"I'm careful, Karl. You know I am. If you need me to take more precautions, I will. More self-defense classes, more shooting lessons, maybe training on another weapon, like a knife. Or carry mace or pepper spray."

God, how pathetic did she sound? The words kept coming, each one underscored with a whine of please, please, please. Please don't leave me, Karl. I'll do whatever you want.

"You could bite me." Hope heard the words, the softest whisper, as if she barely dared give them voice, and she couldn't believe she was giving them voice, that someone else hadn't crept up behind her and spoken them.

Karl didn't move. Just stood there, back to her. He hadn't heard. Thank God, he hadn't heard. Then, slowly, he turned. The look on his face, the horror...

"No." The word was a strangled whisper as he stepped toward her. "Never, Hope. I would never – "

She reeled back out of his reach, her cheeks blazing.

"I-I-I – " She rubbed her throat as if she could push the words out. "I'm sorry."

She fled, stumbling, into the bathroom as he called after her. She locked the door and leaned against it. Burning tears of shame blurred the room. The doorknob turned one way, then the other. A pause.

Then a rap.

"Hope?"

"I-I'm having a bath."

Which was, quite possibly, the lamest excuse she could think of.

"Let me come in – "

"What I said, I didn't mean it. I'm wiped out and I'm worried about Robyn and I'm stressing over what she heard tonight, and I just – I need a bath."

Hope could sense him at the door, but he didn't answer. She had to follow through, but the tub looked an impossibly long distance away. She staggered to it and turned on the tap. Hear that? I really am having a bath.

She undressed and lowered herself into the tub without waiting for it to finish filling. Her words pounded against her skull.

You could bite me.

She couldn't believe she'd said that. Worse, even now, shaking and crying in shame, she wasn't sure she hadn't meant it.

Bile washed over her tongue.

In movies, she'd heard romantic heroines declare they couldn't live without their man, and she wanted to tell them to grow a backbone. But she needed Karl. Without him...

She couldn't bring herself to say she'd die without him, but in the last few years, there'd been times when she'd seen the abyss yawn before her, the chaos hunger grow from a craving to an all-encompassing I-must-have-it need, the demon whispering new ways to feed the hunger. She'd stared into that abyss and she'd known what she could become, and that if she ever became that, she would sooner die.

But she'd always had Karl to pull her back. To support her and teach her to deal with that darkness, to accept and control her demon the way he did the wolf. To tell her she'd be okay, she was doing fine, he was there and they'd handle whatever came.

Even if Karl walked away now, he wouldn't abandon her. He wouldn't stop pulling her back from the edge, being her friend. Just not her lover. She could live without that part of the relationship – she just didn't want to.

But everything Karl did – buying a condo in Philly, switching his territory to Pennsylvania, following her to L.A. –

told her that he was committed to this relationship and he wasn't going anywhere. Even tonight, she knew he'd only been trying to figure out what he needed to change so she'd be safe with him around.

So why was she constantly worrying? Needing proof he planned to stay? Reminding herself that he might not stay and she needed to be prepared for that?

Because she wasn't prepared for it. What terrified her was not Karl leaving, but her fear of Karl leaving. She needed him so badly that she'd risk her life becoming a werewolf to keep him.

What kind of person did that make her? Not one she wanted to be.

"You're shivering."

Karl had picked the lock and come in without her realizing it. Now he was beside the tub, sitting on his haunches, his back against the door, hands folded on his knees.

He straightened. "Watch your feet. I'm going to add more hot water."

He bent at the taps, touched the water, then jerked his hand back. "It's ice cold, Hope."

She mumbled something about it cooling off too fast. Better than admitting that she was so out of it she'd sat in a tub of cold water without noticing.

Karl pulled the drain and Hope watched the water drop, the chug-chug of it echoing in the silent room. When it was two-thirds empty, he replaced the stopper, then nudged her feet farther from the faucet before turning on the hot.

Once it was refilled, he returned to his spot by the door without a word.

"I didn't mean it," she said after a moment.

"I hope not."

Hope's cheeks flamed. "I'm tired, Karl. Absolutely wiped out, and I just started babbling. I feel like an idiot for saying it. I don't want that at all. I was just... babbling."

He moved to sit on the side of the tub, where she had to look at him.

"You know it's not what I want, don't you?" he said. "That when I joke about the mating instinct and dragging you off to a cabin in the woods, I mean you. As you are. I don't mean – "

"I know."

Hope fixed her gaze on her toes bobbing over the water. He turned her face toward him, fingers resting on her chin.

"I mean it. That's not what I want. Consciously, subconsciously, unconsciously... I'm not fighting any temptation to turn you into a werewolf."

When she nodded, gaze down, he lifted her chin.

"You know that, don't you?"

Hope had never thought she was in danger of Karl biting her without her permission, as Clay had done to Elena, or that he'd ever find a way to do it "accidentally." But maybe she did worry a little that he'd prefer it. Werewolves weren't like other supernaturals. Like wolves, they preferred the company of their own kind.

"No," he said, as if reading her thoughts, his gaze locked with her, challenging her to read his vibes for any sign that he was lying. When he was satisfied she believed him, he pulled a washcloth off the rack and picked up a bar of soap.

"I'm not going anywhere, Hope," he said as he unwrapped the soap. "Tonight, I was just furious with myself for being too cavalier about the threat Gilchrist posed. Even before today I've downplayed the threat of you being attacked.