She jerked back, peering up into his face. "A mouse?"

He chuckled, setting butterflies to flight in her chest. "That one's a joke. I think." His hands framed her face, and he watched her with so much tenderness in his eyes, she thought she might melt beneath it. "Do you have any idea how much I love you?"

Her heart sang at his words, tears pricking her eyes. "I think I do. Maybe almost as much as I love you. But I almost wish you wouldn't. Your loving me scares me, Hawke. What if I turn into the enemy?"

He stroked her hair. "You're not going to turn into the enemy. And I couldn't stop loving you if I tried. There's so much good in you, Smiley. You're strong, you're giving, you're sweet. Your smile lights me up inside like a dozen suns, and your kiss turns me to putty. You're worth every risk. Any risk."

She was stunned by his words, humbled. And deeply moved. The love she felt for him swelled until she thought it would consume her.

He kissed her, his fingers sliding into her hair, his lips lingering, brushing over hers, the touch sparking an instant fire inside her. He groaned, sliding his tongue into her mouth, one hand gliding down her back to press her hips tight against him. Kissing her temple, he murmured, "You're going to be a valuable member of the Feral team, Faith. If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to see to that. You'll have a purpose here. A home. No matter what happens."

She pulled back to stare up into his face. "What do you mean, 'no matter what happens'?"

A shadow passed over his features, his eyes troubled. "Nothing." He tried to kiss her, to end the discussion, but she turned her cheek, avoiding him.

"Tell me what you meant, Hawke."

He sighed and shrugged. "Nothing. I just . . . I don't know what the spirit trap did to me. I know it damaged me. And the damage is getting worse."

"You're supposed to be getting better. You're immortal."

"I know." A look of resignation crossed his face.

"No, Hawke. You can't tell me I'm going to succeed against all odds, yet give up yourself. While you're finding a cure for me, how about finding one for what's happening to you, too?"

His mouth tightened. "We've tried everything."

"Then try something else," she snapped, then covered her mouth, ashamed of herself. Her anger crumbled beneath the caress of gentle eyes. "I just found you. I don't want to lose you." Her voice cracked on the last.

He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close within the shadows of the trees. The scent of flowers and new grass, of spring's rich promise, felt wrong somehow, in direct counterpoint to their talk of death and loss.

"Even if the worst happens, you won't be alone this time, Smiley."

"I haven't been that alone."

"No?" He peered down at her. "Have you lived with an enclave since you lost your own? Have you ever lived with anyone other than the occasional street kid who needed a place to sleep for a while?"

She shrugged. "I'm fine that way."

"No. You're not. I can see the loneliness in your eyes." He stroked her hair. "Why didn't you go with your enclave that day when the warning came that your village was about to be attacked?"

"It was a long time ago, Hawke."

"I want to know what happened. It's part of who you are."

She pulled away, turning to look out over the woods, reluctant to go back there, to that time, to that day, even though . . . so little had actually happened. When he pulled her back against him, she relaxed, looking up at the canopy above, and told him.

"We were living in Belgium early in the First World War. One of the Therians in our enclave was particularly gifted at clouding the minds of humans and getting the information he wanted from them. He'd been out scouting and came upon a German who told him that they were planning an imminent attack on the human village where we lived. The Therian raced back to warn the enclave. My best friend, a human, lived in that town. It was her father who used to call me Smiley. He'd shown me more patience and kindness than anyone in my enclave, and I'd often pretended he was my real father. I begged our leader to give me an hour so that I could warn them, but he said no. I went anyway."

"They didn't wait." Hawke's tone as his chin settled on her crown was heavy with understanding.

"No. On some level, I think I'd known they wouldn't. In my youth, I said good riddance, but . . ." She shook her head. The horrors of the attack and the days that followed were something that she would never forget.

"Were you able to save your friends?"

"No. As much as they cared for me, they didn't believe I could know such a thing. They didn't leave in time."

"I'm sorry." Hawke slid his arm across her upper chest, pulling her firmly against him, anchoring her back in the here and now. "Your leader should be staked and left for the draden for leaving a fifteen-year-old child behind."

She curled her fingers lightly around his forearm as she tilted her head forward and pressed a kiss to his bare skin. "He did what he had to do to ensure the safety of the enclave."

"He could have left someone to wait for you."

"That wasn't his way. He was a rigid man, cold and unbending. They all were."

"You had parents among them?"

"Technically. My mother had little to do with me. And she neither knew nor cared which of the males was my father."

"Others raised you."

"Others fed me, clothed me. I raised myself." She shrugged. "I'd intended to leave them as soon as I was of age, anyway. Circumstances left me on my own a few years early, is all."

"Ten years." He groaned. "It shouldn't have happened, Faith. You were their responsibility."

"They were cold people, Hawke. They cared for no one and nothing but themselves. I didn't understand that at the time. It took years."

"But you care. About others."

"Yes. Humans aren't so different from us. Their bodies are fragile and don't last long, but the hearts and minds and souls that inhabit them are the same as ours. To believe we're better than them is a mistake. We're stronger, yes. But we should use that strength to help them. Not use them to help ourselves."

His chin brushed the top of her head. "I agree."

Her tension drained away with the certainty he understood. She heard it in the tone of his voice and sank back against him. "It was humans who helped me and protected me during those attacks on my village. The same humans I watched die all around me. When it was over, only a few of us had survived, and we banded together. A handful of kids who'd lost everything and everyone. The others weren't Therian, they weren't immortal, but it didn't matter. We became a family, scavenging for food and warmth. We survived.

"I soon realized that there were always kids who were lost and alone, not just during wartime. Runaways. Throwaways. Orphans with no one to protect them. Kids who needed me. After a while, they died or grew up and moved away. Soon, I found myself moving every year or two to another country, another city, and starting over again, finding new kids who needed help. The moving was easy enough since I was born with a gift for language."

"Did you ever find your people?"

She blinked, opened her mouth to tell him she hadn't been looking for them, then shut it again. Of course she had. Not actively, perhaps, but every time she moved, a secret part of her had hoped she'd find them.

"No." It didn't matter, yet even she could hear the sadness in that word.

She felt the quiet sympathy in the brush of his chin and the gentle squeeze of his arms.

"I'm sorry, Faith."

"I'm not. It's a good life, a worthwhile life." She swallowed. "It's where I belong."

He stiffened, releasing her, turning her to face him. "That's where you're wrong." His eyes blazed with soft intensity. "It's not where you belong. Those selfish idiots that gave birth to you and raised you should be strung up by their heels for what they did to you. Not only leaving you behind but making you believe that you weren't worth their time. That you weren't worth anyone's. It's not true." She tried to look away, but he wouldn't let her. "It's not true, Faith. You're worth more than every one of them combined. You're worthy of being chosen a Feral Warrior, one of the greatest honors any Therian can be given." He gripped her face gently in his hands. "I wish you believed that."

"I can't. Because I know I was marked in error."

"No. You don't. At this point, we don't know anything for sure. Except that you're strong and fine and good." He kissed her. "And beautiful." He kissed her again. "And sexy."

She laughed. "Now, that's important."

He smiled, his eyes growing heavy-lidded and sexy as hell. "It's a bonus. For me. Only for me." He kissed her again, this time for keeps, pulling her into his arms, sweeping his tongue into her mouth. That quickly, passion ignited, the kiss turning hot and desperate.

"We need to do this indoors," he whispered against her temple. "I need to be inside you."

Damp heat flooded her body, and she nodded, turning willingly as he tucked her against his side and started back to the house. Love welled up inside her, overflowing, drenching her heart with warmth and beauty. She wished there was something she could do to help him recover from whatever the spirit trap had done to him. At the very least, she'd do as he wanted - learn to fight, work to be the best Feral Warrior she could be. And when her time came, she'd do her best to die a hero's death.

Despite Tighe's and Fox's kindness and encouragement, she knew that Hawke was the only one who truly believed she was meant to be one of them. And only because he loved her and couldn't stand the thought of the alternative. For both their sakes, he was fooling himself, trying to make her into something she could never be.

She ached to think what it would do to him when he realized he was wrong. Just as she trembled with fear that he was right about his own damage within the spirit trap. All her life, she'd waited for him, this kind, gentle, beautiful warrior. But their time together appeared destined to be all too short.

Chapter Fifteen

Hawke pulled Faith into the library, then closed the double doors and pulled her into his arms, brushing her hair aside to kiss her neck. Even after the training he'd put her through, she smelled like ripe, sweet raspberries.

"I need to be inside you."

"Here?" she asked on a laugh, a disbelieving lilt to her voice.

"I'm on duty." He unfastened her jeans.

She snorted. "Duty for what?" Then gasped as he slid his hand down into her panties.

He pushed his fingers through her curls and down into heat and wetness. "Goddess, you're ready for me."

"Always." The word trembled on a sigh.

With shaking hands, he released her and knelt before her to pull off her shoes. Then with quick, desperate movements, he shoved her jeans and panties down her legs and onto the floor, baring her slender calves and creamy thighs and all the lush beauty between to his starving eyes. He pulled off his shirt, then shucked his own pants while she stripped off her shirt and bra.

His hands shook, his body quaking and throbbing with incendiary heat as she turned to him, a smile on her lips, passion in her eyes. He lifted her, and she wrapped those lovely legs around his waist. Positioning himself against her damp, swollen opening, he pushed inside. His eyes closed at the exquisite feel of her tight little sheath, slick with arousal, hot and throbbing. And at the feel of her arms around his neck, the sweet torture of her taut nipples teasing his chest, the softness of her lips against his earlobe, and her hot gasps and moans, all driving him up fast and hard. She was fire in his arms, his light in the darkness, and he loved her beyond measure.

Capturing her mouth, he kissed her, sweeping his tongue inside as his body drove into hers, melding with hers, making them one.

Lightning bolted through his head, and he groaned. He knew what followed. But even prepared, the pain of those raking, vicious talons had him rearing back, his mind going white with shock, his body rigid with agony.

"Hawke?" Faith asked softly, worriedly.

As the pain slowly dimmed, as the hawk's angry cries faded away, he felt Faith's soft hand stroke his hair with a featherlight touch, over and over, easing him back.

He swallowed, looking at her. "Bad timing."

"Are you okay?"

A smile tipped the edge of his mouth. "That's my line." With a sigh, he nodded, though it was a lie. The hawk was trying to destroy the connection between them. The animal spirit had been damaged in that spirit trap. Or maybe it was Hawke who'd been damaged. Either way, the bird spirit was trying to gain his freedom, a freedom that Hawke would not survive.

The pain had been one hell of a distraction, but his body still throbbed, demanding release. He pulled partly out of Faith, then pushed himself deep inside her again, the intense pleasure shoving away the last of the lingering shock.

Faith moaned, the sexy sound combined with the scent of lovemaking sending his senses tumbling all over again.

"Can you finish?" she asked softly.

"All too soon. There's nowhere I'd rather be than inside you. And I'm not coming until you fly for me."

She smiled. "Let's fly together, my hawk."

He captured her mouth once more, driving into her hard and fast until they were both breathless and panting, until she cried out with release, squeezing him in hard, rhythmic spasms. He followed her into oblivion, pumping his seed inside her, loving her with his body, his mind, his soul.