerberus?”

  I briefly sketched it for her. “Even if destroyed, he continues to remanifest as soon as the magic is up. He’s bound to that house. I’ll be talking to the People today about the vampire. I doubt they’ll tell me anything.”

  “How important is this?”

  I explained about Aunt B.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Ghastek owes me a favor,” Kate said. “I have it on paper, signed in the presence of witnesses. Call him on it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s the least I can do. Say, how did you even get into this mess?”

  “Some man called Teddy Jo called it in.”

  Kate hesitated. “Be careful with Teddy Jo,” she said softly.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t have anything solid, but there is something that bothers me about Teddy. Just watch him carefully if he ever shows up.”

  I hung up. After Nataraja, the head of the People in Atlanta, Ghastek was the most talented of the Masters of the Dead. And also the most dangerous.

  “Are you off the phone?” Raphael inquired mildly.

  “Yes.”

  A hint of danger added edge to his smile. “Good.”

  When one says “pounce,” most people typically think of a cat. Maybe a dog. But none of them can manage to pounce quite as well as a horny male werehyena.

  It took us nearly forty-five minutes to get out of the house, partly because Raphael had jumped me and partly because I had lingered. I lay next to him, wrapped in his arms, and tried to sort it out, and all the while my brain feverishly pulled apart my emotions, the secret creature inside me purred and snuggled up to Raphael, blissful in her simple happiness.

  Raphael went all out: black jeans, black T-shirt, black jacket, enough knives to fight off a gaggle of ninjas. At least he didn’t wear leather, or we would’ve caused a slew of traffic accidents.

  He had also called his mother. During his life, Alex Doulos was a Greek pagan, and he did worship Hades. Aunt B didn’t know the particulars. Raphael didn’t mention that her mate’s shade was trapped behind a ward by some sort of necromancer. We both agreed that she could be spared that knowledge.

  “What’s bothering you?” Raphael asked, as I slid the Jeep into traffic. The magic had dropped again during the night. At least we could speak without yelling over the roar of the water engine. “Was the morning not good for you?”

  He was worried. If he knew how completely he’d blown my socks off, his head would swell to twice its normal size. I tried my best not to laugh. “Sex, it’s what for breakfast.”

  “Seriously?”

  “It was great.” The best I ever had, but he didn’t need to know that. “Couldn’t you tell?”

  “You never know. Women are more complicated.” He shook his head. “If not that, then what is it? You have that pinched look on your face.”

  “Aren’t men supposed to be bad about reading women’s faces?”

  Raphael sighed. “Not when they are reading the face of a woman they’ve obsessed over for the last six months. Tell me.”

  I didn’t say anything. He would think less of me if I did.

  “This is one of my hang-ups,” he said. “I’ll keep asking you what’s wrong until you tell me.”

  Fair enough. “I’m a professional,” I said. “I went through the training, got knighted, the whole thing. I have decorations for meritorious service. But I have to rely on Kate to get the People to talk to me. It bothers me.”

  He waited for more.

  “Back in Texas, my partner and I took out a group of loups. My partner caught Lyc-V and went loup. I killed her. The Order tested me, but I got the all clear.”

  “How did you manage that? The virus is in your blood.”

  “I had a silver ring implanted under my skin in my arm just below the armpit. It pinched off my blood supply and then I shot liquid silver into my veins. It killed the virus. I cut my wrist to bleed out the dead virus cells, and the ring kept Lyc-V from the rest of my body from entering my arm.” The mere memory made me want to curl in pain.

  “That was insanely dangerous. You could’ve lost your arm.”

  “I almost did. But the blood work came back clear, and the amulet in my skull, the one you pulled out during the flare, kept my magic from leaking into an m-scan. I was given a clean slate, but they still shipped me off to Atlanta. Ted Monahan, the knight-protector, put me on the back burner. Before coming here, I was on the way to becoming Master-at-Arms, Firearm.”

  Raphael nodded. “I take it that’s a big deal.”

  “Very. I had all of my security briefings, passed all of the tests. All that remains is the formal nomination from my chapter’s knight-protector. But Ted will never do it.”

  “Why not?”
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br />   “Because he senses there is something wrong with me. He isn’t sure what, and until he figures it out, I’m the only knight without any active cases. I don’t even have an office.”

  Raphael’s jaw took on a stubborn set. I had seen it before a few times, and I knew what it meant. “I know that look.”

  He turned a dazzling smile at me. “What look?”

  “Promise me that you’ll cause no harm directly or indirectly to Ted by acting on my behalf. I’m dead serious, Raphael. Promise me.”

  “What he’s doing to you—”

  “Is exactly what I would do in his place. I knew the risks when I got into the Order. The Order has done absolutely nothing to renege on the terms of our bargain. All the fault lies with me. I deceived it, and if discovered, I’ll pay the price. I accept that.”

  “What is the price?”

  A spike of anxiety pinched me. My throat closed up for a moment. “They’ll throw me out on my ass.”

  “Is that all?” he asked. “Are you sure they won’t send someone after you to make sure you don’t join the opposite side?”

  “I’m sure,” I said. “Their conditioning is very good. It would take a lot to break my devotion to the Order even if they put me out on the street. Promise me.”

  “Fine. I promise.”

  We drove in silence for a few minutes.

  Raphael’s eyes darkened. “Maybe we should be careful with public displays of affection.”

  I gave him my thousand-yard stare. “Oh no. I think you misunderstand the nature of our relationship. You are mine. If there is an attractive female in speaking range, you will be publicly affectionate to me. Otherwise I’ll end up pistol-whipping them off you, and I’m pretty sure injuring innocent civilian hussies would be considered ‘conduct unbecoming a knight.’”

  Raphael showed me the edge of his teeth in a slight smile. “And what will Ted think of you shacking up with a bouda?”

  “Ted is welcome to show me a section in the Order’s regulations that forbids me to do so. My knowledge of regulations is extremely extensive. I can quote entire passages from memory. I guarantee that I know the rules much better than Ted.”