Evangeline gasped and spun toward him, the color draining from her face. “Fyodor. No.” She said it softly. Fiercely.

She wouldn’t have cowered in her room, hiding from her abusive husband while her husband forced terrible things on their child. She would have fought him to the death for their son or daughter. He saw that. He knew what was inside his woman and he needed that more than anything else in her. She would fight for their children. She would stand for them.

“The man pleaded for his life. Begged. He had tears in his eyes. My father forced me to hold a gun to the man’s head in front of his wife and children. They were all crying. Looking at me like I was the same as my father. A monster. I hesitated, looking into the man’s eyes, hating myself. Hating my father.”

“Honey, I’m so sorry. That must have been so terrible for a child.”

“We hadn’t gone there alone. Both my uncles were there. They held neighboring territories and they were cruel and vicious as well. But my Uncle Lazar, the eldest, was the worst, his cruelties legendary. They wanted to be there for my first kill.”

She shook her head, glanced at the table beside the bank of windows and then set two plates on the counter.

“I was afraid of what my father would do to the wife and children. When I hesitated, my father went mad, kicking me in the stomach repeatedly while my uncles laughed at him. He yanked me up by my shirt, forced the gun back into my hand, closed his fist over it and snarled at me to pull the trigger.”

He tried not to feel anything as he told her. He recited the incident as if it happened to someone else, or as if it were an article he’d read. He’d learned not to feel. Feeling made one vulnerable and he could never be that.

“My leopard rose in a rush of anger and determination, of sheer courage, knowing it would have to face the demon leopards of my father and uncles.” He’d been proud of his leopard then and was proud of it now. No, the vicious need for blood and the kill had been taught first by the man. Now it drove the leopard, but he hadn’t started out that way.