Raphael’s expression didn’t change. “You can’t even walk to the balcony without help. You’re weaker than the fledglings.”

She’d seen the smaller wings, smaller bodies, watched over by bigger ones. Not many, but enough.

“The Refuge,” she asked, “is it a place of safety for your young?”

“It’s everything we need it to be.” Those eyes of purest sin shifted toward the door. “Dmitri comes.”

She sucked in a breath as she felt the temptation of Dmitri’s scent wrap around her in a glide of fur and sex and wanton indulgence. Unfortunately, she hadn’t gained immunity to that particular vampiric trick with her transformation. The flip side was also true. “One thing you can’t argue with—I can still track vampires by scent.” And that made her hunter-born.

“You have the potential to be of real use to us, Elena.”

She wondered if Raphael even knew how arrogant he sounded. She didn’t think so. Being invincible for more years than she could imagine had made that arrogance part of his nature . . . But no, she thought. He could be hurt. When hell broke and an Angel of Blood tried to destroy New York, Raphael had chosen to die with Elena rather than abandon her broken body on that ledge high above Manhattan.

Her memories were cloudy, but she remembered shredded wings, a bleeding face, hands that had held her protectively as they descended to the adamantine hardness of the city streets below. Her heart clenched. “Tell me something, Raphael?”

He was already turning, heading to the door. “What is it you’d like to know, Guild Hunter?”

She hid her smile at his slip. “What do I call you? Husband? Mate? Boyfriend?”

Stopping with his hand on the doorknob, he shot her an inscrutable look. “You can call me ‘Master.’ ”

Elena stared at the closed door, wondering if he’d been playing with her. She couldn’t tell, didn’t know him well enough to read his moods, his truths and lies. They’d come together in an agony of pain and fear, pushed by the specter of death into a union that might have been years in the making had Uram not decided to turn bloodborn and tear a murderous path through the world.