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  Hearing my name called from her lips caused my eyes to close on their own in a small moment of bliss. The frigidly cold steel counter was our only separation.

  As freaked out as she was, she was still listening. The whirlwind in her mind was as twisted as a rope.

  No! I can’t think about this. This is not right. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong.

  I didn’t move for fear of losing her more. When her sobs turned to tears and she gripped the counter mercilessly, I fell apart even more.

  Who is doing this to me? My life rule, never give face time to anyone, no matter what...too much to Calum. How did this boy affect me in less than twenty four hours and now this? ... out for me...can’t take this. Is anything in my life my own? ...lie.

  Her thoughts went on and on. I had to act, and soon. The swish of the air as my leathers caught the sharp corner and ripped didn’t stop me. I pinned her to the side of the counter between with both arms allowing a small visible space between us. Shirtless, my sweat dripped heavily down my arms and neck and I knew she had to be disgusted. She still cried.

  I knew her eyes remained closed even as she dry heaved when all the tears were finally gone over a minute later. She leaned into my chest after so long and I embraced the warmth she burnt into my skin for I didn’t know why she did or denied her doing it. Her hair was matted against the middle of my chest mixing sweat and tears together and now drying up creating an adhesive between us. If she opened her eyes she would see my stomach again. She would feel compelled to ask and I had to tell her. I was out of time on that important detail. The feel of her eyelashes brushing against my bare skin made my body tense to all levels of danger.

  I knew now she could feel my own fear radiating like the sun she shared.

  How could this be?

  Are you sure you want to know just yet? I stilled even more if it was possible.

  I don’t think I have a choice anymore. But you know, don’t you? She lifted her tear-stained face to mine.

  There is always a choice, Anastacia.

  “Why do you call me that?” she snipped at me reminding me that her anger wasn’t buried deep.

  Why not?

  “My father calls me that,” she clucked her tongue.

  What do you want me to call you?

  She wrestled with that one. Hope gripped my insides.

  I don’t know.

  Her hair jerked free when she rocked back and forth enough, but staying close. Some of it was caught in the opening across both shoulders in the dress and I gently tried to keep my fingers from touching her skin to free each piece.

  The fluttering feeling I had heard her speak about when she neared me must be working overtime because she held her stomach like she was sick. I knew well my own “Anastacia radar” told me she was nearer to my body than she had ever been.

  “Thank you,” she understood surprise written on all of her features.

  Then her face went through a series emotions I liked and then didn’t and then could have never anticipated, but hoped for. She had come to the point that destiny was involved and maybe, just maybe it involved me.

  “You have the sun also?” A question that I have longed for. Ached for. Tasted even to hear her agree.

  She nodded such a tiny nod up to me.

  Can I see it? I asked breathlessly even in my head.

  Her grace and beauty were framed in that moment. Her mind went in five different directions with no visible response. Nor did she intend for her thoughts to be for me, but I heard nonetheless.

  I revealed this to someone who made me feel actually special rather than being a rogue Valkyrie princess who spends her time reading and throwing knives at walls that never ever talk back to you. I showed my true nature giving more of myself than any other one person in this world has known. Was I supposed to reveal those secrets elsewhere? Was he the wrong person? Is this why father kept me hidden from others? No, Calum is still important to me.

  She drew in a deep breath and held it, clutching her chest. I don’t know what to do. Please, I don’t know what to do. My faults. My fears. I am not sure I can handle it. I don’t know if I want to handle it.

  Adjusting myself to accommodate her legs that had surely fallen asleep, I buzzed like a freight train with her fingers pressing into my arms and I was almost sure she was feeling me up on the length of my arms. Self-control could only be taken so far.

  Needing to give her comfort, I pulled out the ring and held it in front of her since my vocal cords were seemingly locked up. The void ached in me. She didn’t see what it did to me. How I needed it. Needed her.

  Her hands shook to the point of frostbite, so I obliged to clasp it in place. Being this close to her, smelling her vanilla and cream scent. The vanilla was easy to name, but the cream...it was all I could define it as. She shivered in a patterned way. I wondered if it was a positive or negative reaction.

  “Better?” I asked.

  A minute shake of her head was all she gave.

  “You were born as a daughter of Anat. You were predestined to be more than what you think of yourself. You have the abilities you do like no one else. You have the skills of a Valkyrie, the skills of a Hunter, the abilities of something otherworldly, and power you have yet to acquire that you siphon from others. You have doubled your numbers since yesterday alone. You are special in more ways than you know.” I stemmed myself carefully to spill it in small doses.

  “My father knows all of this?” she worried aloud. I reassured her surprised again at how quick she was to pick up on barely there clues. “And how do you play out in all of this?” She adjusted her skirt now because she moved her cute little ass onto the top of the counter and faced me. Her eyes widened as the arctic cold steel hit her bare legs. I held back the laugh.

  She darted her eyes more than once on the downward spiral.

  “Hold on,” I had an idea. A better idea. I grabbed a paper towel and leaned over sideways to the menu board Claire kept for me to jot down what items I needed for guests. (For which was rare.) Fast and furiously, I wrote every word down for her to hopefully see what I needed for her to know. Hope. That word played on my thoughts more than her name even. I hoped to change that. She watched every word as my nearly unreadable handwriting filled the thin make-do document.

  Dear Son of Eos,

  Son, I am only the pawn in this. Asked by Anat to comply with her orders, I give you my undying love and respect for what you must do in the following years. As goddess of the dawn, I foresee what actions you did and will take to have the human emotion love and to fulfill your destiny. Please use the powers you hold to complete these tasks. Don’t let her go alone. As the son of Ra, you are bound by all orders of our kind and hers. When choosing another form, take care that you are taught properly. The ring will return to you for the both of you. Take care.

  With Love.

  She reread it three times. “Where is the original?”

  “My room. I didn’t want to leave you alone.”

  Did she see it the same? Could she see she was meant for me? Would she let me?

  Do I trust him? He had not hurt me yet. “Where do you fit in this?”

  “What do you think?” She wanted the answers. I wanted her.

  “I’m asking what you think,” her cat claws coming out.

  “I have also increased my powers in the last twenty four hours. I am able to feel fear and anger as well as the joy and happiness as of yesterday. I can last twice as long in a fight than I could just yesterday.” You made me stronger. I wasn’t sure if she heard the last part.

  Her confidence was growing as much as our powers by her next comment, “Like magnets that absorb. We catch it like a disease.”

  I lifted my chest to match my push for the small light she left shining. “Not a bad thing. We increased, not decreased. I didn’t anticipate it, but recognized it immediately when we arrived back here, together last night. I felt your every fear and every time your heart speed up in a happier mom
ent very vividly.” I was trying to let her know she felt something between us. It was instant attraction. “I knew something was up so I was prepared to show you the letter today. I didn’t want to scare you. Even had thoughts of how it might pan out. I believe that our “charms” have intermingled so to speak and although I think that has a double meaning, I also believe,” I swallowed and looked down away from her. When her lips parted a little I waited for her, but received nothing and went on.

  “I believe that the last lines mean something about me. I reason that you feel deeply about the Hunter boy named Calum and know that he bares similarities to you in more than one way. I know that you share a birthday, commonalities in your name, and similar star marks. I know that he believes it too. But I have theory also. I bare a similar mark to you. I have the same abilities as you. I am…Valkyrie.”

  She looked up at me with shock. “What?”

  “I was born Valkyrie before being turned. And I would know my other theory to be correct now at matching your sun to mine.”

  She licked her lips leaving me needing more than she could give at the time. Now or never.

  Just when I was about to make my move, ask her to see it again, she crawled up onto the counter leaning upward and propped her legs under her. She smoothed out the front of her dress and started a roll with the bottom ruffle. Her thin black pants that resembled fancy long johns were rolling down slowly now.

  She seemed to panic at my lack of reaction, but I held my breath just waiting. She watched my hand flex and change its mind every time I chickened out again to touch her. She seemed to do the same.

  She finally nodded and I gently scooted her legs over and moved between them. I worried this was too intimate for her. It sure as hell was for me if it didn’t pan out the way I planned. I smoothed my hand over the side of her hip first to wager her next move. I checked her face. The feeling shot through me like a shot in the arm but with a certain high.

  ...Calum.

  I only caught some of what she might have thought. The ring moved and then rocked back against her skin.

  She wisped her hand further in thoroughly depressing into my stomach knocking the air from my lungs. Her own shock was evident by the way she bit her bottom lip. The pain dispersed throughout my body and stayed there as just a buzzing lukewarm liquidy feeling snaked around my insides.

  “What does the sun mean?” she asked.

  “The two suns create one.” I hoped.

  Skeptical, she shifted her weight around me.

  “That could mean, I think, they join forces or that that the two suns create a child,” I blushed heavily and very unmanly, “or simply that the two suns become one as in marriage or simply merge another way.”

  “Those are strong ifs,” she swallowed the bowling ball that had gelled up inside her throat.

  “And so is everything else about me, you, and your Hunter boy.”

  Chapter Nine

  “MY Hunter boy?” she was offended by my word choice. She didn’t know what I had to do to survive the last weeks knowing he would steal all of her firsts. I had to endure the sting of living with it. Hearing it even. Unfortunately, it was edged in my brain. I could have blocked. I should have blocked it if I was a gentleman. I wasn’t a gentleman in most sense of the word.

  She liked his kisses.

  “Yes, he is a part of this too. He is marked as well.”

  I am losing my mind.

  “And how, may I ask, do you theorize we all fit into this because somehow I feel very caught in the middle and yet you know way more than me and still I don’t know your name,” she snipped no doubt irked by my lack of following her so-called rules. I couldn't tell her everything just yet.

  Keeping my composure was never hard for me...until now. She breaks every barrier I have ever held up.

  “I think,” I took two steps back to cool the sensations her body was torturing me with so I could think. I changed my original line of thought and asked, “What do we share?”

  “The sun.” I covered the place where her dress covered her navel of being marked like me.

  “What do you and the Hunter boy share?” I calmly demanded this although my raging fear was that of a bull at saying his name and seeing her face react to it.

  Anastacia didn’t want to tell me, this I knew. After a long while, standoffish and even a little bashful she whispered, “The stars, Orion.”

  “And what do he and I share alone?”

  She drew both brows in tight refusing to say what she knew to be true.

  “You!” I confirmed for her. I knew she dreaded it though.

  “You don’t have me!” she popped off clucking her tongue like she did a lot. I took a foreseeable sweet chance and slipped the ring away from her skin, her tiger eyes watching my every inch. But I would like too.

  “How did you do that?” she forced us apart.

  “Remember, the talisman part of it only needs to touch your skin.”

  “Why do you know my father?” She wasn’t giving up on figuring it all out. And as much as I was reluctant to be rejected, I admired her tenacity.

  Two of the cooks waltzed in behind us, disturbing nothing and stopping everything. I wanted her to myself and not one eye on her other than me. I had reached a new level of hope and couldn't stop it in any way. My hand out her hers, my bloodthirsty heart beat wildly enough she had to hear it. She jumped down from the counter and walked away from me.

  He needs a shirt.

  I do?

  Anastacia jumped sky high right in front of me, startled by my inner voice. How did you hear me?

  I grabbed a shirt on the way in the den and pulled it over my head enjoying the crimson in her cheeks as she watched without inhibition and pointed out that her ring wasn’t in place anymore, “Your ring is against the dress, not your skin.”

  “That seems awfully picky of it,” she chuckled to herself.

  I nodded to the sofa praying she would comply but she seemed distracted and only watched my eyes rather intently. Her ring had fallen to a dangerously low area of skin I had no access to. Yet.

  We both fell into either side of the sofa and waited with fidgety hands. Forcing my one hand to land over the top of the sofa and leaning into her enough to at least appear open to her lead, I realized my other hand was barely touching the tips of her toes so I inched it back. She watched all the while.

  Anastacia turned her whole body into me and curled her feet up under her legs making my thoughts far from decent.

  The nonexistent threshold was about to break.

  I laid it out there. “I’ve known your father personally for ten years. He summoned me one night to seek out a boy who was rumored to have similar markings like you and I. I didn’t know about you completely, mostly that you were the twin second to your brother in line for the crown or the other way around. I didn’t know which. I had seen you at court from the kitchens, but never very close.” I watched her shift her pink toenails around probably after losing the circulation in her feet. How females can sit that way comfortably is beyond sane.

  “Lord Hathown found him and had me watch him until his father transferred the both of them to a Hunter school. His father became the headmaster and I was to keep an eye on them both for safety from afar.”

  I skated around so many of the details. Hinting at her Hunter didn't get the results I wanted.

  “So you are in service to my father?” She asked me shifty-eyed.

  “I am.”

  “I have been well reimbursed. I gained the ring back like predicted.” And the letter said I would. She would think I did it for money by the way I short answered her.

  “Why did you do it? Work for my father.”

  Good, she wanted more. “He said that you would need a benefactor at eighteen and that safety was of upmost importance to my own survival.” And I knew she was my soul mate even then. I didn't say something that that stupid out loud or where she could hear it.

  “Your survival?” she laughed. />
  “I didn’t know then. But when the Hunter spy entered your court, I became suspicious of his intentions with you and followed him daily until his last. He shared a bit of news one day that changed my existence forever.”

  “And what was it?”

  I motioned to the pouch showing that I knew it was there and presumably never left her side. I'd not tell her I watched that slime put his mouth on her. Stole her taste from me. “Your letter I presume?”

  Her pretty little face scowled at me. I so often had to stop my inappropriate at the time smiles but it made her face draw up just the way I liked.

  “He said that you were marked on your stomach with “suspicious marks” that made a pattern (I knew this already). I had to know more, if only to confirm that I wasn’t alone. I spied on you but could never catch a glimpse of your bare midriff (But Szar knew). After careful research I learned that your father knew about my own and that of your Hunter boy. We are all connected somehow though I had seen you long before then. I have yet to find out how completely, but I do know now what happened when—

  “When what?” She just realized where she had put her hand across my leg. When she coiled her hand back quick as a whip, I made sure to show no signs of complaining.

  “Later, let’s eat something.”

  “One more question, please?” she batted her eyes enough her head danced around in the rhythm of it.

  Oh, she was good. Her little act didn’t fool me. I knew she wasn’t turning the tide on her feelings for me or anything like it. I really needed to get to the meal to avoid all this but here it was. I raised my head up to her, “and I’m the sly one, you say.”

  “Why am I really here?”

  I will lose her. Any question but that. “You are under my protection.”

  “From who?”

  “From anyone who would harm you.”

  “Does that include you?”

  She had serious gumption. “I would never hurt you.”

  I believe you. She raised the ring to make it obvious she was telling me more than just the three words. She pointed out in her own thoughts that I could hear so clear and crisp that my eyes were closed and she was angry she couldn't read my thoughts. I opened my mind to her sending my heart a jolt of once again hope. And I can't read your thoughts with that ring. Equally as maddening.