“You’ve been hunting vampires for years. Why is it so complicated to find one or a few?”

Her lips pursed; then she went to sit on the couch. “We’ve relied on the lycans pretty heavily. A lot of what we know about where vampires concentrate and what their behavior patterns are came from the lycans. They were the ones in the trenches every day.”

“So why aren’t you using lycans for this sting?” He took a seat beside her.

“They revolted just a couple weeks ago. Right about the time the vampire disease first became known.”

Trevor leaned into the corner of the sofa, digesting that. “So you’re on your own? How many vampires are there?”

“Tens of thousands.”

“And how many Sentinels?”

“Less than two hundred.”

“Jesus Christ.” He winced. “Sorry. I should watch my mouth.”

Her lips curved rueful y. “Don’t worry about it. You’ve got enough to deal with at the moment.”

“Why did they revolt?”

“Wel , that’s complicated, too.” Her eyes stared into his, revealing a swirling morass of reactions and what he would cal emotion—emotion she swore she wasn’t capable of feeling. She had no idea how wrong she was. Out of all the angels he’d met so far, Siobhán seemed the most . . . real. “We didn’t mistreat them,” she went on. “They were fed, clothed, and paid well . They had no expenses, and we enabled them to do what is in their nature to do—hunt. But, all that said, we weren’t kind to them. They weren’t beaten or chained, but I think we never stopped thinking of them as the Fal en, beings that deserved to be punished. And we treated them that way. They had no free Will . They did what they were told when they were told, and that was it.”

“Wasn’t that the deal they made?”

“That was the deal their ancestors made. Angels and vampires don’t die or breed, but the lycans do both. The lycans in service today are many generations removed from the Watchers who begged for mercy.”

Trevor pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes closing. “Okay. You’re right. It’s a lot to digest.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s not your fault.” He exhaled harshly and looked at her, wanting her. He wanted more of this with her—quiet conversations and working together, digging through things together. In his mortal life he would’ve said he wanted to date her and get to know her better, but he knew it couldn’t be that way. Not with what she was. But he’d take this, this tentative friendship. “I need to ask you the real question on my mind.”

“Go for it.”

“What’s going to happen to me eventual y?”

“Oh.” She looked down at her hands in her lap. “I wish you wouldn’t worry about that. I promise that you’l be happy and whole. You’l have a good life.”

“Without you in it,” he said flatly.

Her silence was answer enough. And yet the downward turn of her mouth hinted that she might have mixed feelings about letting him go.

“Don’t I get a say, Siobhán? It’s my life. Don’t I have the right to make decisions about how it should go?”

She shook her head. “You have to think of the last year of your life as being a detour. You took a wrong turn—through no fault of your own—and you ended up here, but this is isn’t how it should be for you.”

“A week ago, I would’ve agreed with you. I can’t tel you how many times I told myself I didn’t deserve what was happening to me—”

“You didn’t. You don’t.”

“But when I’m with you, I feel like I’m right where I’m supposed to be. I damn sure don’t want to be anywhere else.”

“I think it’s a form of post traumatic stress disorder, Trevor—”

“Bul shit,” he said quietly and vehemently. “You’re talking to a combat veteran, Siobhán. I know PTSD. I’m tel ing you that I’d feel this way around you if I’d passed you on the street or saw you across a crowded restaurant. You get to me, and that has nothing to do with how we met.”

“You can’t know that.” She pushed to her feet and backed away, nearly tripping over the leg of the coffee table. “You’re forgetting what I am. I’m not like you, Trevor. I don’t have the ability to connect with you like a mortal woman could.”

He stood, the rhythm of his heart taking on a heated, demanding beat. “I don’t believe you,” he said softly, not wanting to frighten her further.

She was so skittish, her eyes dark and wide in her beautiful face. “I know how a woman looks and reacts when she’s attracted to me. The signs are all over you.”

She shook her head violently.

“I’m not going to push you, Siobhán,” he promised, careful y closing the distance between them. “I can live with this—what we have and what we can’t have. I just want to be near you. Don’t send me away.”

“I have to send you away! There’s even more reason to, now that you’re talking this way. You’re confused. You’re mixing up gratitude with something else.”

“Shh,” he soothed, hating to see her panicked and upset. He wondered why she was so freaked out when he knew she felt some of what he felt. She acted like the world was going to end if they cared about each other as more than friends. He wasn’t even nursing the hope that he could ever have her physical y, but surely caring about each other—maybe even eventual y loving each other—wasn’t wrong.

She pointed an accusing finger at him. “Don’t look at me that way!”

Trevor caught her wrist, tugging her closer.

“Stop it.” Siobhán yanked away and he couldn’t hold her. She was too strong. “You can’t feel this way about me. You need to stop it right now.”

He smiled. “God, you’re adorable—you know that? You’re like a pissed-off pixie. A little dark-haired Tinkerbell.”

Her mouth fel open.

“You said no one can change the way I feel about anything,” he reminded her. “Doesn’t that mean it’s meant for me to like you?”

A little growl escaped her, a sound of frustration that had the effect of rousing his desire. In an instant, he wanted her in the way he knew he shouldn’t. His smile faded and he took a step back.

But she saw it anyway. He could see the awareness of his unexpected hunger sweep through her expressive eyes. And he saw the tiniest spark that told him she could return it.

“Trevor.” Her voice was husky.

Damn it. Getting turned on now was only going to freak her out more. “Yes?”

She moved so fast he couldn’t fol ow her. One minute she was about a yard away and the next, she was pressed up against him and kissing him with passionate inexperience, her soft lips closed as she mashed them against his.

He caught her up with a groan, lifting her feet from the floor, his tongue sliding along the seam of her lips until they opened with a gasp and let him inside. He licked into her mouth, stroking into the warmly sweet recesses, his mind reeling with the headiness of her flavor and the feel of her surprisingly lush body in his arms.