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The scent of the human hunting party burned a path from his nose to his soul.

They smelled delicious. Not as well as Amira’s father, but to keep his vampire from lashing out at the older man, he needed satiation.

The vampire in him coiled tight, winding and readying to go to battle for Amira.

“What are you doing?” Even in its harshest whisper, Amira’s voice sung to him like a lullaby.

Yes, what are you doing? It was as if he no longer held dominion over his limbs or mind. But when several wet hooves dug into the riverbed, his vampire knew what needed to be done to get him and Amira back into that hut and her life force on his tongue.

“Taking away your enemies,” His vampire rose to the surface, but when he tried to move his wrists, Amira’s binds kept him restrained. He thrust his hands toward her. “Cut me loose.”

She choked again. Quickly, he examined her to ensure the choking wasn’t permanently damaging.

“No, can’t do that,” she shook her head.

Her Aleoian accent strengthened along with her distress, he noticed. He didn’t like that from her.

He swore, then held them up to his fangs.

“Wait,” she said. “Don’t—”

Too late. The bristly rough of the rope tasted like bitter powder and caused his flesh to sizzle as it burned his mouth. No wonder the ropes burned against his wrist.

She’d poisoned the ropes.

Had she thought of everything to keep him subdued? Then why was she and her father so afraid of the humans that came toward them? Surely, she was formidable enough to take them on.

“Unbind me,” he ordered more firmly. “We must face them. They bring you and your father fear, we will vanquish them.”

The words coming from his mouth were alarming in their firmness, but as the drug held onto his mind, his alarm turned into determination.

From behind her, Amira’s father weaved through the trees toward them. The leaves rustled with his every step and his scent plumed in his direction. He held firm to his vampire. Her father was not their enemy.

“Amira, let’s go.”

“Papa, we can’t. If Monger finds him here…”

“It will be worse if he finds you both.” Emerging from the shadows of the tree line, the older man grabbed Amira’s arm with too much force. She flinched.

His vampire didn’t like that.

Even if a piece of him knew the effect was from her drug, it agreed with the carnal part of him. He didn’t like her pain. He growled.

Amira’s father unsheathed a blade the size of his forearm. Again, Amira jetted between them to stay her father’s knife. By the gods, he wished he could smell her just as he could feel her warmth, close and warming.

He inhaled deeply even though he knew there’d be no scent from her. The smell blood coming from her father was the most prominent. Yet the sound of the hunting party approaching diverted his attention. Gustav’s head swiveled toward the direction.

So, did Amira’s father.

“We must leave here.” He quickly sidestepped Amira and sliced his ropes to the sound of Amira’s protest.

Finally freed from his restraints, Gustav flexed his hands, then rubbed his wrists. Already, the skin started to heal.

“We cannot leave without defeating our enemies.”

“Our?” Her father snorted, but sheathed his blade and began walking with Amira in tow. “If that is the hill you wish to die upon, so be it. But I need to get my daughter to safety.”

There was no hill here and he had no intention of dying tonight. It didn’t matter. Amira’s father took her into dense tree foliage. A second later, his scent began to dim.

His vampire growled possessively.

It was already bad enough that he couldn’t scent Amira. If he couldn’t smell or hear her, he couldn’t track her. If he couldn’t track her, he couldn’t get them alone together. He needed to keep her father close.

Horses neighed a short distance away. Again, Gustav looked up. The shadows moved. They were near.

Yet, his mind split as he heard her father’s footsteps disappear into the thick of the trees.

He needed to feed but when he took a step toward the hunting party, the drug won out and he moved in Amira’s direction instead. Each step brought him farther away from the scent of human blood but not by much.

He caught up to them in the forest, on a beaten path that looked to have been paved by human feet for decades. By now the hunting party had finished with the house and spread through the trees surrounding the house they were in.

Gustav glanced back at the five men, then watched one examine a branch one of them must’ve hit on their way through. They were tracking their movements.

Gustav looked down at his feet. They were making a trail even the most obtuse could follow.

“They follow our feet,” he said.

“And if you don’t keep quiet, they’ll follow your voice,” Amira’s father’s low voice said harshly, but paused to examine their path. “Can you walk without being seen?”

He was a vampire, of course he could. Could they? There were three sets of prints they could follow.

“Amira, wrap your feet. Quickly.”

Amira sat and grabbed a long cloth from her utility belt and furiously began wrapping her feet with it. They didn’t have the time. The man examining the trees caught their trail.

“This way,” a person from the hunting party said in the distance. “She traveled this way. She’s not alone.”

“Then we get them around the pass,” the commander, he assumed was Monger, said.

The group of three headed toward the pass in the road. The other straight for them.

“They are splitting,” Gustav said eyeing the tree line. The party of five, divided into two groups.

Amira’s father’s heart raced as he stalled. The older man followed his gaze to the moving trees, then backed his way into the foliage.

“We’ll need to split up. Amira, you need to run.” Amira’s father took several of her bags dropped them into a thick pile of leaves and covered them with brush.

“Papa. I need those.”

“We’ll come back for these later.” The rumble of the man’s deep voice pinched again, fear coating it in spades. “Now, go!”

Amira nodded and broke out into a sprint. He followed. Yet, there was no escaping. They were surrounding them.

Gustav tugged at Amira’s hand, coaxing her off the make-shift path and into the wilds of the forest.

Their feet were much noisier, the branches whipped at their skin, damp leaves crunched under their feet, but this was their best shot.

“I see her. Over there,” someone called out.

Amira ducked into the bush. But to flee, they needed to keep going. Gustav coaxed her forward, then caught sight of her father heading in the opposite direction. He scanned the trees again. The party on the read, split again.

Quicker than humans had any right to, they weaved through the forest floor with the coordination he’d only seen from predators.

Gustav took a step back and his vampire quickly raced through his options. Face an unknown foe or flee enough to face them anyway. He readied himself for the fight they should’ve waged in the clearing where there was more room and leverage to defend themselves.

Amira, on the other hand, didn’t move to grab her blades like she should have. Instead, she unharnessed all but the one on her hip and dropped them in a pile at her feet, then ducked low to examine her options. The twitch of her brow moved, but a man forcing his way through the trees stole his attention.

“What are you doing? Put your blades back on.” He asked, watching glance around the thicket with panic. Her eyes, rooting in their intensity, raked over him as the men slinked through the trees.

“Can’t. I’m going to be captured,” she whispered, her voice stricken. “But they can’t find you with me.”

“Then, we will fight them.”

“No, we won’t. We can’t be seen together. Don’t you get it?”

He understood her, just fine, but he didn’t understand her passiveness. They shouldn’t allow themselves to be captured by the ones she feared.

Gustav bent to pick up the pile of armaments she left in the dirt.

“Don’t,” she tried to push him, but only succeeded in making his vampire launch forward to touch her back.

Another mistake.

“Sorry for this,” she murmured. “You won’t listen otherwise.”

Just like their first meeting, a rock the size of his face careened toward his head with so much force, it nearly knocked his fangs from position.

This time, when he staggered back, he found his footing.

“What are you—” the question didn’t find birth as she straddled him, pinning him to a tree. The drugged cloth she’d put over his face before made an appearance. This time, it sloshed liquid in his mouth made him force his way back.

With that brew, a drop had him completely gone in the head for days. This was too much. He might never get his sanity back.

“I need you to stay here. Breathe.”

What? Was she trying to kill him? Despite this possibility, his vampire wanted to comply. Whatever she’d put into that concoction made his vampire a complete idiot.

He was actively trying to save his captor when the smart thing to do would be to out their location, not give into her demands.

Gustav gritted his teeth held onto what was left of his mind and fought back.

With the use of his feet, he twisted his body until he found leverage. And with his wrists unbound, he had some advantage. He grabbed her waist and pushed her back.

She staggered.

An arrow whizzed past his face, grazing his cheek before he could pluck it from the air. His reaction time was off. Too slow. He did look up in time to see Amira’s father string another arrow in into his bow. The first shot had been a warning, for all parties. Then men near to them, paused, then looked around. Another arrow burst through the trees.

Amira used the distraction to her advantage. She jumped on him. The force of her body launching into his pushed him into the tree trunk. A half second later, his face was covered. The scent of spice and steeped florals filled his nostrils.

He grabbed her forearms and started to pry her hands from his face.

“Please breathe, so I can hide you.” The desperation in her voice made him soft. She was stricken. The fear in her eyes washed out any determination he’d seen before. “If they find you with us, they’ll know I’ve taken you and will kill me and my father for it.”

It was a truth that rattled him.

“What of me?” his words were muffled by the cloth. “Won’t they kill me if they find me.”

“No, they can’t. They aren’t allowed. They are bound to your kind.”

Another truth.

The hunting party had her frightened and no matter what his vampire thought, they were in no condition to fight anyone. He weighed his options.

The trouble with being a truthsayer wasn’t that he couldn’t discern the truth. Only what they believed to be true.

Amira thought the human named Monger would kill her and her father if they were fond together. She also believed that Monger wouldn’t kill him as well. Didn’t mean either of those things were actually true. He wouldn’t know that until he met the other parties. Yet, that could also lead to his end. He was in no condition to fight, if it came to one.

His best course of action was to give into her demands—let his body recover and make his escape.

Begrudgingly, he did as she asked and took a breath in.

“I will find you later,” she promised, relieved.

Another truth.

His body became too heavy to hold up. He slid down the rough bark of the tree and nestled in the roots protruding above ground. All the while, she pressed the cloth against his face and he breathed. His eyes sunk low and unconsciousness pulled at his eyelids.

His muscles stilled.

Gustav didn’t feel the moment she let go, only saw his blurred vision cloud over when she’d dumped leaves on top of him, then left.

There was a row a in the distance. Then tussling and branches snapping but he couldn’t make sense of it.

Nothing held dominion in his mind as he laid in the earth for what felt like an eternity, watching color and light swirl into the night sky as the sky brightened then darkened again, wondering how long it would take to see her again.

He wasn’t sure how long he laid like that. Hours? Days? Weeks? She’d promised to come back for him, and hopefully she returned with an anecdote to the drugged stasis he was in.

The leaves on and around his body dampened with rain, the dried out in the sun and blew from his face.

Up.

Get. Up.

Someone’s here.

His eyes sprang open as he flinched away from a body that wasn’t there.

The morning sun sprinkling through the trees blurred his vision. But the careful steps coming toward him made his vampire lash out.

It wasn’t her. Nor her father. Nor the men who took them away. He tried to focus on it, but her drug still held him deep in its clutches.

Only, he was worse now. He felt sickness run from every pore he had. His head hurt, his shoulder had yet to heal, and his brain felt like the gelatinous goop fed to younglings before their first teeth arrived.

He rose to his feet, but whatever blood remained in his body, raced to his face. He staggered, then steadied himself against a tree. By the gods, she’d hit him hard. Near his upper eye, dried blood stuck to his skin and a sharp pain pulsed from the laceration to the depths of his skill.

Walk. His vampire instincts ordered him. Through his dizziness, he followed his instinct to flee.

The ground moved in several directions he barely managed to stagger through it. A piercing sound like a barn owl rang through the trees, making the brain in his head split. His feet moved as if he’d had too much to drink. His mind warped the image of the trees, creating a tunnel of round tree trunks.

Yet, the footsteps caught up to him.

“You there.” There was no mistaking her Aleonian accent this time. He turned, but the image in front of him was wrong.

Dressed in a long brown cloak, an old woman with Amira’s exact face and eyes examined him as she held out what looked to be a walking stick as her only defense. Had he been out for that long? Long enough for her hair to turn silver and lines to show up around her eyes?

“Amira?” he asked. “How did you grow so old?”

Everything in him grew cold. He’d lost so much time. He had a mission. A kingdom to provide for. What happened?

In the same way the Amira he remembered processed emotion, the old woman’s silver eyebrows wrinkled as she looked him over.

“You know me?”

Did she not remember? Had he really been a blip in her life while his was stolen away?

“You captured me,” he said without thinking.

More confusion, then understanding.

“Of course. Now, I’m to retrieve you.”

“As you promised many moons ago before you dosed me with your brew.”

The woman’s eyes widened as she took in that thought, then examined him again.

“Been here all this time, then?” she asked, digging her walking stick into the dirt as she moved toward him.

“Yes, waiting for you to return.”

“Then, come with me.”

He took a step that faltered. Then, he fell at the old woman’s feet.

“We must be quick. You cannot be found here.”

Still? After all this time?

He didn’t have the chance to ask as the older Amira raced away. His instincts to chase kicked in. Staggering, he followed.