And he wasn’t just beautiful but powerful, even for a Full Blood Monère warrior. He had been Mona Louisa’s favorite, before she had tried to kill me, her territory forfeited to me as punishment. She’d tried to regain it, and one of the means she had used was the tall, sumptuously handsome man who stood before me now, looking at me with soft wonder in his eyes. He’d been left behind to spy and betray me, but he hadn’t. He’d saved me instead. Not just once, but again at High Court when I had been questioned there for Mona Louisa’s death.

I’d taken him not just into my body but into my heart. In the midst of sadness and loss, I’d found love again, unexpectedly. It was because I loved Dontaine that I needed to talk to him now. So that he did not continue to look at me that way—with love and happiness.

It had only been one day since we’d returned from my testimony at High Queen’s Council. And we’d spent most of it reassuring my people here that I would not be blamed or punished for Mona Louisa’s death, that everything was okay. But that was a lie. While things may be okay Council-wise—or as much as it could be after a stir like that—I wasn’t okay. And only Dontaine knew the truth of this.

I stepped back from my lover’s touch. Dropped my eyes from his compelling male beauty, from the tempting loveliness of his form, from the raw and tender heart he offered up to me with those expressive green eyes. I took a hard step back from it all and said, “We need to talk, Dontaine.”

A beat of silence. When he spoke, it was with quiet tension thrumming in his voice. “That never bodes well.”

I guess that was a rule that held true not only for humans but for the Monère also.

“I will dress,” he said quietly, and I retreated to a corner chair as he opened the armoire and began to pull on clothes. I would have stared out the window had there been one, but there was none in this simple cabin. I passed the time instead with an intricate study of the wood-planked floor.