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"I’ll take that as your thank-you, I guess," Jaden said, "since it’s obviously all I’et"

"Take it however you want," Lyra replied "As long as you take it and go I’ht now and lucky for you, not in the e my mind" When her words seemed to amuse him for some perverse reason, Lyra narrowed her eyes and added, "Go away"

She thought, and hoped, he would leave now that his heroics were finished Instead, he surprised her by lingering And she surprised herself by not turning and walking ahich is what she knew she should have done Now that she had stepped closer to him, she was unable to avoid his scent He smelled unmistakably of vampire, the faint whiff of some rare and ancient spice that Lyra doubted he could even smell himself, just as she’d been told (snarled at, more like) on several memorable occasions that her breed stank of wild animal musk She had never seen anyone but a vae, and she certainly saw nothing wrong with the wolf scent

But Jaden wasn’t reacting norh she had some dread disease He simply acted… interested And it had affected her, Lyra realized, because she didn’t find hiood to her Really good Good enough to make her want to roll over on her back and--

She took a quick step back, sucking in a breath as she realized as happening to her Her skin had warreedily drinking in Jaden’s vampire ht little buds, and it had nothing to do with the cold Her sex ollen and slick already, deet him behind her and let him… let hih he were the Hellhound hi her to the underworld for her disloyalty to the pack He watched her steadily, his eyes still blue but grown decidedly lowing blaze of blue And she knew she was in trouble when he took two steps toward her, closing the distance until he was only inches fro her face

Only pride kept her froround, even when those unusual eyes dropped to her lips She licked thehten She decided it was not to her advantage that Jaden was only perhaps an inch taller than she She’d always hated the way the ht and brawn to try to intiht she was tall for a wo When those men had tried to move in on her, their mouths hadn’t been so very close, so evenly matched with the position of her own If Jaden leaned in just a bit, he would have her

Lyra couldn’t let that happen But the thought of it was so led pleasurably Her fingers flexed, itching to grab hi," he said softly, his British accent doing terrible, forbidden things to the o on my own territory You shouldn’t even be here, Lyra You know the wolves are banned fros to the Lilim now So this is twice I’ve hts to tear you apart for crossing the line"

It was a threat, but she knew instinctively it wasn’t a real one Killing her was the last thing on Jaden’son hers Still, she knew the reality of the situation would intrude soon enough, and at that point she was going to have to get away froh, his next words set her already frayed nerves on edge

He tilted his head, putting her in ether benevolent cat

"What are you up to, here? First it was hiding in that safe house in Chicago, and now you’ve turned up in a small town in Massachusetts that just happens to be the ho for?" He drew even closer "Spying so you can run back and tell your leader what a dynasty full of cats looks like, are you? Or were you thinking ouldn’t notice if you holed up here for a while? What are you running from, Lyra?"

Lyra sith a dry click, and the words wouldn’t come He would think what he would think, she knew It didn’t matter what she said His kind didn’t understand hers, and never would And he would never understand the desperation she’d been grappling with, looking for ideas, or even scraps of ideas, that ht save her

It was a shame she couldn’t have stayed, seen more She’d really hoped to find a way to see Lily, without Lily seeing her, of course, and study hooman with so much power and responsibility conducted herself Was there some secret to the way she walked, moved, talked? Why had they allowed her to clai for dominance? The whispers she’d heard of the human woman’s ascendance to the upper echelons of vampire society had been true But as insane as it had sounded to all the wolves who had heard the rumors, Lyra no the rest was true as well This was now a dynasty of Cait Sith, the vampire cat-shifters, no matter the new name they had taken And if there was a more poisonous relationship than the one between that bloodline and her kind, she’d never heard of it