“Welcome home, my little one,” Jabari whispered as he pressed a kiss to the top of my head. His beautiful accent skipped to my ears, seeming to caress my frazzled nerves. He wrapped his strong arms around me, holding me tightly against his chest. “The Old Kingdom has missed you.”

Jabari represented more than just a mentor. In many ways he was also the voice of the Coven when Our Liege deigned to remain in the background. During the past few decades, I had been absent from Europe and the Coven, preferring to direct my focus to establishing a steady, consistent balance in my own domain. While nothing negative was ever said about my choice, a dark undercurrent had started to form, strengthened by the growing silence I was receiving from Venice. I needed Jabari to protect my back.

“I feared things must be bad to drive you back here, my desert flower,” he murmured, running one hand down the back of my head, smoothing my hair.

I shuddered, struggling desperately to pull myself back together. Jabari was the only vampire in this world that I trusted. He was all I knew of safety and love among my own kind. “Why can’t I sense you?”

“I did not wish to be found.” There was no censure in his voice, just a statement of fact.

“Forgive me,” I said, reluctantly releasing him. “I had few options.”

Taking a few steps away from him, I ran a trembling hand through my hair to push it back from my face. My thoughts were coming back into focus. With a wave of my hand, I extinguished the balls of fire that flickered around the quarry. I hadn’t expected to find the Elder. Hoped and wished, but never expected it. Yet, he was here now, and he would fix everything.

“You are forgiven,” he said, bowing his head in a single, regal nod. “What has brought you to my lands?”

“The naturi.”

Those two words sounded flat and dead to my ears. Something seemed to die inside of me every time I mentioned them. I watched Jabari’s face, but there was no change in his expression. There was nothing to reveal that he was surprised by what I’d said, or that he had known the naturi was once again threatening to return.

“How?”

“Their symbols have begun to appear on trees, and there was a sacrifice at the Indian Temple of the Sun, Konark.” I paused and licked my lips, forcing myself to hold Jabari’s piercing gaze. “Nerian was also following me. The naturi attacked us—”

“How is that possible?” Jabari interrupted, though his voice remained even and calm. “You were to kill Nerian more than five hundred years ago.”

I took a hesitant step forward, holding both hands out to him. “I thought he was dead.”

“Thought?”

I never saw Jabari move. One second he was standing still more than three feet away, and in the next I was flying through the air. My back slammed into the wall of broken rocks. Stars exploded in front of my eyes as my head hit half a breath later. I slid down the wall, my left shoulder striking the ground. Blinking, I looked up to see Jabari step off the obelisk and walk toward me. His expression was still calm and emotionless, but the air tingled now with his anger.

“You were ordered to kill him.”

“His legs were broken and his intestines had spilled onto the ground. I didn’t think he would survive.” I pushed myself off the ground. In my haste, my hand slid in the dirt and rocks, tearing at my palm. Pain screamed through my shoulder and down my spine as I moved.

“The naturi held you captive for two weeks,” Jabari argued. “We never could discover all that they did to you. You were a threat to all nightwalkers and were only permitted to live because Nerian was dead. You should have made sure.”

“It was dawn!” I screamed. Panic fluttered in my stomach, begging me to run. It was only years after Machu Picchu that I discovered Jabari had defended me from the rest of the Coven, which demanded my destruction. He had saved my life not only from the naturi, but from my own kind as well.

“That’s not an excuse.” Jabari’s right hand lashed out, grabbing me around the throat. I didn’t even have enough time to claw at his hand before he tossed me against another outcropping of rocks like a rag doll. “You failed me.”

Pain slashed like lightning through my back as I hit the wall and fell to the floor. “He’s dead now,” I whispered, doubting I had the strength to rise before he attacked again.

“Centuries too late.” His sweet features hardened and his brown eyes had darkened to black clouds in a midnight storm.

My eyes fell closed, holding back the tears that started to gather. I had failed him. Jabari had always been able to depend on me for any request, no matter the task. He had given me so much, and I’d failed him. And now he was going to destroy me just like any other nightwalker who failed to live up to his expectations. A part of me welcomed it, an escape from the pain, but a faint brush of Danaus’s power quickly reminded me why we had traveled to Egypt; the naturi. If Jabari destroyed me, no one would be able to protect my home, my people. It was enough that I had failed Jabari, I wouldn’t fail all those who had come to rely on me.

I opened my eyes at the sound of a foot scraping in the dirt. Danaus suddenly stepped between Jabari and me, the blade of an eight-inch knife glinting in the faint starlight. My body was sore and protesting, but I pushed to my feet. This was not the wisest decision on Danaus’s part nor could I even begin to understand it. Jabari would destroy him before the poor creature could draw a breath, and I still needed Danaus alive.

“This does not solve the problem of the naturi,” Danaus said, his hard voice calm.

“Not only do you fail me, one whom I trusted above all others,” Jabari began, finally beginning to shout, “but you bring this…this human into my domain!”

Standing beside Danaus, I tried to edge in front of him and keep Jabari’s attention on me. “He was the one who captured Nerian. He showed me pictures of the symbols and the sacrifice.”

“You betrayed me!” Jabari closed the distance in a blur, grabbing Danaus by the throat. He pitched the hunter a hundred feet across the quarry as if he were tossing garbage out to the curb. Danaus crashed into a smooth wall of rock, cracking and crumbling stone. I winced, gritting my teeth. The impact alone should have shattered the man’s spine and broken at least one of his shoulders. I started to drag my eyes back to Jabari, the muscles in my body tensed and waiting for the attack, when I saw Danaus pick himself up off the ground. He rolled his shoulders as if shaking off the momentary pain.

Something in my blood froze. After that bone-crushing impact, Danaus should not have been able to move, let alone stand and prepare for yet another attack from Jabari. My thoughts tripped over themselves as I tried to understand how he was now standing. I didn’t know of any creatures other than nightwalkers that might be able to shrug off such a blow. Even a lycan would have been slow to regain his feet.

I think the realization also alarmed Jabari, because I felt the power in the area increase until it was a physical pressure weighing against my chest. The hunter had been upgraded from “bug to be squashed” to “threat that must be eliminated,” regardless of Danaus’s potential uses. I wanted the hunter dead as much as any other nightwalker, but we needed to get some information out of him first.

Jabari lunged at Danaus again, but despite the Elder’s alarming speed, Danaus managed to sidestep him so that the nightwalker’s attack was reduced to more of a glancing blow. However, it was still enough to knock Danaus back a step, sending him down on one knee, his knife clenched in one hand.

I balled my fists at my side. What the hell was going on? Danaus wasn’t using his knife. He was doing what he could to defend himself without attacking Jabari outright. I didn’t know if Jabari had noticed or if he just didn’t care. At least Danaus had realized that we needed the information from the Elder, and so wasn’t trying to kill him. Yet, if this continued, he would have no choice and one of them would end up dead.