Alejandro immediately moved into a position to defend her, in front, but slightly to the side so she could still see Sante. “Back off,” he warned. “You touch her and I’ll gut you.”

Sante never moved his gaze from Daria’s face. “Calm down, Alejandro. I have no intention of harming her. Don’t you think I would’ve before now, if I wanted that?”

“What do you want, Sante?” Daria asked.

His expression darkened. “To not have to deal with you, Daria. To not have to kill you. I am sincere in my wish to not hurt you. I have already done enough of that.”

Alejandro took a step forward and snarled, “If there’s any killing to be done, we’ll be doing it.”

“How did you recognize me?” Daria asked.

“The first time I saw you, I suspected. That night, when I came to your room, I knew for certain.”

Sante smiled a little. “Did you really think you could fool me? Did you think you could disguise yourself from a man who once loved you, who memorized every move you made, every little gesture? You could have had ten plastic surgeries, Daria, I still would know you anywhere.”

He’d known all along. God, he’d known when he’d allowed them into his inner circle, when he’d revealed the secret of Ari Templeton. He’d known when they’d rescued Ari from his house. He’d been acting the whole time.

“Why didn’t you kill me?” The question sprang from her lips before she could stop it.

Sante rose slowly, and Alejandro shifted in front of her, ready to act if required.

Daria also shifted, balancing her weight on the balls of her feet in case Sante decided to rush them.

“Because I once loved you, Daria, desired to take you as my mate. Haven’t you heard a word I’ve been saying? I know you and Alejandro are good people, and I have no will to hurt either of you. I wanted to wait and see what you would do before I made any decisions regarding your future.”

She shook her head, trying to wrap her mind around the words he’d spoken. Thoughts of murder she’d expected from him, but words of love . . . no, she hadn’t expected those. He’d wished to take her as his mate?

“Yes, Daria,” Sante murmured. “It’s true I loved you. Not at first. In the beginning I only meant to use you. However, after I got to know you, I fell in love.”

She put a hand to her head. “Stop. I don’t want to hear that from you.”

“Did you love me back?” Sante pressed. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“Shut up! Just shut up.” She paused, swallowed hard, and brought the conversation back to somewhere relevant. “It doesn’t make sense that you wouldn’t kill us once you’d revealed my true identity. We were a threat to you.”

He smiled. It looked even more cruel and violent for Brandon’s blood discoloring his fangs, face, and clothing. “You were never a threat. I wanted to know how you would react to the truth about Ari and me. I wanted to know if there was any way to deal with you two peacefully. There is an old Earth saying, ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’ That’s what I was doing while I assessed you.”

And, as his enemy, she needed to be closer to him now.

She took a step forward. Alejandro blocked her, but she gently pushed his arm away. “I need to do to this, Alejandro. If you care for me, you won’t interfere.”

“If I care for you, I won’t let you take another step.”

“Alejandro, I have come a long way to stand and face Christopher Sante. I have spent years dreaming of this, and have discarded my humanity to be here. Please. Do you understand?”

Alejandro hesitated, but then stepped to the side. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

She allowed a ghost of a smile to cross her lips. “Me? Do something stupid? Never.”

Daria took another three steps toward Sante, coming close enough to scent the blood on him. She noted uneasily that the predator in her liked that smell a lot. She was a Chosen, a true vampire. Death was not something that she abhorred, as a human would. In fact, the smell of that blood made her hungry.

She could see that same hunger reflected in Sante’s eyes, the eyes she once used to look into and glimpse love. An hour ago she would have said that love had been an illusion. Perhaps it hadn’t been. That was a thought she couldn’t follow at the moment, so she turned her mind toward the oddness of that violent hunger mirroring her own.

They weren’t so different after all, she and Christopher Sante. The thought was chilling, but it was the truth. Daria preferred the truth, even when it was chilling.

She held his gaze. “I came here to bring you in, Sante.”

“I know you did.”

“I came to find Ari Templeton, nail you with kidnapping charges and anything else I could throw at you. Since you got out of punishment the first time, I came to make you pay for killing Julia any way I could.”

“I understand that.”

“You deserve to die for what you did.” The words came out of her cold and bitter, like rusty water running from a pipe that had just thawed after winter. They made her feel sick because she meant them. She didn’t enjoy meaning them, not even when they were directed at Christopher Sante.

“You’re right. I do deserve to die for what I did. Afterward, I even tried to take my own life. In another time, in another place, I would let you kill me.” He paused. “But I have someone to live for now.”

Anger, hot and hard, filled her. “So, you’re not going to come quietly then. Too bad.” Just like she was in the gym back at headquarters, she pivoted on her right foot and brought her left leg up fast, kicking him in the side of the head.

He took it just like her punching bag, too, didn’t even make a move to block her. His head snapped to the side and he staggered.

If he wasn’t going to fight her, that was fine. It would make her job a lot easier. The fact she’d just engaged a Chosen male nearly four hundred years her senior was not lost on her. She knew she played lamb to his wolf, even though she felt better—stronger and faster—than she ever had in her human life.

Sante lurched to the side and put his hand to his face, where she’d added to the blood he already wore by splitting his cheek open with the side of her thick-soled boot.

Not giving him a chance to recover, she turned the opposite way and brought her other leg up to kick him square in the solar plexus.

He grabbed her foot before it could make impact and wrenched it, forcing her to twist in midair to avoid having her knee broken. She hit the ground unscathed and rolled away, spitting out sand.

She risked a glance at Alejandro to see him standing ramrod straight, fists clenched at his sides. Every muscle in his body was clearly tense from the effort to stop himself from jumping into the fray. She gave him a look of warning. This was her fight. She needed this, no matter the outcome.

“Do we have to do this?” Sante asked. “I don’t want to fight you.”

“Why?” she sneered as she pushed up. “Because you once loved me? Spare me, Sante. You don’t know how to love. You don’t have it in you.”

His face became like stone. “Fine, you want to fight, little girl? Let’s fight.”

“Finally.” She whirled in another kick and caught him right in the gut this time. The air whooshed out of him, and he staggered backward.

He came to a halt, holding his stomach and looking up with hooded eyes. Sante snarled and launched himself at her.

They met in the middle.

Daria ducked as he threw a punch, then spun to find him nearly on top of her. She crouched and elbowed his solar plexus, hitting the already sore area. The impact was like hitting a concrete wall. Sante hardly seemed to notice it at all. Kicks were more effective to his rock-hard stomach. Live and learn.

Daria stumbled backward, dodging another swing and feeling air brush her cheek. She whirled, but couldn’t avoid the next punch. Pain exploded. She fell back, holding her cheek. God, that hurt. She only hoped it wouldn’t swell too quickly, limiting her vision.

She heard Alejandro move near her. She should’ve expected him to leap to her defense. “No!” she yelled. “Back off, Alejandro.”

“You’re too weak for this, Daria,” he answered. “You’re newly Chosen!”

She fixed him with a grim stare. “I’ve dug my grave.”

Alejandro swore loudly and colorfully, but he backed away.

Sante circled her, that eerie light in his eyes. This excited him. Clearly, the fight brought out the brutal part of his personality he’d been trying to suppress. That part that had led him to torture Stephen Miller for hours before he’d killed him.

This dome, his love for Ari Templeton, none of it fooled Daria. At the heart of him, Christopher Sante was a monster.

“You never could best me in the sparring ring at headquarters, Daria. Do you remember?”

She did remember. They used to spend hours training together there. Christopher had always been her favorite partner, since he never let her win. She’d always had to fight all out in an effort to best him . . . and had never succeeded. Now she knew that was because he was Chosen. She’d never had a prayer of beating him.

Nothing much had changed.

“If you’re trying to psyche me out, it won’t work,” she replied. Knowing her best chance lay in her ability to move faster than him—maybe—she leapt up, whirled around, and caught him in the side of the head with her boot.

She may not be stronger, but she was quicker.

Well, almost.

With a roar, he turned and grabbed her before she could move to the side, slamming her to the ground. Her breath left her with a hard gasp. The loss of it stunned her into inactivity for a moment, giving Sante an opening.

The older Chosen hovered over her, that same murderous glee in his eyes that she’d seen after he’d snacked on Brandon’s throat.

She snaked a hand up and palmed him hard in the Adam’s apple. He yelped, released her, and she rolled to the side, as far from his reach as she could get.

She heard him come after her—his low growl and the shift of sand under his boots. Daria lunged to her feet and darted away before he could body slam her again.

Move met countermove.

Daria knew Sante wasn’t giving it his all only because she wasn’t dead yet. They danced their violent dance in the sand under the spread of glittering stars over their head, Daria gave everything, depleting her energy and grunting in exhaustion. Sante mostly just blocked her, wore her down.

She wanted nothing more than to kick his ass, but had to settle for just getting in a solid body blow once in a while.

Daria went down on her knees in the sand, her body aching from the continual hits and blood running afresh from the wound in her throat. She’d lost too much. Exhaustion suffused every molecule of her body. Hunger ached in her stomach and her head pounded. Her eye had swollen where he’d hit her, obscuring her vision.

Sante was winning, but at least she hadn’t made victory easy for him.

“Give it up,” rasped Sante, out of breath.

“Never.” The word tore from her. She bowed her head, panting.

“I’ll kill you before we’re through.” He leaned over, resting his hands on his thighs. “You have someone to live for, too.” His gaze flicked to the pissed off vampire watching them.

Alejandro. It was true.

She realized she didn’t want to die. It was jarring, since she’d spent the last seven years not really caring if she did or not. She looked up at Alejandro and locked gazes with him. He probably saw in her unguarded expression that sudden, undeniable truth.

She turned back to Sante, her gaze hardening. Yes, she thought she might love Alejandro, and she didn’t want to die, but her bitterness for Christopher Sante was too much for her to deny.

“Fool,” Sante sneered, seeing her answer in the hardness of her expression and the challenge in her gaze.

He lunged for her, catching her around the throat and pushing her back onto the sand. His big hands tightened and her airway closed.

Her gaze locked with Sante’s. Brutal, joyful, light of death lit his eyes. This is what Julia had seen right before she’d died—Christopher Sante wanting nothing more than to take savage bliss from murdering her. Here was his monster in full rampage.

Alejandro moved on Sante like a striking snake.

Suddenly, Sante was just gone.

She rolled to the side, gasping for air and holding her burning, bleeding throat. Through her nauseous light-headed wooze, she watched Alejandro and the older vampire. They fought, a tangle of limbs and growls.

Sante managed to push Alejandro away and lunge to his feet. Alejandro also rose. They circled each other.

Alejandro wore a murderous expression, but Sante didn’t back away. Instead he snarled and attacked. They met in a flurry of fists and fangs.

Alejandro was much younger, but exceptionally strong. Probably even stronger than Sante. That strength made up for the discrepancies in their ages.

They dealt blow after blow, periodically circling each other with their fangs extended. Sante fought like a well-trained Chosen, but Alejandro . . . Alejandro fought like a bar brawler. He punched more than he executed any fancy kicking moves, brought his strength to bear on his opponent with brutal intensity.

Sante swung, but Alejandro blocked him and returned the punch, then swept Sante’s legs out from under him, slamming Sante facedown onto the sand. He knelt on the small of Sante’s back, in just the way they’d restrain any other piece of scum they’d arrested on the street.

One large hand gripped Sante’s hair and wrenched his head back, exposing the vulnerable line of his throat. Sante growled and clawed the sand, unable to free himself from the press of Alejandro’s weight.

“Kill him,” Alejandro pushed out in a low, gravelly voice, breathing exerted. Blood streaked him. “Do it, Daria, if you want it so bad. Here’s your chance to avenge your friend.”