6

“You drank from him, didn’t you?” Dani called over her thickly feathered shoulder to Petra as they flew past a stand of teak that housed three of the Avian’s twenty-two nesting grounds.

Avoiding her best friend’s massive wings, Petra leaned forward and wrapped her arms around the hawk’s neck. “Of course I did.”

“Well, I hope you drained him dry. I hope he could barely breathe. I hope he was coughing and sputtering and losing consciousness—”

“I get it, Dani,” she shouted over the wind. “You want him to suffer.”

Dani glanced back, her hawk eyes flashing with ire. “Did he tell you how close he came to having sex with me?”

“No, you told me, remember?” Petra returned.

“Of course, for me,” Dani went on, “it was all part of the act. We needed to get him alone, get him as vulnerable as possible. He’s a total manwhore, and last night I made sure he chose me.”

This wasn’t a subject Petra felt all that comfortable with. Especially a second time. And yet she couldn’t seem to stop herself from asking, “So, if Sasha and Val were late or hadn’t shown up, were you actually going to—”

“Fuck him?” Dani called back, sounding appalled before she actually snorted. “Hell to the no.”

“You make it sound like a fate worse than death, Dani. The guy’s incredibly hot. And the things he can do . . .” What the hell am I saying? She shook her head. It felt like someone else was running her mouth.

“I don’t want to hear about his magic tongue,” Dani shouted.

Heat flared in Petra’s cheeks. “You can stop now.”

Dani laughed. “Fine, then. His magic penis.”

“Okay,” Petra said, completely mortified now. “I think we should play the quiet game. Don’t you?”

“No. I don’t.” And just to send that message home, Dani dive-bombed into the forest, pulled up right before they would have hit the ground, and then started serpentining through the trees.

Petra gripped the hawk’s feathers, her mouth dry as she panted with fear. “That was unnecessary,” she called through gritted teeth.

“I don’t think so,” Dani called back. “You need your brain shaken up, reworked. You’re talking about this guy being all hot and everything, and all I can think is he screwed my best friend, got her preggers, and couldn’t care less.”

Petra winced. Her best friend’s words cut deep. As they were meant to. “You know my father took away his emotions. He couldn’t feel a thing now even if he wanted to.”

The hawk made an irritated sound. “Are you seriously defending him?”

“No.” And she wasn’t. That would be insane. That would make her foolish and optimistic, and worse yet, a glutton for punishment.

“You totally are,” Dani returned. “Please tell me that blood you took from him didn’t shatter the reality of the here and now, and his major dickhood.”

Jeez. Sometimes Dani could be a major pain in the ass. “Rest assured I haven’t suddenly become blind to reality. But his blood did calm me down. Made me able to think and feel, without pain and depression along for the ride.”

“Well . . . I suppose I am glad of that.” Dani was quiet for a moment. Then, “You think he’ll try to escape?”

Absofreakinglutely. “He tried once already.”

“What?” Dani cried, dropping about eight feet, making Petra’s gut fly up into her throat.

“Christ, Dani! Pregnant back here.”

“Sorry.” She quickly leveled out.

“He got burned, okay? Stepped right into the sun, trying to get past me. Didn’t work out very well. Skin started smoking and all that.”

Dani snorted. “Nice. Wish I could’ve seen that.”

“He’s not going anywhere. Val and Sasha are standing guard inside the cabin.”

“That should be interesting.”

“Yeah.”

“You hope he doesn’t go, don’t you?”

“What?” Then she sighed. “Oh, Dani, my love, he has the blood.”

Dani’s hawk made a screeching sound at that, then started circling the waterfall below and the gathering stones beside it. The stones that marked their borders, and that welcomed all outsiders to their world. “All right, vamp girl,” she called back. “Before we land, I really need you to repeat after me.”

Petra rolled her eyes. “What is it?”

“I. Hate. Synjon. Wise.”

Petra laughed. “Fine. Simple enough.” She raised her voice to the wind. “I hate Synjon Wise.”

“Barely convincing,” Dani drawled. “And this too: I will never let him touch me again.”

Petra’s laughter petered out. Now that one wasn’t so simple, and Petra didn’t want to even look into why that might be. She’d had enough worrisome admissions today.

Dani squawked at her. “You’re hesitating. You shouldn’t be hesitating. Hesitating will get you into trouble.”

“Shit, Dani. Look at me. I’m already in trouble. Seven months’ worth.” She laughed. “And I kinda have to touch him if I’m taking his blood.”

Dani glanced over one feathered shoulder. “Yeah, but he doesn’t have to touch you.”

“Look out! The tree!” Petra called, pointing ahead. “Jeez. Come on, Dani, focus. Mom and baby don’t have the ironclad shifter belly.”

Smooth and easy, Dani banked around the massive tree, then came in for a landing just outside the rock wall of the gathering stones. Petra slid off her back, spotting her mother already seated beside Sara on several small, flat boulders in the center of the stones. Petra’s blood sister. She still couldn’t get used to that concept. Neither of them had noticed her yet. They were deep in conversation, and for one second Petra felt a splash of jealousy move through her. Sara already had one mother. She didn’t need Petra’s too.

“Hey, Bestie,” Dani called out to her.

Petra stopped, realized she’d been walking toward her mother and Sara, and glanced over her shoulder.

Dani’s hawk eyes narrowed. “You never repeated that last bit.”

No, she hadn’t.

“I will never let him touch me again,” Dani urged.

Petra gave the hawk a quick grin. “Thanks for the ride, Bestie. I owe you.” Then she made her way toward the gathering stones and the family she barely knew.

• • •

Phane couldn’t take his eyes off the female hawk. He stood on the very top of the highest rock within the gathering stones and stared. Every member of his family that could handle sunlight—except Ly, of course, who had once again refused to come—was seated and waiting a few feet below him. Like Helo, Phane had also been curious about the Rain Forest and its creatures. After living all of his life among vampires, Phane had wanted to know about that other part of himself. The one that had never been discussed or revealed. But in all that time—hell, even back at the house in SoHo—he’d never contemplated another being like himself.

He felt his hawk scratch inside his skin as he watched the female shift from avian form to human. In the air, gliding, swooping, touching down, she’d been fucking magnificent. But on land, in her female form . . . Shit, he’d never seen anything or anyone so hot. She was the perfect height, not too tall, not too short. Her body was a mix of athletic strength and dangerous, supple curves. Her blond hair was cut in a short and sexy style that accentuated her beautiful, sharp-as-shit face, and mysterious black eyes and a ripe mouth that she seemed to work well and often. But it was the piercing—the small ring through her nose—that made Phane’s entire body erupt in possessive desire.

He wanted to lick it, run his fangs over it.

Maybe while she bit his neck.

His cock strained against the zipper of his jeans. Then went steel hard as before his very eyes the last shreds of hawk feathers disappeared and she was completely and totally nude. His obvious, lecherous gaze raked over her spectacular body just seconds before she slipped on a thin electric blue dress.

She’d been naked. In front of anyone who cared to look—and Phane was pretty damn sure there were many who wanted to look—and she didn’t give a shit.

That was his kind of female.

Fuck, he might be in love with her already.

He thought about shifting into his hawk and gliding down to stand beside her. He needed to stake his claim, let her know he planned on mating with her. Not today. Not unless she agreed to it, of course. But soon.

Unfortunately, the dark-haired veana who looked so similar to Alexander’s Sara stepped into the center of the stones at precisely that moment, drawing everyone’s attention. Phane knew the female was in swell, but he hadn’t realized how far along she was. Five, maybe six months. She looked good though, healthy, her face and eyes bright—far better than when he had seen her last.

“Why have you all come?” she asked the small crowd of Petra’s mother, the Roman females, Helo, Phane, and Dillon.

The last was the first to speak. “This land, Petra, your existence—it has all been a closely guarded secret for some time.”

“Try forever,” said the hawk shifter female, who stood in the shadows of a massive boulder, just a few feet behind Petra.

Damn, she was tough. Phane liked tough.

“Right,” Dillon amended. “Well, it’s a secret no longer.”

“Do you speak of more than yourselves?” asked Petra’s mother, Wen, who sat beside Sara.

“I do.”

“Humans?” Wen asked.

“No,” Dillon said. “Our kind. Vampires.”

Wen looked momentarily relieved. “Didn’t they already know? With Cruen as their leader . . .”

“He held this secret pretty damn close to the vest,” Dillon explained. “He didn’t share anything about you with the vampire community, and he told you nothing about us.”