She fought the urge to run. While he’d been huge before, up close and in her space, he was gargantuan. And there was no missing the bloodlust in his white-and-red eyes. Something made even more ominous when he opened his lips and ran his tongue down his long canines as if savoring the taste of her blood and bones. “What’s your name and rank?”

“M-m-my what?”

“I saw your League markings, assassin… Name. Rank. Now!” That had to be the fiercest, deadliest bark she’d ever heard.

“Agent Sumi —” She answered immediately, barely catching herself before she spoke a surname that would guarantee her a slow painful death at his humongous hands.

“Sumi, what?”

“Just Sumi.”

Crouching in front of her, he grabbed her arm and pushed her sleeve back to expose the branded words that mocked her every day of her miserable life. “I know you were conscripted into League service. What felony did you commit?”

Sumi stared into the intensity of his cold glare as old memories returned to torment her. Like Hauk, the bastard she’d killed had been merciless and cold. Unyielding. Unforgiving. And his attack on her had been completely unwarranted.

“Murder.”

“Premeditated?”

Without thinking, she shook her head. Then she cursed her stupidity. It was never a good thing to admit to your enemy that you were anything other than ruthless. But then, as now, she’d acted out of fear.

“Who did you kill?”

Trying her best not to return to that horrid night with her thoughts, she snarled the answer. “My boyfriend.”

He arched a brow at that. “For?”

“Breathing.”

One corner of his mouth twitched as if her sarcasm amused him. Then he sobered into a terrifying countenance. “I can well understand the urge to kill someone for breathing. Been known to succumb to it myself from time to time.” He glanced to the opening of the tent. When he looked back at her, she had no doubt that she was only one wrong answer from death. “I also know you’re a mother.”

Stunned at what she thought was a well-kept secret, she sucked her breath in sharply. “How?”

He pulled the covers back to show the bandage over her abdomen where she’d been gored by the tourah’s horns. “I saw the stretch marks when I cleaned your wound. Given the location, there’s only one thing that could have caused them. And by their number and depth, I know you carried to term.”

Damn, he was good. And he was right. Tears filled her eyes as she tried her best not to remember the baby that had been stolen from her before she’d ever had a chance to hold her.

“Where’s your child now?”

A single tear fled past her control. It always did whenever she thought about her daughter. “She was taken from me.”

“By The League?”