I WANDERED THE HALLWAYS UNTIL I FOUND THE room where the Crusader and I almost had our little show-down. Nick was gone. I hoped he had enough sense to stay in the compound. Pissing Curran off right now was pure suicide.

I closed the door and went to the window. It was raining. The gray sky spewed gray water onto the dull grass far below. The grayness from the outside seeped into the room, leeching the color from the sparse furnishing. The rain would end eventually, leaving the grass and the trees brilliant green, vivid with fresh color. Strange how something so colorless and drab could rejuvenate the world.

There was a pair of gray sweats and nothing else in the small dresser by the bed. I placed Slayer and its sheath onto a Spartan blue blanket, stripped, and put on the sweats. I started slow, stretching, jumping an invisible rope, until warmth spread through my muscles. I cracked my neck and attacked the punching bag.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Sweat drenched my sweatshirt and the T-shirt under it, and the fabric stuck to my back. Sometime after my legs began to hurt, I heard a knock. My brain brushed the sound aside. I launched another kick, connected with a solid thump, launched another before my mind put on the brakes. “Come in.”

Curran stepped into the room and closed the door. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and stretched. He sat down on a chair, hands resting on his knees, looking at the floor, and waited for me to finish.

“He called back,” he said when I was done.

“What did he say?”

“He raved for a while. Promised to kill me. He won’t attack Keep.”

“You expected him to?”

“No. I hoped.”

I sat on the bed. It wouldn’t play out the way we hoped it would. Bono refused to be provoked into something rash, where numbers would be on the Pack’s side. In this new age, combat between individuals decided the fate of many.

Bono would challenge Curran. It was inevitable. Curran had threatened his masculinity; he had made it personal, and when the challenge came, Curran would have to accept it. He was the Pack leader, the alpha male who didn’t have the luxury of backing down. He would not hide in the safety of Keep, while the upir raged, murdering everyone whose death he thought likely to bring us pain.

I looked at Curran. “Your . . .” I paused searching for the right word. Girlfriend seemed inadequate, woman too impersonal. “Your lady,” I finally said. “Is she safe?”

“Yes,” he said. “She’s here.”

I nodded, screams of another woman echoing in my ears. Curran looked up at me, his eyes haunted. He looked older and tired.

“It’s not that I don’t care,” he said. The screaming didn’t stop for him either.

“I know.”

“I can’t let him intimidate me.”