Assail ended up further tracking his prey from behind the wheel of his Range Rover. Much cozier this way - and it wasn't as if the woman's location was an issue now: While he'd been waiting by the Audi for her to come off his property, he'd attached a tracking device to the underbelly of her side-view mirror.

His iPhone took care of the rest.

After she'd left his neighborhood in a rush - following his deliberate dematerialization from sight just to further destabilize her - she had crossed the river and headed around to the backside of the city, where the houses were small, packed in close to one another, and finished with aluminum siding.

As he trolled behind her, keeping at least two blocks between their vehicles, he regarded the brightly colored lights in the neighborhoods, the thousands of strands of twinklers strung among bushes and hanging from roof lips and boxing out windows and doorframes. But that wasn't the half of it. Manger scenes placed prominently on tiny front lawns were spotlit, and there were also fat white snowmen with red scarves and blue pants that glowed from within.

In contrast to the seasonal accoutrements, he was willing to bet the Virgin Mary statues were permanent.

When her vehicle stopped and stayed that way, he closed in, parking four houses down and killing his lights. She didn't get out of the car right away, and when she finally did, she wasn't wearing the parka and tight ski pants she'd had on whilst spying on him. Instead, she had changed into a thick red sweater and a pair of jeans.

She'd let her hair down.

And the heavy, brunette weight reached below her shoulders, curling at the ends.

He growled in the darkness.

With quick, easy strides, she surmounted the four shallow concrete steps leading up to the modest entrance of the home. Propping open the screen door with its curlicue metalwork, she buttressed the thing with her hip, let herself in with a key, and closed things back up.

As a light came on downstairs, he watched her shape walk through the front room, the thin privacy drapes giving him only a sense of her movement, not any kind of clear view.

He thought of his own screens. It had taken him a long time to perfect that invention, and the Hudson River house had been perfect for piloting them. The barriers worked even better than he'd anticipated.

But she was smart enough to have picked up on the anomalies, and he wondered what the giveaway had been.

On the second floor, a light came on, as if someone who had been resting had stirred at her arrival.

His fangs pulsed. The idea that some human man was awaiting her in their mated bedroom made him want to establish his dominance - even though that didn't make sense. After all, he was tracking her for his own self-protection, and nothing more.

Absolutely nothing more.

Just as his hand sought the car door handle, his phone rang. Good timing.

When he saw who it was, he frowned and put the cell up to his ear. "Two calls in such a short time. To what do I owe this honor?"

Rehvenge was not amused. "You didn't get back to me."

"Was I required to?"

"Watch yourself, boy."

Assail's eyes remained locked on the little house. He was curiously desperate to know what was going on inside. Was she heading up the stairs, undressing as she went?

Exactly who was she hiding her pursuits from? And she was in fact hiding them - otherwise, why change in the car prior to entering the house?

"Hello?"

"I appreciate the kind invitation," he heard himself say.

"It's not an invitation. You're a goddamn member of the Council now that you're in the New World."

"No."

"Excuse me?"

Assail thought back to the meeting at Elan's house in the early winter, the one Rehvenge had not known about, the one to which the Band of Bastards had shown up and flexed their muscle. He also thought of the attempt on Wrath, the Blind King's life - on Assail's own property, for godsakes.

Too much drama for his liking.

With practiced ease, he launched into the same speech he had given Xcor's faction. "I am a businessman by predilection and purpose. Although I respect both the current sovereignty and the Council's power base, I cannot divert energy or time away from my enterprise. Not now, nor in the future."

There was a stretch of silence. And then that deep, ever-so-evil voice came over the connection. "I've heard about your business."

"Have you."

"I was in it myself for a number of years."

"So I understand."

"I managed to do both."

Assail smiled into the darkness. "Mayhap I am not as talented as you."

"I'm going to make something perfectly clear. If you don't show up at that meeting, I'm going to assume you're playing on the wrong team."

"By that very statement, you acknowledge there are two and they are opposed."

"Take it as you will. But if you're not with me and the king, you are my enemy and his."

And that was precisely what Xcor had said. Then again, was there any other position in this growing war?

"The king was shot at your house, Assail."

"So I recollect," he muttered dryly.

"I'd think you'd want to put to rest any notion of your involvement."

"I already have. I told the Brothers that very night that I had nothing to do with it. I gave them the vehicle in which they escaped with the king. Why would I do any such thing if I were a traitor?"

"To save your own ass."

"I am quite accomplished at that without the benefit of conversation, I assure you."

"So what's your schedule like?"

The light on the second story was extinguished, and he had to wonder what the woman was doing in the darkness - and with whom.

Of their own volition, his fangs bared themselves.

"Assail. You are seriously boring me with this hard-to-get bullshit."

Assail put the Range Rover in gear. He was not going to sit upon the curb whilst whatever happened inside...happened. She was clearly home for the night, and staying there. Besides, his phone would alert him in the event that her car was once again set into motion.

As he rolled into the street and gathered speed, he spoke with clarity. "I am herewith resigning my position on the Council. My neutrality in this battle for the crown shall not be questioned by either side - "

"And you know who the players are, don't you."

"I shall make this as bald as I am able - I have no side here, Rehvenge. I do not know how to state this more plainly - and I will not be pulled into the war either by you and your king, or by any other. Do not attempt to push me, and know that the neutrality I present to you is exactly what I give to them."

On that note, he had made a vow to Elan and Xcor not to reveal their identities, and he was going to keep it - not because he believed the group would e'er return the favor to him, but rather for the simple fact that, depending upon who won this tussle, a confidant to either side would be viewed either as a whistle-blower to be eradicated or a hero to be lauded. The problem was, one wouldn't know which until the end, and he was uninterested in such a gamble.

"So you have been approached," Rehv stated.

"I received a copy of the letter they sent in the spring of this year, yes."

"Is that the only contact you've had?"

"Yes."

"You're lying to me."

Assail stopped at a traffic light. "There is naught you may say or do to pull me into this, dear leahdyre."

With menace in abundance, the male on the other end growled, "Don't count on that, Assail."

With that, Rehvenge hung up.

Cursing, Assail tossed his phone onto the passenger seat. Then he made two fists and banged them on the steering wheel.

If there was one thing he could not abide, it was being sucked into the vortex of other people's arguments. He didn't give a pence who sat on the throne, or who was in charge of the glymera. He just wanted to be left alone to make his money off the backs of rats without tails.

Was that so fucking hard to understand?

When the light turned green, he stomped on the accelerator, even though he had no real destination in mind. He just drove in a random direction...and about fifteen minutes later, he found himself going over the river on one of the bridges.

Ah, so his Range Rover had decided to take him home.

As he emerged onto the opposite shore, his phone let off a chiming sound, and he nearly ignored it. But the twins had gone out to move Benloise's newest shipment, and he wanted to know if those petty dealers had shown up for their quotas after all.

It was not a phone call or a text.

That black Audi was on the move again.

Assail stomped on the brake, cut in front of semi that blew its horn like the f-word, and plowed up and over the snow-covered median.

He positively flew back over the inbound bridge.

From his vantage point at a rather distant periphery, Xcor required his binoculars to properly sight his Chosen.

The car that she had been traveling in, that vast black sedan, had continued onward after the bridge, going about five or six miles before getting off on a rural road that took it north. After another number of miles, and with little warning, it had turned onto a dirt lane that was choked on either side with hardy all-season undergrowth. Finally, it came to rest before a low-slung concrete building that was lacking not just pretense of any kind, but windows and, seemingly, a door.

He tightened up the focus as two males got out from the front. He recognized one instantly - the hair was a dead giveaway: Phury, son of Ahgony - who, according to the gossip, had been made Primale of the Chosen.

Xcor's black heart began beating hard.

Especially as he recognized the second figure: It was the fighter with the mismatched eyes whom he had battled at Assail's as the king was spirited away.

Both males took out guns and surveyed the landscape.

As Xcor was downwind, and there appeared to be no one else around, he figured there was a reasonable expectation, barring the revelation of his position by his Chosen, that the pair would proceed with whatever they had planned for his female.

In fact, it appeared as if she were being delivered unto a prison.

Over. His. Dead. Body.

She was an innocent in this war, one used for nefarious purposes through no fault of her own - but clearly she was going to be executed or locked within a cell here for the rest of her time upon the earth.

Or not.

He palmed one of his guns.

It was a good night to take care of this business. Indeed, now was his chance to have her as his own, to save her from whatever punishment had been doled out on account of her having unwittingly aided and abetted the enemy. And mayhap the circumstances around her unjust condemnation would make her favorably predisposed toward her enemy and savior.

His eyes closed briefly as he imagined her in and among his bedding.

When Xcor once again lifted his lids, Phury was opening the rear door of the sedan and reaching inside. When the Brother straightened, the Chosen was drawn out of the vehicle...and taken by both elbows, the fighters holding on to her on each side as she was led toward the building.

When Xcor prepared to close in. After so long, a lifetime, he finally had her once more in the vicinity of his person, and he was not going to waste the chance destiny was providing him, not now - not when her life so obviously hung in the balance. And he would prevail in this - the threat to her strengthened his body to unimaginable power, his mind sharpened such that it both raced with attack possibilities and remained utterly calm.

Indeed, there were merely those two males guarding her - and with them, a female who not only appeared weaponless, but did not regard her vicinity as if she were trained for or inclined to conflict.

He was more than mighty enough to take his female's captors.

Just as he prepared to lunge forth, his Chosen's scent reached him on the stiff, cold breeze, that tantalizing perfume unique to her causing him to weave in his combat boots -

Immediately, he recognized a change in it.

Blood.

She was bleeding. And there was something else....

Without conscious thought, his body moved itself in close, his form reestablishing corporeal weight and heft at a distance of a mere ten feet, behind an outbuilding set off from the main facility.

She was not a prisoner, he realized, being led to a cell or execution.

His Chosen was having difficulty walking. And those warriors were supporting her with care; even with their weapons out and their eyes searching for signs of an attack, they were as gentle with her as they would have been with the most fragile of blooms.

She had not been ill treated. She was marked not with bruises and welts. And as the trio progressed, she looked up at one male and then the other and spoke as if trying to reassure them - for in truth, it was not aggression tightening the brows of those warriors.

In fact, it was the same terror he felt upon smelling her blood.

Xcor's heart pounded even harder behind his breast, his mind trying to make sense of it all.

And then he remembered something from his own past.

After his birth mahmen had shunned him, he had been dropped at an orphanage in the Old Country and left for whatever fate befell him. Therein, he had stayed among the rare unwanted, most of whom possessed physical deformities such as his own, for nearly a decade - long enough to form permanent memories of what transpired at the sad, lonely place.

Long enough for him to piece together what it meant when a lone female appeared at the gates, was let in, and then screamed for hours, sometimes days...before giving birth to, in most cases, a dead young. Or miscarrying one.

The scent of the blood back then had been very specific. And the scent upon the cold wind of this night was the same.

Pregnancy was what he had in his nose now.

For the first time in his life, he heard himself utter in absolute agony, "Dearest Virgin in the Fade..."

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