“Back slowly toward the gate,” Con said, his voice slurred by both need and the fact that his fangs had filled his mouth. “Don’t draw a weapon. And for all that’s unholy, button your shirt.”
Damn, he’d been afraid of this. Sin was a magnet for trouble. How had she managed to survive this long?
One of the youngsters lunged. Con knocked him back with a powerful blow to the jaw. Yelping, the kid wheeled back into the crowd. The display instilled a little respect into the others, and the distance between Con and Sin and the mob increased.
They had almost arrived at the wall when Sin’s harsh whisper cut through the fog. “The gate is closed.”
Son of a—Con risked a glance over his shoulder at the sentry, whose hungry gaze was fixed on Sin. “I freaking hate pack mentality,” he muttered.
“I have an idea.” Sin broke away from him before he could stop her. A couple of males started to give chase, their instinctive prey drives activating at the sight of their target darting away. Con leaped in front of them with a bloodcurdling snarl that brought them up short. He’d kill them, and they knew it.
He angled his body so he could keep an eye on the horny males while checking out what Sin was doing, and he damned near swallowed his tongue.
The way the sentry was swallowing Sin’s.
The guy had her pinned against the wall, his hips grinding into her as his hands clawed at her top. A wild, primitive rage spewed like molten lava through Con’s veins. Seeing any female being savaged angered him, but he could still feel Sin’s blood rushing through him, could still feel her as part of him, and the word “mine” was a faint buzz in his head.
But did he want her, or did he want her blood? Both were dangerous desires, and he needed to get over himself real damned fast.
Suddenly, the sentry jerked away. Sin kept a grip on his wrist, her expression calm, cool… but her eyes flashed black fire. She said something, and he doubled over, losing his breakfast on the cobblestones. Though his movements were jerky, he withdrew an iron key from his pocket, jammed it into a panel on the wall, and the thick wood-and-iron gate clattered open, its hinges creaking in protest.
The pack of males rushed the gate, blocking the exit, but out of nowhere, a furious roar cut through the fog.
“Let them go!”
Con let out a curse, looked up to see Valko standing on the wall walk. The Warg Council leader pointed at the group of males, and they tucked tail and slunk away like scolded curs. Con might be grateful to Valko for the save, but he didn’t need the guy asking questions about why he was there. Fortunately, Valko merely gave Con a slow, meaningful nod, one that made it clear that Con owed him, and then he took off, heading toward the north wall tower.
Quickly, Con grabbed Sin’s hand and got them the hell out of town, and they kept going until they reached the Harrowgate.
“Who was the dude on the wall?” she asked when they’d stopped.
“Head of the Warg Council. That was his town. His pack.” Con still didn’t like the timing of Valko’s appearance on the wall, even though it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Valko would have been alerted to the arrival of visitors. “So what did you do to the guard?”
“I gave him Khileshi cockfire.” An impish grin lit her expression. Gods, she was gorgeous when she smiled like that. “Told him his dick would shrivel up and burn off if he didn’t open the gate.”
“I thought you can’t cure a disease once you give it.”
“I can’t.” Her eyes glinted with mischief that matched her smile as she made a show of studying her fingernails. “He’ll be making an emergency trip to UG.”
It was his turn to grin. “Nice.”
He drank in the sight of her standing proudly on the hill, her gaze feral, fierce, her raven hair catching the wind and swirling around her face and shoulders. As a sex demon, she hadn’t been bred to fight, but there was something inside her that was a warrior. Maybe her human ancestry gave her that edge, or maybe it was her hard life, but something called to his own warrior blood and consumed him from the inside out.
He wanted to take her to the ground, drive into her in a mating that would be as wild as the mountains in the background. He’d mark her with his scent, his come, his teeth…
Holy hell, he needed to stop thinking about his fangs in her throat. He searched his memory, trying to remember if this was the way it had been with Eleanor, the only female he’d ever drunk to addiction. He recalled obsession with her blood, hunger that hurt, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember the insane need for sex.
Slowly, Sin’s smile faded, and she spat in the dirt. “I don’t think that guard has brushed his teeth in a year.”
He had the strangest impulse to put his mouth on hers, to kiss her until she burned and tasted only Con.
Clearly, they were too close to the warg village, and he was still feeling the effects of the inhabitants’ animal natures.
“Why are they like that anyway?” she asked. “I thought wargs were a little more… civilized.”
He glanced back at the village, where the gate had opened again, and the sentry was standing just outside, watching them through the thinning mist. “Born wargs really are wolves in human clothing. It’s why they live apart from humans. You’ll never find a pricoliciliving in a city with them. They also are fully aware of what they do while in animal form, and they generally won’t kill humans because they’re smart enough not to want to expose themselves to the human race. It’s one of the reasons they want to exterminate turned wargs. The varcolacare a risk.”
“Well, they didn’t seem to have any trouble with killing me.”
“You aren’t human.”
“Thanks for the reminder,” she muttered.
He couldn’t help it—he reached out and tucked a tendril of her unruly hair behind her ear. “You don’t accept what you are, do you?”
“I don’t know what I am,” she said, stepping out of his reach.
He let his hand fall back to his side. “How can you be as old as you are and not know?” Con knew very well what he was, and he’d long ago accepted it, even if he wasn’t always thrilled about it.
She shrugged. “I thought I did know. Before, we were just half-breed mongrels with no idea what kind of demon we really were. We had no expectations. Then Lore and I found our brothers. Now we know our demon, but not what it means. We know what Seminus demons are, but it doesn’t do any good because the rules don’t apply to us.”
He hadn’t thought of it that way. But then, he’d grown up keenly aware of what he was: a dhampire from a shrinking line of royalty, who had arrogantly expected to take over the clan one day—until the wake-up call that said, no, the world didn’t revolve around him. He might not like the role he was born to play, but at least he’d known about it his entire life.
“You can make your own rules.”
“Oh,” she said silkily, “I do make my own rules. And I never break them.”
“Like what? What is one of your rules?” He was starting to think one had something to do with driving dhampires crazy.
“No one will everown me again.” She raised her chin in that stubborn set he was beginning to admire. Especially because it bared the slender column of her throat and forced her to arch her back the way it did when he was driving between her legs. “I will never belong to anyone—I will die before I allow that to happen.”
He remembered how she’d freaked out when Shade said that she belonged to them, and he wondered how encompassing her self-imposed rule was. “What are we talking about, Sin? You don’t want anyone to own you… or your heart?”
She laughed bitterly, and entered the Harrowgate. “I don’t have a heart for anyone to take.”
Con slung his jump bag over his shoulder and followed Sin into the cavelike enclosure of the Harrowgate.