He nodded, even as he strapped on a pair of blades to the holster that rode his thigh over the top of his black fatigues. The long-sleeved shirt she'd washed and dried at Amelie's for him completed his transformation back to the warrior who'd escorted her from Boston to Detroit not so very long ago.
But now Hunter was anything but stoic or unreadable. His golden eyes caressed her with tenderness at the same time his strong hand reached out to draw her close for his kiss. "I love you," he told her fiercely. "I do not want you to worry."
She nodded once. "I love you too."
"Stay in the truck. Keep yourself out of sight until I return." He kissed her again, harder this time. "I won't be long."
He didn't give her any time to argue or stall him. He slipped out of the cab and vanished into the surrounding darkness.
Corinne sat there, waiting and alone, instantly regretting that she'd let him talk her into remaining behind. What if he ran into problems? What if he was discovered before he was able to determine if Nathan was living in the house at all? How long should she be expected to wait before -
A crack of gunfire rent the silence of the night.
Corinne jolted. The sudden explosion of bright orange went up near the front of the cabin as the noise ricocheted off the trees like a thunderclap.
"Oh, my God. Hunter ..."
Before she could stop herself, she was climbing out of the truck, running toward the cabin up ahead. She had no plan once she got there, except to search for some reassurance that Hunter was unharmed. Invincible as he seemed, he held her heart in his hands, and there was nothing that could have stopped her from going after him now.
She smelled the tang of spent gunpowder as she neared the front porch of the cabin. A dead man sprawled there, a long rifle smoking from its barrel where it lay across his chest. His face was frozen in a rictus of startled alarm, his neck snapped efficiently to the side. Hunter.
He'd been through here.
He was somewhere inside the cabin.
Corinne crept inside carefully. Immediately, she heard the sounds of a struggle taking place beneath her. The basement. She found the stairwell door leading toward the disturbance below, and in the instant she debated the idiocy of going down there, the painted wood panel appeared to spontaneously explode from within.
The force of it knocked her back against the wall behind her. When she opened her eyes after the shock, she found herself staring into a gaze that matched her own - greenish blue irises ringed by dark lashes and catlike, almond-shaped lids. The eyes looked back at her from out of the face of a boy. A lean, muscular boy about five foot seven, his lovely face still round at the jaw with the last traces of childhood.
But he was no boy, she realized. He was dressed in gray drawstring sweatpants and a white tank top, despite the night's chill. His head was shaved bald, his skin covered in dermaglyphs. A terrible-looking, thick black collar circled his neck.
"Nathan," she gasped.
The instant turned into a moment as he cocked his head at her, no expression on his face. No recognition at all.
And the brief hesitation cost him, because now Hunter was in the room with them as well. He'd moved faster than Corinne could follow, seeming to materialize out of thin air as he came up behind Nathan.
The boy's senses were as quick as his reflexes. He faced off against Hunter. Then, moving with the same impossible speed as the larger male, Nathan put his hand out and Corinne saw that he'd removed a long, thin iron from the set of fireplace tools near the potbellied stove several feet away.
Instead of using the iron as a weapon, the boy cracked it into the metal exhaust pipe of the stove.
The answering clang reverberated through the whole cabin. Then it began to rise, to expand. She felt Nathan's power - her own power, passed down to her child through his birth - as he warped the sound waves with his mind and sent them higher, coaxing them toward a deafening racket.
She'd had no doubt this boy was hers, but now, the rush of relief and rejoice poured over her. This was her son. This was her Nathan.
And this boy - this dangerous young Breed male - was gathering his psychic power, pushing the full force of it on Hunter now, attempting to drive his opponent to his knees. Hunter's jaw was held tight, tendons standing out like cables in his neck and cheeks as the aural onslaught intensified.
"Nathan, stop!" Corinne shouted, but her voice was lost under the piercing shriek of her son's talent. She tried to douse it with her own ability, but his command of the gift was too powerful. She couldn't silence it.
Amid the cacophony he'd created, he launched himself at Hunter, murder gleaming darkly in his merciless eyes. He swung the fireplace iron at him in a rapid series of blows, any one of which might have cracked open Hunter's skull had he not moved to deflect it. And that's all he was doing, Corinne realized. Hunter delivered no strikes of his own, though he could have taken down the smaller male in an instant. Could have killed him at any moment, if that had been his intent.
But Hunter only defended, like a seasoned alpha lion patiently batting away the scrappy cub who sought to test his mettle. This was far more dangerous than play; Corinne knew better than to think it anything less. Hunter knew it too, and yet despite the aggression being dealt to him, he made no move to inflict harm.
In that moment, Corinne had never loved him more.
Nathan kept coming at him, relentless and calculating, just as his training had conditioned him to be. Corinne reached once more for a grasp on the din he'd conjured. She gathered her mind around it, tried to bunch the noise into a kinetic tool of her own. She caught a glimpse of Nathan landing a blow of the long iron against Hunter's shoulder. Oh, God. She would die if either one of them failed to walk away from this. Focus.