He pulled off his shirt, probably guessing that would spook me less. I didn’t know if I was ready to be naked with him, but I didn’t want to wait, either. “Can I touch you?”

When my fingertips found his chest, he shivered. “Anywhere.”

It helped that he let me lose myself in his lean body, learning his lines until he was shaking. He pressed his mouth into my shoulder, breathing fast, especially when I raked my nails down the nape of his neck. To test his reaction, I did it again, and this time, he groaned.

“You like that.”

“I’d like anything you did to me.”

While I doubted that was true, it made me bolder. I pulled him down on top of me, and we kissed some more with my hands roaming up and down his back. Soon, he was moving on me as if he couldn’t help it, and it felt good, even the parts that were new and strange.

“Fade…”

His voice deepened, his words ragged and choppy with longing. “You feel so good. Need to … just let me…”

Feeling brave, I wriggled out of my shirt and that drew another pained sound from him when he lay down on me again. He explored with lips and hands. Then I lost track in the squirming and touching, so I didn’t notice when the rest of our clothes went away. The night was all heat, firelight, and Fade, breathing hard into my skin. He pressed my hand to him, but it didn’t take long until he was gasping. There was madness born of need in his eyes but I wasn’t afraid, never of him. He had restrained himself more than once, and I knew if I asked, he would stop. Instead I urged him on.

It hurt a bit, but I’d had worse. As he held me, kissed me so deep I tasted nothing but him, the rest turned beautiful. I figured out my part pretty fast, and when we finished, we were both sweaty and smiling. He cuddled me close, and I decided I didn’t mind being naked with him. With the wrong person, this would be awful, but I loved Fade with all my heart.

“So that’s how brats are born,” I said.

He propped up on an elbow. “We might have made one.”

“Is it possible the first time?” Maybe there was a learning curve.

“I think so. I’m not clear on the details.” Fade kissed my temple. “Was it all right?”

Teasing him, I pretended to consider. “I’d do it again. It’s probably like fighting, and we’ll get better with training.”

“I don’t know if I should be sad it wasn’t perfect or excited about the practice.”

“The last thing,” I advised.

Fade reached down, pulled up the covers, and settled me against his chest. We had lain like this together before, but never without clothes or blankets between us. To my mind, this part ran a close second to the touching and kissing.

“Are you scared?” he whispered.

I closed my eyes against the inexorable tick of time. “Very.”

“We have a few hours yet,” he pointed out.

As it happened, there was a lot to discover in that time. The second effort was better, and I understood why Momma Oaks spent so much time cautioning me. It was probably a good thing most Hunters were kept ignorant, or there would’ve been more brats than we could feed.

In silent accord, we gathered our clothes, dressed quickly, and crept out to the bathhouse to clean up before we met the rest of Company D. I’d never felt closer to another person in my life, as if breeding had destroyed the barriers between us. He waited while I took my turn, then I did the same. When Fade stepped out, I couldn’t resist kissing him; it seemed unthinkable that a night like this must end in death.

Not his, I begged silently. Not Fade. Please don’t take him from me.

Onslaught

Three hours before dawn, we assembled on the shore as agreed. The boatmen met us and ferried us over in shifts. I ordered the men to sit quiet and wait; I wasn’t sure how good the enemy’s hearing was, and this attack didn’t start until I gave the signal. It took about an hour to get everyone safely across. On arrival, I counted and realized we were short a few men. Apparently they couldn’t live with their orders … and I understood.

“Is everyone ready?” I asked.

“Yes, sir.”

Fade drew me aside. The men turned away—and I appreciated their discretion. We weren’t the only ones who had just-in-case good-byes to say, however. Around us, other people paired off: Morrow with Tegan, Tully and Spence, and a couple of men too. My heart hammered in my chest, so hard it hurt, and those moments of sweetness and safety up in the loft felt so far away. I went into his arms without asking if he wanted me there because I knew he did. His breath stirred my hair, and for a moment, I just listened to his heart beating.

“The odds still aren’t good,” I said softly.

I fought tears, as I had to be strong and brave at this moment, everything I didn’t feel. Fade loosened his arms enough so he could tip my face up to his, and I could’ve drowned in his eyes. “For us, they never were. Look where we found each other.”

He had a point; it was pretty awful down below. “I’ll never be sorry that we went Topside together. I’ll never be sorry about anything.”

Including what we did tonight. I left that part unsaid, but Fade knew. He always did. Back when Silk partnered us, he seemed to understand me better than I did myself, sensing what I wanted and things that would make me happy. I remembered how he’d comforted me with an arm around my shoulders, and that was the first step toward a world where he meant everything to me, and his touch was as much my home as any cottage could ever be.

“If this is the last time, let me say it so you never forget. I will always love you, Deuce. No matter where souls go, mine will be looking for you, solnyshko moyo.”

Those words tore me in two. “No. I want a promise instead. Promise you’ll fight like you never have, so when the dying stops, you’ll be on your feet looking for me here.”

“I swear,” he said.

But there were no guarantees. I knew that, even as I extracted the pledge. So I kissed him because if the end came for me in the form of fangs and claws, I wanted to die with the taste of him on my lips.

There should be a speech for a moment like this one, but it was chilly, and we were all ready to have the fight done. So I held out my hand to Fade, who put his sire’s lighter in it. I jammed the artifact in the ground, as Tegan had said, lit the wick, and then we all backed up. Sparks flew, then the thing shot straight up in the air in an orange arc, making a popping, whistling noise, then it exploded in a cascade of colors. For a few seconds, we all stared up in awe because none of us had ever seen anything like it.

“I’m counting,” Morrow said.

As he hit two hundred, an answering light rose on the other side, just high enough that we could see it. I took a deep breath, scared as I never had been. I didn’t believe that I was a Huntress anymore—and therefore, destined for a great and glorious death. If I died in battle, it would hurt as much as it did for anyone else, and there were so many things I’d never do. But courage wasn’t an absence of fear; it was fighting despite the knot in your stomach.

“That’s our cue. Good hunting, Company D.”

The men echoed it back to me; and in the faint, predawn light, I saw all of their fear, all the uncertainty. I had no remedy for it. Morrow took his scouts while Tully, Fade, and Spence rallied their soldiers. Thornton stuck close to Tegan, hanging back, and I was glad he meant to protect her. I wanted to grab Fade and beg him not to be too brave or too reckless. Instead, I led as I’d always done, by rushing the enemy with my knives drawn.

The camp was mostly asleep, though some of the Freaks were retching. I’d never seen them vomit before. It was disgusting, the way bile funneled to either side of their fangs. They hardly had a chance to raise the alarm before we were on them. Company D ran straight into the heart, and then stabbed it for good measure. Tactics that served us before worked again. The men were armed with all the liquor the pub owner was willing to spare without knowing why we needed it, and we lobbed ten firebombs into the horde. Rifles barked and I heard the smooth shing of Tully’s crossbow. In the confusion and snarling bodies, I lost sight of my lieutenants at once. The beasts were all around, so many that I couldn’t breathe, but they were sluggish and clumsy, as promised, which meant the Gulgur had kept their part of the bargain.

The air thickened with smoke, until it was hard to see who we were fighting. I stabbed one Freak, then another as it stumbled toward me. Another burst out of the miasma, but he wore a white strip of cloth around his arm, so I raised my blade in salute and we attacked the next enemy together. I hurt for him; it might be his sire or dam suffering beneath his claws but he didn’t falter.

My ears echoed with the screams and curses, snarls and cries of pain. There were corpses everywhere, gunshots cracking out, the coppery tang of blood heavy in the wind. I had no sense for how my side was doing, only the certainty that if I stopped fighting, I would die. The horde was huge, their numbers formidable, even with poisoned meat churning in their guts. Ten of them surrounded me, and beyond them, there were ten more and ten again, far past what the night and the smoldering reeds permitted me to see. Bodies splashed in the river nearby, fighting or fleeing, I couldn’t tell which.

The Uroch near me slashed a Freak that tried to lunge past him to get at me, and I finished his kill. These monsters were puzzled, unable to grasp why they were fighting their kin. I parried and sliced until my arms ached and the dead piled up around me. Still they came on as the dawn broke. It should’ve been an inspiring sight, sunlight on the water, but instead it only illuminated how long our odds were. The combined might of Company D, the Urochs, and the Gulgur didn’t seem to be enough. We’d killed so many, but as many of our soldiers lay injured and dying on the bloody battlefield, and they had a thousand more to throw at us.

Across the way, I heard Tully screaming at her men to regroup while rifle fire came slower and slower. The men were running low on ammo, I guessed, as I swiped sweat and blood from my brow, and fought on, focusing on my immediate danger. A Freak impaled the Uroch beside me, and I was too slow to save him. Blood bubbled from the young one’s mouth, then he fell, never having said a word, and I was alone in the middle of the horde.

I need Fade.

But my throat was parched and tired from the hours of fighting. Calling out was a waste of breath. Freaks surged as far as the eye could see, and they were exultant despite their weakness because they sensed how this fight ended. With a burst of renewed energy, I struggled on, powered by the memory of all the people I would never see again if I gave up. My shoulders burned, my arms twin columns of fire.

Another wave of the monsters rushed me, and I was engulfed, unable to see, just the snarling mass of claws and fangs lashing at me. With sheer determination, I brought up my knives, but willpower wasn’t enough. My body had limits, and I’d reached them. More of their strikes got through; it was just a matter of time until one of them got lucky and struck the killing blow. Heart, throat, thigh. One of those places, and I’m gone.

A Freak sank its teeth into my forearm, another scored my shoulder. With a move Stalker had taught me, I cut the first one’s throat, and spun low, slicing at their legs. If they can’t stand, they can’t fight as well. It also made me a smaller target. I sliced the veins in their legs and nearly puked at the rush of blood that caught me in the face.