“It’s about loyalty,” she whispered into the dark. “It’s about sacrifice. And honor. It’s about living for something beyond yourself and having the courage to die for what you believe in.”

“Yes,” he murmured, and very gently pressed his lips to the nape of her neck. “It is.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. There seemed to be a deeper meaning to his agreement, and she knew the irony would not be lost on him that she wore the symbol of the rōnin on her skin and he was the man on whom she had pledged vengeance, yet here they were, entwined together in a bed in which they’d slept after making love. She still felt like killing someone, only now she wasn’t sure if it was him, herself, or the next person she laid eyes on. Maybe all of the above.

Irritated now, she said, “How did you find me? At the catacombs?”

Another low chuckle. “Dreamt it.”

Her heartbeat accelerated—did that mean he knew exactly where the rest of them were? About the abbey, the entrance from the catacombs?

D stirred behind her, nuzzling his face into her hair. “Followed a bunch of guys into the catacombs from a manhole cover hidden behind a crypt in the Montmartre Cemetery. Had no idea where I was going, just got a starting point, and then they showed up.”

To hide her sigh of relief, she pretended to yawn. “And those assassins that are after me…who sent them?”

“I told you, they’re a group assembled from the other four colonies—”

“But who sent them, exactly?”

There was a pause, and then D said, “The Queen.”

“Queen?” whispered Eliana, astonished. “They let a woman lead?”

“There have been others before,” he murmured, tightening his arms around her. “Marie Antoinette, Cleopatra—”

“No!”

“It’s rare, but when it happens, an Ikati Queen is far more powerful than any male Alpha. They say this English Queen can Shift to anything she likes, not just panther—”

“No!” Eliana sat up in bed, the sheets rucked around her waist, and stared down at him. He stared back, shadowed eyes and corded muscle, heat rising from his naked body in delicious, heady waves. He reached up and swept his thumb, very lightly, across the apple of her cheek.

“Whether they realize it or not,” he murmured, gazing into her eyes, “women are always more powerful than men. The only reason males are bigger, physically stronger, is because we’re made to protect and serve the more valuable sex: females. Nature bestowed on them the ability to conceive and give birth. Only females grow life inside their bodies. Only females bring it forth. They’re made to create and nurture life. There’s nothing more powerful, more necessary, than that.”

Heat suffused her cheeks. When his look became too intense, too probing, she dropped her gaze to the covers. We’re made to protect and serve.

“And now this powerful, can-shift-into-anything Queen wants me dead.”

“They haven’t read your father’s journal. They don’t even know it exists, so what you read is for your eyes only. But they know he was the leader of the Expurgari, and they believe you—or your brother—have taken his place. They’ve been hunted by this group for hundreds of years, their leaders have been killed, their people tortured. She herself was apparently tortured. You know now what Dominus planned to do…we’ve been on the brink of war with them since you left. They don’t fully believe none of us knew what your father was doing, but we’ve given them enough concessions to hold them off. For now.”

So because of her, the entire Roman colony was in danger. But why, if the Bellatorum wanted to keep peace with the other colonies, hadn’t they let the Queen read her father’s journal, thereby proving Dominus’s guilt and their own innocence?

The serum, a little voice inside her head whispered. They want it for themselves.

A chill ran over her skin. She pushed the thought aside, but it kept swimming back in front of her eyes, resolute, damning. She watched D’s face carefully as she asked, “Do they know about the serum?”

His expression did not change. His voice remained neutral. “No. As I said, they never read your father’s journal, and as far as the Bellatorum know he never developed it, just tested it successfully.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”

She stared at him for a long moment, her stomach in knots, her heart beating frantically against her breastbone once again. “Why wouldn’t you show them the journal, Demetrius? If it could prove you’d done nothing wrong?”

His head tilted to one side on the pillow. Something changed in his face. A hardening, a slight closure that indicated an awareness of her distrust, perhaps, she couldn’t be sure. There was a new hollowness in his voice when he spoke, a new tightness around his mouth.

“I’ve read that journal, Eliana. Over and over and over, searching for some kind of clue as to where you might have gone when you left. There wasn’t any, of course, but what your father planned for you…your brother…all the terrible things he did and wanted to do…that’s not something I would ever let anyone read. That’s not for anyone else’s eyes. Especially theirs. The other colonies can take their threats and go straight to hell—I’d never let you be humiliated like that. Never.” His voice darkened. “There are some secrets we should take with us to the grave.”

Oh, what those words did to her. If she was conflicted and confused before, this was the cherry that topped her triple-scoop ice cream sundae of confusion. The words seemed sincere, but the tone he spoke them in and the look on his face seemed…what? Odd, if nothing else. Protection is the motivation he claimed, her protection, and she might have believed it, but for that final sentence that held a strange ring of prophecy. There are some secrets we should take with us to the grave. And for that oddness in his manner, which might have been hurt at her disbelief.

Or might have been fake hurt, intended as a diversion.

Killers enjoy creating diversions, Eliana.

Even now, Silas’s voice echoed in her head.

She slowly lay down and pressed her back against the hard expanse of D’s chest, avoiding his eyes, avoiding the sudden tangle of flying chicken feathers that were her thoughts. “I see,” she whispered, not really seeing anything at all.

He lay behind her, tense and silent, until he let out a breath and dragged the blankets up around them and pulled her tight against his chest once more. They lay like that for a long time, until she felt his breathing grow more regular, his heartbeat more slow. When she was certain he was almost asleep, she whispered into the dark, “Do you really believe males are made to protect and serve females, or is that just pillow talk?”

He mumbled something, and she turned her head to hear him better. “If you hadn’t already worn me out, woman, I’d serve you right now.” He chuckled softly. “But it’ll have to wait ’til morning. I’ll show you exactly how a male should protect and serve his female in the morning.”

But when morning came and D stretched and opened his eyes, the bed was empty, the sheets beside him cold.

Eliana was already gone.

Mel awoke with a start to the feel of a hand clamped over her mouth.

She bolted upright in bed, a scream strangled in her throat, but let out a huge sigh of relief when she saw it was only Eliana, crouched beside her bed in the dark, pale and wild-eyed with a finger to her lips like some kind of mute, blue-haired ghost.

“What are you doing, crazy person?” Mel hissed. “You scared the hell out of me!”

“Get dressed,” came the urgent, whispered response. “Wake up the others and go down to the Tabernacle and wait for me. I’m going to go see Alexi—”

“Alexi? What? You are crazy, E, it’s the middle of the night—”