“Oh yeah.” Striker’s mouth twisted cruelly. “You ran away.”

“You murdered hundreds of my people.”

Striker shrugged, as if he couldn’t see what the two things had to do with each other.

“Why did you do it? You flattened the city of Vaticano twenty years ago. You stole power and tortured innocent people. Why did you do it?”

Striker shrugged again. “What are you, a groupie? I did it ’cos I wanted to, kid. I enjoyed it. I’d do it again-”

“No, you bloody wouldn’t,” came a female voice, the voice of the brunette at Nuala’s house. Chalia. Chance’s mother…

Understanding stabbed Bael in the heart.

“You did it for her,” he said slowly. “Because she hurt you.” With every word he became more certain, the knowledge creeping into him like fog.

Striker’s face turned to granite.

“Because she did something to you,” Bael went on. “Because she hurt you so badly it screamed inside you, and all you wanted to do was make everyone else feel as much pain as you. To hurt and maim and burn and slash and kill, because that’s what she did to you. And she never stopped you. She stops you now but she didn’t then. And you went on sucking power out of people so you could destroy more and more, bigger and bigger, until you’d destroyed a city and killed thousands-”

A jolt of power suddenly surged through the scryer, like the shock from ungrounded metal, making Bael flinch and lose his thread.

The view on his scryer tilted, as if someone else had taken hold of the device, and Chalia’s face appeared, pale and shocked.

“It was you,” Bael said, and her lovely dark eyes swam with fear and guilt and pain.

“What did you do?” Bael asked her.

Her hand went to her throat, lovely and unlined even twenty years after Striker had burned and destroyed cities in her name.

“I got engaged to someone else,” she said distantly. “Who are you?”

“Baelvar.” The world had narrowed to the scryer in his hand and the anger pulsing through him.

Chalia regarded him through the scryer. “You’re Kett’s mate, yes? The Nasc. With power.”

Bael clenched his fist and looked away.

Striker laughed softly. “What did she do?”

“Someone else,” Bael said.

“Ah,” he said, but Chalia looked shocked.

“Kett? She’s not the cheating type. Is she? Why would she-you must have been mistaken,” she told Bael, who bristled.

“I saw her with him,” he said, “and unless she sat on a snake and he was sucking the poison out, then I don’t think I was mistaken about what they were doing.”

Striker started laughing.

“It’s not funny,” Bael said, and to his horror his throat swelled as if he was going to cry. “Look, she was just making a point. She doesn’t want to be mated to me. She never did.”

“Ain’t the sort of thing you can break, kid,” Striker said.

“Well, it is. She broke it,” Bael said. The tears were still threatening, so he added, “That’s all. I just wanted to know. Sorry to disturb you,” and let the scryer fall from his grasp, breaking the connection.

Striker’s laughter faded on the evening breeze.

All for the love of a woman. Striker had stolen power and killed thousands in anger because his woman had betrayed him. He’d become this vicious killer who gleefully committed genocide because he felt like it, and all because a woman had broken his heart.

Bael shook himself, trying to escape the specter of his own future, and flew on.

The lion had been a bad choice. Kett knew it, but she still kept on in the same shape, climbing over sheer, slippery rocks to cross the mountains.

She’d broken Bael’s heart and destroyed perhaps forever her own chance of happiness. Not to mention ever having sex again. And for what? To prove her own independence? To make a damn point?

You never learn, Kett Almet, she cursed herself as rough rocks tore at her paws. Ever stop to think maybe you’re the one cursing yourself?

When are you going to stop fighting?

For a long moment she paused, tired and hurt, resting on her haunches on a rare piece of flat ground. Maybe she should give in, go back to Bael, explain and apologize and settle down to…what? Not ordinariness. Life with Bael might be infuriating, maddening and humiliating, but it would also be exciting, passionate and stimulating. It would be…fun.

Maybe-

Something whined past her ear, too fast and too straight to be an insect. Instinct had her on the ground instantly, her feline ears twitching and swiveling, her head whipping around to see where it might have come from.

She didn’t see the shapes at first, but she heard the voices.

“A lion? Up here?”

Hell. She knew this had been the wrong shape. Too conspicuous.

The hunter’s voice was oddly familiar, although she couldn’t place why. She tried to scent him, but then heard the bark of half a dozen dogs, hunting hounds, their scents coming sharp on the wind. If she hadn’t been so preoccupied she’d have noticed them before. Dammit!

She ducked and changed into a gryphon, a quick shift, changing only half her body, claws and wings and beak-

A second shot zipped toward her, so close it ruffled her feathers, and she leapt into the air.

“A gryphon!”

“Hiding with a lion? Not likely!”

“It’s the shapeshifter! We found it!”

Panicked, Kett darted, trying to gain speed, but while a gryphon was graceful and swift in the air, takeoff was a problem. Should have gone for an eagle, she thought as she darted under a hail of crossbow bolts.

One ripped into her flank, making her falter, and she lost height. The hunters whooped-why are they looking for a shapeshifter? Who are they?-and the dogs bayed. They were close, their scents strong in her nostrils, their claws scrabbling on the bare rocks below her. Kett flapped desperately, pain swamping her, twisting away from the dogs.

She didn’t see the scrawny tree in her path until it was too late, and its branches slammed into her ribs, scraping through the fur and feathers. She fell, breathless, into the tiny, rocky gully from which the sorry tree grew.

The dogs yelped in excitement and raced over, snapping and swiping at her, trying to reach into the crack in the rock that both protected and trapped her.

“Sir!” someone yelled. It was a man in hunting gear, his face twisted by an ugly scar running from temple to jaw. “Lord Albhar!”

Kett’s gut twisted, because she recognized this man. She’d given him that scar.

These people were Federación.

A dog lunged at Kett, snarling, spittle flying at her, and she snarled back, snapping with a beak that was turning into a mouth. She needed to get airborne again, and if she could just get away from these dogs-

“Are you sure?” asked a male voice, out of breath and elderly.

“It can’t hold its shape, sir, look! It’s definitely changing! Either it’s the shapeshifter or it’s Nasc.”

“Well, either will do,” said the voice she supposed to be Lord Albhar’s, and she looked up to see a bearded man staring down at her from behind the dogs, a cruel light in his eyes. He took out a scryer from a pouch on his belt, and while the dogs whined and scraped at her with their paws, he calmly concentrated on the little rock.

“Bael,” he said. “Where are you, dear boy?”

Determined not to turn into the sort of Mage who destroyed things just because he could-determined not to turn into Striker-Bael kept his murderous rage confined to the reaches of ordinary hunting. All right, so there’d be a few villagers feasting extraordinarily well on the dead creatures he’d left behind-some of them ready-roasted-but at least he wasn’t running around murdering people, and that had to be something.