He waved all the other death vamps away, and like a dark fog, they slipped into the shadows and hidden pathways of the cavern and disappeared. When they were gone, he released Elise, giving her a shove so that she fell forward, hitting her knees hard.

She was on her feet almost as fast. She crossed the space between and lunged for Gideon, grabbing him, pressing herself up against him, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Fold us out of here,” she whispered.

He tried, but nothing happened. “Can’t. There’s some kind of blocking mechanism, which means that no one else can get in here either.”

Elise drew back and looked at him, at his longish dark blond hair, messed up from the battle; at his dark blue eyes, which she loved so much; at his strong cheekbones and jawline; at his fierce expression.

There was no way out.

Reality struck hard that this might just be the last time she would ever look at Gideon. Funny how she had been thinking in terms of decades and even centuries, when in reality all she really had was this moment with him.

She sat back on her heels and stared at him. The past two years at the Blood and Bite flowed through her mind, the many times she had made love with him, how their time together often turned so beautifully wicked.

At the same moment, she recalled being under her bed as a child, lying on her back, plucking at the super-thin fabric that covered the bottom of the box spring, afraid of who she was, afraid of her emerging powers, alone in her struggles.

She had always been alone. Until Gideon.

Did it all end here? Was Gideon to die because he’d cared for her enough to follow her trace into this cavern, this trap?

In all the time that she’d been with him, she’d never understood the most remarkable truth of all—that she loved him. She loved his ferocity and his attentiveness, she loved his dedication to his men, to the fighting Militia Warriors, she loved his devotion to his sister. She loved him.

Without knowing exactly how it had happened, for the first time in her life, she had fallen in love.Gideon, she sent, just a whisper through his mind. Then she put her lips to his and she kissed him.

For some reason, the thought that he was to die, that his wonderful service as a Thunder God Warrior was to end tonight, became utterly unacceptable. She drew back and ran her hand through his hair, savoring the sight of him, longing suddenly for all the years they wouldn’t have together.

She had been foolish, even reckless, with what had been given to her. She had denied what was right beneath her nose for the past two years, that by some miracle love had found her. Could a woman have ever been more obtuse?

But what would have been different for her if she had known? She looked into his eyes and willed him to understand just how much she loved him.

As that awareness of love flowed through her, something in her heart opened up, opened wide. She drew in a deep breath, so very deep, as though understanding flowed with the air that moved into her lungs. She no longer thought just of herself. Her tidy orderly world had expanded and she thought of him, and what would be right for him, best for him.

Above all, she wanted him to live. If she had been more focused on that part of the equation, rather than blindly insistent on what she could do, he might not even be here right now, trapped. She had wanted to help and had acted hastily. What if she had paused for just a moment, thought a little harder about the situation, maybe even waited while the individual battles raged? Maybe things would be different.

All well and good, but what was she to do now?

She had one goal: to get him out of here, and as she considered the nature of the death vamp’s suffering, she knew what she had to do.

She kissed Gideon one last time. “I think I know a way out of this,” she whispered.

“How?”

“Just trust me.”

“Elise, wait. What are you thinking?”

She rose to her feet. “Vampire,” she called out. “We’ve said our goodbyes.”

Gideon had a really bad feeling. He didn’t like the look in Elise’s eye, as though she’d made up her mind about something and it wasn’t good. She needed to fight. He needed to fight. But how? He struggled against his bonds, but they held.

The vampire returned, a swagger in his step, his dark eyes cold and merciless as flint. “So soon?”

Elise approached him. “I think you’ve erred.”

“Really. I doubt that.”

“Then tell me this, just how much are you suffering since your wife died?”

He grabbed both of her arms and shook her. “Don’t even speak of her, ascender.” His fangs emerged.

Gideon struggled harder. “Elise, don’t do this. Don’t fucking do this.”

She ignored him. She smiled up at the vampire. “Don’t you think my man’s suffering would be better than his death? Don’t you think he should suffer as you’re suffering now? What real retribution would there be in just taking his life?”

The death vampire gripped her arms harder, but a slow smile crossed his face. “You’re making some sense, ascender.”

“You can always come for him later. But for a little while, why not release him, drink me to death, then after he’s truly suffered, you can hunt him down and finish him off.”

“You want him to have a chance.”

She shrugged. “I think you’ve been wronged. I don’t regret my death. It was inevitable. I knew I had a lot of power. If you hadn’t done this, Greaves would have found a way to get rid of me.”

Gideon knew she was working for his release, and the bastard might just fall for it. But if he was thrown out of the cavern, he knew he’d never get back, never have a chance of saving her. He’d lose her forever. “Stop this, Elise. Stop it now. You don’t know what you’re doing, what you’re saying!” He kept shouting and when she didn’t even turn in his direction, he started yelling at the death vamp, telling him to release Elise, to take him instead, to let her go.

The death vamp smiled. “Looks like you’ve got your boyfriend all upset. Maybe you’ve got something here.”

Gideon didn’t stop shouting, but it did no good.

The death vamp issued the order. Before Gideon could blink, two of his comrades had him by his arms and he was flying through nether-space, the image of the death vamp sinking his fangs into Elise’s pale throat the last thing he saw.

When Gideon was back at the campsite, Duncan ran across the rocks toward him and started slicing through the bindings. He saw his sister, shaken but safe. Several ascenders were gathered in a knot around her.

Once freed from the ropes, Gideon immediately folded back to cavern, but the block that the death vamp had put on the pathway back to Elise returned him to the riverbank again and again.

He sank to his knees, not caring that the rocks were hard and something pierced his skin so that he bled. Duncan was there, but he waved him away. He wasn’t exactly aware that he shouted to the heavens and waved his fists and yes, he wept, tears streaming down his cheeks.

How had this happened? And how had he failed to prevent it? In his strenuous effort to keep Elise at arm’s length, he’d succeeded in making it impossible to work as a team with her. He was a man of war. He battled the enemy in teams all the time. He strategized, worked with his men, and they worked with him. They trained and plotted. He knew their minds. They knew his. Sometimes, in the heat of battle, it took only the smallest flicker of an eye to understand what one of his fellow warriors meant to do.

He should have done no less with Elise, engaged her, plotted with her, trained her. But his fear of getting too close had made it impossible to really know her or to work with her, so that in the end what he feared the most, her capture, her imminent death, had been exactly what he got.

And she’d done this for him. She had found a way to set him free, but he wasn’t free and never would be. He was bound to her as tightly as the moon to the earth. If she died now, how could he go on without her?

Finally, he stopped shouting at the heavens. He’d been a fool, insisting he didn’t want her in his life, didn’t want to care about her or worry about her, but right now, he would give his life to have that responsibility laid on him, to have his woman beside him, to hold her once more, to give himself to her without reservation.

Deep awareness dawned.

He loved her. He had tried so hard not to love her that in all those months at the Blood and Bite he’d failed to notice that he’d probably passed that point the first night he’d been with her. Everything made sense now, all the tumblers fell into place, his heart opened and he saw all his truths, that no man should live without love, no human, mortal or ascended, should deny himself love, war or no war.

He’d been foolish, utterly foolish, and that’s what had brought him here, his knees bloodied, his heart and mind anguished, his woman even now at the mercy of a grieving maniac. If he’d understood his heart even a little, he would not have taken such a risk tonight, with only Duncan as backup. He would have had a clearer view, his usual warrior’s view. He would have brought reinforcements, a large-scale force, and not relied exclusively on a vision that he knew damn well could be used equally by the enemy. His thoughts had been narrowed down, not broad enough. He saw that now.

He calmed his mind a little more and turned inward. He opened his heart then he realized he still had a mind-link with Elise. The link had been created just before the attack at the White Tanks so that he could receive her stream of battle images.

Maybe if he worked with her, together they could figure a way out of this. It took time to drain a person to death. She wouldn’t be gone yet.

He opened the link. If they were fated, as he now believed they were, then he might be able to communicate with her, even through the powerful block the death vamp had created.

Elise, he sent.Can you hear me?

Elise had tried for the past two minutes, as the monster at her neck took her blood, to reach out to Gideon telepathically, to find him, to tell him of her latest vision and what she knew, what the monster had failed to conceal from her.