Sin bit her cheek to keep from moaning at the “mating” word. “So you don’t mate like other wargs? I mean, getting a female pregnant during her heat doesn’t bind you to her forever?”

“No,” he said huskily, and she wondered if the subject had affected him the way it had her. “In fact, the males very rarely take permanent mates.”

His skin was sotan. “Why not?”

“Because we tend to kill the females.”

Ah, well, okay. That wasn’t cool.

She wandered around the living room and down the hall to check out the bedrooms. Yep, she was a Nosy Nellie, but Con didn’t seem to mind. “What do you do with all this space? You have parties and stuff?”

He looked up from checking the answering machine. “Nope. A lot of my friends are human. They’d ask too many questions.”

“Human? You’re tight with humans?”

“Not recently.” He moved to the window and yanked the curtains closed. “Just had to let go of my last group of buds. When they start mentioning how you never get older, it’s time to take a “permanent job” in some remote place with no communications. Right now, I’m studying nematodes in Antarctica.”

“Well, aren’t you a dork.” But seriously… how odd that he hung with humans. He seemed like an underworld-purist kind of guy.

His cell phone rang, and he dug it out of the lower side leg pocket of his BDU pants. “E. Yeah. You’re where?”

Con hung up, strode to the front door, and standing there, still in his scrubs, was Eidolon. Shade was next to him, clad from boot to neck in black leather, from his biker boots to his jacket, sunglasses hiding his dark eyes. He looked like the freaking Terminator.

“How’d you know where we were?” Sin asked.

“I’m a good guesser,” Eidolon said as he and Shade stepped inside. He tossed a duffel bag at Sin. “Clothes. Figured you might need them after getting nailed by the dart.”

Con closed the door, but not before scanning the area outside. “Is Runa doing better?”

“Not good enough.” Shade tucked his sunglasses into his pocket. “She made me leave. Said I was driving her crazy. Besides, I needed to do some grocery shopping.”

Sin nearly laughed at the image of the big, bad leather-clad demon pushing a grocery cart through the vegetable and diaper aisles at a supermarket. “I have a hard time believing you left her alone, not feeling well, with three babies.”

“I didn’t. Gem and Tay are with her.” Tayla, Eidolon’s mate, and her twin sister, Gem, were both half-Soulshredder demon—the worst of the worst—but they were gooey marshmallows when it came to caring for their nephews. Gem was pregnant, and Sin figured it wouldn’t be long before Tayla hopped that crazy train, too.

Shade moved to Sin. “You okay? E said you were hit with a lock-dart.”

“I’ll live.” She dropped the bag and marched back to the kitchen, talking as she went. “Con patched me up before the assassins attacked.”

Both Shade and E focused on her, dark lasers of pissed-off-ness, and she knew she’d made a huge mistake by saying anything. “Assassins?” they both growled.

“Yeah.” Con took a six-pack of beer out of the fridge and tossed a bottle at each of them. Sin fumbled hers. She’d been too busy admiring hissix-pack. “Your sister can’t take a freaking step without causing some sort of disaster.”

Shade popped the cap off his bottle and flung the top into the sink. “Who were they?”

“They were mine. I’m walking around with a bull’s-eye on my ass.” She held up her left hand and wiggled her fingers, where Detharu’s silver ring glinted in the light. “Any assassin who kills me and takes my ring inherits my job. I’m pretty much the underworld’s most wanted right now.”

“Hell’s bells,” Shade muttered. “What kind of defense do you have against them?”

She waggled her brows. “Besides my uber-incredible fighting and self-defense skills?”

“Yeah,” Shade said flatly, and sheesh, the guy had no sense of humor. “Besides those.”

I could bind myself to Lycus for the rest of my life.She shrugged. “All I can do is stay ahead of them. Most won’t be able to find me, but a few can sense me. It’s even possible that they’ve put out the word to every hired blade in the underworld. I need to keep moving.”

“You’ll have to do that to keep ahead of the Carceris, too,” Eidolon added.

“You’ll stay at the cave with Runa,” Shade announced, as if he’d made the decision and Sin would have to accept it. “The entrance is hidden, and even if they track you to it, they’ll never get in.”

“You don’t know my assassins. Trust me, they’ll find a way. I’m not putting your mate and children at risk.”

Eidolon raked his hand through his hair. “Then we’ll take turns with you.”

“Turns?”

“There are four of us,” Eidolon pointed out, as if she couldn’t count. “One of us will always be with you.”

“No way.” She twisted the cap off her beer bottle. “I can take care of myself. I don’t need you guys being all big brother. Besides,” she said jauntily, as she linked arms with Con, “I have this studly dhampire to keep me safe.”

Con went taut, his arm and chest muscles turning to iron against her. For a second she thought he’d argue, but he shocked her by saying, “I don’t have a choice. I need her blood to eliminate the virus inside me.”

“Well, gee, don’t sound so excited.”

“Trust me,” he said in a hard tone. “I’m not. I do have other obligations.”

Shade knocked back half his beer. “Con can stay. That’ll give you two bodyguards.”

Sin jerked away from Con, partly to round on Shade, but mostly because Con’s lack of a shirt was a distraction she didn’t need. “Do you not understand the word no? I don’t want to be responsible for you.”

“Responsible?” Shade choked on his beer. “Responsible for us?”

“Yeah. What if my assassins use you to get to me? Or what if they kill you?”

“I think,” Shade said quietly, “that you underestimate us.”

No, actually, she knew her brothers were more than capable of defending themselves. But no one was invincible. “There’s also the trouble with the Carceris,” she reminded them.

“We’re not worried about that,” Eidolon said, but Sin shook her head.

“I am. I said no.”

Shade was in her face so fast she didn’t have time to blink. Next to her, Con tensed again, and she wondered if, possibly, he was gearing up to defend her. “This isn’t up for debate,” he growled. “We have each others’ backs in this family, and we won’t let yours be exposed.”

She went up on her tiptoes, but she still only reached his shoulders. “I. Said. No. If I were a brother instead of a sister, you wouldn’t be this crazy about protecting me, and you know it. I will notbe treated differently just because I don’t have a dick.”

“Sin—”

She cut off Eidolon by slamming her beer down on the counter, spraying foam everywhere. “I will not put you at risk.” She’d done that by accepting Lore’s help with her ex-master, Detharu, and it had cost her brother years of suffering. She wouldn’t do that to a sibling again, and neither would she allow herself to grow close to them. If she was stuck with them twenty-four-seven…

She shuddered. They were overbearing and protective enough as it was. If they got to know her, she’d be screwed.

“You don’t have to do this alone.” Shade’s fingers circled her wrist, his hold gentle but as unyielding as shackles. “You are ours—”

You are mine. The voice of her first master, the one who had taken her off the streets where she’d been starving, craving things she didn’t understand, pounded in her head. He’d run an underworld crime ring that mostly operated in the human world—gambling, prostitution, murder for hire, drug and slave trafficking. He’d been the first to own her, but he hadn’t been the last.

You are mine. You belong to me. You are ours. The words of past masters kept clanging around in her skull until her throat tightened and her heart kicked madly against her ribs.