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A low, growling bark sounding the alarm came from a great horned owl, instantly alerting Diego. He came awake, every sense flaring out to read the forest outside their sanctuary. The female owl was a particular favorite of his. She was very familiar with him and his touch, allowing him to communicate with her easily.

The raptor was a ferocious hunter. She defended her territory relentlessly, without fear. She could be a deadly killing machine when her ire was aroused. She would drop silently out of the darkness with no warning, coming in low and fast, her talons and beak lethal weapons. He was fond of her. More than once, she’d protected him. In fact, she had saved his life.

Diego had fallen asleep with his arm around Leila. The pads of her fingers rested on his inner wrist, unerringly over his pulse, as if that steady beat reassured her. He pressed his face into her neck and inhaled.

“Wake up, Warrior Woman.” He kept his voice low and soft, not wanting to startle her. He should have known better. She was instantly alert. Her breathing changed, but she lay still, clearly doing as he had done, reaching for information outside their shelter.

“The men pursuing you are about three miles out and coming this way fast. They have to know something is wrong since not one of the soldiers from their unit contacted them. Once they find the bodies, they’ll be out for blood.”

“I can get up,” she said. “I’ll back you up. The pain is less today.”

“No, sweetheart, you’re going to stay right here and defend our den. You have a couple more days to heal before we can move you up to the cabin. Let’s take care of getting you ready.”

She made a face. “Lovely. My favorite thing is waking up and having you have to take care of me like that.”

“Are you getting modest on me?” He traced her cheekbone with the pad of his finger. “I’ll go out for a few minutes and start to set things up. You’ll have some privacy that way.”

“Thanks, Diego. I appreciate everything you do for me.”

He didn’t acknowledge her gratitude. He wasn’t used to having anyone thank him or treat him the way she did. He had a bad feeling that she was capable of ripping out what was left of his heart. It wouldn’t take much to fall off the proverbial cliff with her.

He examined her before he did anything else, needing the assurance that she was healing. Each morning, he performed another healing session on her, in the hopes it would speed up the process. Without her spleen, he knew she was susceptible to infections. He wanted to stimulate her immune system and defenses as best he could. Moving her was going to be difficult on her. He wanted her in the best shape possible before they started the long trek up the mountain to his cabin.

Leila caught at his arm when he made a move to go. “Tell me what you’re going to do.”

“What I do best. Hunt.” He was abrupt and he didn’t mean to be. Those men looking for Leila had been part of the attack on her, and his intention was to leave their dead bodies for the vultures and ants. He didn’t want her to see that ruthless side of him, although it would be best if she did.

“Are you upset with me, Diego? I know it must be difficult to stay here taking care of me. I’m getting stronger, and then I’ll be able to take care of myself,” she assured him. Her voice was strong, but once again he caught that small note that tugged at his heartstrings. Deep down, she believed he wanted to be away from her.

He swore under his breath as he leaned directly over her, forcing her to tilt her head back, her vivid green eyes meeting his. “We’re a pair of idiots. You know that, don’t you? Doesn’t matter that we might have high IQs. The bottom line is we’re letting others dictate how we feel about us. Luther would not be happy with either of us.”

Her eyes widened. “My uncle?”

“The man can give a lecture, woman. You haven’t experienced the full extent of Luther’s annoyance. He’ll tell you something most likely spot-on, and if you don’t learn right there and then, he thinks you aren’t quite bright, and he has no problem letting you know.”

He found her confusion adorable. Adorable. Good grief, it was too late for him to act normal or to run. He was already gone. It made no sense unless he considered they were in life-and-death circumstances and they’d formed a bond to survive. He told himself that was the reason he was head over heels for her, but he wasn’t a man to lie to himself.

“You think Luther would lecture me?”

“I know he would. He would tell you to quit thinking you aren’t worthy of love and admiration or respect. You are. I am. We’re just doing this crazy dance around each other, and we’ve got to stop. Every time you think badly of yourself, change your thinking. Tell yourself you’re a good person.”

At once her face flushed and she lowered her chin, but not fast enough. Her eyes had welled up with tears, and she gave a little shake of her head. “I’m not, Diego. You don’t know the terrible things I’ve done. I don’t want you to think that I’m something I’m not.” She sounded near panic-stricken. Her fingers tightened on his wrist. “You can’t go out there and put your life on the line for me. You’ve already done it and you shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have allowed it. I stayed alive because…” She broke off, turning her face away from him.

He curled his palm around the nape of her neck and traced the line of her jaw with the pad of his thumb. Her body trembled, betraying her very real agitation. “Share with me, Warrior Woman. I realize you have no reason to trust me, but I swear to you, I’ll help you figure it out.”

He knew she was used to being alone. She’d only had herself to rely on. She may have had a good early childhood with her parents, but he knew from experience that age ten was still very young. She’d had to make decisions regarding her life. Her sister had been ripped away from her—the sister she’d promised her parents she would look after.

Growing up in a laboratory, even if it wasn’t a facility like Whitney’s, was brutal on a child. He couldn’t imagine what Leila’s training had been like, especially when he’d witnessed the way the soldiers had callously treated what amounted to a dying woman. That revelation struck him. He’d thought the soldiers coming from the lab would be decent men, because Luther, his one example, had been. But the five soldiers he’d killed to keep them off Leila had failed to show compassion, empathy or even decency. Had she been exposed to those kinds of men after she’d turned ten?

“Leila, talk to me. You have to trust someone. Let that someone be me. I don’t consider myself the best of men, but I’m loyal, and I don’t break promises.”

Leila shook her head and looked at him. He read despair in her eyes. All that look did was make him want to gather her up and shelter her in his arms.

“You are the best of men, and that’s the problem, Diego. I know you think because you killed a few men that makes you irredeemable in some way, but it doesn’t. You were at war. Fighting for your country. It doesn’t matter if war was declared; you know we sometimes don’t have choices.”

His thumb continued to stroke along her delicate jaw, tracing that line, committing her features to his physical memory. That declaration shook him, whether he wanted to admit it or not. She wasn’t a liar. She spoke to him what she believed was truth. And she saw into him, past the bullshit persona he put out there for others to see. He knew she could see into that place in him that was all killer. Almost pure predator. The hunt was sacred to him. As necessary as breathing. Why didn’t she see that as a negative trait?

“Sweetheart, you’re looking beyond my worst characteristics because you think you need me to survive. Or you feel you owe me a debt.” He tried to be practical, not let her opinion of him wrap her around his heart. Who knew she would manage to gut him in such a short time? He had a high respect for Leila and the gifts she obviously had. “You’re at a place where you could do this on your own. It would be difficult, but you don’t need me.”

Her lashes were so damned long. That little flutter, the sweep up and down, veiling her expression and then revealing the vivid green of her eyes sent flickering flames dancing through his veins.

“I might not need you, Diego, but I want to be with you. I see darkness in you. You view that as a bad trait. I believe it’s what allows you to be so effective at what you do.” Her gaze shifted from his and then returned, the green going so vivid it appeared as though two jewels had been pressed into her face. “I have a child. A daughter. I killed her father.”

Diego heard the defiance in her voice. The expectation that he would condemn her. A child? He should have seen that when he was examining her. All he saw was the mess the bullet had made of her body.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that if you killed him, he deserved killing.” He kept his voice mild. Soothing. “And don’t cry.” He swept his finger under her left eye to remove the glittering liquid. “You’ll break my heart, and you’ve already put the damn thing in jeopardy.”

She blinked rapidly, her soft lips parting slightly. His body reacted in an inappropriate way for a doctor. Her doctor. He needed to keep reminding himself of that.

“He wasn’t the only one I killed that day. He had two friends with him. They were fellow soldiers, men I trained with. I kept to myself for the most part because many of the soldiers were amped up and seemed off to me.”

His gut tightened. He couldn’t abide men who beat or raped women. It was a huge trigger for him after the experiences of his childhood. He had a bad, bad feeling his little warrior woman had been exposed to men like the ones who had tried to rape her when she was at her most vulnerable.

“With that experience, it’s a wonder you went to your uncle with Bridget.” It was an effort to keep his voice mild and soothing, but he managed.

“Believe me, I was ready to kill him if needed. Bridget was in a bad way, and I needed to go back for my daughter. Before I could, I had to ensure Bridget would be safe. Luther was my only choice. I counted on the fact that my feelings of loyalty and need to protect family were just as strong in him.”

A daughter. That was the reason Leila had told Luther she had to leave but would come back. She had killed the child’s father along with two of his friends.

“They tried to rape you.” Diego made the statement for her.

“Leon succeeded. That was how I conceived.”

So the bastard who raped her had been named Leon. That name would forever haunt him because he was determined to take that memory onto his shoulders and find a way to lessen the impact on her.

“And you kept the baby.” Again, he was very careful of his tone. He didn’t want her to think he wouldn’t accept another man’s child, no matter the circumstances of conception. Her daughter was Leila’s. He would welcome—and love and protect—any child of Leila’s.

The tears in Leila’s eyes did more than gut him. His heart felt as though it clenched in his chest so hard he feared a heart attack. That didn’t bode well for their future. He was going to be a pushover for the woman. Maybe that was what she needed. He hoped so, because he was already feeling possessive toward her. Protective. It felt as though she was always meant to be his. Maybe he’d been created and shaped into the monster he knew himself to be just to be able to protect her. To be whatever she and her daughter would need.

“I’d been alone so long. It wasn’t her fault that those men were jacked up from the enhancements. I needed her.”

She spoke low, a confession when he wasn’t the priestly type. She didn’t need to feel guilt just because she wanted a family.

“I understand, Leila,” he assured, because it was the truth. He’d lost most of his family, but he’d always had Rubin with him. Later, he’d been accepted by Ezekiel Fortunes and Zeke’s two brothers, Malichai and Mordichai. They’d formed another family unit. Then he’d had Nonny, the grandmother of one of the GhostWalkers in his unit. He’d always had people surrounding him, caring for him, and yet he was a walking mess. What had it been like for her? She’d been alone.

“You don’t though, Diego.”

Those long lashes swept down and back up again. Wet. Spiky. Heartbreaking. If she kept it up, he was going to have to put her on his lap and just hold her. If the men hunting them found the trail, which he doubted would happen, he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. Right at that moment, the only thing that mattered to him was to stop her tears.

“Then tell me, sweetheart.” He massaged the nape of her neck, trying to ease the tension out of her. Trying to convey to her that she wasn’t alone and she’d never have to be again if she could just see the man right in front of her.

“I flirted with him. With Leon. I was so tired of being alone, and he seemed decent. I really thought if I got to know him, maybe I’d be attracted to him. I was the only one who lived in the dormitory, and he came there with his friends. I didn’t see the others when he knocked on my door, and I opened it. He punched me so hard it nearly knocked me out. They dragged me inside and I was too groggy to fight him off. The others held me down…” She trailed off again, turning her head away from him. “If I hadn’t drawn his attention, it never would have happened, and all of them would still be alive.”

“How many other women would they have raped?” he asked gently. “You’re not thinking about this clearly, Leila. If they were so willing to rape you, it was in them. They would have done the same to other women. More than likely they already had. The fact that he incapacitated you immediately leads me to believe it wasn’t the first time and Leon had perfected his technique.”

Leila fell silent, but she leaned into him. The tension slowly faded from her body. Diego remained silent, letting her work it out for herself. He knew he was right. He was good at reading human nature. He might not have met Leon and his friends face-to-face, but he’d met many men like them. Enhancements often brought out the worst traits in the soldiers. Introducing aggressive predators into the DNA was asking for disaster. He should know. For every good characteristic, there were two bad.

“I didn’t think of it that way. Now that you’ve pointed it out, I believe you’re right.”

“Did those running the laboratory allow you to keep the baby?”

“They were excited when they found out.” Her gaze met his. This time the green was as cool as ice. “They knew if they tried to take her from me, I’d declare war on them.”

Diego waited for her to continue. He was beginning to feel a sense of urgency, and he reached for the owl, an automatic reaction he’d had since his childhood and all the years he’d practiced communicating with the birds in the forest. Now, despite long months away, he connected easily with the great horned owl. Once he had her attention, he sent out a command using the notes of a male owl calling to her.

They had developed their private language over time. The female owl was extremely intelligent, and she had caught on to his various call patterns and the meanings behind them very quickly until, over the years, they’d developed communication skills he hadn’t believed possible. He needed her to find the intruders and let him know their exact position. He preferred to hunt them a good distance from Leila. No matter that he told her she could defend the den they were in, he didn’t want her to have to.

The notes of the male owl were as close to the real thing as possible. Her eyebrow shot up. “You’re telling an owl to do something.”

He nodded. “I need her to let me know the location of those men hunting you.”

“She can do that?”

“Don’t tell me you aren’t able to utilize animals, because I think you can.”

“Not like that. I wish I could.”

“It took me several years of working out patterns that would sound close enough to a male great horned owl calling to a female. She took less time to learn it than I did to develop it.”

“That’s amazing. Even just the fact that you persisted.”

He gave her a faint smile. “You’ll find I’m quite stubborn when I want to do something. I tend to persist until I get my way. I can work at something for years and never stop until I manage to attain my goal.”

“That’s not a bad trait to have. You sound like you think it is.”

“It can be very bad. I got myself into a lot of trouble when I was young. If my commanding officer knew half the things I did, he’d most likely throw me in the brig.”

“I doubt that. I think you’re considered very valuable by everyone but you.”

She could be right. He hadn’t given it much thought. “Please continue telling me about what happened with your daughter and how you came to be separated.”

Leila sighed. “Mistakes. Misjudging people. Not knowing who was an enemy and who wasn’t. I was sent out a few times to help in situations with troops. While I was gone, they had a woman looking after the baby. She seemed okay at first, but after the second time, when I returned, I found I didn’t trust her—or anyone else but Marcy, my commanding officer’s wife. Not that I trusted him. The baby is highly intelligent. They didn’t take that into consideration, or that I might have ways to communicate with her that they didn’t.”

She looked at him as if he might not believe her. He nodded, hoping to reassure her that he would always believe her. “There have been several GhostWalker babies born in the last few years,” he told her, still massaging the knots in her neck. Each time she gave him more information, she tensed as if she expected him to condemn her. “Every single one shows remarkable intelligence and the ability to understand and communicate before they are able to speak.”

Her eyes widened in shock. “Grace isn’t the only one?”

She called her daughter Grace. Nonny, Wyatt’s grandmother, was Grace Fontenot. She was the best woman Diego knew. If Leila’s daughter was anything like Nonny, she would grow up to be an incredible human being. More and more, Diego believed he’d been born to be with this woman. Every sign seemed to point in that direction. They were even free of the taint of Whitney’s pairing that had originally bothered so many of the GhostWalkers. Everything he felt for Leila was from getting to know her. Being in her mind. Seeing who she really was.

He admired her courage. He respected her as a soldier. The fact that she was so injured and yet ready to defend their position got to him. He hadn’t expected the intense chemistry. She was injured. He was her doctor. He was caring for her in ways that forced an intimacy between them that should have been awkward. It wasn’t.

“No, Grace is in good company. I love that you named her Grace. Wyatt, a member of my unit, has a grandmother and a daughter named Grace. We all call his grandmother Nonny. She’s one of the most amazing women I’ve ever met.”

“I liked the name. It’s maybe a little old-fashioned, but it suited her.”

There was love in her voice. Her face had gone soft. He’d never seen that look on his mother’s face. Not even when she looked at Rubin, and he was her favorite.

“You’re beautiful all the time, but when you talk about your daughter, you’re even more so.”

Faint color swept under her skin. “You always make me feel good about myself. Thank you for that, although I don’t know how to handle it. It’s a little embarrassing, but still makes me feel good.”

He brushed a kiss on top of her head. “Why did the woman watching Grace make you feel as if you couldn’t trust her?”

“Grace sent me impressions of a man in a white lab coat taking her blood. It hurt her. I realized that when I was gone, my commander would allow the lab to study Grace. I had no way to protect her when I was gone. I didn’t want them experimenting on her. I’d heard such terrible things about Whitney and what he was doing. The other soldiers would talk sometimes. It was terrifying knowing Bridget was with Whitney.”

He couldn’t imagine how painful it must have been for her to know her sister was in the hands of a madman.

“What changed everything? How did you come to a place where you tracked Bridget down?” Even as he asked her, he listened for the great horned owl’s response.

The large bird could elongate its body when sitting motionless on the branch of a tree. The coloration allowed it to blend into the bark, a perfect camouflage. Diego and Rubin had learned to mimic the owl, often sleeping in the branches of a tree when they were children out hunting for their families. They’d learned to camouflage and be still from the fierce predatory owl. They’d taken many lessons from the great horned owl. To strike fast and decisively, not giving opponents time for resistance. Mold their bodies to their background and go completely still, holding the position for hours. The owl was intelligent and fierce, protective and territorial. Diego had those traits in abundance.

“Marcy. She didn’t allow anyone, not even the commander, to touch Grace while I was gone. She didn’t approve of a lot of the things going on at the laboratory, or how I was raised as a soldier. She slipped a note to me when she handed me Grace. Grace was bundled up and sleeping. I could see that Marcy was extremely nervous. Her eyes kept darting around the room, and when she spoke to me, she turned her face into the blankets and tote filled with Gracie’s things. I knew we were under observation, and she didn’t want anyone watching to know she was conveying anything to me but how my daughter was in my absence. I went along with it and didn’t even read the note until I was alone in the bathroom.”

“The woman was an ally?”

“Her name is Marcy Chariot. She’s a registered nurse and married to the commanding officer. She overhears quite a bit of what is going on when there are discussions about the genetic enhancements. She was appalled when she heard what Whitney was doing to some of the women. At first, she didn’t believe what she was hearing. She thought if the rumors were true, Whitney would be stopped. She asked her husband about it, and he told her many factions in the government believed he would create the soldiers of the future. Her husband told her that Whitney had a program imprisoning the women and forcing them to give birth to babies he could experiment on.”

Diego swore under his breath. He knew it was true. They’d actively hunted Whitney in the hopes of stopping him, but he had too many allies willing to shield him. They showed up at compounds known to be used by him, but he was always already gone.

“Marcy told me they were all disgusted with the way he had treated my sister and that she was in a bad way. They feared, because I had a baby, that he would force Bridget to have one and the experiments would continue on that child. Marcy had the last known location of Bridget. One of the officers had visited the compound and saw her. He said she looked as if she was very ill. Whitney was known to put cancer and bacterial and viral diseases into the women for his experiments. She worried that Bridget was being used that way.”

“Marcy has Grace now?” Suddenly, it was extremely important to Diego that the child was safe.

Leila’s nod was slow. “I had to trust her. I felt I had no choice. I had to get to Bridget if at all possible. The first place was already abandoned, but I tracked her to the next location used and was able to get her out. I needed a safe place to stash her while I went back for Gracie. Luther was the only one I could think of who might help us. Bridget needed care. She has no filters, and the assault on her brain is horrific. It feels to me as if she has a massive brain injury.”

“Whitney removing Bridget’s filters makes no sense. Whitney saw the results in his first unit of GhostWalkers. Brain bleeds. Seizures. Continuing to remove filters and experiment in that direction is an abomination. If you make a mistake, you do your best to rectify it, not double down and ruin the lives of other human beings,” Diego declared. As far as he was concerned, Whitney was a sadist, especially when it came to women. Whitney didn’t consider the things he did to them torture, but that was exactly what it was.

“The fact that the government protects him is mind-boggling,” Leila agreed. “At least I was given a choice. No one just experimented on me. I was talked to several times by the head of the lab, and I could have turned them down.”

Diego wasn’t as certain as Leila. The experiments came under the heading of top secret. Few knew of the lab and the soldiers coming out of it. He hadn’t even known, and he was a GhostWalker. Whitney piggybacked on the experiments done to the volunteer soldiers. If information had been disclosed to Leila, especially when she was a child, they would have leaned on her, broken her down psychologically, to get her to comply. Diego had been around those experimenting on the soldiers and women, and their fanaticism outweighed their morals. Betrayal and treachery were the norms.

“Why did you want to be enhanced?”

“I was shown footage of what the soldiers could do. Footage of Luther. I really wanted to meet him. My grandmother had talked about Luther often. I knew she regretted the things she’d said to him, but she couldn’t find him to make things right. My father had tried while my grandmother was alive. I wanted to be able to do that for her and my father. I also thought if I could be as fast and as strong as the soldiers, I would have a better chance of getting Bridget back.”

“That makes sense,” Diego agreed. “I was given the same rhetoric, and they convinced me to sign up. I can’t very well fault a child for choosing enhanced physical strength. I was choosing enhanced psychic talent.” He flashed her a grin because sharing with her made all the problems easier. “Guess we both got screwed.”

“Maybe.” She rubbed her palm along his thigh. “And maybe they screwed themselves. Most of their soldiers implode, like Leon and his friends.”

“And the ones taking you up the mountain to the site where they were going to land a helicopter.” He knew the exact location of the only clearing available to set a helicopter down safely up the mountain. It was a good distance above their cabin. Rubin had used it on many occasions to practice diverting lightning strikes. “Whitney’s supersoldiers are worse. And they never last long. Pumped up the way Whitney makes them, their bodies give out fast.”

Leila tilted her head to look up at him. Her cheek rubbed against his shoulder. “If something happens to me, will you find Gracie and protect her? I need you to do that for me. I know what I’m asking, but it’s important to me to know she’s in safe hands.”

His first reaction was to protest. To tell her everything would be fine and she would be the one to get her daughter back, but he knew the real world wasn’t always accommodating. Things could change in seconds. It had for him already. He had come home to die, and yet dying was the furthest thing from his mind. He’d felt more alive in the last few days than he ever had.

“I give you my word, Leila.” He rubbed his chin on top of her head. “I’d like you to make up your mind that you’re going to live through this. No other outcome is acceptable.” He turned fully to her and captured her face between his palms. “Do you hear me? No other outcome is acceptable.”

Her green eyes searched his for what seemed an eternity. A slow smile curved her soft mouth. He found himself wanting to kiss her.

“I hear you. I want you to hear me. Your life is important. It is to me and, I’m certain, to a number of others. It isn’t just your talents that make you worthwhile; it’s who you are fundamentally. I want you to come back to me as soon as we’re in the clear.”

He brushed his lips over hers because the temptation was too much to resist. “I keep my promises, Leila. I don’t make that many, but the ones I do make, even to myself, I consider that my bond. I’ll come back for you. We’ll get Gracie together. And then we’ll find Bridget if Luther wasn’t able to get to her before they took off with her.”

“The tracking device. You shot me with one; you must have shot her as well.”

“I did. A highly intelligent teammate of mine developed it, making it impossible to find in the body. Those who took her won’t have a clue we have a way of finding her. As far as they know, only you and Luther were there. The others don’t know about me. Even if they did, they wouldn’t know who I am. Even then, if they realized who I am, it would never occur to them I would have such a sophisticated tracking device on me when I was simply coming home.”

“Whoever invented your tracking device needs a better way to deliver it. It hurt worse than a bug bite and bled.”

“You were stoic as hell,” Diego pointed out. She had glared at him. Even then, in the middle of a firefight, she made him want to laugh. Now they were sitting in a makeshift den created out of dirt, branches and forest floor debris. She was severely injured, and they were being hunted by soldiers. None of that seemed to matter. She made him feel alive and happy. She made him want to laugh despite the grim situation. For him, she was the perfect woman, one who would stand at his side and cope with everything that came their way. Most importantly, she would love their children and stand in front of them.

“I didn’t feel stoic,” she said. “I was very, very angry. If I could have risked a shot at you, just to shave a little flesh off your arm, I probably would have done it. Luther warned me you were going to shoot a dart at me. I told him absolutely not.”

He couldn’t help the grin. “Yeah. I saw that little exchange. I took the shot just in case Luther decided to warn me off.”

Her green eyes went cool, but there was a hint of laughter in them. “You’re a little on the ruthless side, aren’t you?”

He raised an eyebrow. “A little? Woman. That’s insulting.”

Her laughter melted something hard and stony inside him. He wasn’t sure how she managed, but she turned the worst of conditions into fun. Women threw themselves at him. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been with women, but he didn’t enjoy their company. He could have spent a lifetime in Leila’s company. She was just…easy to be with.

“Most men would think it was insulting if I called them ruthless. It isn’t a compliment.”

His grin widened and she reacted, tracing one of the indentations around his mouth with the pad of her finger.

“It is a compliment,” he insisted.

“You have dimples.”

He did his best to scowl at her. “I don’t. Dimples aren’t manly, Warrior Woman, and just being ruthless proves I’m all man.”

She rolled her eyes and burst out laughing again. “Stop. It hurts when I laugh.”

The owl settled on the top of their den, emitting a series of calls much like she would make to her young. That galvanized Diego into action. He pressed a kiss to her temple, and then made certain she had everything she needed to defend herself.

“Water and ammo on your right. More weapons on your left. I’ll be back as fast as possible.”

She didn’t protest or cry. He had known she wouldn’t. Her expression was one of utter resolve.

“I’ll protect our happy little home.” She flashed a smile at him, the last thing he saw when he left her. He took that someplace deep in his heart and, signaling the owl, headed up the mountain toward the place where he had left the bodies in a gorge.