“You don’ have to have a drink with me, Fyodor.” She opened the wine. “This is all disturbin’. I thought my family’s lair was bad; yours was far worse. I want to know what happened to your mother.”

He couldn’t sit there. Neither could his leopard. He pushed away from the counter and stalked across the room. Paced like the caged animal he was. “You can never tell anyone what you know. Not Timur. Not Gorya. If my uncle finds us he will try to kill us. I’m far stronger than he can possibly know, far faster. He remembers that boy, the one getting sick and crying over his first kill. He doesn’t know the demon he’ll be facing if he comes for me. For us.”

He had to include her. She had to know no matter what, no matter how she took this next revelation, he was not giving her up. She would have to try to find a way to live with it—with him.

“I don’ talk to people, Fyodor. I keep to myself and I keep my own counsel. My mother is dead and I don’ remember her. I don’ think I ever saw her outside the womb. My leopard remembers she wanted me but was afraid for me. I have no one to tell your secrets to, nor would I.”

He heard the truth in her voice and knew what kind of a woman she was. He couldn’t stop the restless pacing. No woman could accept what he was asking and even then he wouldn’t be done. His world was one of danger and deceit. She would only have him to turn to. There would only be a handful of friends they could trust. Her children would live with that.

“He killed her,” she stated softly.

He closed his eyes briefly. Of course she would know. “Yes. He killed her in front of Timur and Gorya. They tried to stop him, both with their leopards and as men. He ripped them apart and he was killing them systematically when I walked in. He was covered in the blood of my mother, my brother and my cousin. I went . . .” He trailed off. “Crazy. Insane. Mad with rage, grief and fear for my brother and cousin. I killed him. Not easily, and not cleanly. Not, Evangeline, because I couldn’t, but I didn’t want easy or clean. He died hard. Very hard. And then I killed every male in the lair. It was a cold, calculated choice. If I didn’t, they would continue with their cruelties and they would kill their women and daughters. Or sell their daughters as they often did to other lairs to live the same fate as their mothers. I killed them all. Every. Single. One. Our lair was gone. I wiped it out.”

He could have kept the satisfaction out of his voice, but he didn’t try. She had to know him. Had to know what she would be living with. A ruthless man, cold as ice, as dangerous as any predator she might run across. He was a killer, and he’d taken down his entire lair.