His gaze met those of his lycan guards, who were sitting a few rows away on either side. They were observant, curious. They couldn’t help but see that he was reacting differently to Lindsay than he did to other women. The last time Shadoe’s soul had been with him, neither of the two lycans had been born yet, but they knew his personal life. They knew how little attention he paid to the opposite sex.

He would need more than two guards now that he could resume his hunt for Syre, and Lindsay would need her own dedicated protection. Adrian knew he’d have to manipulate that carefully. She was young-twenty-five at most-and starting out on her own in a new place. Now was the time for her to broaden her horizons, not find out that her new lover was micromanaging her life.

Lindsay rolled her straw between her fingers, her soft pink lips hovering momentarily before parting for a sip.

A wash of heat swept over him. Even the knowledge that he would lose her again, that he was forsaking his duty once again, couldn’t dampen the rush of desire quickening his blood. He wanted those lips on his skin, needed to feel them sliding across his flesh, whispering both raw and tender words as they teased him mercilessly. Although the Sentinels had been forbidden to love and mate with mortals, nothing could convince Adrian that Shadoe hadn’t been born to belong to him.

She talked to her dad on the phone…

He grew very still.

Adrian kept his face impassive, but he was intensely alert. Shadoe’s various incarnations had always been raised by a single-parent mother, never by a father. It was as if Syre had marked her soul when he’d begun the Change that would have transformed her into a vampire, ensuring that no other man would ever take his paternal role in her life. “Are your parents in Raleigh?”

A shadow passed over her features. “My dad is. My mother died when I was five.”