“Which is?”

“I’m not a vamp. I’m a wolf.”

Jaden angled his head at her. “This is… not news.”

Lyra threw her hands up, narrowly missing knocking the bag of junk food to the floor. “But it’s relevant! I can’t move like you. I don’t have all the different funky abilities that your kind has. I can only work with what I have. And that is very different from what you started with.”

“You’ve got a point,” Jaden agreed. “But I took out Mark and then Simon without a lot of effort, and using very little of the ability I have at my disposal. Trust me.” He leaned forward, and Lyra was struck again by his natural intensity, an interesting contrast to the glimmers of humor, and even of kindness, that she’d now seen beneath. Interesting, puzzling, and slightly unwelcome. She wasn’t big on surprises.

“I’m not saying I can make sure you win, Lyra. But I can teach you to compensate for your smaller size, and to attack in ways the others won’t expect. You’ve got plenty of natural grace and strength. There are more effective ways for you to use it than throwing yourself at another beast and biting and slashing away.”

“How would you know? You haven’t seen me fight.”

“I—can tell.” Blushing again, Lyra noted. It was probably wrong to be entertained by this reaction, but she couldn’t help herself. It was cute. Dangerously cute.

“It’s the way you move,” Jaden said. “I can just tell. A couple hundred years of scrapping will give you a pretty good eye, you know.”

“Uh-huh.” Lyra played it off like she didn’t care, but knowing that he’d been watching her move—closely watching her—had her belly immediately tangled up in knots again. The memory of his hands on her, of the heat between them, tried to surface. Lyra pushed it away with all the force she could muster. Even if she was willing to consider this insanity, which was still a big “if,” she needed to consider the effect Jaden had on her. This feeling wasn’t healthy, it couldn’t go anywhere, and if anyone found out about it, she’d be run out of town with her tail between her legs. So the question was not only whether she could handle training with a vamp, but whether she could handle that much alone time with this particular vamp.

It bothered her that she really didn’t know.

“So, what, you’re going to just hang out and teach me how to fight like a vampire? That’s the whole plan?”

“Basically, yeah.” He moved his head just a little, and a lock of his hair slipped out from behind his ear and swung into his face. He didn’t bother to put it back, but Lyra’s fingers itched to. She lifted a hand to toy with a curl that had escaped her bun instead.

“And you’re going to hide out…”

“In your basement. Dorien said he’d figure out some excuse for my being here, though, so it’s not exactly hiding out.”

Lyra laughed then, a real laugh, and the loud and lusty roll of it seemed to surprise Jaden. But the entire situation, so completely strange and ridiculous, struck her all at once. He raised an eyebrow while he watched her, but he didn’t seem offended, just curious.

She shook her head, amused all over again at how confident he was in his ability to stay alive for any length of time in a town full of werewolves.

“You’re a cocky bastard, aren’t you?”

“I may have heard that a time or two,” he replied. “Why?”

“You realize that people around here are going to get one whiff of you, smell vamp and cat, and go ballistic, right? And you don’t see that as a problem?”

“You haven’t gone ballistic, and you’ve been sitting here a while. Nor have you ever grown fangs and chased me around,” he pointed out. The thought of it made her grin despite the fact that she didn’t think he grasped the seriousness of his situation.

“Yeah, well, I guess I’m used to your particular stink by now. And I love my pack, but not everyone here is a model of self-restraint.”

Jaden shrugged. “Dorien assured me he would work something out. Since I would assume he’s remained Alpha for so long for a reason, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.”

She looked at him, sitting there so calm and collected, and realized two things: one, Jaden didn’t understand a damned thing about werewolves, and two, he was completely serious about helping her win her rightful position in the pack. The first was strangely charming, even if it was probably going to get him killed. The second was a puzzle she couldn’t begin to figure out, and that bothered her. She was pretty good at sizing people up. But Jaden was completely outside her realm of experience. Since he was determined that a vampire walking around in the heart of the Pack of the Thorn was totally hunky-dory, Lyra asked him the only question she really had remaining.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

She narrowed her eyes at the guarded expression that returned so quickly. “Why any of this? Why show up with my family’s talisman? Why stick around to help me? I’m assuming Dad is paying you, but it wouldn’t be anything that would rock your world. You’ve got to have better things to do than get involved in werewolf politics, and it’s not like you and I hit it off right off the bat or anything. I just… don’t get it.”

Jaden’s forehead creased with a small frown. Lyra toyed with her snack, turning her fingers orange while she poked at it. Her appetite had evaporated, an unusual occurrence. But it suddenly seemed very important to understand exactly what Jaden was doing here. Even if she had a suspicion that there were a lot of things about him she would never understand.

Finally, he said, “I’m well over two hundred years old, Lyra. For most of it, I had to do as I was told instead of doing things that interested me. But things are different now, and this interests me. I don’t know why. Does it matter? You’ll have my help if you want it, regardless.”

“And what if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll go find something else to do,” Jaden replied. The words were casual, but he looked deadly serious. Lyra watched him, seeing the tension in the line of his shoulders, the set of his jaw. For whatever reason, it seemed he really wanted to be here. To be with her, in some capacity. Despite her own reaction to him, she could hardly fathom why.

“So what’s it going to be?” Jaden asked softly. “I don’t think Dorien was really listening when I told him this was up to you, but obviously it is. This is your fight, your decision. I can be out of here, and out of town, before he gets back if you’d rather. And if you want me to stay, we can get started as soon as we have a safe place to work.”

Lyra shifted uncomfortably, busying herself rolling up and clipping the top of the Cheetos bag so she didn’t have to look at him. She hated being put on the spot, and this was an awfully big deal. Too big to make a snap decision about. Apart from that, the fact that she couldn’t get a good read on Jaden’s motivations, and that she might not ever, was tough to swallow. She knew a little about his bloodline—or at least, the bloodline he’d been sired into before he’d hooked up with the Lilim. But all that dynastic crap, with the aristocracy and the weird medieval way the vamps governed their own, was not her world and not her concern.

Jaden was a big unknown. And she wasn’t sure she was in a position to be taking a risk with him. Then again… she wasn’t sure she could afford to refuse.

Frustrated, and not really thinking about what she was doing, Lyra stuck a finger in her mouth to suck off a last bit of cheese. After a moment she realized that Jaden’s attention had become completely fixed on her mouth. His expression, in the instant before his eyes met hers, was one that Lyra didn’t think she would ever forget. He looked hungry in a way she’d never experienced, plagued by a longing so deep that it was unlikely anything could ever assuage it.

In that instant, he looked every bit the vampire: ancient, and lost, and nearly consumed by need.

Then he lifted his gaze to meet hers, and Lyra felt the hot punch of all that fathomless hunger blow right through her. He might be a vampire, she realized, but the animal in her responded frighteningly well to the animal in him. It was all she could do not to leap across the table, wrap her legs around him, and sink her teeth in.

She stiffened, folded her fingers together on the table, and crossed her legs. Jaden, too, seemed to withdraw a little. He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and looked away as though bored, as though nothing had just passed between them.

Lyra realized he didn’t want this either. It was a relief, in a way. But it was also no guarantee he would continue to behave himself. Or that she would.

Finally, she gave the only answer possible.

“It’s late,” she said. “I’m wiped, and this is a lot to take in. So why don’t we do this: stick around for now. We’ll give it a shot. If the whole idea crashes and burns, you go, and I come up with something else. No hard feelings.”

Slowly, Jaden nodded. “Okay. Sounds reasonable.”

“Good,” Lyra said, trying to sound relaxed when she was anything but. She needed to get some air and some space, and wished she could get out for a four-legged run beneath the waning moon. But even that small pleasure had been denied her for some time. Too dangerous. Even here.

All she could do was head for another part of the house. It would have to be enough. And hopefully, a good night’s sleep would provide her with perspective she currently lacked.

“Look, I need to, um, do a couple things before I hit the sack, and I have no idea when my father will show back up.” She tried for a smile. “He’s probably hiding from me. Anyway, I’m usually pretty nocturnal, but it’s been kind of a rough week, so…” She trailed off, hoping he’d get the hint.

“Not a problem. I don’t need a babysitter,” Jaden said easily. “I’ll find something to do until Dorien gets back. You go ahead.”