"No! I haven't been, working against you."

"To break down our defenses until you could… what?" He shook her. "What have you done?"

She tried to knee him in the groin, but his reflexes were too quick. His knee knocked hers away, deflecting the blow. Outrage threatened to choke her. The injustice of his accusations. The betrayal of everything she'd believed he was.

"I thought I was human. Human. You were the one who ripped me from my life, who insisted I was Therian, who told me I was the Radiant and was doomed to be your power plug for the rest of my life. I don't know what I am. I've never pretended to know." She kicked at his jeans-clad shins, hurting her bare toes, but her fury needed an outlet. She had to hurt him somewhere. Somewhere. Because, dear God, his betrayal was killing her.

"You said you'd protect me, and I trusted you. I trusted you."

He growled and pushed her hard against the rock wall at her back, getting in her face, his fangs glistening. "What spells have you cast over me, witch? You made me want you. You drove me to my knees with lust for you. I've never cared whose legs spread for me, but you changed that, didn't you? You made me want you."

"I didn't do anything! Or if I did, I didn't do it on purpose."

"Tell me what you've done."

"Go to hell,", she shrieked at him. "You don't believe me. You're not even listening to me."

"You made me want you. Now you're going to live with it." His face loomed close, his fangs disappearing a heartbeat before his mouth was on hers, grinding against hers until she couldn't breathe.

She'd wanted him to kiss her. How many times had she wanted him to kiss her? But not like this.

Kara wrenched her mouth away. "I thought you refused to touch me."

"I thought your mate had been chosen for you. Now I know you bewitched me, then made me think I couldn't have you. To torture me."

She laughed, but the sound was bitter, then gone when his mouth captured hers again.

Kara pushed against his shoulders, but she might as well have been trying to push away a tank. No matter how hard she beat at him, he didn't budge, just ground his mouth harder against hers until she tasted blood.

Her eyes burned with tears. She'd loved him. How could she have been so wrong?

His hands covered her breasts, squeezing, kneading, raising a fire she didn't want, and pulling a moan from her throat. The kiss changed, no longer punishing, but hot. Desperate.

His tongue stroked her lips until she let him in, that single stroke melting her body, melting her resistance. With a groan, his tongue swept inside her mouth, staking its claim, stroking her own until she was spinning out of control. The first release ripped through her, scattering her to the winds.

She came back to herself clinging to him, her fingers buried in his hair, her body rocking hard against his.

Lyon growled and pulled her hard against him. "You want me."

"Yes." Her affirmation was little more than a gasp, but there was no denying it. She didn't want to want him, but her body was on fire, burning from the inside out.

He pushed her back, then sheathed his claws and stripped out of his clothes, tossing them onto the rock. He stood before her, bathed in moonlight, wild and untamed, more beautiful than any man ever made. On his arm, the silver armband gleamed and shone, the jeweled eyes of its lion's head shining as brightly as Lyon's own. His shoulders wide and strong, his chest ripped with muscle, tapering to a hard abdomen, he was glorious.

Between his legs, his erection curved toward her, thick and long and ready.

His eyes met hers, their golden glow hard. Hot. "Take off your gown, witch, or I'll rip it off you."

She stared at him, her breath lost somewhere between her lungs and her throat, the pulse pounding in her neck. Her legs had gone weak, a dampness forming between her thighs: With trembling fingers, she lifted the hem of her short nightgown and pulled it over her head, tossing it aside.

Lyon's eyes grew impossibly hotter as his gaze traveled slowly down her body, stopping at the juncture of her thighs. The melting inside her intensified, the heat between her legs growing until she thought her entire body would go up in flames.

He closed the distance between them and grabbed her arm. She gasped with pain as his hand closed over one of the draden bites. She'd forgotten the bites, the nipping pain spiraling into the greater haze of sensation as he turned her around and pushed her against the rock face.

"I've got to have you, Kara. I can't wait." As his hands grabbed her wrists, pinning her hands to the rock above her head, his leg parted her thighs. His thick erection slid down the curve of her rear, sliding through the crease. In one hard thrust, he entered her from behind, filling her, stretching her almost to the point of pain. He gave a guttural cry of pleasure, pulled nearly all the way out, then slammed home again, pressing her hard against the rock.

At the exquisite feel of his domination, Kara felt a wild stirring inside that made her almost believe her ancestors, millennia back, were shape-shifters, too. Animals. In the distance, a dog barked as if sensing the wildness.

Lyon's mouth came down on her arm, his tongue stroking one of the draden bites, stealing the pain. Each stroke of his tongue sent heat shooting to her core, making hex wetter, easing the thrusts of his erection.

Her body tightened, rising higher, to a crescendo she knew instinctively would surpass everything that had come before.

Four strokes, five, and she was gasping, shattering, her inner muscles squeezing him as she came. Still he rammed into her, his mouth moving to a different wound until she fell apart again. Over and over, seven times, eight, he brought her to climax before he finally roared his own release.

For long moments, he pressed against her, filling her, his ragged breath stirring her hair. Then he pulled out of her and turned her to face him, still pinning her hands above her head.

"I'm not through with you."

She tilted her head back to look up into his eyes, eyes shining with a fierce brightness that mocked the dark. "Good."

His teeth flashed for one instant before he swept her up and deposited her on her back on the cold rock, then knelt at her feet and lifted her ankle to his mouth where another of the little fiends had bitten her. She remembered how the rock had warmed to her when she'd tried to pull the power that morning, and later when she'd finally gone radiant. Pressing her palms to the cold stone, she pulled.

Almost at once, the rock began to warm, easing the chill of the air on her damp flesh.

"Do it," Lyon growled.

"Do what?"

"Pull the flame. See if you can go Radiant. It'll help heal these wounds." His tongue stroked her ankle, stealing her thought as her pulsing womb tightened all over again. He brought her to climax four times before she could concentrate enough to pull the flame. She'd just pulled it when his tongue stroke sent her into a fifth raging climax. Without realizing what she was doing, she pulled the flame inside and felt it burst within her, filling her with light and warmth even as she cried out with the pleasure of the release.

And then Lyon was on top of her, shoving deep inside her, his mouth drinking from hers, his body hard and demanding as he drove her up yet again.

But this time, when she broke, the pleasure nearly sent her out of her body, and Lyon was there with her. They cried out as one. Fell as one.

Kara cradled his weight, loving the feel of him on top of her, inside her, as she struggled to catch her breath and knew he did the same.

Of their own accord, her hands stroked his damp back, reveling in the play of muscles along its width. She hated what he'd done to her. Hated that he didn't believe her. But she didn't hate him. She couldn't hate him. Even when he thought she was his enemy, he'd saved her from certain death. Even when he was stealing his pleasure from her body, he'd returned it a hundred times over. And he'd taken the time, made the effort, to heal her wounds.

Her emotions were a confused mess, too tangled to figure out. She still loved him. That was the only thing she was sure of. But she was beginning to understand the importance of the Radiant. And she didn't know if she could convince them she could do the job even if she wasn't the Therian they'd thought her. She didn't know how to convince them. She barely understood the difference between the races herself.

Her life, her fate, were out of her hands. From the moment she'd first seen Lyon in her kitchen at home, her fate had ceased to be her own. Maybe it had never been her own. Even though she hadn't known it, she'd always belonged to this world. Of Ferals and Mage, of magic and radiance and terror.

As she held Lyon, a strange and profound peace settled over her. A rightness. As if this place, this moment, this man, were what she'd been waiting for all her life.

All she could do was hope this wasn't the end.

Lyon wasn't sure how long he'd lain Within the cradle of Kara's arms and the tight welcome of her body. All he knew was, he never wanted to leave. Was this, too, bewitchment? Or something more? Something all Kara.

He pulled out of her and rolled away, to lie on his back beside her.

He turned his head to look at her, his breath catching at her shining beauty. "You're radiant."

Her head rolled toward him until she met his gaze. There was something warm within the wariness and confusion in her eyes. "How can I go radiant if I'm a Mage?"

"I don't know. Why don't you have the Mage eyes? You're probably only half-Mage."

"Can you have a Radiant who's half-Mage?"

He turned his face to the stars, unable to voice the truth. But Kara was too sharp to need it spelled out for her.

"You'll kill me to make way for my replacement." Her words were simply said, without emotion. But he felt her pain, the pain of betrayal. "Why didn't you just let the draden have me? Why did you save me and heal me if you're only going to kill me again?"

"I don't know. It's probably the spell you put on me. I still feel protective of you."

"I didn't put a spell on you, Lyon." She rolled onto her stomach, rising on her arms to look down at him. Her body still glowed, but in her eyes, he saw a hurt and a bleakness that raked at his soul. "You've been sensing and pulling my emotions since you found me in Spearsville. Wouldn't you know if I've been lying?"

He tucked his hand behind his head as he looked up at her. "Yesterday, I'd have said yes. Absolutely. I believed everything you told me. Tonight, I'm not so sure." But searching her eyes he saw no cunning lurking in those blue depths. No slyness. In the emotion that rolled out of her he felt an anguish of the spirit that had his beast whimpering in pain. With his free hand he reached for her, needing to touch her, to comfort them both.

He stroked her cheek. "Goddess help me, but I want to believe you."

She turned her face and kissed his palm. "If I've done anything to hurt you or yours, it was an accident, Lyon. I would never hurt you on purpose." The truth of her words swam in her eyes and sank into his heart, making him ache.

With his thumb, he traced her cheekbone. "Even after I cut you?" The thought of what he'd done to her made him ill. He reached for her and pulled her on top of him, cradling her head beneath his chin.

He shouldn't care. She's Mage, his mind railed.

She's Kara, his heart replied.

All he knew was she was hurting, and it was his fault.

"I'm sorry, little one. What I did was inexcusable." Barbaric. He'd felt that cantric and all he could think was that she'd betrayed him. That she'd opened him up, made him feel, and it was all a lie. She was a lie. He'd attacked her. Turned on her without asking a single question. Judge, jury, and executioner in one brutal act.

His hands slid over her back, comforting. Begging forgiveness. "You had to have felt that cantric before."

"I didn't. As deep as it was buried, how would I have felt it? I'm not in the habit of exploring the bones in my rear. You only found it because you were pressing so hard."

What she said might be true, he supposed. "When I felt it, I went a little berserk."

Her cheek brushed his collarbone, her soft hair sliding against his chin. "I noticed. Is there anything left of my room?"

"Not much. I don't think I hurt the bed, but I can't entirely remember." His hand slid carefully over the place where he'd cut her. "Are you okay?"

"It's healed."

Physically. The emotional pain he'd caused her would take far longer. He marveled that she trusted him to hold her after that. He felt no hate coming from her, though he thought he just might hate himself.

He stroked her hip and buttocks where he'd hurt her, his fingers exploring the sweetness of her curves. His body responded and rose to the feel of. her along his length, her naked breasts soft against his chest, the sweet scent of her hair. His senses swam and goddess, but he wanted her. He had to have her again.

His fingers dug into her buttocks, kneading, pressing her against the arousal growing thick and heavy between their bodies. He reached lower, sliding to the crevice of her rear, and down, past the tight pucker of her anus, to the soft, wet folds he sought.

As he stroked her, dipping his finger into her heat, Kara moaned, rocking against his hand.

His mouth brushed her hair. "Do you want me again?"

"Yes. Always." She lifted her face for his kiss, and he didn't disappoint her. He pulled her head down, cradling it as his tongue drove into her mouth. A groan broke free of his throat while between their bodies his erection surged and bucked, demanding attention.

He kissed her hard and long, then released her head to reach for her hips. She propped herself up on his chest, and he lifted her and drove himself deep inside, her hot, slick walls expanding to fit him. He lifted her hips, pulling nearly out of her, then pushed home again, his hips rushing up to meet hers. Over and over again, he took her, watching the passion drench her radiant face. But it wasn't enough.