“You cannot help me, Nate.”

Oh, you’re wrong about that, he thought. I’m totally pumped to help you reunite with the male you love. Sign me up.

“Of course I can.”

“It shall be . . . dangerous.”

Nate frowned. “Who is after you?”

“He is dead, the now.”

“So you’re worried about his kin?” When she didn’t answer, Nate felt a warning ripple down his spine. “So his kin lives?”

“He was of fine bloodline.”

“Glymera?” As she nodded, Nate exhaled in relief, even though there was no verified reason to. Yet. “You may not know this, but many of them are dead now.”

“In truth?”

“From the raids a couple of years ago.” He was not surprised when she stared at him blankly. “The lessers infiltrated their homes here in Caldwell. So many were killed. Can you tell me your enemy’s name? We can check and see if his bloodline was affected? We can ask Mrs. Mary’s hellren and he will know—or know how to find that out . . .”

When she once again stared into the impact pit and didn’t answer him, Nate tapped her on the shoulder—and waited until her silver eyes rose to his own.

“I’m not afraid,” he said.

Her response was grim: “You should be.”

Instead of waffling at the warning, Nate felt a certainty in his chest that he had never known before, a surety that was so rock-solid, it was as if the end point of wherever they were going to go had already occurred.

“I am not and I won’t be,” he said in a low voice. “No matter what happens.”

“Nate—”

“You think I haven’t lived through pain? I’ve had surgeries with no anesthesia. Viruses and bacteria forced into my veins. I’ve been examined for the sole purpose of degrading me—and I was a young when all this happened. There are no miseries I haven’t endured, and if I lived through it once, I can do it again.”

Especially for her, and even though there was clearly no future for them. She was in love with her male, and given the hero-material the guy obviously was? Who could compete with that.

After a long moment, Elyn reached up and put her hand on the side of Nate’s face. “You are so brave.”

As the contact of her flesh on his own registered, he froze where he stood . . . and realized, as he stared down into her silver eyes, that he was as the male she loved had been.

Willing to lay his life down for her.

“Your hellren is a very, very lucky male,” Nate said roughly.

Elyn frowned and tilted her head to one side. “Hellren? I am not mated.”

“The male you love, then.”

“No, ’tis not as that. I do love him, but he is my first cousin. He is my family, not my mate.”

As her words sank in, Nate’s soul smiled. He couldn’t describe the feeling in any other way. But he pulled his shit together quick, as Elyn was still looking very serious.

“Then let’s find him,” he said. “Together.”

As she looked into his eyes, he wanted to be even taller than he was. Bigger. Stronger. He was through his transition, sure, but compared to his dad, Murhder? He was a pip-squeak.

“You have been so good to me,” she murmured. “You have been a friend when I need one, a shelter when I had none, a well of compassion in this darkness in which I am trapped. Thus I cannot, and will not, do anything to endanger you. This has always been my quest, and it must needs remain thus.”

They stared at each other for the longest time.

Kiss her, Nate thought. Now is the moment—

Off over Elyn’s shoulder, a tiny flare of light appeared and began to move. And another. And a third.

She turned and glanced at the little galaxy that had inexplicably formed behind her. “Oh, they are back.”

Elyn extended her palm, and the flickers came to her, coalescing above her outstretched hand.

“Fireflies,” Nate murmured. “Wow.”

The glow was such that it illuminated her face, making her positively resplendent—no, it was more than that. Her silver hair and her silver eyes seemed to pull the golden illumination in and reflect it back out, so that a halo formed all around her.

Without warning, she pegged him with a hard stare. “I shall not allow anything or anybody to hurt you, Nate.”

Touched as he was by the sentiment, he didn’t have the heart to state the realness. Out of the two of them? She was hardly in a position to do any protecting.

That was his job.

Balz smelled the brunette first.

In the midst of the dense darkness inside the triplex’s book collection room, that perfume, that grape-undertoned, darkly sensual Dior scent, pervaded the still air.

“Devina?” the Mr. said through the void. “What are you doing here?”

The lights came back on, and as Balz blinked the retina sting away, he didn’t shift from the position he was in, his arms and hands still outstretched toward the Book. But he did turn his head. Between him and the Mr., the brunette—Devina, evidently—was posed like a cover girl, wearing a formal white skirt and jacket and a hat that looked like something you’d wear to a royal wedding.

“You’re supposed to stay at corporate headquarters,” the Mr. said. Then he glanced behind himself and lowered his voice. “I thought we agreed you’d never show up here unannounced. Idaho is where you have to—”

“Oh, shut up, Herb,” the brunette snapped. “And I’ve never even been to Idaho, you fucking idiot.”

“B-b-but . . .”

Devina focused on Balz and rolled her eyes. “Humans. Really. They’re all in remote control cars they think they’re driving. So fucking ridiculous—”

“Herb” marched over and took the brunette’s arm. “This is not a game you’re going to win. I want you out of here, and if you’re going to keep seeing me, you’re never doing this again. Do we understand each other. My wife lives here.”

The brunette looked down at where Herb’s hand was. And in the beat or two of silence that followed, Balz was tempted to tell the guy to let the fuck go of her—but there was no saving stupid.

“Are you touching me right now,” the brunette said in a soft voice.

Herb rose up on his tiptoes a little so he could glare down at her given her heels. “I will touch you anywhere the hell I want, and you’re leaving now.”

As Balz straightened from the Book, he had a thought that Herbieboy was going to choke on those words.

“This behavior is really not becoming on you,” Herb felt the need to tack on.

Devina’s perfectly arched brow lifted over her perfectly made-up right eye. “You don’t say. Well, wait’ll you get a load of this.”

Herb’s body flew back against a set of the display shelves, sure as if invisible hands had picked him up and thrown him across the room. And as books were dislodged from their props, and all kinds of things landed on the floor, Balz frowned. There was no noise. Nothing made a goddamn sound, not the flopping of the first editions as they hit the parquet wood, not the clattering of the Lucite stands as they fell, not the banging of the varnished planks.