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His jaw went tight as he stared at her. His dark brows lowered over his eyes, mouth going flat as he grimly shook his head. “This is my battle. The Order’s battle. Tomorrow some of the warriors will arrive from Boston. I’ll be meeting up with them when they get in, and from there we’ll launch an offensive strike on Dragos’s operations at the mine. We don’t know what we’re going to find. I just know that I want you as far away from this mission—and any possible fallout—as you can get.” He reached up and smoothed his fingers lightly over her cheek. “That also means getting you as far away from me as possible, before I put you any further at risk.”

“No.” Alex turned her face, pressing her mouth to the warm heat of his palm where it rested against her. She kissed the heart of his large hand. “I can’t hide anymore, Kade. I don’t want to live like that, always looking over my shoulder, afraid of the things I don’t understand. You can’t ask me to, not when meeting you has given me the strength to believe that I can face my fears. Meeting you has given me the strength to understand that I must face them.”

He cursed harshly, but his caress was soft, his gaze penetrating, the pale silver color that ringed his pupils dark with desire. “You give me too much credit. You were stronger than you realized, to have gone through what you did as a child and not let it destroy you. Not many could. That’s courage, Alex. You didn’t need me for that. You still don’t.”

She smiled, reaching out to hold his face in her hands as she kissed him. “I do need you,” she whispered against his mouth. “What’s more, I want you, Kade.”

His breath rasped out of him on a sigh as she slanted her lips over his again and moved closer to him on the sofa. His arms went around her, holding her in a loose cage as she climbed up onto his lap and pushed her tongue into his mouth.

He groaned, caught her tongue with his teeth … then abruptly broke contact and turned his head away from her.

“What’s wrong? Why did you stop?” She panted the words, her lips and tongue stinging with a delicious heat. She tasted blood, only the smallest trace, but instinct brought her hand up to her mouth and the tip of her finger came away wet with a scarlet stain.

She glanced at Kade’s downcast face and felt his torment in the way his big body vibrated with barely leashed control, as though he were waging a private war inside himself.

“Look at me,” she whispered. When he didn’t immediately comply, she lifted his stubborn chin and physically brought his gaze back to hers. “Look at me … let me see you.”

“Trust me, you will not want to,” he muttered, glancing away quickly.

But not before she noticed the change that had come over his eyes. He hadn’t been able to turn quite fast enough to hide the fact that their normally pale gray color was now shot with fiery amber. And his pupils … something was different about them, too.

“Kade, please,” she said gently. “Let me see you as you really are.”

Slowly, he lifted his face. His dark lashes flicked up, and Alex was stunned by a blast of ember-bright color that glowed like lit coals. And in the center of all that fire, his pupils had narrowed to catlike slits. It startled her, the strangeness of his gaze, the way it transformed his face, sharpening the angles of his high cheekbones and squared jaw. She stared, robbed of words. All but robbed of breath.

“I don’t want you to be afraid of me, Alex.” His deep voice rasped, sounding oddly thick to her, and then she realized why. She saw the gleam of sharp white teeth behind his lip as he spoke. His fangs. Not quite hidden, despite his obvious effort to conceal them from her view. When he looked at her now, there was a desperation in his amber eyes. Desperation and longing like she’d never seen before. “I don’t want you to hate me, but this is who I am, Alex. This is who I truly am.”

Despite the tiny shiver of wariness that kicked her heart into a more frantic beat, Alex leaned forward and cupped his face in her hands. She held his tormented gaze, then let her eyes travel downward,