“Are you all right?” Tristan demanded before coming to a complete stop.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“I’m fine,” I quickly interrupted.

“You’re bleeding,” Knox countered.

“I’m fine. It’s just a scratch.” If he had seen some of the “scratches” I’d had in the past, he would have fainted dead away.

“But—” Amanda tried to continue, but a familiar rumble cut her off.

“She’s fine,” Danaus said with a smirk as he extended his hand to me to help me off the ground.

A matching wry smile touched my lips as I grabbed the hunter’s wrist with my left hand and hauled myself back to my feet. While painful, this was a little bit of nothing. “Go gather up the bodies and throw them on the car. We need to destroy the evidence before someone finds them,” I directed as I handed Amanda back her knife.

It took only a few minutes for us to gather up the bodies that I hadn’t completely incinerated. The cloaking spell we had all thrown over the fight, and the fact that it was three in the morning, helped hide the scuffle from the eyes of humans, but we still needed to get rid of the evidence that the naturi existed.

Once we were all settled in the car again, I set the Ford Mustang on fire. I must have managed to hit the fuel tank because the whole thing went up in this beautiful ball of fire. We lingered long enough to be sure the bodies were completely incinerated before driving back toward the city, with Danaus following us in the other car. No one had yet commented on his sudden appearance, though the questions hung in the air like a pink elephant suspended by fishing line.

Knox was the first to break the silence weighing on the occupants of the car, using his ubiquitous dry sense of humor. “While I enjoy a night out with you as much as the next nightwalker, I assumed you had something else in mind besides playing with the naturi.”

“Can we please not talk about them?” Amanda said in a shaky voice from the backseat. I was stunned by her soft, almost broken tone. Nothing had ever rattled her as far as I knew, but then, this had been her first run-in with the naturi, and she’d barely survived. She had also managed to stab the Keeper of the domain she inhabited. Amanda wasn’t having the best night.

“I didn’t call you together to talk about the naturi,” I said with a sigh. “I wanted to invite you both to be a part of my family.”

Only now I was beginning to question the wisdom of it.

The study in my private home was a classic Old World library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining three of the walls. Lighted curio cabinets were interspersed among the shelves, holding odds and ends. This was the first home I had maintained for more than a couple of years, and I had begun to allow myself to collect things since I no longer feared the need to pick up and run. Savannah was my home, and I was prepared to defend it.

Leaning against the front of the desk, I found Tristan watching me with hooded gaze as he lounged in a high-backed leather chair. He had grown more comfortable living within my domain during the past month, but then, we were still slowly trying to work out our own relationship of mistress and…child. I had stolen him from our maker, Sadira, in an attempt to protect his life. I’d made no plans for such a thing. I had never intended to create my own family, especially with one of the children that once belonged to my hated maker.

Yet, Tristan needed me. Sadira had created and kept him weak so he could never escape the way I had. When he had tried to escape, Sadira tricked me into returning him to her. I knew what it was like to be under her evil, twisted control and I understood his need to finally be free. While in London, I promised to help him find a way to do that, but never expected to become his mistress as part of the bargain.

Once I returned to Savannah from Crete, it had been on the tip of my tongue to set him free; to renounce my ties to him and let him live his own life as a nightwalker. But my conscience wouldn’t let me. He was still weak, making him easy prey for anything that set its sights on him. I wouldn’t let him get himself killed the first minute he was away from me. For a century Jabari trained me to protect myself, and taught me what it meant to be a nightwalker. I could at least pass along some of that knowledge to my newfound ward.

For now, Tristan seemed content to stay. But there were times when I would find him watching me, a sad look in his eyes. I wondered if he was staying for an entirely different reason. Was he looking for a way to protect me?

Danaus was also there, sitting in one of the high-backed chairs before the desk, his eyes never leaving me, like a lean jungle cat watching its intended prey. Both he and Tristan had fought the naturi beside me in London and again at the Themis Compound, and Danaus stood with me when the seal was broken in Crete. While I’d known both Amanda and Knox longer, I felt a strange closeness to the two newcomers to my domain.

Amanda and Knox wandered slowly around the room, their footsteps echoing in the silence as they stepped from the thick Persian rug to the dark hardwood floor. It was the first time either of them had been in my home outside the city limits. I kept a town house within the city, which was where I held some of my meetings and social gatherings, but the house outside the city was for my own private use. It was also where I spent the daylight hours. Gabriel, my bodyguard, was familiar with my home, and now Tristan, because it was his home as well.

“Mira,” Knox murmured, his gaze still taking in the room for a moment before settling on me. “I’m honored that you’ve brought us here.”

I smiled at him, appreciating his Old World charm and manners. He was more than a few centuries old and had been raised by an Old World nightwalker named Valerio, whom I admired and detested in nearly equal amounts.

“You can repay me by promising to never drive my car again,” I said with a smirk. He smiled in return, knowing I was not entirely serious. He had done what was necessary to keep us alive. And while I loved my car, it was still just an object.

“I’m guessing you’re serious about what you said in the car,” Amanda said, turning from a curio cabinet that held a series of daggers from the twelfth century. “About joining your family.”

I nodded once, my gaze shifting from Amanda to Knox.

“Then I acc—”

“No!” I said, holding up my hand and halting Knox before he could complete the thought. I pushed off the desk and stood with my hands out and open to both of them, wishing for a moment to be able to find the words to express both my fears and my gratitude adequately. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, Knox, but I don’t want either of you to accept or deny this blindly, particularly in the name of loyalty.”

“Besides, this isn’t your typical family,” Tristan interjected, drawing my gaze to him. A wicked smile tweaked the corners of his mouth, but he was just needling me, trying to break the tension that had drawn the muscles in my shoulders taut.

A family among nightwalkers was usually an arrangement where an elder nightwalker agreed to protect a small flock of nightwalkers. Typically, the elder nightwalker had created the others, but not always. Living in a family was a source of protection, like living within a particular mob family. However, life within the family could be just as brutal if not fatal. And in most cases there was no leaving the family alive once you were accepted.

“My arrangement with Tristan is different than what I am offering you,” I started, leaning against the desk again in an attempt to resume my relaxed posture. “My arrangement with Tristan will always be different because of the circumstances. That is no one’s business but ours. The same goes for his future here in Savannah.”