control thinned until she feared a single breath might break it. She looked away. It wasn’t a retreat, exactly, just a moment without looking into his blue eyes. Her attention fixed on the false security of the bedroom she had chosen on the second floor. Poised between the unfamiliar woods and the unfamiliar home, she felt lost.
She turned again to Alon and found him a step closer. She never heard him move. Her skin prickled a warning. He reached, and she leaned away in a halfhearted effort to evade. A moment later he had captured her just above the elbows. Her gauzy shirt did not cover her arms, and she felt the heat of his hands on her bare skin. His earthy scent intoxicated. She rolled her weight to the balls of her feet, knowing she appeared too eager but unable to hold herself back.
Dangerous and alluring all at once, she decided.
“I have to go,” he said.
She nodded, wanting him to go and wanting him to pull her near. The urge to press herself to him beat in her with the rapid pounding of her pulse. “Stay in the house,” he ordered. His voice, now low and full of a gravely tenor, vibrated through her deliciously.
She shivered and pressed closer.
Alon glanced toward the bedroom above, glowing now with the soft artificial light she’d left on. She followed his gaze.
“Is that the room you have selected?”
She nodded.
“Interesting that of all the rooms in this house, you have chosen the one that I once occupied.”
His room? She had picked his bedroom.
Samantha couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t swallow.
She’d be sleeping in Alon’s bed.
“You’ll be safe here. My siblings know not to come into the house. Stay indoors until I come for you.”
She wanted to tell him that she did not have to obey his orders. Instead she nodded her consent.
“How long?”
“Until morning.”
He lifted a hand and stroked her head, running long pale fingers down her shoulder. When he reached the middle of her lower back, he eased her forward until their bodies met at the hip.
“Then you’ll bring me to your mother?” she asked.
Alon did not answer. Instead he held her with one hand while the other gripped the rail, as if he needed it to stay upright.
“Will you?” she asked.
“Once I know where to find her, yes.”
She reached for him now, eager to put her hands about his neck, angling her mouth to meet his. But he captured both her wrists, staying them for a moment until she realized what she was doing and had time to reconsider.
“Don’t, Samantha. I’m not this face or this form. I have three shapes. This one is a lie. Think. Remember what I am.”
Then he let her go.
What was she doing? This was no friend and certainly no lover. Alon was a Toe Tagger. The fact that she’d forgotten, even for an instant, only emphasized just how dangerous he was.
He nodded his approval. “Now go in the house and stay there.”
She backed toward the French doors, wanting to run and wanting to object all at the same time. He was treating her like a child, treating her just as her parents had done. She didn’t like it. Samantha’s shoulders sagged as she realized she was still acting like a child.
When she bumped the glass, she fumbled for the handle. Samantha gripped it as she looked to Alon, but he was gone and all that remained was a pile of discarded clothing. How had he vanished like that?
She made it inside and locked the door, knowing the ridiculousness of that as a method to keep Alon out. If he chose, he could break any lock more easily than she could.
It was a long time before she left the window, before her heart returned to a normal rate, before her skin lost its tingle.
Samantha made her way upstairs and prepared for bed as if this was any normal night, but nothing was normal. She checked her email again and discovered that her mother had arrived safely in New York and had already met with the chief of the Northeastern Council. Blake’s second email said that Chien’s father-in-law, a Peacemaker, would bring him to meet the chief of the Northwestern Council in Spokane, Washington, tomorrow. There was still no word from her dad. But Nicholas Chien was tracking him. That gave her reason for hope.
Samantha slept restlessly. She woke with a start to find the room bathed in sunlight and Alon standing at the foot of her bed. Or was