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  Within minutes, she was past Treszka’s remains and able to smell fresh air. Up ahead, the entrance to the cave was nearly blocked. Only a small hole remained inside a wall of rubble.

  Someone had collapsed the entrance.

  Lyka shoved Joseph through on his shimmering stretcher. She was right behind him, but her big tiger’s body wouldn’t fit through the hole.

  She shifted back to human form and wiggled through just as the first of the horde of demons cleared the corner.

  “Plug it!” shouted Eric.

  The young scurried to obey, working together to lever a huge rock into place with a sturdy tree branch.

  The stone wall wasn’t going to hold them for long. She could already hear them scratching at the rocks on the other side, trying to claw their way free.

  A familiar noise beat in the background, but Lyka didn’t pay it any attention. Her complete focus was on Joseph.

  She knelt by his side and laid her hands on his chest. Blood was everywhere. There were still hours of night left, and any demons nearby would be headed their way as soon as they smelled it.

  “You need to take the young and leave,” Lyka told Eric. “They can’t be near him with all this blood.”

  “What about you?”

  Joseph was still alive but only barely, and only because she was forcing his heart to beat. The power flowing out of him that was usually as strong as a river was barely a trickle now. She was struggling just to keep in place the tiny shields that were preventing him from bleeding out altogether.

  They’d escaped the cave, but she had no idea how she was going to keep him alive long enough to reach help.

  Lyka bowed her head over him, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Please don’t die, Joseph. I need you. I love you.”

  A flutter of something flowed through their link, but it was so faint, she couldn’t decipher it.

  The noise she’d heard earlier began to get loud. The wind picked up. She covered Joseph’s head with her body as dust and leaves whipped around them.

  Eric put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, Sis. The cavalry is here.”

  Lyka looked up to see what he meant. A helicopter landed a few yards away in a space barely big enough for the job. Out jumped Nicholas and two other burly Theronai, swords in hand. They made a beeline for the cave entrance, taking up a fighting stance, ready for whatever made it out.

  Behind them was a tall, lean man, his dark head bowed against the wash from the rotors.

  Ronan.

  He lifted his head as he neared Joseph, and a pale silvery light spilled from his eyes. His expression was harsh, his face gaunt. “I’ll need blood if I’m to save him and still find the woman I seek. Lots of blood. And I don’t have the strength to mask the pain.”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation. “As much as you need. Whatever it takes.”

  The glow in his eyes brightened. “Deal.”

  Ronan grabbed her, bent her head back and bit her neck.

  She was so shocked by the sharp sting of his teeth sinking into her skin that her control faltered. The power she’d been channeling to keep Joseph from bleeding to death slipped from her grasp.

  She tried to find the strand of energy again, but there was nothing there anymore. The connection was severed.

  Lyka was alone.

  Without her there to keep Joseph’s heart beating, it stuttered once, then fell silent.

  The luceria opened and slipped from her neck. She moved to catch it, but Ronan was in the way. She fought against his hold, using all her strength, but no matter how hard she thrashed around, she couldn’t break free of his grasp.

  Sleep, he ordered as he continued to drink from her neck. He shoved the command directly into her mind, leaving her no choice but to obey.

  She lasted all of ten seconds before fatigue sucked her in and stole all her strength.

  Chapter 47

  Vazel found his queen on the dirty cave floor. With her neck twisted at such an odd angle, she was no longer perfect, but she was still beautiful.

  Her breath was so shallow, he almost thought she was dead. But the faint beat of her heart had called to him, summoning him as powerfully as any verbal command she might have uttered.

  He stroked her hair, straightening the tangled locks to cover the maw in the top of her head. Why she covered herself like that, he never understood, but he knew she liked it better when no one could see what she really was.

  “I can’t save you,” he said.

  Her eyes opened slightly, but that was the only sign she gave that she’d heard him.

  “But your blood will live on.” He cut open her gown with a knife, baring her abdomen. It was smooth and flat, but he could still sense the life that pulsed within her, struggling for survival.

  The Slayer’s seed had taken root, just as Treszka had hoped.

  “It should have been my child,” he told her. “And now it will be.”

  There was a flicker of terror in her black eyes, as if she realized what he intended to do. He hated her fear, but he wasn’t going to let it stop him. Not when he knew this was the right thing to do. How else could she live on?

  Vazel summoned every bit of power he possessed and used it to speed the flow of time within her body. Her abdomen grew with the child, but there was no pain. His mistress couldn’t feel anything below her broken neck now.

  By the time he was done and felt the first contraction ripple through his queen’s belly, he was exhausted. Sweat rolled from his skin. His body shook from the strain of wielding more power than he ever had before.

  With trembling hands, he carefully cut into Treszka’s body to retrieve its fruit.

  The child was perfect. Beautiful.

  “You should be proud,” he told his queen, but she didn’t hear him. She’d bled out from what he’d done and was gone from his reach forever.

  Vazel cut the cord and wrapped the child in a strip of velvet from Treszka’s gown. A sense of pride filled him as he cradled in his arms the thing he’d dreamed about most since he’d first laid eyes on his queen.

  He looked down at the remains of the woman he’d loved and smiled. “We have a son.”

  Chapter 48

  Lyka woke up in her suite at Dabyr as if nothing had happened. She was whole and safe. All her wounds were healed. She was clean and naked in her own bed.

  Completely naked.

  She reached for the luceria, already knowing that it was gone.

  A deep sense of loss consumed her, driving her from her bed. She slipped into a bathrobe and made it as far as her living room before coming to a dead stop.

  Joseph sat at the desk in the corner of her living room, working.

  He stood up as she came out of her room but didn’t come toward her. Instead, he gripped the back of the chair like an anchor. “You shouldn’t be out of bed yet. Ronan said you’d sleep for another day.”

  “Guess he was wrong.”

  The luceria was back around Joseph’s neck again. It looked like it always had, like it had never graced her throat.

  His hand rose to touch the band. “You’re free.”

  “How? I didn’t leave any room for a way out of our bond.”

  “Except death,” he said. “I died for a minute or two before Ronan brought me back.”

  That’s why she hadn’t been able to reach his power, why she hadn’t been able to reach him.

  That moment had been the loneliest of her life. Truth be told, that feeling wasn’t much better now. The only consolation was that Joseph no longer had any way of knowing what she was thinking. She couldn’t be ashamed of her weakness.

  “So, what does that mean?” she asked him.

  “It means you’re off the hook. Eric and the kids are safe. Andreas and the rest of the Slayers are staying here until they c
an rebuild and reinforce the settlement. I told him that you’re free to go with him when they leave.”

  He didn’t want her to be here anymore? Had she done something to upset him? Or was it just that he’d seen the person she really was and wanted nothing more to do with her?

  No one else had ever connected with her like he had. If he didn’t like what he saw, then maybe there was something wrong with her.

  “What about you? What about your pain?”

  “You funneled so much power from me that I’ll be fine for a while.”

  “Your lifemark?”

  “Still has three leaves. The others fell when we separated.”

  “So, you’re fine without me, huh? What about me? What about us?” she asked, her tone a little sharper than she’d intended.

  His gaze dropped to the floor. “I can’t put you in danger like that ever again. I have no clue how the other men do it.”

  That pissed her off.

  She marched up to him and got in his face. “Really?” she asked. “We have one little bump in the road and you call it quits?”

  “Little bump? I fucking died, Lyka. If we’d been together much longer—if the colors in the luceria had stopped moving—you could have died right along with me.”

  “You only died a little. And Ronan patched you up. You can’t let that get in the way of doing what you were meant to do—and I don’t mean sitting behind a desk.”

  “I’m needed here. Someone has to sit behind the desk.”

  “Then take turns. You deserve to get out there and fight just as much as the next guy. And so do I.”

  He frowned at her. “You want to fight?”

  “Honey, I was born for this. I may still need some practice at the magic part, but I’ve never in my life felt as whole and satisfied as I did when I was working side by side with you.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” he said. “Or you could take your time and see if you’re compatible with any of the other men.”

  “Screw that. I’ve found my partner. You’re the man I want. You’re the man I love.”

  His smile was slow to form, but once it did, it stretched all the way to his eyes. “Damn, I love hearing that. Say it again.”

  “You first.”

  “I love you, Lyka. I have for longer than I’m willing to admit.”

  “I love you, too, Joseph, but it’s still pretty new, so don’t push it.” She grinned and reached up to pull the luceria off his neck. It opened easily, wrapping around her hand as if needing to get closer to her. “This is mine. And so are you.”

  He kissed her until her head spun with desire. When she pulled away, she could feel the heat of the luceria back where it belonged, around her neck.

  “And you’re mine,” he told her. “My life for yours, kitten. All of them.”

  She placed her hand on his lifemark, feeling the slight pucker of the scar he now wore over his heart. “Forever, Joseph. Whatever comes our way, we face it together.”

  Read on for a sneak peek at the final book in Shannon K. Butcher’s thrilling Edge series,

  ROUGH EDGES

  Available in August 2015 from Signet Eclipse

  April 28

  Dallas, Texas

  After two weeks of sleepless nights, little food and endless hours spent working beside a man who lit up her libido like the surface of the sun, Bella Bayne wanted nothing more than a little quality time with her vibrator and a solid eight hours of shut-eye. In that order. Instead, what she got was the man of her fantasies—highly inappropriate ones at that—standing on her front porch, making her mouth water far more than the fragrant bags of Indian food he was toting.

  “Thought you might be too tired to cook,” said Victor Temple, the most perfectly formed male of any species ever created.

  He stood a few inches over her five-foot-ten-inch frame, blocking out the streetlight behind him. He had aristocratic features that were made more interesting by the three scars decorating his face. They were small but broke up the sea of masculine beauty enough that she could look at him without sunglasses to mask the glare of perfection. His dark blond hair was cut with military precision, falling in line exactly as he pleased. After several missions with this man, she’d learned he defied the laws of helmet hair in a way she still couldn’t understand. Blood pact with dark forces, no doubt.

  His clothes were casual but neat and extremely high-end. Victor came from money. Old, refined, nose-in-the-air money, yet she’d never once seen him flaunt it. No diamond cuff links, flashy cars or pricey watches for this man. No, Victor Temple had way more substance than that, which was another reason she wished he was anywhere other than standing on her front porch. It was his substance combined with those stunning good looks that made him dangerous to her professional ethics.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  Bella was hungry, but not for what was in those sacks. If not for the fact that she was Victor’s boss, she would have feasted on him weeks ago. But her strict no-fraternization policy meant she had to keep her hands and mouth off. Way off.

  “You should be at home, asleep,” she said, forcing censure into her tone. “If you think I’m giving you the day off tomorrow so a pretty boy like you can get his beauty rest, you’re wrong.”

  “I slept more than you did while we were away. And when one comes bearing gifts, Bella, it’s customary for the receiver to at least pretend to be gracious.”

  “Sweetheart, I don’t like pretending. And I’m not gracious.”

  He smiled as if he found her amusing. “Only because you’re hungry, which I have learned over the past few weeks makes you cranky. Now step aside, Bella. I’m coming in to feed you. Then we have to talk.”

  Talk? At this hour? That couldn’t mean good news.

  He didn’t give her time to move. Instead, he stepped forward, and she had no choice but to step back or she’d feel his body collide with hers. As nice as his body was, as off-limits as it was, she wasn’t sure she’d survive the crash without tossing him to the carpet and riding him until she got off. At least twice. Maybe then she wouldn’t be so cranky.

  “Talk about what?” she asked as he strode past her as if he owned her home, heading unerringly to a kitchen he’d never before even seen, much less navigated.

  “It can wait until after food.”

  His clean scent lingered in the air around him, crossing her path and making her drag in a deep breath to capture it. For a moment, the urge to bury her nose against his chest took over and she forgot all about why she didn’t want him here. She had to shake herself to get her brain working again. “You’re my employee in my home, honey. If I tell you to talk now, then that’s what you’ll do.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at her, daring to give her a grin. “I’m off the clock. You can’t order me around. Deal with it.”

  Fury struck her for a second before turning to lust. She had no idea what it was about this man. She was the owner of a private security firm. She worked with badass men all day long, every day. None of them had ever held her interest for longer than it took her to flatten them in the sparring ring.

  But Victor Temple was different. He got under her skin and made it burn. It didn’t matter that he was her subordinate, or that he was on loan from the U.S. government to help her deal with a situation of nightmarish proportions. She couldn’t seem to be near him without wishing they were both naked, panting and sweating.

  Maybe it had something to do with the one and only time she’d taken him on in hand-to-hand-combat practice. They’d both been panting and sweating then, and while they hadn’t been naked, she was acutely aware of just how skilled he was. How perfectly built he was. Not overblown or bulging with showy bulk, but his big frame was wrapped with sleek, functional muscles that rippled with power. She had fought bigger men than him and won, but only Victor had been able to pin her to
the mat.

  She was a strong, independent, kick-ass woman, but even she had to admit she liked that in a man.

  “I was half hoping you wouldn’t answer the door—that you’d be asleep,” he said.

  “I needed to unwind a bit first.”

  He lifted a wayward lock of damp hair that had escaped her haphazard ponytail. Only then did she realize just how close he was standing. Too close.

  “Shower didn’t do the trick?” he asked.

  No, but her vibrator would have if he hadn’t shown up. After all the time she’d spent with him recently, she wondered if she’d still be able to keep his face out of her fantasies. “There’s a heavy bag in the garage. A little time with that would have worn me out.”

  He stepped away, leaving her feeling adrift for a second before she caught up with reality. She could not be drawn to Victor. She had to lead by example, and fucking her employee on the kitchen floor, whether he wanted it or not, was not the kind of tone she wanted to set for her workplace.

  “You’re worried about Gage, aren’t you?” He glanced over his shoulder as he washed his hands. Muscles shifted beneath his tight T-shirt, adding fuel to the naughty fantasies she already suffered for this man.

  Her gaze slid past him to the window over the sink. She didn’t want him to see how he affected her. Even more than that, she didn’t want him to see her fear for Gage. He had willingly walked into the hands of a monster in the hopes of taking her down for good. No one had heard from him since. Bella had to stay tough, appear confident and provide leadership for her men. That included Victor.

  She straightened her spine. “Gage has been gone for weeks. He was ordered to make contact with me as soon as he could. The fact that he hasn’t is more than a little concerning. Sweetheart, any sane person would be worried.”

  Victor turned back toward her as he dried his hands. A flicker of sympathy crossed his features, making him even harder to resist. “He’s smart. And tough. I’m sure his silence is a sign that he’s working an angle with Stynger, not that he’s in trouble.”