By the time she had the last thought, she was breathing hard, feeling a little panicky and a lot alone in the cold darkness of the night. Everything that had been so comforting a moment ago seemed reckless and vastly dangerous, and she began to regret walking away from the safety of her home. Her heart was throbbing in her chest, clamoring near her still-bruised lungs. Everything, every nuance of it, reminded her of how weak she still was, of how vulnerable she was … now and even before all of this. The difference was, she had been highly ignorant of it before. She’d had all of that ignorance unceremoniously removed from her.

She turned back. Her casual stroll had taken her only a block and a half away. Too far. What if … ?

Docia barely made it two steps before she saw the stranger on the street. Or maybe he was one of her familiar neighbors and her state of panic was making him look ominous. It didn’t matter. She had no interest in finding out either way. She was breathing hard, her breath curling out of her in long, frosty plumes, and she put energy into her steps, holding on to the belief that if she acted as though she knew what she was doing, knew how to take care of herself, it would somehow protect her from any dangers, real or imagined, on her quiet suburban and historical street.

Still, she glanced his way too frequently. She could barely make him out as he moved around the edges of the light, his slower, longer stride making him look too much like a stalking beast for her imagination’s peace of mind. Why didn’t he cross through the light? Why move purposefully around it? The only reason she could conceive of was that he didn’t want to be seen or identified, and that understanding made sickness swirl in Docia’s stomach. She hurried toward home, but even if she made it to her tiny house, there was no Jackson there to protect her. She had sent him out, sent him away.

She was clearly a moron.

You should have at least kept the guy with the gun close by for a few more days, her inner voice said dryly. This wasn’t the new voice, this was the familiar voice of sarcasm she’d always used against herself throughout her life. Honestly, she could use a bit of her new voice right then, that voice that seemed to give her strength. Where the hell was it when she needed it most?

Keep calm. Panic will never serve you well. Always remain calm.

And there it was. Filtering through her with confidence and focus, her new voice settled her crazed breath and pulses as if it had cast a spell on her. The necessitated calm drifted over her, and suddenly she did feel like that movie heroine spy out to make a smooth exchange of information, keeping her cool in the most dangerous of situations.

And then the shadow crossed the street toward her and she stopped, squeezing her knees together to quell the sudden urge she had to pee her pants.

So much for smooth and cool.

The shadow was on her from one breath to the next, a blitz of movement and sudden streaking through the edge of the light. It glanced off his dark jacket and ominous ski mask, but more important it glanced off the expanse of metal he was slamming in the direction of her belly.

The sudden stop startled Docia, kept her from screaming like a crazed banshee hopped up on meth at a grunge metal concert. She stared down at the hand that had appeared out of nowhere, large and masculine and strangely bare of any gloves considering it was really cold, allowing her to see that the very large knife had punctured the palm and run straight through the back of it. As the seconds ground down to infinitesimal ticking instants, Docia comprehended several things. One, the shadow man had indeed meant her ill. For some reason, he had just tried to gut her. Two, a second man she hadn’t even noticed had appeared out of nowhere and thrust himself between her and the knife.

Then, as if the agony of being run through meant nothing to him, the rescuer grabbed the attacker by the back of his head and yanked him down to meet the upward thrust of his knee. There was the resounding crack of bone smacking into bone, and the attacker fell dazedly to the ground.

This, she thought inanely, is the part where I am supposed to run. Oh, and that screaming thing would really come in handy, too.

Yet she was rooted silently to the spot, watching with fascination as the rescuer, a lean man about half a foot taller than the other guy, stood over his apparently unconscious victim, reached out with long, bare fingers to grip the handle of the wicked-looking blade run through his flesh, and slowly pulled it free of his punctured hand. He made only the smallest of sounds, like a deep sort of grunt, which sounded far more like aggravation than a pained reaction. The sound of the knife itself, that strange suctiony kiss as metal withdrew from flesh: That was a sound she feared would echo in her memory at odd moments in the future. She watched with peculiar fascination as he shook his own blood from the blade and onto the unconscious man, then spat something out at him, some kind of foreign invective that she suspected put a curse on him and all his offspring to come.

Docia felt herself shaking in her own skin as she looked up into what she could only describe as golden beauty. He was gold of hair, a dark and white, uneven blond that rested in ghosts of curls around his head, just light enough at the tips to give him a nimbus effect, like a living savior stepped free of a fresco painting. His eyes were mesmerizing in the way they matched his hair almost perfectly, that rich gold with a halo of lighter gold around the rims of his irises. It was a compelling color, a fascinating one that was framed by long, gilded lashes teasing on the cusp of being too pretty … if not for the hardness and depth of life she could see beyond those superficial accents. The hardness with which he was looking at her now. He was assessing her, just as she was assessing him. But all he was seeing was a puffy coat two seasons too old, almost a size too small, and a rather frumpy girl stuffed into it who looked as though someone had beat the living Christ out of her.

Well, how convenient, then, that he should look and act so much like a savior come to rescue her. Warm-skinned, tall enough to hurt her damaged neck as she looked up into his face, and broad enough in his shoulders to block out the gray of the sky behind him from her sight. He was dressed inappropriately for such cold, and she thought she might attribute some of the sternness in his face to that.

“My queen?”

He was addressing her, she realized, stifling a bit of a giggle. Yet there was something thrilling and empowering to hear one so beautiful and so obviously powerful address her as though she were somehow greater than he, as if he were possibly subservient to her.

She opened her mouth, but she honestly didn’t know how to respond— not only to such an address, but to the way he had come to her assistance overall. And then there was a moment, standing there in the golden aura of strength and hardness that was emanating from him, when she wondered if her attacker had been the frying pan and her savior was, actually, the fire. It kind of felt that way. Just a little. Seeing as how he now stood over her with a bloody knife in his hand.

He watched as her eyes tracked to the knife he held clutched in his hand, and suddenly he seemed to recall it was there, as if he’d forgotten he’d been stabbed and stood armed in the aftermath. He moved immediately to tuck the blade in at his belt, as though six inches of bloody metal would suddenly seem less menacing at his strong, long waist. The handle of the knife settled in relief against a tucked-in polo shirt that clung to at least a six-pack of well-heeled abs. To say nothing of the powerful pectorals and biceps. He must live in the gym, she observed. If so, she really needed to know which gym. She’d really like to go hang out there. Watching him push weights around as though he owned them would be one of the high points of her existence.

“Docia,” she managed to say at last, sounding all squeaky and fragile when she was going for cool and confident. Crap. Oh, well. He’d have to make allowances for the situation. Maybe if she played it off right, she could come across all genteel and flirty like Scarlett O’Hara. “I … you … thank you,” she ended meekly, acknowledging that she also sucked at genteel and flirty. This lack of confidence was why she was still stuck at a desk as an office manager … with her being the only person to be managed.

“I am ever at your service,” he said, his rich, rumbly voice falling all over her. And then he bowed. It was a slight forward tipping of his body, the most perfect debonair act she’d ever witnessed in her life. And despite his lean, athletic power, it looked comfortable and genuine on him in a way she couldn’t describe.

Wow. For real? Docia resisted the urge to pinch herself, though she highly suspected she was asleep … or maybe still in a coma in the hospital and she’d just been dreaming these past few days.

“Well, as nice as that would be,” she murmured a bit dryly, “we need to get you to a hospital. And the cops. Cops would be good here,” she noted as she observed the immediate area around her and its sense of carefully controlled chaos. An unconscious man, blood dripping into the snow from big fingertips, and battered, vulnerable little her standing toe-to-toe with a rather dangerous-feeling stranger. “I have to call my brother.”

It was a pretty lame thing to say, considering her phone had probably ended up in the drink along with her pretty new old purse. Not to mention a far more flattering winter coat.

Docia rolled her eyes at herself. Granted, she liked her precious pearls of fashion reacquisition well enough, but she was beginning to sound obsessive about it in her own head. Maybe it was because she hadn’t seen so much as a single reflective surface since the morning of the accident. Jackson had gone out of his way to deny them to her in a Nazi-like fashion, presumably because she looked like a hot mess that had been dashed up against about thirty unforgiving rocks on her travels into the Hudson River.

The sudden understanding had her feeling self-conscious over what she must look like to this gorgeous hunk of rescuer. She hadn’t exactly led the search for a mirror with a full battle charge. She didn’t need a mirror to feel hanks of hair shaved away and inroads of stitches crisscrossing her scalp. She’d rather suspect she looked like hell than see proof of it.

She gave the blond god a sour look, as if his extraordinary good looks were proportionately to blame for the wreck she’d made of hers.

“I’ll go call my brother,” she grumbled at him, taking a step toward her house. He reached out to grab her arm, drawing her to a halt. She squealed … no, wait … she screeched, a shrill, obnoxious sound leaping out of her like that alien thing bursting out of people’s chests in the movies. “You idiot! You’ve gotten blood all over my coat!”

They both seemed to freeze for a moment, the air hanging between them more than cold enough to do it and the caustic words dangling like ice crystals, frozen for all to see as the outright thankless, bitchy things they were. That she was.

Docia slapped both hands over her mouth, her eyes rounding with horror. Then they burned, liquid rimming and filling them.

“Hush,” the stranger said to her as he stepped closer, the word not reproachful at all, but soft and gentling. The tack was rather like that of a cowboy to a wild horse, but she was not so upset that she didn’t see him brushing his attentive eyes all around them. She’d seen that before. Hypervigilance. As an adopted sister of the SPD, she’d seen it in cops who suffered from PTSD. It was one of those symptoms that jumped out at you. However, he didn’t wear it as if it were out of control or even out of context. Given what had just happened, it wasn’t out of context for him to be worried about the area. “The Blending takes time. It draws on all the best and worst of what we are and what we have been, whether openly or just in our thoughts. I won’t hold it against you. Not just now, anyway,” he said, taking a moment to tilt half a smile at her. And somehow that half smile was more delightful than most men’s whole smiles. It gave immediate comfort; it flashed a deep dimple and added a ripple of golden light in an almost lightless night to the brushes of gold limning the coronas of his eyes. She barely comprehended what he was saying, who he was, but that one brief expression settled more warmth and well-being over her soul than she had felt in all these past days. Not even waking to Jackson’s familiar face or knowing he had seen to it that she was flawlessly protected had made her feel that she had both feet firmly back on the ground instead of tumbling over the side of a bridge.

“I’m so sorry,” she felt compelled to say to him, in spite of his ready forgiveness.

“Think no more of it,” he insisted, pulling her back in the direction of her house with sure and knowing steps, with those bright eyes that settled on her home in the distance and none of the others. That detail jumped out at her instantly, and this time she was the one looking all around herself in concern for what next danger would be coming out at her. In the end, he was the only one to settle her attention on, seeing as how they’d left the only obvious threat in a dark heap on the sidewalk behind them.