His arms tightened around her as love roared through him. Hardest of all would be convincing Faith herself.
Hawke held Faith's hand as they descended the stairs midafternoon. She'd slept the sleep of the dead for hours, and he'd held her, dozing some, worrying more. When she'd awoken, he'd told her his belief that her marking was no accident. As he'd suspected, she didn't believe him, but he'd gotten a very sweet kiss for saying it. A kiss that had quickly heated to full-blown passion. He'd made love to her thoroughly, then carried her into the shower and made love to her again. He couldn't get enough of her body or that smile of hers, which bloomed every time he pleased her, or that darling, infectious giggle, filling him with a pleasure of the heart that rivaled the pleasure of the body, a joy of boundless proportions that made him want to throw his head back and laugh.
Every time with her was more incredible than the last. Making love to Faith was so different from sex with anyone else that he began to feel as if he'd never really done it before. As if his eyes had been opened for the first time to what lovemaking truly meant.
Just as he was fighting to hold on to his animal and stay alive.
As they reached the foyer, she looked up at him, worry in her eyes. He squeezed her hand, dreading the meeting to come. They had to tell Lyon that she'd been marked, and they both knew it.
The smell of roast beef and the rumble of voices told him where to find the others. As he suspected, they were gathered around the dining table, the wall of windows behind them fully repaired. Hawke seated Faith two chairs down from Kougar and took the seat between, grabbing a couple of plates.
"Can I serve you?" he asked her.
She met his gaze. "I'm not hungry." Her hands twisted nervously in her lap, matching, he suspected, the knots twisting her stomach.
"I'll just give you a little. You need your strength."
"I need a lot more than I can get from food."
"You already have a lot more than you recognize." He put a couple of slabs of warm roast beef on her plate and added two freshly baked rolls, then filled his own plate to overflowing.
As he ate, his brothers' conversation flowed around him, talk that ranged from adding defenses around Feral House to the need to track down the new Ferals.
"First, we have to find a way to cure them of this infection." Tighe reached for the roast-beef platter.
The Shaman looked up from his nearly empty plate. "I would like to speak with your mate, Kougar. I have an idea, but I'll need her help."
Kougar nodded. "I'll ask her."
Hawke caught Lyon's gaze. "Where's Kara?"
"Still sleeping."
Tighe cut his chief a sly look. "Something you're not telling us, Roar? Is my son going to have a playmate?"
Lyon shook his head. "She's not pregnant. Just tired." He frowned. "She hasn't been feeling right since the Renascence. Since Maxim's, apparently. Too many new Ferals pulling energy from her."
"It may be the darkness," the Shaman murmured.
The Chief of the Feral's gaze snapped to the much smaller man. "What do you mean?"
"Darkness is always hungry for power, for energy. If the new Ferals hadn't been infected, I doubt they'd be draining her like this. Perhaps with most of the infected Ferals now gone, she'll recover soon."
Lyon nodded. "I hope you're right."
Hawke set down his fork. He didn't see any easy way to lead up to what he needed to say, so he didn't try. "Faith has been marked."
All eyes swiveled his way, his brothers' expressions a mix of shock and confusion.
"Marked?" Tighe asked.
"To be a Feral Warrior."
Lyon set down his fork, his brows lowered, his gaze pinning Faith. "When?"
Tension ripped through Hawke's body.
"I don't know," Faith said beside him, her voice clear and sure despite the fear she had to be feeling.
Hawke didn't turn to watch her. He wasn't taking his eyes off his brothers. Or his chief.
"I didn't have any idea. Not until last night." Her voice wavered only slightly before evening out again. "I told you I escaped Maxim before he could cloud my mind. What I didn't tell you is that I went feral. It shocked us both, giving me a chance to get away before he could stop me. I looked for the feral marks this morning and found them on the back of my thigh." Her calm evaporated in a trembling draw of breath, and a whispered, "I didn't know."
Tighe groaned.
Vhyper shook his head. "You couldn't be the Wicked Witch of the West. You have to be all Tinker Bell cute and sunny."
Lyon continued to watch her with that piercing gaze of his, seeing all, revealing nothing of his thoughts, though Hawke suspected them clearly enough. "Maxim . . . You were his intended mate."
"I barely knew him. I met him the day before we arrived here and felt an instant connection with him. A pull. I thought . . ." She went silent, and he glanced at her, seeing her cheeks begin to color. "I thought it was a mating pull. He was kind to me then. But he was a monster, and I believe now that the pull I felt was due to the infection."
"Shaman?"
At Lyon's prompt, the Shaman stood. Hawke rose with him, moving behind Faith, his hands on her shoulders, his gaze meeting every one of his brothers' in turn. A silent warning that each of them acknowledged with a nod or a look of dismay. If they'd had any question as to how he felt about her, they did no longer.
Mine. He didn't have to say the word. They all heard it loud and clear.
The Shaman approached slowly with his usual calm demeanor and held out his hand to Faith.
With only a brief hesitation, she placed her own in his. The Shaman covered her hand and closed his eyes. Then he reached for her, one hand traveling unerringly to rest on the top of her head.
"She's infected, but not like the others. The infection is dormant in her, like an unpopped kernel of corn. It's there, deep inside her. But it's not yet affecting her."
"Which is why she didn't rise up against us," Lyon murmured.
"Like that would have ended well," Faith muttered.
A quick smile flickered in Tighe's and Vhyper's expressions.
"You should also note," Hawke said quietly, "that she told me about the feral marks. She showed me, despite being privy to the entire conversation yesterday."
Tighe grimaced, and Hawke knew he was thinking about just what they'd discussed - the possible need to eliminate all the new Ferals.
Kougar's frown told him he was thinking the same. He plucked at his small beard. "Why isn't the darkness affecting her? Because she's female and lacking the testosterone? Or because she hasn't been brought into her animal?"
"I don't know," the Shaman replied. "I suppose you'll find out as soon as you bring her into her animal."
Lyon met Hawke's gaze, nodding toward the hallway. "A word?"
Hawke's grip on Faith's shoulders tightened. On a primitive level, he didn't want to leave her unprotected. But he'd made his feelings clear. None of them would hurt her. Yet. The one calling those shots was Lyon. It was his chief he had to convince to leave her alive.
As Hawke walked away to talk to Lyon in private, Faith looked around the dining table at the remaining Feral Warriors, now staring at her with varying degrees of speculation, sympathy, and wariness. Thanks to Mage interference, she was one of them. For now.
"Well, this is awkward," she muttered, wishing she were anywhere but there. She picked up her fork and absently pushed a bite of meat around.
"You really went feral on that saber-toothed bastard?" Wulfe asked, a hint of awe in his voice.
Faith looked up, her expression rueful as she nodded.
Tighe snorted. "I wish I'd seen the look on his face."
"Trust me, it wasn't any more comical than the look on my own."
"You should have seen Croc and me last week when we first went feral." Fox frowned. "He was a new recruit to my unit of the Therian Guard. An idiot, if you ask me, which I can finally admit. I belted him because he had it coming. He went feral, then laughed, thinking he was the new fox shifter - the entire race had been waiting for him to show up. Then he took a swipe at me with those claws, ripping off half my face. I was more angry at the fact that one such as he had been chosen to be a Feral Warrior than the pain he'd inflicted. So I returned the favor. I'm not sure which of us was more surprised when I drew claws, too. I remember staring at my hand, his blood still clinging to those claws and thinking, for just a moment, that I'd turned into a monster."
Tighe nodded. "I know the feeling. I was married to a human who didn't know I was immortal. I knew almost nothing about the Feral Warriors. So when I went feral that first time . . ." He scrubbed his face. "She thought I was a demon. I was half-afraid she was right. I lost her because of that. Lost my daughter. I was not one of the ones celebrating being marked, trust me."
Wulfe's hand squeezed Tighe's shoulder.
Their stories, freely offered, were a gift Faith cherished. A welcome of sorts. Or at least an assurance that they didn't outright hate her. Yet.
"Can you call on the fangs and claws anytime you want?" she asked.
"Some can," Tighe said. "For most, it's tied to emotion. I would have said testosterone . . ."
She put down her fork. "I was furious."
"That works, too."
"So in a fight, in order to go feral, I have to get mad?"
A couple of them exchanged glances. Most looked away, uncomfortably, as if they didn't think it likely she'd ever be in a fight. Not for long, at least.
Kougar was the only one who held her gaze, studying her. "Female shifters tend to go feral with temper or adrenaline. Anger or fear. And you'll likely feel both in battle. But I've known females who could draw claws or fangs whenever they chose. They were actually far more controlled than the males. And sometimes more effective. But that kind of control comes with experience."
"How many female shifters have you known?" Fox asked.
"Shifters? Hundreds. In my youth, all Therians shifted. But there have been few female Ferals. Six, not including Pink. Faith is the seventh."
Seven in five thousand years.
Female Ferals were rare. But she was no rarity. And the uncomfortable silence at the table said they all knew it. This female Feral Warrior was a mistake.
Chapter Fourteen
Hawke followed Lyon into the hallway, then stopped where he could still see Faith. He'd gone as far as he intended to go.
Lyon glanced back at him, a flicker of frustration on his face before he gave in and backtracked to him. "She has to be locked up in the prison with the others. All new Ferals do."
"The infection is dormant in her. We won't bring her into her animal."
"She's heard the discussions, Hawke. She knows we may have to clear the way for new Ferals to be marked, for the right Ferals to be marked. She'll run."
"No, she won't. She won't try to escape this."
Lyon clasped him on the shoulder, genuine sympathy in his eyes. "I'm sorry. I know you care for her."
"I love her, Roar. But more than that, I know her. She would never endanger others to save herself. Sacrifice is her life."
"You can't know that."
"She's spent nearly a century on the streets helping human runaways. Yeah. I can."
Lyon's jaw clenched and unclenched in rhythmic bursts. The Chief of the Ferals never made rash decisions. Ever. Which was one of the reasons that, to a man, they'd lay down their lives for him.
"Kara thinks Faith is your mate."
Hawke nodded. "I would ask her to be if things were different. If I were whole . . ."
Lyon sighed. "Why can't any of you fall for normal Therian women?"
Hawke smiled. "Like you did?" Kara, the Radiant who'd been raised human and hadn't even known that immortals existed, had hardly been that.
"Touche."
Pain tore through Hawke's head, one of the lightning bolts he was becoming all too used to, closely followed by his hawk's vicious retaliation. When it was over, when he was able to breathe again, he found Lyon watching him with quiet worry in his eyes.
"You're not getting better." Lyon's statement held no lilt of question.
"No. Not yet. I'm not convinced my hawk isn't infected. He's been fighting me since we got out of that spirit trap."
"But you're holding it together."
"Yes. With Faith's help."
Lyon rubbed his hand over his mouth and sighed. "I don't want her out of your sight."
Hawke nodded, relieved and grateful. "My feelings exactly."
Lyon's hand on his shoulder tightened. "I hope this works out, Wings, I really do."
"Me, too." He'd calculate the odds on that happening, but the answer would be far too depressing.
Faith's head swiveled toward the doorway, her gaze snapping to Hawke's face as he and Lyon returned to the dining room. The small, calm smile of reassurance he gave her had the worst of the awful tension leaching from her body.
"My orders are to not let you out of my sight," he said quietly as he took his seat beside her again.
"No prison?"
"No prison."
A sigh escaped her lips as she looked at Lyon. "Thank you."
Lyon nodded, his expression reserved, but not unkind. "We believe the infection in you is dormant, Faith, but if we find it's not . . ."