He heard the smile in her voice, a small teasing note. He growled and moved his head to nuzzle against her neck, his mouth whispering over her soft skin. He felt her sudden stillness, the quick inhale. He bit down on the soft, sweet spot between her neck and shoulder, just hard enough to make her yelp, then laugh.

“You’re not that safe, woman.”

“Zev, I know you want to ask Mikhail to release our spirits before you allow him to try to heal you, but it’s important to me that you don’t. Tatijana and Skyler are Dragonseeker. My mother’s brother, Dominic, is here with his lifemate. He’s Dragonseeker. Our lineage is old and strong.”

She sat up slowly, stretching, the beautiful lines of her body seen only through his night vision, there in the absolute dark of their resting place. She’d opened the earth before he’d awakened, but the house sitting above them protected them from the rain.

She didn’t don her clothes right away but turned toward him, just enough to allow him to see the raised scar running from her left breast to her right. Both ends went up and over the soft curves. He reached out and gently traced the scar, from the tip of one breast down the slope to the valley and back up to the tip of the other.

“I will show you someday, just how beautiful your body is to me,” he promised, regretting that he was so weak.

She took a breath as if he had exchanged air with her, and she was able to breathe again. She nodded—seemed to steady herself—and then she went back to business, braiding her long hair with a wave of her hand.

“If something happens there, the four of us can pull you back. Skyler came up with the idea and talked to Tatijana, asking if it was possible. Tatijana went to Dominic and he agreed that it was. We share the same bloodline and we can weave our spirits together.”

He shook his head. “No. Absolutely not. I forbid that. No, Branka.” Was she crazy? Were they all crazy? If he died, he would take not just Branislava with him, but her sister and Fen, Dimitri and Skyler, and her uncle and his lifemate. “No.” He said it again so she knew he meant it. “There’s no discussion on this.”

“Zev, if you die, there is no life for me. I am unclaimed. If I choose to follow you, I’m lost on my own in a world I have no knowledge of. If I stay here, I will live a shadowed, half-life. It is the only way I know to be certain we don’t lose you.”

He took a deep breath and the pain that had been waiting for an opening slammed into him, robbing him of that first real rush of air. He absorbed the blow and waited for his mind to accept what he had no control over.

“I have the right to fight for my lifemate and if my family chooses to fight with me, that is for them to say,” Branislava said softly, defiantly.

He sat up slowly and imagined that he was clean and fresh, just out of a shower, and fully clothed. It was easier than he thought it would be. “No.” He had to move, had to float to the surface on his own. His body needed a fresh supply of blood, but Branislava had given him more blood just before he’d gone to sleep and she would need to feed this evening.

Branislava followed him up to the surface, fully clothed as well. He regretted that. He didn’t want to end their perfect moment with an argument, but he wasn’t going to take the chance of wiping out the entire Dragonseeker line. The generosity of her family, of Fen and Dimitri and her unknown uncle, a stranger to him, was shocking. His own people would have killed him, sentenced him to Moarta de argint—death by silver—or hunted him down and attempted to kill him, because he was mixed blood. He would defend himself and blood would run in rivers.

They moved through the house in silence. He was just a little ahead of her, keeping his teeth clenched and his body as flowing as possible so there would be no jarring as he moved. Lying in the rich minerals of the earth had helped him tremendously. Branislava stayed close to him, but she remained just as silent. He didn’t trust her silence.

His Branka was home in silence. It wasn’t surrender or submission, it was her place of power, not retreat. She had spent centuries as a prisoner, trapped in the ice caves in the form of a dragon, unable to escape the evil of her own father. She had lived there, with Tatijana, in that cocoon of silence, but her mind had absorbed everything around her. Each victim of her father’s, no matter the species, she had sought to learn from. Language, culture, the passing of history, how to fight, how to survive. Her mind was always busy. Zev was very certain, there in the silence, her mind was very busy now.

Fen and Dimitri met them just outside the stone house. The forest was enveloped in the blue-black color of night. The fast-moving storm had left the trees shimmering with crystal drops and overhead, as the clouds swept past with the wind, stars began to sparkle.

“Everything all right?” Fen asked.

Branislava nodded.

Zev gave her his most fierce, intimidating scowl and shook his head. “Not by a long shot. She has a harebrained idea that her entire family is going to tie themselves to me in order to keep anything from going wrong. Dimitri, that includes your Skyler. In fact, she conceived the idea. I absolutely forbid it.” He glared at Branislava again just for emphasis.

She reached out to take the wrist Dimitri offered, her gesture casual. Every muscle in Zev’s body coiled for action, a red-hot rage sweeping through him. The reaction of his wolf was completely unexpected and he was unprepared for the wildness rising in him. He tasted the hot burst of blood in his mouth, took in the scent of his enemy, his vision banding with colors.

Stop it. Her voice was low, but carried a command. I’m feeding from Dimitri. Your brother-kin. It is natural and right and you need to think with your brains not your . . . um . . . you know. You need to put Wolfie back in his cave.

Her laughter bubbled up, infectious and beautiful, spreading through him like a tide of joy. Once again it was her humor that saved him. He found it impossible not to laugh with her. Wolfie? Really? I probably am thinking with my . . . um.

The wolf receded, and he felt stronger for keeping it at bay when he was so obviously vulnerable to the very ugly trait of jealousy. He had refused to even acknowledge that he could feel such a petty emotion, but there it was, intense and demanding. She was right, he definitely had been thinking with his . . . um. He laughed again, grateful she’d freed him from his own failings.

Not failings. We aren’t tied together. Your reaction is primal. You’re a predator, Zev, a very lethal one, and your instincts are what have always saved you. Your instinct is to protect me and to keep all other males away from me. That’s natural.