punishment he wants to dish out.
I deserve it. But believe me when I say that no one else will lay so much as the tip of a claw on her skin and live.”
There was another silence on the line. “Ethan? I‟ve known you since I was a child, and I‟ve never heard that in your voice. What exactly is going on between you and Marie?”
He turned his gaze toward the chair where Marie sat wrapped in the blanket from his bed, and she looked up at him at that instant, as if his thoughts had called to her. She was so beautiful it almost hurt him to look at her—art made flesh and infused with grace.
He‟d failed her.
He could never deserve her.
“Ethan?” Kat‟s voice in his ear yanked him back to more pressing matters.
“Find Jack,” he repeated. “I want a neutral observer. They‟ll be forced to let him in.
You‟ve got less than twenty-four hours, Kat. Do your best.”
“I‟ll find him,” she promised. “If you hear from Bastien—”
“Marie hasn‟t been able to establish contact with him or with their priest. When she does, I‟ll get a message to him to contact you.”
He could almost hear through the phone lines her battle to focus on what needed to be done. “Fine. Call me if you can. I‟ll get Jack here if he‟s anywhere on the eastern seaboard, Ethan.”
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“I know I can count on you. You‟ve always been one of the strongest of the pride, even before you discovered your ability to shift, Kat Fiero.”
“Take care of her for me, Ethan. She‟s my sister now.”
He looked over at Marie again. “I will protect her with everything I am, Kat.”
As Ethan clicked his phone closed, he repeated his promise. Turned it into a vow. “With everything I am.”
Several hours later, Marie struggled to wake from a dark and terrifying dream in which bears battled panthers, and the strange lizardlike creatures the landwalkers called alligators snapped at the flesh of the vanquished. She abruptly sat up on the couch where she lay, realizing that it would not take a dream-speaker to translate that dream for her. She was caught in a battle between opposing predators, and her gentle gifts of healing wouldn‟t be of any assistance at all to him.
To Ethan.
She watched as he stood at the table in his starkly furnished strategy room. Other than the couch where she‟d finally dozed off, only a few scattered chairs, a desk, and a large table covered with charts and papers decorated the spacious room. He‟d called it his office, but she‟d been in the palace war room and recognized this place as its twin in purpose. Ethan‟s men surrounded him, discussing strategy and plans for the upcoming challenge. As if he felt the weight of her gaze upon him, he turned those golden eyes toward her, and his heated stare pinned her in place, stealing the very breath from her lungs.
He‟d spoken truly when he named attraction a tame word for what lay between them. If attraction were a single hearth flame, this was a conflagration. An inferno of raging desire. It made no sense at all, and yet it made all the sense in the world.
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Some attractions defied logic. Isn‟t that what the women who came to the temple had told her time and again? Even her brother, when he‟d described his newfound love for Kat, defiance mingled with hope that she might understand and embrace her new sister.
Bastien, who‟d always underestimated himself, finally came fully into his own when he found a warrior woman to stand at his side. But she, Marie, was no warrior. The best she could manage was a few simple tricks with the calling of water.
Her gift was to heal and to aid in childbirth. So unless Travis decided to go into labor during the challenge, she thought bitterly, there would not be much she could offer.
A noise alerted her to movement,
Kristin Vayden
Ed Gorman
Margaret Daley
Kim Newman
Vivian Arend
Janet Dailey
Nick Oldham
Frank Tuttle
Robert Swartwood
Devin Carter