4. Dakota

Dakota watched her and didn't even try to hide it. His instincts were screaming at him to grab her. To hold her tight and never let go. To stake his claim and let everyone know she was his.

But he had a lot of experience bottling his rage and the desire coursing through him was hot in similar ways. Burning for him to take action.

He fed the flames into his attention, letting the obsession he'd been half-starving feast on the hard fury in her eyes and the soft fall of her hair.

When she wasn't near death herself, she'd overflow in hands. He could see how she would carry the weight in her hips and chest. How her body would flush with health… and his child.

Alexandra sat on the bed with her plastic fork and the microwave dinner in her hands. She glared at him for several seconds before deciding the food was more important than her immediate escape. And there was some small part of her that had already fallen for the trap that the shower and new clothes represented. The promise of being saved that she never let herself believe in.

Dakota wasn't trying to hide anything, not from her. He knew what he looked like: all fierce angles and fury. He wasn't suitable for the general public. Not after being forced to survive on his own in the dark cracks of the world. After feeding nothing but anger for so many years. He'd never been softened by young love or the one that got away. He was sharp as glass.

But Alexandra was sharper. Hardened by the loss of her family and her own soft edges. Forced to become what he had grown into. She had done something Dakota wasn't sure he could have survived. He'd taken the gentle world she knew and abandoned it in the name of survival. Cut out a critical part of herself in order to live. Like taking a lung.

She knew what she was missing. Dakota wanted to know, fiercely. He'd let that wish rot on the vine for twenty years, but the touch of her hand brought it back flush and ready to harvest. He needed to know what love and family felt like.

And if he didn't have a chance to learn with her, he wouldn't survive the loss.

Alexandra ripped the plastic off the top of her dinner and started shoveling, barely taking the time to chew it all. He watched her wolf the food, his concern for her growing. She'd been on the run for so long—especially lately because of him—that she didn"t even pay attention to what she was eating anymore. There was no enjoyment of the food. Not that a TV dinner was steak and potatoes, but he was a little worried that she"d choke on it.

She watched him back the entire time, her stare unmoving, her fork blindly tracing the edges of the tray to catch every morsel.

"No one"s going to steal it from you." He said. "You can slow down."

Her eyes just narrowed at him. She had no reason to trust him, even if he was the one who brought her the meal.

He was unexpectedly frustrated by that. Did the mate bond mean nothing to her? He understood her position, but the part of him that responded to the touch of her skin, the part of him that awakened and painted the world Technicolor, screamed at him to hold her close. To touch her. To map out her body under his hands. He wanted nothing more to worship her. But if he took even a single step forward, she would bolt like a rabbit. And she had every reason to.

"What if I kill the master vampire?"

Alexandra was so startled that her fork paused halfway between the plate and her mouth. She stared at him, gob-smacked, like the very suggestion was as likely as flying into space. Then her expression changed to a sneer, as if to say she could see the trap he was laying and she wasn"t going to fall for it.

She'd already accepted his food. He'd find a way to crack that door open a bit more. She belonged to him. She'd see soon enough. Fate was on his side.

"I"m serious. You don"t trust me, and you shouldn"t. But I want to prove that this mate bond means something to me. I want to prove that I won"t hurt you."

How was he supposed to explain that the vampires weren"t a choice that he made? Being a killer wasn"t a decision he walked into twenty years ago after talking to a recruiter at the job fair. After years of searching and not finding his mate he'd had to channel his fury into something or he would"ve destroyed himself. The vampires were a means to an end. A means he'd been using for so long he didn't even remember why he'd try to find her all those years ago.

Then all of a sudden Alexandra had opened a door that had been locked since he was born. She represented an alternative he never thought he would get. Of course he craved her. She was the solution to every problem.

Alexandra swallowed the last of her dinner and slid the tray onto the dresser beside the TV. She stared at him directly, eyes glimmering with hot emotions he understood all too well. The fury never abated, it just burned a little lower sometimes. They were a matching pair and it wasn't coincidence.

Fate knew he would need a woman as fierce as he was. Someone who could match his anger and his passion.

"Answer my questions." she said. She didn't shift or glance away. No hesitation existed in her. Not when hesitation could get her killed twelve times over.

He liked that.

"And then you"ll let me kill the vampires for you?"

She tilted her chin up a little, defiant but holding her fury at bay. She didn't like the suggestion that anything needed to be done for her. "Answer my questions and we"ll see."

Dakota took a seat in the chair she had thrown at him as an improvised weapon, bracing it back against the door. He nodded at her. "Ask your questions."

"What"s your name?"

He blinked. "I"m sorry," he said honestly. "I thought you knew. I"m Dakota." Of course, in retrospect, when would she have figured that out? From the moment he'd been called in, he'd pushed her harder than she'd ever run before. She'd known she was being hunted, but he certainly never approached her to introduce himself.

Hi, I'm Dakota, I'll be your assassin this evening. Would you prefer a cut throat or a heart-removal? Our specials include shifting to dragon form and biting your head off.

The vampires he'd sent after her wouldn"t have mentioned him. He"d been following her for so long, tracing her movements, trying to predict the next place she would go to ground—he"d been so close he felt like he knew her.

Not like a friend, but almost as close as a lover. He'd lay where she had slept fitfully for only a few hours. He'd memorized the ginger and earth of her natural scent months ago.

He growled at himself for creating this situation. The anger rose up in him so easily, as familiar as breathing, and he had to take a moment to wrangle it back into place.

Alexandra asked, "How do I know you"re not trying to deliver me to the vampires?"

She couldn't. That was a reasonable leap to make. He frowned. "Let's take out a safe house first. Or two. Or all of them. I know where they all hide during the day." He tried to imagine being so distrustful, so extremely paranoid, that even the flush of the mate bond wasn't enough to tip the scale. If the literal hand of Fate couldn't change her mind, Dakota would have to take more direct measures.

She stared him down like she was trying to read his mind and the questions came fast.

"What"s the Master's name?"

Surly she knew. Was this a test? "Malik."

"How many vampires does he have under him?"

"Mid-two hundreds. I haven"t checked in for a few days, could be up to three hundred by now."

"Does he turn new vampires regularly?"

"One or two a week."

"That"s a lot of growth for a vampire clan."

Dakota smirked. "You"re very good at eliminating them."

She didn't smile back. "You"ve been pursuing me for weeks. Why did you keep sending vampires? Why not fight me yourself."

His grin faded. The expected thrill at the idea of a hunt instead gaped open like a pit in his stomach. The very idea of killing her nearly turned his lunch. He needed to swallow hard. "It would have been over too quickly."

She bristled at the implication that she couldn"t hold herself in a fight against him. Before she could argue about it, he clarified, "By the time I became involved, you had already been weakened by the length of the pursuit. It wouldn't have been a fair fight."

"Hunting me with your lacky vampires was fair?"

"No, they were fodder. Expendable. They let me study you. I could destabilize your sense of safety without any risk to myself, which taught me about your habits and responses to stress."

She watched him for a moment, her angry eyes holding his. Eventually she said, "Long time to study a target."

"Watching you was more interesting than killing you," he said truthfully. He brushed one hand against his own wrist to remind her of exactly why she was here. "Now I know why."

She frowned at that. Her response to Fate was curious and so different than his own. That moment of connection had only brought an overwhelming euphoria for him. Alexandra seemed to consider it just as much of an enemy as he.

"I want to kill them all," she said abruptly, with the kind of ferocity he"d come to recognize.

He doesn't want to dig any deeper or she might change her mind. He doesn't need her devotion today. He'd work the rest of his life for it if she required it.

"All right," he said. "I"ll help. I"m serious when I say that we can take them all out. I"ll show you where each of the safehouses are." He leaned back to pull his phone out of his pocket.

Her eyes narrowed at him and he understood that even if he answered all of her questions, this wasn't enough to bridge the gap between them. She wasn't going trust him without proof. And he couldn't prove anything to her if she was just going to run.

He stood up abruptly and nudged the chair back under the desk with one foot. "You know what, it's full daylight. Let"s do this right now. I'll prove I"m not at Malik's beck and call."

She stood up from the edge of the bed. When he opened the hotel door gestured her through it, he could see by the way her eyes flicker toward freedom that she was considering running. As if the food and the questions had been a stalling tactic until he trusted her enough to let down his guard.

This wasn't his first kidnapping.

"If you let me help you take out one of their outposts, I"ll tell you what I know about the prophecy."

Her gaze snapped to his with renewed focus and she took a step forward before she could stop herself. He watched her digest that offer and then the doubt came back.

"Why would you know any more than what I"ve told people. The entire thing comes from my own dreams."

He tilted his head. "You"re not the only one with dreams. The daughter you"re so keen to protect, the one supposed to save the world? She's my daughter, too."

Her eyes widened and he almost laughed at the way she suddenly realized that of course there"s a father in the picture. Of course if Dakota is her Fated mate, then he is that father.

Of course the Fated chosen one would have another parent.

And maybe that parent had been having the same dreams she had.

Her eyes flickered into the open door and back to him. She nodded. "We take out the vampires. You tell me what you know."

He grinned. "Then I help you take out Malik."

"We"ll see."

She walked past him with her head high and he couldn"t help but smirk. The shower, the clothes, the food, they had helped certainly, but the future was her real weakness. She was as desperate to see that future as he was. She'd just buried it deep inside so it couldn't be used against her.

The need was there, though. And maybe he'd just put her on the path toward it.

He'd kill any vampire that stood in her way. "Oh, yes," he said. "We will see."