The guy he’d tossed aside charged at him again. Jareth lifted the gun and shot a tranq into the guy. He turned back to the door. No one else came at him, but he wasn’t assuming this was over. Evelyn had said a team of Hunters was on the way. He stepped toward the door, preparing to scan outside when Amber’s voice froze him in place.
“Jareth.” Her voice was strained, stiff.
He brought her into focus, his gut clenching, an icy chill of dread in him at the sight of Evelyn pointing a gun at her head. “They’re real bullets,” Evelyn informed him. “She’s part human. If they don’t kill her, they’ll do plenty of damage. I’m sorry. Really, I am. I did come here to save her, but I’m not going to get out of here alive without killing her or taking her hostage—not now that Mike has arrived.”
Her scent said she wasn’t bluffing, and Jareth would be damned if he was going to lose his mate. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t give himself time to doubt. He raised his weapon and planted a tranquilizer dart in Evelyn’s weapon hand. She stiffened and started falling. Amber gasped and eased her to the ground.
“I won’t be so easy to get rid of.” It was Mike. In the doorway, holding a machine gun. He hadn’t bothered with a mask. The man had a reputation for believing he was invincible. “No tranqs in this baby,” he said, giving the gun a tiny lift. His chin motioned to Amber. “Amber, darlin’,” he said. “You’re going to be helping me get into your father’s lockbox.”
“Never,” Amber hissed vehemently. “I won’t give you anything.”
He grimaced, hatred in his face. “I killed your father for being so damn obstinate. I’ll damn sure kill your animal lover and do so while you watch.”
“You killed my father?” Amber gasped.
Jareth almost doubled over from the rush of pain and anguish rolling off his mate. It was all he could do not to lunge forward. “You bastard,” he growled.
“How could you?” Amber demanded. “My father was like a brother to you.”
“No brother of mine would marry a filthy Yaguara,” he said. “And that’s what your mother was. Even she knew it. I read it in her letters. She was so damn afraid of her own kind, she wouldn’t go back to them for help with her pregnancy. After she died, your father was a killing machine. He hated your kind. Then, something changed. He started hiding secrets. And now I know it was because he went soft. Because you made him soft. He was protecting you. But your kind doesn’t want you any more than he did. You were a burden to him and an outcast to Yaguara.”
“Don’t listen to him, Amber,” Jareth said. “He’s trying to manipulate you.”
“Like your mother,” Mike added. “Shunned for marrying a human. Outcast, without help.”
Jareth was about two seconds from shifting and ripping Mike’s throat out—to hell with his gun and to hell with the populated area—but suddenly Mike jerked forward, his eyes rolling back in his head. An instant later, blood poured from his mouth and he collapsed into the room. Mike was dead. Evelyn had killed him.
“He was lying,” Evelyn whispered, dropping her gun and her barely raised head back to the ground. “The letter,” she whispered, barely audible. “In the duffel bag—his . . . car.”
Amber broke for the door, but Jareth snagged her arm. Sirens sounded in the distance, the human officials on their way. Chase would handle them. Jareth had not doubt Chase was the reason they hadn’t been attacked again. “Wait, baby.” He sensed no imminent threat, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Not with Amber. “Once I know it’s safe out there, we’ll get the letters. We’ll find out the truth.” He thumbed away the dampness on her cheeks. “I promise. You’re not alone in this. You’ll never be alone again.”
She hesitated, and then buried her face in his chest. “Neither will you,” she vowed, wrapping him in warmth. He held her close, where he planned to keep her for the rest of her life. He would never let the Hunters, or anyone else, hurt her again.
Epilogue
Coffee and the Danishes that Amber adored in hand, Jareth returned to the London hotel room they’d been in for more than two weeks to find his mate lying on her stomach across the bed, in nothing but a pair of red panties and a matching bra, her perfect creamy white butt cheeks in full, perky display. In the three months he’d been given—or rather ordered to take by the council—to honeymoon, the woman had kept him in a perpetual state of erection that he would have acted on relieving again now, if not for the letter she was reading. Her mother’s letter.
“Hi,” she said, sitting up and disposing of the letter on the nightstand. She rubbed her hands together. “Yum. You got them.” He sat down and opened the lid, displaying the chocolate-filled, flaky pastry. Her eyes lit and she reached for one. “I love these things so, so much.” She bent forward and kissed his cheek. “And I love you.”A smile filled him. He’d never get tired of how easily she said that to him.
She savored a bite of her pastry and then sighed. “Have I mentioned I’m really glad that being a Yaguara does not mean eating raw meat?”
He laughed. “Several times.”
“The whole die-in-childbirth thing is bad enough,” she said. “I’m just relieved the mating cycle for the men is once a year. But for the record, the raw meat would have really been the final straw. I might have left you.”
“Is that so?”
She nodded and ate another bite of her pastry. “Oh yes,” she teased. “Most definitely. I’ll have to find a new pastry indulgence when we get back to Nevada.” She turned serious, abandoning her food. “The Sentinel duty thing does make me nervous. I think I might become the insanely protective mate, rather than you. I saw how crazy the Hunters are. How out for blood they are.”
“Is that what has you reading your mother’s letter again?”
She nodded, flicking a bit of chocolate from her lip. “The tragedy of it all tears me up inside. My mother knowing she was going to die. She didn’t want to go to her people. She knew she had the pregnancy sickness that had killed so many Yaguara before her. She didn’t want my father to spend the entire nine months grieving. I can’t imagine what he must have felt when he read her letter explaining it all. Even expressing regret that she wouldn’t be around to teach me about my heritage. She loved her people and he had been hunting and killing them.”
“Your people too,” he reminded her. He slipped another letter in front of her.
Her brows dipped. “What’s this?”
“Open it.”
Amber unsealed the envelope and read. Let out a little squeal. “Oh, my God! I’m going to publish my father’s work!” They’d picked up all of his journals to take on the road, and she’d worked through them, weeding out what was safe to print and what was not, as Jareth had finished one of his novels. In a flash, Amber was on her knees, hugging his neck. “Thank you. Thank you so much for arranging this.”
He pulled her across his lap. “The proposal you did was brilliant or they wouldn’t have offered.”
“Only because you helped me,” she said. “I didn’t know how to put together a book proposal.”
“I’d do anything for you,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”
She gently caressed fingers down the side of his face and smiled a mischievous smile. “Anything?”
He arched a brow. “What did you have in mind?”
“I have a list.”
“Do you now?” he said. “What exactly is on this list?”
She tugged on his shirt. “Once you get out of your clothes, we’ll start at the top. Or the bottom. No particular order.”
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Prologue
“We’ll all be dead by morning.” Martin’s voice quavered as he emptied another glass of Frau Sophie’s precious peach schnapps.
“Who’d have guessed it’d be nigh onto impossible to find a virgin in this valley?” his companion said.
“Pah! Even my own daughter,” Martin moaned. “What’s the world coming to, Edgard? Young women giving themselves like barmaids . . .”
Edgard’s shoulders slumped. “I tell you it was the last May Day celebration. The bürgermeister should never have let Sophie provide the drink.”
“We should have locked every last one of the unmarried maidens in a cellar. Well, no use grousing.” Martin set down his glass. “We have a problem. Now’s the time for clear thinking.”
“There’s no solution. The village will disappear, swallowed by Hell itself when we fail to provide his bride.” Edgard’s reddened eyes widened. “Couldn’t we mount a raid on Fulkenstein down the valley . . . take a girl or two . . .”
“There’s no time left. We only had the new moon to give that devil his due. It ends tomorrow night. We’d never be back in time.”
Edgard shook his head, sighing. “We’ve failed. Daemonberg will be no more. Best get the women packing tonight so we can flee come morning. A thousand years of prosperity and health—gone for the lack of a single maidenhead.”
“We’re doomed, I tell you.” Martin lifted the schnapps bottle and tilted it over his glass. He gave it a shake, and then slammed it down on the table. Turning toward the bar, he shouted, “Sophie, liebchen, bring us another bottle, will you?”
As he turned back to his friend, he saw a woman step through the doorway of the inn. Her beauty arrested him: far prettier than any of the strapping blond women of the village, this one was slender and delicate, with deep reddish hair that glinted like fire in the torchlight, reminding him of the bay he’d bid on and lost at an auction in early spring.
He elbowed Edgard beside him. “Look there.”
Both men turned to stare at the young woman.
“Where’s her escort?” Edgard whispered.
“She looks wary. I’d wager she’s on her own.”
They shared a charged glance, shoulders straightening.
“What do you suppose the chances are she’s a virgin?” Edgard asked softly.
“She’s beyond fair. What man would care whether he was her first just so long as he’s her last? Besides, what other options have we?”
Sophie slammed another bottle in the center of the table and gave them a scathing glance. “If you go home to your wives legless with drink, I’ll not take the blame.”
“We’ll have just one more glass,” Martin assured her, reaching around to pat her rump. “For the road. We’ve business to attend.”
Sophie rolled her eyes and turned, her ample hips rolling as she walked across the room to greet the young woman, who waved her away.
“If they only knew the solemn duty we perform,” Martin whispered. “They’d call us heroes.”
Only, Martin and Edgard could never tell a soul. That, too, was part of their sacred oath, handed down from father to son.
Edgard poured them both another drink, then lifted his glass. “To another hundred years of peace and wealth.”
Martin lifted his glass with one hand and crossed himself with the other. “To the fair maiden with the red hair—God rest her soul.”
1
Voletta felt faint with alarm; her stomach was in knots. I can’t have lost it. Someone must know where it is!
But what were the chances anyone here would just give it back to her? She didn’t have any gold to offer as a reward for its return. She’d already had to steal the voluminous cloak she wore so she wouldn’t walk naked into their midst.
She stepped farther into the entryway.
“Hullo, Miss,” an elderly gentleman said as he approached, his avid gaze sliding over her hair.
She clutched the edges of the cloak, only too aware its thick folds hid her nudity. “Good evening, sir.”
“You’re a stranger here.”
Her nose twitched at the sour smell of liquor and unwashed skin that emanated from him. Not many men believed in the value of a thorough cleansing.
If only she hadn’t been so fastidious herself, she might never have paused beside the gurgling brook, then noted the thick green curtain of foliage that rendered the glade an irresistible temptation.
“Miss, are you looking for someone?” he asked, his gaze looking beyond her shoulder furtively.
She took a deep breath. How to explain? “I lost something.”
“Yes?” he said quickly. “Perhaps we can help you find it. Why don’t you come have a seat? Can I take your cloak?”
“No! I’m chilled. And I won’t be staying long. I’ve just come to make an inquiry.”
“Come along, now,” he cajoled. “You must join my friend, Edgard, and myself. I am Martin, by the way. I promise we are as harmless as we are hospitable. We might even be able to help.”
The old fellow seemed a friendly sort, although she didn’t feel quite comfortable with the way his gaze kept searching her face.
“Come, come. You seem overset. Have a wee drink with us—just to warm you up. Then we’ll help you find whatever you’ve lost.”
Unused to talking to men, to anyone for any length, really, she tried to demur. “I shouldn’t. I must keep looking.”
A frown drew his thick peppered brows together, then quickly faded as he smiled once again. “What is it you’ve lost?”
She nibbled her bottom lip, then blurted, “My fur. I’ve lost my fox fur.”
“A fox fur, you say?” His glance slid away, and his gnarled fingers scratched his head. “Was it part of a garment?”
“No . . . not yet. It was . . . a gift. I need it back.”
“Come along. Edgard purchases furs. Although one fur is hardly distinguishable from another.”
“Oh, mine was unique,” she murmured.
She let him lead her to a table at the rear of the establishment. Another man stood, younger than his companion, with a large, round belly and ruddy cheeks. He drew up a chair and indicated that she should sit.
“No,” Voletta said, holding out a hand. “I really should be on my way.”
“But your fur . . .” the elderly man began.
Each passing moment deepened her unease. “I’m sure I just missed it in the darkness. I’ll retrace my steps.”
“A fur, did you say?” the fat man said, giving a pointed glare at his companion. “Where did you leave it?”
“Beside a brook. I put it down for only a moment.”
“Today?”
“Yes, just before dark.”
His gaze sharpened. “A fine fur, was it? Unblemished by any trap’s teeth?”
“Of course!” she said, feeling hope at the man’s brightening expression.
“And red as your hair, miss?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, it is.”
“I saw just such a fur. The bürgermeister brought it to me. My wife is even now sewing it onto a fine cloak.”
“Sewing it?” she asked, pressing her hand to her belly.
“Yes, as part of the dowry for a nobleman’s bride.”
Voletta reached for the man’s arm. “I must have it back.”
The heavy man dropped his gaze to her hand, then reached up slowly to pat it. “And you shall. We will go to my shop in a moment. Would you have a drink with us first?”
Relief made her lightheaded, and she nodded. “But quickly, please.”
“Of course. Don’t fret yourself.”
Voletta accepted the beaker the older man handed her and took only a sip, then set her glass on the table. “Sir, I apologize for rushing you, but could we please go retrieve my fur?”
“
Of course.” He stared expectantly. “How are you feeling?”
Voletta shook her head. “Fine, can we go now?” Only she didn’t feel fine. Her head swam. The men before her seemed to teeter and stretch. “How odd,” she said, her voice sounding to her own ears as though it rose from the bottom of a deep well.
“Best get her out of here, Edgard, before she topples.”
“Come, miss. You wanted to see my shop?”
She tugged at the collar of her cloak. “S’warm.”
“Catch her!”
“Seems a shame. A beautiful girl like her.”
The voice, Edgard’s, she remembered, came from right beside her.
“Just get the trunk off the cart,” Martin whispered harshly.
Voletta tried to lift her head, but the movement made her nauseous. She pried open her eyelids and found herself looking down at a rutted track. Graying daylight stabbed like tiny daggers at the backs of her eyes.
The air around her was damp and cold. Her skin prickled—she was naked! A fog had rolled in, droplets catching on her breasts and cheeks. The bastards had taken her cloak!
She forced up her head and stared after the men riding atop a cart rolling down a long, steep trail. Then she noticed other things: her hands were tied behind her; a rope was wound around her waist to keep her upright against a pole.
She pulled at the ropes around her wrists, to no avail. Should she call out? Naked, she felt terribly vulnerable . . . human.
Then she heard a sound . . . soft, measured footfalls.
In front of her a shadowy form appeared beyond a dark iron gate at the end of the trail. The outline of the figure shimmered, then solidified before her widening gaze. She blinked. Maybe the apparition had just been a floating tendril of fog that had given her that impression.
The fog cleared for a moment to reveal the imposing figure of a man.