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His words were daggers to my gut.

He steeled himself against whatever expression I wore. “Damnit, Lana, you and I areenemies. I lost my family to your kind.”

“Do you want to know why I like you, even now?” I said.

“You have a bad habit of seeing good in people who don’t deserve it,” Asher said. He made it sound like that wasn’t a compliment.

I wrapped my hand around the vial of his blood. “Because you’re loyal.” I let out a breath. “I was taught that humans weren’t capable of loyalty, not like Infernari. But you are. You defend your family even now. That’s admirable.”

His expression crumbled, his throat working. “Stop, Lana,” he breathed. “For the love of God, please, stop.”

This man burned for his mate.Burned. Another fallacy I was told. That the cold natives here were unfeeling. This man wasn’t unfeeling. Behind his stony façade, he was all fire and heat. His passion burned hot, and his grief smoldered.

Wewereenemies, and yet I feared he and I had it all wrong.

And I feared it would make a difference in the end.

We fell intoan uneasy silence, only interrupted when we stopped for lunch. He ordered a kid’s dish for me, which I assumed was supposed to be some sort of insult, but the joke was on him. Chicken fingers were delicious and I got four colorful crayons out of it.

“I didn’t know chickens evenhadfingers,” I said now, hoisting myself into Asher’s car.

The vehicle dipped with his weight as he got in. “They don’t.”

“Oh,” I peered down distractedly at the crayons in my hand. “Then why are they called that?”

The engine roared as he turned the car on. “Beats the shit out of me.” He raised an eyebrow at the crayons in my hand. “Do you want to make necklaces for each of those?”

My eyes brightened at the idea. “Yes. You are brilliant, Jame.”

I reached back for his rope.

He gave me chagrined look. “It was a joke, Lana.” He snatched the rope out of my hands. “I need that.”

“For what? Killing more Infernari?”

“Give the girl a trophy.”

I frowned at him. “You know, I was told you were the scariest, most lethal hunter out here. And yet since I’ve been with you, you’re the one getting your ass kicked by my kind.”

Asher tossed the rope behind us. “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” he said. “Plus,” he eyed me up and down, “I managed to capture you.”

“Give the man a trophy,” I mimicked.

He cracked a smile at that, and his already gorgeous face was now almost painful to look at. My attention moved to his mouth. The mouth that had kissed me...

“We’re about to cross the border,” he said, his smile vanishing. “We need to get you a passport... if I steal one for you, you think you could make yourself look like the photo?”

“A passport? Is that one of those little blue books?”

“Yeah, they mean you’re a citizen. Since you don’t have one, you’re an illegal alien...”

He trailed off when he saw me reaching down my suit, my beads from New Orleans shivering as I did so.

I grabbed the little book and the strange, rectangular piece of plastic I was assigned when I began visiting the United States. “Is this what you’re talking about?” I asked, handing them both over.

“Where did you store that?” he asked, his expression dumbfounded.

I flashed him a bewildered look. “In my outfit. Where else?”