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“Let me flow through your security feed with you, Savage. Between the two of us, we should be able to find our answer about the weirdos,” Mari said, looking up at Thane.

“Are you calling me a weirdo?” Thane asked.

“Hey, don’t put words in my mouth.”

“I’d like to put something in your mouth, pasăre mica,” Thane grumbled.

“Try it, and I’ll bite it off.”

“You two bicker like children on the schoolyard. Can you wait until you’re alone and do it naked so you can, you know, work shit out the way adults do?” Jenna winked.

“Found you, asshole,” Savage growled.

The image Savage popped up on the massive screen made Mari and Pax gasp. Brother and sister both moved toward the door to the outer hallway.

“Wait. You know him?” Savage asked.

They both stopped in their tracks. Pax ground his teeth so hard that Thana swore she heard his back teeth crack.

“We’ve seen her. She was in the cargo container with us. I thought she was dead,” Mari whispered.

The dead body they’d found inside with the others hadn’t been dead. She’d masked her scent and cast an illusion to make them all believe she was deceased.

“Was she alive at any time that you remember?” Thana asked.

Mari nodded. Pax shook his head.

“I think she was a bit crazy, but she was obviously playing a part. I’m thinking she wasn’t who she pretended to be.” Mari sucked in a breath. “Whatever she is or was, she’s trouble. Look, she escaped when the battle began.”

“Do you remember when you first saw her? I know not everyone came from the same city and state.” Severin glared at the screen, then at the brother and sister.

Epilogue

Severin and Thana left the brother and sister to settle into the safe house Savage had set up. He and the other male set up wards and protections, making it as secure as they could before his female let him whisk her off to what she called his lair. Not that she was too far off the mark. He hated that his cave had been compromised, but he hadn’t stayed alive so long without knowing how to protect where he slept, especially when it came to his female.

“Don’t be silly. I trust you to keep us safe. You and I both know they wouldn’t have found that place if you’d been home,” Thana said.

He brushed her hair back from her cheeks, framing her face with his palms. She looked so fucking fragile. “Do you have any idea how damn hard it is to have a conversation with you and not want to fuck you silly? At the same time, I want to wrap you in the finest silk and bubble wrap, so you don’t get the slightest scratch.”

Thana snorted. “When you fuck me silly, I get a lot more than a scratch, mo ghaol.”

Severin ran the back of one hand down Thana’s cheek, then ran his knuckles over her breasts and cupped her between her thighs. “Mmm, I promise I’ll kiss every part I hurt.”

A feral light of need lit her beautiful gaze. “That sounds like a promise I can’t deny I want you to make good on.”

“Well, I’d better get busy then. I don’t want my female to think I can’t follow through on my promises. You know, some human males need little blue pills to do what I can. I hope you can keep up.” Severin lifted Thana into his arms.

“Oh, I heard about those prescription drugs that help men get hard and stay hard. Let’s see how you measure up,” Thana laughed.

Mari pulled away from the couple’s mind-link, unwilling to watch them get busy. Her face flamed at their easy banter and familiarity. She’d never felt the urge to be so intimate with another human, let alone to spend hours in sexual contact. Heck, she was pretty damn sure her vagina would break if it were exposed to hours of sexual gymnastics.

She wanted a man who looked at her and thought about her as if she mattered. For just once, she wanted someone to stop and say they missed her, even if they didn’t have the right to. Mari knew it was stupid, but fuck it, it is what it is. She was a woman who’d never had anyone wish for more time, more of anything, with her. Oh, she knew she was pretty enough and had a body most men wouldn’t mind spending a night or two with. Yet she was fucked up in more ways than one, which scared the shit out of everyone she’d ever gotten close to. The only exception was her twin brother, and he was every bit as screwed up as she was.

It was strange to want to love and be loved by another, yet have nowhere to lay that feeling. Her mind conjured a bigger-than-life man with dark hair and even darker eyes. Thane. Just thinking about him made her wish for stupid, girlish things she had no right to. It was like carrying a weight with nowhere to put it down. An ache settled in her chest, reminding her she’d never get a chance at normalcy. Still, some part of her tugged at a loose memory, like a thread she'd forgotten to tie or a foolish hope she’d sent out into the universe.

“If wishes were unicorns, I’d have a pig,” she muttered.

“What the hell are you talking about?” her brother Pax asked, stepping out onto the balcony with a steaming cup of tea in each hand.