Too young to know the differences between them, Becca had waylaid Quinn, thinking he was Remi. In Quinn's defense, he had no idea Remi loved her--Remi never shared things like that. All Quinn had seen was a warm body pawing at him and he'd done what most men would do when a woman showed up naked in their bed. He'd slept with her. Within the hour and just after Becca had realized her mistake, their mating marks had come in and Remi had been forced to step back and watch his brother claim the woman he'd fallen in love with first. The woman who loved him with everything she had, who'd been trying to mate with him and not his identical brother.
Remi had never emotionally recovered from that tragedy.
And while Dev had thought he understood Remi's pain, it was only now he really got it. The strength of Remi's character was unfathomable. To have stayed with the family and witnessed their relationship all these years. To have never once cheated on his brother with the woman he loved...
That was what real love was. The ability to put someone else's happiness above your own no matter how much it killed you to do so.
It was the sacrifice his mother had made. She'd died to keep Aimee from losing her mate.
Remi made that sacrifice every day. While a Were-Hunter male could never cheat on his mate, women could. It would have taken nothing for Remi to cuckold Quinn. And Dev knew for a fact Remi never had. As big of a bastard as his brother could be, Remi had honor and he loved his family even though he still wanted to break Quinn into pieces.
How do you do it? How could Remi have walked away and not killed Quinn? Because right now the thought of not having Sam was more than he could bear.
All he wanted to do was kiss her, even though they were one step away from death.
"Incoming!"
Dev looked up as a pack of manticores launched out of nowhere to land all around them.
The men pushed themselves up, then put their backs to each other as the manticores circled them while barking and hissing.
"Why aren't they attacking?" Fang asked.
Ethon shook his head. "It's like they're herding us for something."
Yeah, but what?
Sam moved to hover by Dev's side. The manticores flicked their tails as they eyed them warily. She swallowed as she watched the arrows swim up their tails. The arrowhead would peek out of the ball of fur on the tip and then slide back down only to head back to the tip as if waiting for it to be flung at a target.
With the faces of men and women, they were creepy-looking.
"You should not be here," one of the females snarled.
"We'll be happy to leave." Ethon flashed a grin at her. "Just let us pass."
The female hissed at him.
Dev inched closer to the manticores until they turned on him. He stepped back and they retreated. "What do you want with us?"
"They want nothing with you."
Sam looked up to see a beautiful woman in the leather and gold armor of the Amazon nation. Her flaming red hair glowed in the overexposed light. Her hair was braided and held back from her face by a feathered leather headband. Matching feathers made up the white and brown mantle she wore over her armor as she eyed them with a warrior's gleam.
This was Aello. There was no doubt she was the girdle's protector.
"Why do you come here?" Aello demanded.
Ethon held his hands up. "The scenery. My God, have you ever? I mean really. I had a choice. Spend a day in Rio or come to the back door of hell. What can I say? Hell won out."
Aello angled her spear at his throat. "Are you mocking me?"
Sam used her powers to push the spear away. "Don't take it personally. He mocks everyone."
That brought Aello's stare firmly to rest on Sam. Her green eyes glowed in the strange light. "I know you."
"No. You died before I was born. I'm the granddaughter of Hippolyte and I'm told I favor her."
Suspicion hung heavy in her eyes as she measured Sam from the top of her head to the tip of her feet. "You want the girdle." It was a statement, not a question.