The one and only time he’d tried to kiss Dariana, she’d stabbed him and warned him that if he ever offended her like that again, her next attack would be against his groin.

As for human women, they’d never appealed to him, especially since their reactions to his presence made the Andarion females seem kind. Not until this one. He couldn’t explain it or understand it, especially given how much she reminded him of Fain’s wife.

A woman he’d vowed to kill should their paths ever cross again.

And yet there was no denying what he felt anytime he caught the sweet floral scent of Sumi’s hair. All he wanted was to bury his face in those pale strands and breathe her in.

To feel her body pressed against his. Skin to skin.

Damn it. He was even harder now than he’d been when he left to take care of… things and hunt. He wanted her so badly that he wasn’t sure how he remained apart from her.

Touch her and Dariana will gut you with glee.

No, his own mother would gut him. Ever since Keris’s death, she’d been lying in wait for a chance to honorably end his life and he knew it. And all because of a blood feud that had nothing to do with him.

Rather his mother, desperate to tie her blood to his father’s lineage, had seduced his father the day before he was to have been pledged to Nykyrian’s mother. The moment the Andarion princess had learned that her champion had sampled another female’s body, she’d refused his pledge and sent his father home in disgrace.

But at least Cairistiona hadn’t demanded his father’s head or his cock, which any other female would have.

His paternal grandmother had never forgiven his mother for that act that had risked his father’s life and denied them a royal lineage. Her life’s dream had been to live long enough to see the War Hauks tied to the eton Anatoles. Because Keris had been conceived during that night when his mother seduced his father, his grandmother had been forced to allow them to join bloodlines to keep the Hauk lineage pure. But she’d never liked it.

In spite of that, his grandmother had held on to the hope that her great-grandchildren might merge. It was why she’d paid to send Hauk and Fain to school with Prince Jullien, as companions and guardians for him. But that would never happen now. Childless, Prince Jullien had been removed from the royal succession and only Nykyrian remained.