Immortals After Dark 03 - No Rest for the Wicked

to.”
    “Unless, of course, it happened”—she curled her fingers into air quotes—“ accidentally. Since I can eventually dig my way free, that kiss doesn’t seem worth the risk.”
    He nodded, resigned. “Very well. We can sit here till we fossilize. I can be as stubborn as you, Bride.”
    “So, you’re to wait this out with me?” she asked. “Won’t you have a problem with losing the prize?”
    “I have no interest in winning this competition.”
    “I knew you entered just so I couldn’t kill you.”
    “You couldn’t kill me before I entered. Do you not wonder why you’ve destroyed so many of my kind before me and then were unable to swing your sword to my neck?”
    “I don’t know why that happened,” she admitted. “But I’ve stopped questioning it.”
    “Why won’t you let me win this competition for you? That was the only reason I entered.”
    “There’s no one you would want to save from the past, no loved one?” she asked, noting that a shadow passed over his eyes. Who had he lost? “A deceased wife, perhaps?”
    “You are well aware that I don’t believe this key will work.”
    He hadn’t answered her question. He’s been married? “Why are you so certain?”
    “Time travel is impossible,” he answered in a tone that held zero doubt.
    And the wife? “I bet you believed vampirism was impossible, too, till you woke with a marked hankering for blood.”
    “No, my culture was superstitious to the core. Even with my science background, belief came to me more easily than I would have thought. Besides, it isn’t impossible according to the laws of nature.”
    And what about the wife?
    “Anyway, I was never married.”
    She marveled that he hadn’t been—and that she was somehow pleased by this fact. “At your age?” she asked, taking a seat. “You must have been thirty.”
    “Thirty-one. But I’d lived on a battlefront since I was nineteen. There was no way for me to have a woman for my own.”
    “But now you feel you’re ready?”
    As if giving her a vow, he met her eyes when he rumbled the word: “Yes.” Her toes curled in her climbing shoes.
    “And what about you, Kaderin? Will you finally tell me why you are bent on winning this?” He looked away when he asked, “Do you seek to retrieve a husband?”
    When she didn’t answer, he turned back.
    After a moment, she grudgingly shook her head. “I was never wed.” She would never tell him her real motivation—there was no reason to, even if she had the inclination—but she also wouldn’t let him think she fought this hard for a lost husband or lover. “My covens and the Furies have done me a great honor in choosing me for this contest. I won’t fail them.” She shrugged and added honestly, “And I simply want to defeat everyone.”
    “So, all of this is about pride and ego?”
    She made her tone bored when she asked, “Aren’t those good enough reasons?”
    “I don’t believe so. There’s more to life than winning this competition.”
    “I agree. There’s also killing vampires. Those two things give my life purpose.”
    He said nothing in response to her comment, just gave her an inscrutable look. She knew he disapproved of her priorities and the way she lived her life, but at that look, she began to suspect he also felt sorry for her. She tilted her head. “Tell me, then, how would you envision our lives together?”
    “We could see the world. Rebuild the castle, start a family.”
    A family? If she and Sebastian had children, they could be like her little half-vampire niece, Emmaline. Kaderin inwardly shook herself. “I live in New Orleans, I compete, and I kill vampires. You’d expect me to give up everything?” She drew her knees to her chest. “You want me to act like women you’ve known and it will never happen.”
    “No, I truly do not want you to act like women I’ve known,” he said, so vehemently she was taken aback. “And I have no preference for where we would live. I’d go wherever you would be happy. Killing vampires? Fine. The Hie? Also acceptable—if I’m there with you.”
    “Acceptable.” Is he joking? “The more I get to know you, the more I realize your being a vampire is only part of why I’m indifferent to you.”

    Acceptable? As soon as he’d said it, even before her eyes flashed, he’d known that perhaps that wasn’t the best word to use with a daughter of gods. A fifth of any of his brothers’ charm.
    “Then lay out the other reasons you’re