Wrong, she thought, all wrong. Garret had knocked her so far off balance that she wasn’t sure she would ever find her footing again.
“That should be enough to help you finish healing,” he said, reaching for his shirt as if nothing had happened. “But we’ll need to move soon.”
“We.” For a moment, she had almost forgotten.
This was a bargain. Now she had to fulfill her part of it.
Artemis’s lovely face turned utterly cold.
Garret wasn’t surprised. She justifiably believed that she’d been blackmailed into helping him. She’d taken his blood only because she knew she had no other choice, and he would have done nearly anything to get her help.
But he also knew that she had been struggling ever since he’d rescued her...struggling with the same impulses and emotions he’d been feeling almost from the moment of their first meeting. Emotions most Nightsiders denied, believing them to be the bane of inferior humanity.
Yet when she’d taken his blood, he had experienced the kind of intense physical attraction he hadn’t felt since Roxana’s death. He’d been painfully aware of Artemis’s petite but generously curved body, the quickness of her breathing, the deep mystery of her dark eyes. He had held her against him, feeling the heat of her arousal matching his, imagining her soft moans as he stroked her naked skin...
He cut off the thoughts before they could carry him into dangerous waters. In the end, he’d rejected his own lust. As the leader of Erebus’s human Underground, he had always striven to be disciplined, watchful and patient. Roxana had made it almost easy.
Artemis didn’t. What was it about her that stirred his body and soul to such an inexplicable degree? Knowing that she was different from other Freeblood rogues couldn’t account for this strong, almost uncontrollable reaction. What had started out as a compulsion to save an intelligent being from an act of barbarism had quickly evolved into something else, something he didn’t want any more than she did.
If he were making the decision only for himself, he would go his own way and let her go hers. It would be far better for both of them.
But Timon came first. His well-being was a thousand times more important than the relief of any small discomfort his father might experience along the way. No price was too high.
He had to gain Artemis’s trust and keep it. Until Timon was safe.
“I’m sorry,” he said, grabbing his coat. “I should have remembered that we’ll both need to recover before we move on.” He pulled on the coat and zipped it up with slightly numb fingers, aware that he had begun to tremble from loss of blood. The ground seemed to tilt toward him. He’d forgotten what it was like to give so much blood at one time.
“Are you ill?” Artemis asked, a little of the coldness leaving her eyes.
“Nothing that an hour of rest won’t cure,” he said. “And if you move too fast after taking so much blood, you’re likely to have problems yourself.”
She studied him with a frown. “I am in no danger,” she said. “But I see that you are not steady enough to travel. You had better sit down.”
With a brief nod of acknowledgment, Garret slid to the base of the tree and leaned his head back against the trunk, grateful that they’d independently made the decision not to mention what had happened during the blood-taking.
“I don’t expect you to stand guard for both of us,” he said. “Wake me if I start to drift off.”
Artemis chose a tree a little distance away and sat beneath it, holding herself erect and alert. “You are a strange human,” she said.
“I thought you’d reached that conclusion when we first met,” he said, closing his eyes.
“I know why you saved my life and shared your blood, or at least why you claim you did. What I do not understand is why you are so willing to reveal weakness.”
Garret wondered if she was trying to make him angry. She didn’t know him well enough to realize that he’d been through far too much to let pride influence his actions.
“I’ve already put my life in your hands many times over,” he said. “If I didn’t trust you—”
“No,” she interrupted. “I have always heard that free human males believe themselves to be stronger than females in every way, and will do anything to avoid revealing any physical or mental impairment before one of the opposite sex.”
Garret opened one eye a crack. “How do you know?”
“It is common knowledge.”
“The same way it’s common knowledge among humans that all Nightsiders are vicious killers?” He laughed shortly. “Not all human males feel the need to prove that they’re invulnerable.”
Artemis reached for her own small pack and unhooked her canteen. “It would be foolish to attempt it with a female Opir.”
“I’d like to think I’m not a fool,” Garret said.
“Would you have begged for my help, if I had been unwilling to give it?”
“Would that have made you feel better?”
“It would only have proven how much you wish to find your son.”
“Then you have no more interest in having power over me than I do in having it over you. Which makes you exactly what I judged you to be.”
“I still do not accept your ‘judgment.’”
Garret rolled his head to observe the bears, who had apparently determined that the human and Nightsider were no threat and resumed their search for food. “Why didn’t you go after them when you needed blood?” he asked. “It wasn’t fear that stopped you, was it?”
“I was not afraid,” she said, indignation in her voice.
“But something about them made you hesitate.” He straightened, wishing he could sleep but determined to keep Artemis engaged. “They are a family.”
She shrugged, though he could see that he had struck true. “Many creatures belong to what you call ‘families,’” she said. “I cannot spare all of them.”
“Do you know how long the female black bear protects her cubs?”
“I am not ignorant about the behavior of the creatures that live in the wild.”
“One and a half years,” Garret said. “These cubs are less than a year old. They’ll go into torpor with her pretty soon, and then they’ll be with her through the spring. No one can fault a bear’s skill at parenting.” He met Artemis’s gaze. “When were you converted?”
“What has that to do with—”
“Did you have children?”
Her body stiffened. “I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember, or have you chosen to forget?”
“Even humans leave the past behind,” she said.
“We try,” he said, thinking of Roxana. His throat felt thick and full. “Do you remember what love is?”
“I...”
Garret unfastened his coat’s padded chest pocket, withdrawing the battered photograph in its transparent envelope.
“This is Timon,” he said. He rose and reached out to hand her the picture, and she accepted it with obvious reluctance. It had been taken before Roxana’s death; Timon was smiling, a ball in his hands, and his best friend and cousin, Alessa, at his side. With his red hair and violet-gray eyes, Timon looked human.
There