Taking his hand, she pressed her lips to his palm. “Nor I until I met you. But . . .” She shook her head. “Zach, if you aren’t happy here, in North Carolina, mingling with the other Immortal Guardians, we can go somewhere else.”
“You would do that for me?” he asked, touched that she would leave her brothers.
She nodded. “You’ve said little of your past, but what you have said has led me to believe you’ve spent much of your existence . . . isolated. If you aren’t comfortable dealing with over a dozen immortals and their Seconds on a nightly basis, I can request a transfer. We can go someplace more remote—”
“It doesn’t matter where we live, Lisette,” he interrupted softly. “Or how many of your brethren surround us. It won’t even matter if they can’t come to accept me as one of them. All I need to be happy is you. All the family I need is you.”
Rising onto her toes, she brushed his lips with a kiss. “Weren’t the Others like your family?” she asked.
“Not really. We got along and were friends for the most part. But it was friendship that was forced upon us by our circumstances rather than a friendship we chose. We didn’t share the affection Immortal Guardians hold for each other.”
“You never talk about them, aside from letting me know they’re still hunting you,” she said softly. “Do you miss them?”
“The Others? No.” He sure as hell didn’t miss their judgment or their punishments or their fanatical determination to refrain from any and all interaction with . . . well . . . everyone else on the planet.
“Why can’t they just let you go?”
He shook his head. “They fear what will happen if I decide to follow Seth’s example and start dabbling in the lives of humans. They already believe Seth’s actions will one day bring about their downfall. Allowing a second to stray and threaten their existence is unacceptable, so they are determined to capture me and show me the error of my ways. So determined, in fact, that I felt one do a flyby over David’s earlier tonight when we were making love.” Zach still couldn’t believe they had resorted to such. The Others must be getting desperate, with no clue as to where they might find him.
She stiffened. “Did he sense you were there?”
“No. As long as I’m at full strength, they can’t sense me.”
“But you’ve been pouring so much energy into Ami.”
“Forgive me. I should have said as long as I retain my powers, they can’t find me. Even while sleeping or drained of energy I should be safe. Only large bursts of power expenditure will tip them off now.” And while he had been guilty of a few of those while helping Seth search for the betrayer, he had thus far managed to teleport away before the Others could pinpoint his location and catch him.
He smiled down at her. “Besides, the one who flew over earlier was searching for a cold, distant Other, not a man making passionate love to the woman he adores. I would have seemed a stranger to him had he felt my presence.”
“Will he come back?”
“I doubt it. I’m surprised he even dared to venture so close this time. Seth’s and David’s homes have pretty much been designated no-fly zones. Violating that is tantamount to issuing a threat that could incite Seth’s wrath.”
“Do they fear him that much?”
“They don’t fear Seth. They fear the destruction he would unleash if they pushed him too far. They fear the attention it would draw and the consequences that would follow. I’m not sure why Seth is so much more powerful than the rest of us, if it’s simply because he has worked hard to increase his strength and extend his gifts, or if it’s more that we’ve suppressed our own for so long. But when his temper fully erupts . . .”
She grimaced. “I know. I’ve seen it.”
“No, you haven’t. You’ve only had a tiny taste of it. When Seth’s wife and children were slain so long ago . . .” Zach shuddered, remembering the carnage. “It took all of us—all of the Others—and David combined to reel him in. And we took a lot of damage doing it.”#p#分页标题#e#
“David was alive way back then?”
“Yes. I don’t think we would have been able to reach Seth without him.”
“What did you do? Did you . . . torture him the way you were tortured?”
Zach snorted. “No. We were too broken and bloody ourselves. We combined our own powers and used them to drain Seth of his. It was a temporary fix. Or punishment. Call it what you will. But it protected the world from his wrath long enough for him to get his shit together.”