“None, so long as it’s fair and open. Murder, however, is punished swiftly and severely. I wouldn’t advise doing that. No matter how tempted someone might make you.”
And when they’d neared Nala’s grand tent where a row of dragon skulls were mounted on dragon-spine posts, he’d arched a brow at her. “I think I know that guy.”
She’d laughed, until she realized he wasn’t joking. “Seriously?”
“Aye, but it’s all right. I owed him money.” He’d winked at her.
His sense of humor and extreme intelligence had always caught her off guard. It was what had always charmed her about her mate.
Maxis was never what she expected.
“Are you all right?”
She swallowed hard at Samia’s question that dragged her away from her memories and back to the present. “Thinking about the past.”
Sam nodded with a sympathetic smile. “I heard you were recently awakened from a curse where you were all turned to stone? What’d you do?”
“Fought for the wrong set of gods, and were too successful at it.”
Sam sucked her breath in sharply. “That would do it. So who did you piss off?”
“Zeus.”
“Ouch.”
Seraphina didn’t comment on that as her gaze dropped to the low cut of Samia’s shirt where a part of a double-bow brand mark peeked out.
The symbol of a Dark-Hunter – they were immortal warriors who’d sold their souls to the goddess Artemis to fight in her army and protect mankind from the Daimons who preyed on human souls to elongate their lives. Since they hunted the cousin race that had birthed the Were-Hunters, they were normally avoided or considered enemies to her people.
How odd that Samia would end up mated to a Were-Hunter… That had to be the strangest union of all.
“Are you still in service to Artemis?”
Sam shook her head. “I got my soul back.” She jerked her chin toward Dev, who was shoving at his twin brother. “It’s an adorable werebear who owns me now.”
“And you’re happy?”
A wicked smile spread across her face. “He’s a very special kind of happiness.”
“Meaning?”
“He loves to tease and nettle me to the brink of murder, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. He is everything in this world to me.” She wandered back to Dev to give him a hug from behind.
A part of Seraphina envied Sam that easy camaraderie with her mate. She’d never really had that with Maxis. Some of it was the fact that he was so much taller and more massive than her, even in human form.
But mostly it stemmed from the fact that she was acutely aware of the their “other” differences. The fact that he stood out radically from other males.
Even in this group.
Both he and Illarion, and Blaise. While they weren’t the largest in their human incarnations, there was something more feral and innately powerful. Something about them that warned they were much more than they seemed. They exuded a quiet, lethal predatorial confidence that other species lacked.
An air that said they were the pinnacle of the food chain and that anyone else could be added to their menu at any time.
At their sole discretion. And there was nothing anyone could do to stop them.
He also moved with an exquisite grace. A fluidity of muscle and sinew that was both beautiful and unnerving – like watching a sleek jungle cat stalking its prey on the savannah.
Maxis was the perfect killing machine.