The three men had their crossbows up, but in that instant they lost their opportunity, for now they couldn’t shoot without hitting her. She wasn’t a third-mark. She wouldn’t survive an arrow going through her heart, and she and Jeremiah were of like height, their chests aligned for an optimal double kill shot.

Jeremiah’s furious and frightened gaze was locked on his, a challenge and a plea at once. He’d spread his fingers out as far as they could go over her face, pressing her cheek to the cell bars. His other arm was slanted up toward her chest, fingers also spread. He was trying to protect her with as much of his body as he could, thinking Mal was going to retaliate, hit her in those vulnerable face and solar plexus areas. The way he’d been beaten for such acts of defiance.

Jeremiah knew he couldn’t stand against Mal. He should have been cowering back, protecting himself. Instead he was risking everything, protecting her.

“Jeremiah.” When Elisa spoke, her voice was shaking, because she was still riding her fury and pain, tears on her face. In her mind, though, Mal saw she was making a valiant effort to calm herself. Her hand rested on the boy’s wrist. “It’s all right. He’s not going to hurt me.”

She was sure of it, too. It unexpectedly moved Mal, that even in the heat of their argument she knew she was completely safe with him, at least physically. But if push came to shove, she’d take a beating as harsh as he could dish out, if that was what would allow her to stay here.

Christ.

He held the boy’s gaze. He could call him that, at least in his mind, because the difference in their ages, whatever Jeremiah’s true age was, was significant enough to justify it. “She’s right. I’m not going to injure her, Jeremiah. But I need you to let her go, because you know as well as I do that a situation like this could result in a bloodlust surge. It would happen in an instant, and you’d snap her neck. All right? You know that.”

The young man pressed his lips against those long fangs that were so perilously close to Elisa’s neck. Malachi saw the tinges of red in his eye, the grip of his fingers starting to tighten.

Elisa drew in a gasp, because Mal was now flush up against her, his hands locked on Jeremiah’s wrists. Slowly, his gaze remaining on the fledgling’s, he guided Jeremiah’s arms off her body and upward. Mal wasn’t brutal about it, but he was inexorable, slowly pushing the boy back to arm’s length, holding him there.

Elisa, slide out from beneath me and move away from his cell. Right now.

He was pressed pretty tightly against her, so she had to wriggle and inch downward, where the cant of his body widened the space between them. Ignoring the creak of her fragile ribs, she took hold of his shirt at the waist to give her leverage to swing below him and come out of that heated space. Chayton was there, taking her arm and guiding her back a few steps before she could turn and see.

Jeremiah was fighting it, shuddering in Mal’s arms, and Elisa blanched as she realized how close a thing it had been. The boy was already thrashing and growling, the stress of the past few moments overcoming him. Whipping his head to the right, he sank his fangs into Malachi’s arm. Though Elisa gasped, the older vampire didn’t flinch, just waited until the boy convulsed, his jaw relaxing enough for Mal to switch his grip.

Elisa expected him to let Jeremiah go, to thrust him away and let the bloodlust fit take its horrible, pitiful course. It would throw him to the ground, or Jeremiah would rush the bars until he’d knocked himself almost senseless. Then he’d lie on the ground, jerking and crying out in that way that made her heart choke her.

Instead, Mal turned the boy so his back was against the bars, and Jeremiah was suddenly in much the same position Elisa had been, only Mal’s arms held him there, high across the narrow chest and around the waist, the vampire murmuring to him as the boy fought the demonic possession of his body. Mal’s arm was bleeding, staining Jeremiah’s shirt.

Chayton had run to the Jeep and was back, pressing a packet of blood into Elisa’s hand. “Go give this to him, but stay well clear.”

Elisa nodded, and approached the bars again. “Toss it through,” Malachi said, his voice remarkably tranquil, unruffled. “Gently, so it doesn’t split.”

When she complied, Jeremiah’s head snapped around, tracking it. As soon as it landed, Malachi let him go. Jeremiah leaped upon it, and Elisa looked away, somehow unable to watch him transform into this beast, gulping the blood so fast it streamed down his chin, dripping to the ground.

We’re all beasts, Elisa. We just learn control. Somewhat. Don’t look away. You hurt him by reacting the way you do.

It surprised her, coming from Mal, but she immediately brought her gaze back to Jeremiah. She managed to make a soothing and encouraging noise, as if he was sitting down to the dinner table with napkin properly tucked in, knife and fork in hand. With a sinking feeling, she realized that if he’d second-marked her, he could read her reaction, no matter what face she put on it. She concentrated on soothing her emotions inside, so they would reflect what she was trying to give him on the outside.

Whether or not it helped, or if it was just the blood, he was calming. He was rocking back and forth on his heels now, sucking at the blood bag. Mal turned then, taking her arm in a firm grip. “All right. Let’s go.”

He parked on her favored knoll. They stared out over a star-strewn landscape, the whitecaps of the ocean coming through like milk with the help of the moonlight’s touch. In the far distance, across the fault line into Africa, she saw a family of leopards. It was a mother with cub in tow, working her way across an open plain. A gazelle herd was at the other end. The mother would search out the young and injured, Nature’s way of culling out the weak.

It made her so tired. She should ask him what he was going to do with the children after she was gone, but she didn’t have the courage. She couldn’t think about that plane as anything but a coffin, containing the rest of her life, passed in sterile numbness.

“Marshall Grant is the overlord of the Florida territory. He’s worked with me on protection of the Florida panther population, letting me enter the Everglades in his territory as needed. I’ve spent some time at his home. There’s a relatively dense concentration of vampires in Florida, because it has a significantly transient human population. Makes it easier to blend. Lady Lyssa has oversight on Florida, as she’s the Southern Region Master.”

Elisa blinked and looked toward him, her brow creasing. “I’m sorry, sir. What?”

A grim look crossed his face. “Sir is a title of respect, Elisa. You don’t have any for me, so it seems a little hypocritical, doesn’t it?”

He saw her indignant response to that. She followed all of his rules, even those she considered completely ludicrous, rules she thought had more to do with his need to order about the whole world than with anything sensible. The only time she broke them was when it was absolutely necessary, something dire required, and she was sorry she’d thumped him like that, but . . .

He kept his gaze fastened on her until the thoughts stuttered to a halt, the girl realizing he was following them like a typewriter’s keys clattering across a page. “Done yet?” he asked.

She pressed her lips together, gave a nod.

“Good. I’d put a cap on that busy mind of yours, because you have one hell of a punishment coming. You don’t want to make it worse. If we can get William and Matthew to a certain point in behavior and self-control, I believe Lord Marshall will be willing to take them into his household, permanently. On a probationary basis, of course. He could provide them protection and service, give them a safe place to see how they get on with the vampire world.”

When the words sank in, she made a visible effort not to go slack-jawed in shock. He nodded with grim satisfaction. “That’s what I’ve been working on this past week. There’s a similar possibility for Miah and Nerida, down in South America, but I’m still working that one out. Since Lord Marshall confirmed today that he wants me to visit and discuss it, I was going to share that with you. Tonight, in my study.”

“So you weren’t going to send me away.”

“ No.”

“Oh.” She said it in a small voice. “I guess all that was totally unnecessary, then.”

“Yeah. You could say that.”

She swallowed. “Are you going to send me away now?”

“Yes.” He felt the trip of her heart, and held on to silence for an extra five beats, testing himself as much as her. He chose five, because he wasn’t going to make it to ten. “But only if you give me the wrong answer to this next question. What happens to children when their parents are always disagreeing in front of them about how they should be raised?”

“They tend to know they can misbehave with one parent more than the other.”

“That, but even more important, it creates instability. The more stability these fledglings have, the better. You’re key to that, but so am I. We have to work together. Now, if you can agree to that, I will make you a promise, here and now.”

His gaze held hers as she gave him a wary nod. The subsequent pause was long enough to get Elisa past her shock that a vampire was making a promise to a human, and then she was hanging on his every word.

“I’m going to do everything I can to give them the chance to make something of their lives,” he said. “Unless, like Leonidas, they cross a line over which they can’t come back. I will do that whether you are here or not. You have my word.”

Elisa recalled the way he’d held Jeremiah with his strong long-fingered hands, the ones he had on the gearshift and window frame now, his body half-turned toward her. He’d restrained the boy with a strength that could be ruthless and savage, but hadn’t been.

“So, if I convinced you they are in good hands, would you get on that plane, go back to your Australia, and let yourself heal as you deserve? Move forward with the life you thought you might have? There will be other stock hands with good hearts. You’re young. You won’t be alone long.”