He hadn’t thought of it that way. But then, he’d grown up keenly aware of what he was: a dhampire from a shrinking line of royalty, who had arrogantly expected to take over the clan one day—until the wake-up call that said, no, the world didn’t revolve around him. He might not like the role he was born to play, but at least he’d known about it his entire life.

“You can make your own rules.”

“Oh,” she said silkily, “I do make my own rules. And I never break them.”

“Like what? What is one of your rules?” He was starting to think one had something to do with driving dhampires crazy. “No one will ever own me again.” She raised her chin in that stubborn set he was beginning to admire. Especially because it bared the slender column of her throat and forced her to arch her back the way it did when he was driving between her legs. “I will never belong to anyone—I will die before I allow that to happen.”

He remembered how she’d freaked out when Shade said that she belonged to them, and he wondered how encompassing her self-imposed rule was. “What are we talking about, Sin? You don’t want anyone to own you… or your heart?”

She laughed bitterly, and entered the Harrowgate. “I don’t have a heart for anyone to take.” Con slung his jump bag over his shoulder and followed Sin into the cavelike enclosure of the Harrowgate.

I don’t have a heart for anyone to take. Bullshit. Granted, she didn’t seem to give a crap about anyone but herself, and maybe Lore, but Con had once witnessed the way she’d wrapped her body around Shade and Runa’s child to protect the boy from an evil fallen angel. She’d used herself as a shield, and concern for the baby had darkened her expression when she’d seen the blood on his skin—blood that turned out to be hers.

Sin the Hardass definitely had a heart. And something inside him was itching to goad her into seeing how wrong she was. But why was proving he was right so damned important? Because she tests you. Because she’s untamed, unpredictable, and you’ll accept any challenge if it seems impossible.

Yeah, okay, that was why. He was easily bored, always on the lookout for ways to keep from going out of his ever-loving mind. It didn’t always pan out. His quest for excitement had nearly gotten him killed a few times, had taken him down some dark paths, and in a roundabout way, it had gotten him in the situation he was currently in.

He’d become a paramedic in part because Eidolon had forced his hand, but there was also an allure to doing something he’d never done. He’d been partnered with Luc, who was as eager to risk his neck as Con was, and who had instigated the bet that had gotten Con into Sin’s pants. Gods, life took some strange, bumpy turns.

Con palmed the map of North America, and Sin crowded close. He could smell the damned male warg on her, and his muscles twitched with the need to hightail it back to town to kill him. “Where to now?” she asked, as he tapped out the map.

“Montana. The northern Rockies,” he said, more sharply than he’d intended. “It was one of the places Lore indicated on his outbreak chart.”

“Well.” She gave him a fierce poke in the shoulder. “Aren’t you a grumpalufagus?” The door shimmered open, and cool air that smelled of pine trees flooded the small space. He practically leaped out into the twilight-drenched forest, needing to get away from her. “You nearly got us killed,” he said, knowing it wasn’t fair to blame her, but the image of her kissing that bastard wouldn’t go away.

“I also got the gate opened,” she pointed out, and he clenched his fists. “We could have gotten out of the town even without your Council leader buddy.” “It was reckless and stupid, and you won’t do it again.”

“Won’t?” She jammed her fists on her hips. “Won’t? You have no say in anything I do.”

His jaw tightened. “When it comes to wargs, you will listen to me. I know them. I know how they react, I know how they fight, and I know how they lust—” “Oh, for the love of God, put a butt plug in the male tough-guy crap. I know what I’m doing. I’m damned good at killing and f**king, and I’ll use either of those weapons—”

Blinded by fury, he gripped her by the arms, hauled her up against him, and took her mouth. There was nothing gentle about the kiss at all. It was about wiping the other male out of the picture. It was about dominance and all that male tough-guy crap. It was about making sure that all his intimacies with her were about anger or pure lust, because he couldn’t afford to soften.

Not that she’d allow that to happen. She squealed in outrage and stomped on his foot. Pounded against his chest. Then she bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. When the blood hit her tongue, she jerked, but the sharp pleasure-pain drove him harder, and he thrust his tongue against hers, stroking, licking, forcing her to taste him.

And then she wasn’t fighting anymore. She didn’t need to. The razor edge of a blade was biting into his groin, and he froze as solidly as an ice sculpture.

“Kiss me again without my permission,” she whispered against his lips, “and I’ll geld you and sell your balls to a Ruthanian specialty meats shop. Understood?”

“You won’t do that,” he whispered back. “You’d miss them too much.”

Sin snorted and made the blade disappear into her pocket as she stepped back. “Men are always overestimating the worth of their ge**tals.”

That fast, his anger was gone, and he threw back his head and laughed. “Come on,” he said. “We have work to do.”

Ten

They hadn’t gone more than a dozen yards along a worn game trail when a shot rang out, silencing the crickets and sending the squirrels that had come out for their last foray before nightfall skittering into their holes in the trees. Sin and Con ran toward the sound, and in just a few yards they were following more violent battle noises and the stench of blood.

A lot of blood.

The scent grew stronger as they rounded an outcrop of rock and found two dead people, probably werewolves, beneath a bush.

“Wargs,” Con whispered, confirming her suspicions.

“Born or turned?” She didn’t see any telltale marks to indicate that they were pricolici, but the marks could be covered by their clothing. Or blood.

“Don’t know.”

A scream tore through the air, and they crashed through the brush, not bothering with stealth, not even as they broke onto a trail and into the middle of a slaughter. “Oh, God.” Sin skidded to a halt. There were two small cabins tucked away in the forest, but they must have housed several families. They were battling, some in warg form, and some still in human, using axes and knives. One male was firing a shotgun at a leaping werewolf.

The ground was soaked with blood, and a child lay dead on a porch. A child. A big male swung his arm, severing a female’s head with his claws as she pleaded for mercy. “Diseased varcolac scum.” The words were warped by his animal muzzle, but the hatred was as clear as the sky above.

Rabid fury exploded in Sin, and she launched at the born wargs, whose battle gear set them apart from the others. Her throwing knives took out one, and her Gargantua dagger ended another. She lost track of time, of control, and though she knew Con was tearing through the pricolici like a tornado through a trailer park, her concentration was fully centered on causing pain.

Finally, nothing moved. Sin stood in the middle of the small camp, numb. Con was still hopped up from the battle, his fangs as large as a mountain lion’s, his muscles twitching. Sin sensed the darkness in him, the battle and bloodlusts that should have triggered her own, but for once, she was just numb.

The born wargs had managed to take out everyone before they’d fallen victim to Sin’s blades and Con’s hands.

“Son of a bitch,” Con said roughly. His chest still heaved with exertion from the fight. “They did it. Someone leaked the fact that only the varcolac are affected.”

“You think it was a Councilmember? There are probably staff members at UG who know.” She didn’t mention that his granddaughter and her mate knew as well. He swept the area with his silver gaze, his entire body tense, his expression grim. “It’s possible it was someone from UG, but I’d bet my left nut it was someone on the Council. The varcolac were furious at the meeting. I’m not sure their leader, Raynor, was convinced that SF isn’t a conspiracy to kill them. And Valko… he’ll take any excuse to let the pricolici kill off the varcolac.”

“This whole thing just keeps getting worse.” A sudden, shooting pain streaked down her right arm. She clapped a hand over her shoulder where one of her glyphs, a round sundial-shaped mark, had split in two. Odd. The gashes that usually appeared in her dermoire were straight lines, but this was a zigzag, a perfect Z that didn’t extend beyond the faded black lines of the circle.

Con’s brow furrowed. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” she lied, because the truth was, she didn’t care. Her little sting was nothing compared to the suffering she’d caused. Con’s hand lifted to cup her cheek, and the tender caress of his fingers on her skin might as well have been a wrecking ball, the way it cracked her shield of numbness. Her chest tightened and her throat closed up as all the deaths piled high on her conscience. All of it was her fault, and she suddenly felt like she was drowning in blood.

“I’ve got to fix this,” she whispered. “I’ve got to end it, Con. My life can’t have been about death.” “This will end, Sin—” He paused, his tawny brows drawing together. “Did you hear that?”

She started to shake her head, but then a small cry breached the silence. She didn’t wait for Con. She sprinted toward the sound, and her heart nearly stopped when she saw a woman lying in the open doorway of a shed behind the cabins. She knew immediately what it was: a sick hut.

For dying wargs.

The female shrank back at Sin’s approach, her watery gaze full of terror.