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Reiver’s dark brows lifted as he considered the account. Then he chuckled darkly and got up from the sofa, bringing his pair of human playthings along with him. He walked over to Malcolm and cuffed hi Sandckls shoulder. “Good work, Bran. No doubt you’ve worked up an appetite taking care of so much important business for me.” Reiver shoved the blonde at him. “She’s yours to do with what you will. Never let it be said I don’t reward my loyal hounds with a juicy bone when they’ve earned it.”

Malcolm caught the woman as she stumbled into him, dazed and unsteady from her service tonight. She reeked of liquor and narcotics, sex and blood loss. Mal’s stomach recoiled, but his revulsion centered on the vampire who watched him closely, waiting to see how Malcolm would respond.

He had no thirst that needed slaking in this place, least of all when it would come from Reiver’s leavings. But in seven months of indenture to his vow of vengeance, he’d passed worse tests than this. He’d be damned if he failed now, when Danika and her son were in his keeping, their lives in his hands.

It was rage for what Reiver had ordered tonight that made Mal’s hands rougher than intended on the whore tossed at him. It was thoughts of Danika, the impulse he’d felt to pierce her pretty, unspoiled throat and bind her to him, that brought his fangs out to their full, razor-sharp length.

And it was stone-cold determination—a chill and hollow resolve—that made him latch on to the human’s neck and swallow gulp after gulp of her fouled blood while Reiver held his gaze, chuckling with sick amusement.

Mal drank until Reiver was gone. Only then did he set the woman away from him, a sweep of his tongue sealing the wounds he’d made before he eased her down onto the sofa, where she fell into a hard sleep.

He wiped the back of his hand across his face, cursing a string of crude Gaelic between his gritted teeth and fangs. The taste in his mouth was rank, bitter. He spat some of it out, startled to hear a throat clear behind him.

Malcolm wheeled around to find Thane in the room with him. “What the fuck are you looking at?”

The black-haired vampire glanced from the limp form of the human female, back to Malcolm. “Don’t mean to interrupt, but we’ve got a couple of patrons causing problems with some of the girls on the main floor. Slapping them around, getting too rough. I told the boss but he says he ain’t running a public relations firm in here.”

“Yeah?” Mal countered, still vibrating with unvented violence. “What are you telling me for?”

Thane lifted one of his massive shoulders in a vague shrug. “Boss said he doesn’t want to be bothered with club issues tonight, so I was thinking I’d go down and dole out some etiquette lessons to the assholes. Wondered if you might feel like joining me.”

Mal narrowed a look on the guard, trying to get a read on him. He didn’t know if this was yet another test of Reiver’s making or some trap of Thane’s own. Somehow, he didn’t think so. And at that moment, he didn’t care.

“Let’s go,” he snarled, leading the way.

* Sx201C;Let&02A; *

In the hour before dawn, Malcolm arrived back at the castle. Danika was dozing with little Connor in her arms, nestled together in a large, overstuffed chair in the great hall on the first floor. She woke when Mal entered, heard his booted footsteps, his long-legged stride, coming up the short flight of the stairwell from the tower house’s entrance on ground level.

He paused in the arched entryway, his dark brows furrowing as his eyes lit on her and her sleeping son. “After the way we left things between us, I half expected you to be gone when I got here,” he murmured.

His face looked so weary and grim, his expression so bleakly tormented, she had no choice but to ask. “Expected, or hoped?”

A quiet scoff, then a slow shake of his head. “Both, maybe.”

He started walking farther up the stairwell.

“Mal, wait.” She tucked Connor into a secure cocoon of blankets and pillows on the chair, then went