Fun. As if she could possibly enjoy herself doing anything under these circumstances. Kara leaned down and kissed a fragile cheek. "I love you, Mom. I'm right where I want to be." For now.

Her mother was all the family she had, all the family she'd ever had, and her cancer was killing them both. If only Kara could share with her a bit of her own remarkable health. It was so unfair. Kara was never sick. And her mom lay dying.

She rose, unable to remain still a moment longer. "I'm going to heat some soup and make a batch of blueberry muffins. After dinner we can watch a movie. How's that?"

"Lovely."

On her way out of the room, Kara reached for the television on the dresser and flipped on the local news. Glancing back, she caught her mother's sad smile twisting in pain.

It wasn't fair. She slammed the heel of her fist against the blue-painted wall as she started down the stairs. Her mom didn't deserve this. She didn't deserve this.

Kara blinked back the film of moisture that suddenly clouded her eyes. In a few weeks' time, she'd be all alone. Orphaned.

Could you call it orphaned at twenty-seven?

The sun had set while Kara was upstairs, and the main level of the old farmhouse was shadowed with dusk. But she'd grown up in this house, lived here all her life, and could find her way blindfolded.

She slipped into the dark kitchen… and froze.

Silhouetted against the thin gray light coming through the back window was the dark form of a man inside the house.

Her heart rushed to her throat. Her stomach buckled beneath the slam of fear even as her logical mind screeched, It's just a neighbor. But when she flipped the light switch, the sight that met her gaze beneath the fluorescent strips did nothing to dispel her terror.

He was huge, well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and thick, bulging biceps. Tawny hair hung in waves to his shoulders, framing a hard face and cold amber-colored eyes. With his dress pants and expensive-looking shirt, he could never pass as one of the local farmers even if she hadn't known everyone within a ten-mile radius of town. This man was a total, and frightening, stranger.

"What do you want?" Her words came out breathy, forced around the constriction in her throat.

Her mind screamed, Run! But she couldn't. Not with her mother upstairs and helpless. Heart thundering, she gathered every last scrap of her courage, rose to her full five-foot-five, and lifted her chin.

"Get out of my house."

A single, tawny eyebrow rose. "Bare your right breast."

Kara gaped at him as the full realization of his intent sent her pulse into a grinding thud in her ears.

As if reading her mind, the man rolled his eyes with an exasperated grunt. "I'm not going to hurt you."

Kara choked out a laugh. "Right. You just want to see my breast, then you'll go."

"Something like that."

She stared at him, her terrified mind grasping for a plan. Any plan.

He started toward her. Kara lunged for the knife rack, but as her fingers curled around the handle of a small paring knife, the, stranger closed the distance between them. He hauled her against his chest, face to pecs, his large hand clamping around her wrist, immobilizing her.

Swallowing a scream, she struggled against his ironlike hold, but she might as well have been a fly in a spiderweb for all the good it did her. He was too strong. Kara tried to kick him, to knee him, but he only pressed her against the counter, his hips tight against hers as he towered over her.

Terror flashed in her mind like an explosion of light. He was going to rape her. Murder her.

Her pulse began to slow, the terror slipping away as if someone had opened a drain in her head. Even her shallow, desperate breathing evened out as if she'd suddenly, inexplicably, lost her fear of the huge man.

He eased the knife from her hand and returned it to the knife block. "I'm calming you."

And that's exactly what it felt like,, she realized. A strange, unnatural calm settling over her as if an invisible hand were squashing her fear.

"How?" Though the word rang incredulous in her head, her tone, as it left her lips, was one of simple curiosity.

This wasn't right. He shouldn't have this kind of control over her. Her pulse tried to leap fearfully but was instantly stroked into complaisance.

"Stop it." She needed to be afraid of him. He overpowered her. Overwhelmed her. Her senses swam in his nearness, in the elemental scent of wind and earth and pure, raw male. The intoxicating blend teased and tantalized, sending the blood rushing to the surface of her skin in a hot flush of awareness. An awareness that horrified her.

"Let me go."

"I'm not going to harm you. I need to know that you're the one I'm looking for."

"I'm not."

He stepped back, putting a slight distance between them even as he kept tight hold of her wrist. Feeling utterly detached, she watched him reach for her with his free hand, felt the pad of his finger slide down her upper chest to hook into the top of her scoop-neck tee and tug downward.

His eyes flared, those well-sculpted lips compressing as his thumb brushed over the flesh rising above the lace of her bra, tracing the odd stretch marks she'd noticed for the first time around Christmas.

Her gaze caught on his lips, mesmerized by their perfect fullness as a single, disturbing emotion finally broke free of his unnatural control to sweep her imprisoned body. Lust. Delicious fire skimmed over her skin, burrowing deep into her bones and blood, rushing straight down to her core.

He released her shirt as if he'd been burned and met her gaze, his own cool and shuttered. "You are the Radiant."

"I'm the what?" She stared at him, trying to make sense of his words. Of any of this. "What do you want?"

Those amber eyes glowed with a dark determination that would have made her heart pound if he hadn't been tamping her emotions. He slid his free hand over her jaw, his palm rough and callused, his touch not ungentle as his forefinger hooked around the back of her jaw, coming to rest beneath her ear.

"What do you want?"

"You."

The sudden, sharp pressure at the base of her ear stole her thoughts and vision, sending Kara tumbling into a dark, unconscious abyss.

* * *

Chapter Two

Rain fell heavily on Lyon's head and shoulders as he carried the unconscious Radiant out to his BMW, keeping her tucked tight against his body. A surge of protectiveness tightened his arms.

Damn his finder's senses and the connection that linked him to the chosen ones. That connection had to be at the root of the sudden, sharp attraction he'd felt the moment he saw her, though he was certain he'd never been attracted to a Radiant before. Not like this. He tried to focus, tried to escape the awareness, but even through the rain the scent of her, a sweet smell, almost of peaches, pumped the blood straight to his groin.

As he laid her across the backseat, the rain-drops on her cheeks glistened in the overhead light, drawing his gaze to her flawless skin and the sweet curve of her mouth. Her features possessed a simplicity, a girl-next-door freshness, that pleased him. She wasn't beautiful so much as cute, with heir blond ponytail and that one crooked eyetooth. Perhaps not beautiful, but decidedly appealing.

As he released her, the fall of her damp hair brushed his hand like a silken caress, a touch that sent heat spiraling through his veins. He gave a rueful snort. He had a miserable couple of days ahead of him if he didn't find a way to curb the unfortunate rush of need he felt every time he touched her. Slamming the door closed, he slid into the driver's seat and started the car.

The windshield wipers kept a steady rhythm as the road cut through the center of the small Missouri town, past a strip of nightclubs and burger joints. Cars lined the street on both sides as he headed east on the two-lane toward the highway that would take them back to Great Falls, Virginia, and home.

The sound of a feminine groan behind him had his neck muscles spasming. She shouldn't be waking. The pressure he'd exerted should have been enough to knock her out for hours. Barely ten minutes had passed.

The woman was stronger than he'd thought.

Lyon glanced in the rear view mirror as she pushed herself upright, brushing a loose strand of hair out of her face with groggy awkwardness.

"Where am I?" He knew the moment she remembered. A thick wave of tension rolled off her, her eyes widening in alarm. "Take me back!"

"Easy, Radiant. I'm taking you home. I don't know how you got all the way out here, but you've been marked by the goddess."

Pitching forward, she leaned between the front bucket seats. "You're going the wrong way. Take me back!"

"Your life here is over."

"You idiot. She's dying!"

She sat back… or he thought she had until her hand shot past his face and grabbed the steering wheel, jerking it hard to the right as they passed close to a row of parked cars.

Lyon wrenched the wheel, but it was too late. The car slammed into the back of a Toyota, inflating the air bag in his face, knocking him back, stunned. When his head cleared, he whirled to find himself staring at the empty backseat, a gust of damp, chilly air blowing in from the open door.

"Mick, I need to borrow your keys!"

At the sound of the woman's voice, Lyon twisted toward his own door and caught sight of the Radiant hopping into an old blue pickup truck across the street. Before he could disentangle himself from the deflated air bag, the truck squealed away from the curb and took off, leaving two young men watching, bemused.

Dammit to hell.

Lyon tried to back up, but the bumper of his BMW was caught on the Toyota. Swearing, he threw open the rear door and leaped out in a frustrated fury as the two men sauntered across the street to inspect the damage.

"Jerry's going to be pissed when he sees what you done to his car, man."

"Jerry will get over it," Lyon snapped, and lifted the front of the BMW until the bumpers unhooked.

"Dude!" One of the men laughed. "Fucking Superman."

"Yeah." Lyon climbed back into the car, pushed the air bag out of his way, then spun the vehicle in a tight circle and headed once more to the farmhouse. Anger slicked his palms as he gripped the wheel. What was the matter with her? Every Therian female dreamed of waking with the mark of the chosen one on her breast and finding her true mate among the Feral Warriors. Yet this one had run halfway across the continent and was still running.

Vhyper's words replayed in his head. I wonder if she even knows what the mark means. Was it possible she didn't even know she was Therian?

Sweet goddess. That would explain much—why her fear had leaped at the sight of him, why she'd fought to escape.

Lyon pushed the air from his lungs in a harsh burst. He'd thought he was dealing with a reluctant Radiant, or at the very least, a Therian who'd intentionally turned her back on her people. Now he had to consider the possibility she thought herself human.

Pulling into the driveway of the yellow clapboard house, he parked behind the old truck and debated the best way to extricate the woman from her human world. There was no time left to ease her out.

As he opened the car door and stepped into the rain, he heard a shout behind the house.

"Mom?" The alarm in the Radiant's voice twisted something deep inside him. "Momma!"

Lyon took off at a run, the rain stinging his face with small, cool pellets, soaking his hair and clothes. When he reached the come? of the house, he found her kneeling in the wet grass beside the slight, prone form of a woman. In the swath of light from the open back door, the downed woman's soaked white gown clung to her emaciated frame like a second skin.

Crying and frantic, the chosen one tried to lift the woman without success. Even an unascended Radiant should have double the strength of a human, simply from absorbing the energy of other Therians over the years. But this one had none, a sure sign she'd been cut off from her own kind for most, if not all, of her life. The new Radiant of the Ferals had most certainly been raised human.

Hell.

As he neared her, a twig snapped beneath his boot, drawing her wild, hate-filled gaze.

"My mother must have heard us in the kitchen. She tried to come after me. You killed her!" Emotion swirled around her like harsh fire in the cold rain.

"She's not dead." His boots slurped in the muddy grass as he reached her side. "I can feel her life force." Barely. The woman's hold on life was as thin as the finest thread. "She's human. She's not your mother."

A sound of disbelief escaped the Radiant's throat on a burst of humorless laughter. "You're insane, you know that? Just leave us alone."

"Radiant…"

"Don't call me that!"

"I don't have another name to call you." Pushing his dripping hair back from his face, Lyon knew he was handling this badly. He was the wrong warrior to woo her back into the fold. Tighe would turn on the charm. Vhyper the humor.

Lyon had no softness in him to give this woman. To give any woman. He was the chief. The leader. And she would simply have to do as she was told.

"I'm Kara. Just…" The anger on her face crumbled, tears welling in her eyes until her face was a solid sheet of moisture. "Help me. Please. She's going to die right here if I don't get her inside. I'll give you whatever you want. Just help me save her."

Her plea, trembling with desperation, tore through his determination, slamming him with guilt and the harsh understanding of the damage he would do… had already done… by trying to extract her from her human world with as much finesse as a berserker on a rampage.

Kara stumbled up the rain-slicked steps to the back door, a desperate pounding in her ears as she glanced over her shoulder at the stranger following with her mother. There was a terrible irony in the fact that her kidnapper was the only one who could keep her mother from dying in the rain.