Light returned. Well, not light exactly, but a darkness that wasn’t absolutely black. My eyelids fluttered open, and I thought I saw the movement of dim shapes around me. Black candles burned behind them, but I could make out no details beyond that.

I tried to sit up, and realized I could not. The surface beneath me was hard, and felt like some kind of a long table, draped in heavy black cloth. When I turned my head to one side, I couldn’t see any ropes or any other bonds holding my wrists and ankles in place, but I might as well have been bound for all the good my struggling did.

“Hello, Angela,” came Damon Wilcox’s voice from off to my left. I turned my head and saw him standing in front of a group of his clan members. They all wore dark robes, some with the hood pulled up, concealing their faces. There seemed to be at least twenty of them in the room, but it was so dark I couldn’t tell for sure.

And then I recalled Adam’s limp body falling to the rug in my room, remembered how only a few seconds earlier he had been kissing me, and now he was dead. Well, it felt like seconds earlier. I had no idea how much time had passed, how long I had floated in the dark until I awoke in this room.

Tears came to my eyes, but I blinked them away. I would not cry in front of Damon Wilcox. I would not.

“Fuck you,” I said succinctly.

He just laughed and shook his head. “Soon, I promise.”

His words sent another wave of ice through me. Of course I knew exactly why he’d stolen me away from my home, but that didn’t make his words any easier to hear. “You’re crazy,” I told him. “You think my clan isn’t going to come after me?”

“They can try, I suppose, but what good will it do? By then the deed will be done.” He looked past me to one of his clan members, a woman who had pale streaks of gray in her long black hair. I couldn’t tell for sure in the semi-darkness of the room, but something about her features looked vaguely Native American. “Is it time?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. Her voice was soft and low. “The solstice is upon us. Now is the time for the binding.”

He turned back to me and then approached until he stood next to the table where I lay. Although I knew it would do no good, I gritted my teeth and strained against the invisible force that held me in place. I’d never heard of a spell like this, especially one that could subdue the magic of a prima, but then, I’d never studied dark magic. It wasn’t the McAllister way.

In the gloom I could see his grin flash as he stared down at me. “I’ve been waiting for this a long time.”

Then he bent down to me, and I braced myself. Of course I knew how a kiss between a prima and a consort was supposed to feel, but I had no idea what this would feel like, this forced contact between the dark power of a primus and his victim.

His lips touched mine. I had thought they would be cold, since he seemed to bring the cold with him wherever he went. Maybe he drew his power from it, from the ice and the snow and the long dark winter nights. But he was warm enough, surprisingly.

I’d been expecting a shock, a chill…something. Not this, only the press of mouth against mouth and nothing else, just the way I’d felt it so many times before with all of my failed candidates.

The black eyes flashed, and then narrowed. He lifted his mouth from mine and stared at me for a long moment, then bent again and pressed his lips to me again, this time forcing my mouth open with his tongue. I shuddered, although he tasted faintly of mint and nothing else. It was just the violation, the feel of this man I had come to despise forcing himself on me in such an intimate way. Nothing compared to what he had planned, I knew, but still….

He pressed his hands against the edge of the table and thrust himself upward, then whirled on the woman who had spoken a few moments earlier. “It’s not working!” he snarled. “You said on the night of the solstice she would be mine!”

Face calm, she stared up at him, meeting his angry gaze as if it were nothing. With a shrug she replied, “I said the signs told me that she would be the consort of a Wilcox. They did not tell me which Wilcox. You just assumed it would be you.”

“Fuck!” Damon Wilcox ran an angry hand through his hair, and glared into the watching crowd. “Connor, come here.”

The watching clan members shifted, and a tall man moved forward, but slowly, as if he was reluctant to do as Damon had asked. Unlike the others, he wasn’t wearing the dark robes, but what looked like jeans and a sweater.

Even in the dim lighting it seemed as if there was something familiar about him, although I couldn’t quite figure it out. Probably my eyes playing tricks on me. After all, how could there be anything familiar about any of the Wilcoxes? I’d never seen any of them before, except that one time in Phoenix when Damon tried to grab me at the Nordstrom Rack.

But then he bent over me, and I stared up into his eyes.

Green eyes. Cloudy jade, just as I’d dreamed a hundred times.

I sucked in a breath, and then looked beyond those eyes to the face of the man who gazed down at me, and that was familiar as well.

“Chris?” I asked, my voice cracking on that one syllable. It couldn’t be. Maybe I’d gotten knocked in the head during the kidnapping, and I was hallucinating things that weren’t there. No way could Chris Wilson be here, of all places.

Those green eyes didn’t seem to want to meet mine. Finally he said, “It’s Connor, actually. Connor Wilcox.”

No. The room seemed to tilt around me, and I wished I could sit up, wished I could push myself off this table and run, run far away. I shut my eyes, but when I opened them again, he was still standing there.

We might have been the only two people in the room. “You lied to me,” I whispered finally.

He pressed his lips together, as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t quite manage it. Not with his brother and so many of his clan members looking on.

“Do it,” Damon said, his voice harsh with anger and frustration. “You have to bind her to us. Now.”

Again Connor hesitated. His hands were shoved in his jeans pockets, and I could practically feel the tension radiating from him as he stood there. At last he took his hands from his pockets, leaned over me, and murmured, “I’m sorry.”

His face was very close to mine. I’d dreamed of him kissing me, had wondered what it would be like, but never had I ever thought that we would come to it like this.

Then his mouth pressed against mine.

Heat flooded through me, seeming to set off every nerve ending in my body, as if all my veins no longer ran with blood but molten lava, bright and terrible and alive. That same warmth traveled to my core, making me ache with need. In that moment I wanted him so badly that I think I would have let him take me right there on that table, in front of everyone. Even in front of Damon Wilcox.

He felt it, too, I could tell. His eyes widened, and those same hands that had been clutching the table reached up as if of their own volition to cup my face, to hold me tenderly while he kissed me again and again, lips matching perfectly, tongues reaching out to touch one another, the feel and the taste of him better than anything I’d ever experienced. I fought against those invisible bonds, and then it seemed as they melted away, because I was able to reach up and wrap my arms around him.

My consort. The one I’d been waiting for all these years.

A Wilcox.

I gasped then, pushing him away, trying to recover something of my sanity, something of my will, even as my body cried out for him. He seemed to understand, and stepped back, although I could hear his rough breathing and knew he wanted me just as badly.

“It’s done,” the woman said. “She has bonded to him.”

Damon Wilcox made a gesture with one hand, and someone turned on the overhead lights. I could see now that it looked as if we were in someone’s basement rec room. There was a wet bar in one corner, and a large flat-screen television on the far wall, fronted by a leather couch and a recliner. As I put my hand out and felt the lip of the surface on which I lay, I realized their makeshift “altar” had to be a pool table.

Incongruously, I wanted to laugh. But even beneath my amusement I could still feel those ripples of arousal. Connor Wilcox was so very close. It would be so easy to reach out and pull him against me, taste his mouth again, let his hands explore my body, push me back down against the table….

No. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, but somehow I managed to shove those thoughts away, force myself to think of what the Wilcoxes had done — stolen me from my home, from my clan. And again I saw Adam’s lifeless body lying on the Navajo rug beside the bed, and that was enough to flood my veins with ice to replace the heat of a moment ago.

Without thinking, I launched myself off the pool table and at Damon Wilcox, hand raised to deliver the sort of blow I’d dealt Perry with in the parking lot of Main Stage, only this time so much more powerful, as I had the strength of a prima and the hate and sorrow of a thousand avenging angels to bolster it.

But then he raised his own hand, and it was as if I’d crashed into a stone wall. The breath was knocked out of me, and I staggered. At once Connor was beside me, reaching out to take my arm. I wrenched it away.

“Don’t touch me!”

He stopped immediately, fist clenching at his side.

Damon watched me, an odd mixture of anger, frustration, and amusement twisting his features. Now that I saw them together, I thought I could glimpse a slight resemblance to Connor, but Damon’s face was harsher, more hawk-like. He smiled, a mere curling of his lip. “Well, she can’t stay here now. I’m afraid she’s your problem, brother.” Then he added over his shoulder, to two of the burlier-looking members of his clan, “Help Connor get his new package home, would you?”

They converged on me. I lifted a hand again, thinking that even if I couldn’t attack Damon I could surely take out a few of his supporters. But whatever magic he’d used to subdue me before seemed to be active again, because I found I couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything except stand there as one bound my hands in front of me, even as the second man fastened a dark cloth over my eyes. I tried to cry out, but my mouth was blocked as well, and I choked on the words I had been about to say.

Rough hands lifted me up and slung me over a shoulder. I could feel the man going up a flight of stairs, and crossing what sounded like a wood floor. The sound of a door opening, and then a blast of freezing wind against me, colder than anything I’d ever felt before. It made sense, I supposed, if we were now in Flagstaff, several thousand feet higher than my home in Jerome and at least twenty degrees colder.

He carried me what seemed to be several yards, and then I was tossed on the back seat of a car or some other vehicle. The man settled himself beside me, even as I heard an engine rumble to life. It sounded powerful. Maybe not a car, then, but an SUV or a truck with an extended cab. We began to move.

It was hard to tell how long that trip lasted. I thought I heard the sound of another vehicle following us, but it was hard for me to know for certain. The tires were noisy, the road beneath them sounding slushy, rough. Neither the man in the seat beside me nor the person driving the SUV/truck spoke, making it that much more difficult to gauge the passing of time. It didn’t feel that long, though, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. Not much more. At least, I didn’t think so.

Eventually the vehicle came to a stop. The driver got out, as did the man next to me. He grabbed me and threw me over his shoulder again, but I felt him slip a little, as if the surface he stood on was slick. Again that freezing air hit me, and I wondered if the street or sidewalk was icy. The sound of another door slamming, and we walked a little way before we entered a building and went up a flight of stairs. A pause, and then I was deposited on the floor, still not able to move except for a slight shivering caused by the chill wind outside.

It was warmer here, at least, although I couldn’t begin to guess where I’d been brought. The man who’d been carrying me said, “He’ll contact you tomorrow.”

“All right.” Connor’s voice, sounding resigned.

The door opened and shut again. A second or two later, I felt hands untying the knot in the cloth at the back of my head. The dark fabric was lifted away, and I blinked.

I stood in the entry area of what appeared to be a house or apartment. The space was open, with heavy dark wood framing the doorways and windows. One wall seemed to be all brick. The furniture was simple and strong, leather couch and chair, dark wood cocktail table. Most of the walls were covered in unframed canvases, desert landscapes and mountain scenes. The place felt old, maybe of similar vintage to the apartment where I’d grown up. I’d never been to Flagstaff, but I thought I recalled that the only section with buildings this old was the Old Town district.

“Where are we?”

“My apartment,” Connor replied, moving out from behind me. I’d noticed as he undid the blindfold he’d been careful not to come in contact with my hair, as if he were afraid even that small touch would be enough to set us off again. Maybe it would have. My aunt had told me what the bond between a prima and her consort was supposed to feel like, but I’d never imagined it would be so shockingly strong, so overpowering in its urgency.

“Your apartment,” I repeated blankly.

“Well, Damon had thought you’d be staying with him, but that didn’t exactly work out.” He lifted his shoulders, as if recognizing the impossibility of the situation. “So here you are.”

Alone with him, and away from the rest of his clan. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to me.

Opportunity for escape, that is.

Without thinking I bolted for the door. I grasped the knob, but it wouldn’t turn. Of course. Deadbolt. I reached up to turn it, but it wouldn’t budge, either.

A strong sun-browned hand descended on mine. At once my blood began to race, heat washing over me. I snatched my fingers away as if they’d touched a flame. Then again, maybe they had.

“You won’t be able to open it,” Connor said. “Nor the latches on the windows, so don’t bother with them, either. You’re only getting out if I lift the spell, and that’s not happening. Now, do you want something to drink? Some water, maybe?”

Just to be difficult, I put my hand on the doorknob again. This time it felt almost as if an electric spark leapt from the metal to my fingertips, and I jerked my hand back.

“Just as I told you.” His voice didn’t sound particularly happy. Resigned, maybe, as if he couldn’t have expected anything other than me trying to get away from him. “It’s a little late for coffee, and I don’t think wine is a very good idea, either. Pellegrino? Juice?”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

His expression hardened. “Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.”

“Difficult?” I demanded. “Difficult? When you broke into my house, killed Adam — ”

“We didn’t kill anybody,” Connor cut in. He went into the kitchen and got two glasses out of a cupboard, then poured some sparkling water into each one.

“What?” I’d been through too many shocks that night. My brain felt as if it had given up trying to process them.

Without answering me immediately, he took one of the glasses and held it out in my direction. Just as wordlessly, I took it from him. My throat was dry, so I went ahead and drank. Maybe he was trying to drug me or something, but I sort of doubted it. I’d just watched him break the seal on the bottle of San Pellegrino.

“I doubt it was out of the goodness of his heart, but Damon only knocked your cousin out. Murder is hard to cover up, even for a warlock. There would be too many questions. Possible repercussions. He just wanted to get in, get you, and get Adam out of the way. Simple enough.”

I didn’t think it was all that simple, even though I let out a mental breath, and the tiniest bit of the tension in my throat seemed to ease. Adam was still alive. He wasn’t dead because of me. Hardening my voice, I said, “There are still going to be repercussions. If you think my clan is just going to sit idly by — ”

“And how much can they do, deprived of their prima? Not to be rude, Angela, but even with you there they weren’t exactly a match for us Wilcoxes. And with you gone….”

He let the words trail off. There wasn’t much need for him to say anything else. I loved my clan, loved each and every one of them for their quirks and their odd little habits, but I knew they weren’t strong enough to take on the Wilcox clan. Not by a long shot.

If I dwelled on that, I knew I might break down. It was so late, and I was so, so tired. I set down my glass on the counter and decided to move to another subject. “So it was all a lie — grad school, and Tempe, and final projects. Everything.” I looked up at him, at those painfully familiar green eyes. “Even your eye color.”

“It’s a simple trick, but it worked, didn’t it?” He shook his head. “And all of that wasn’t exactly a lie. I did go to school in Tempe, but that was a few years ago.”

“But you did want to know about our trip to Phoenix so you could report back to your brother.”

His shoulders lifted. He didn’t bother to deny it.

“And you were stalking me, showing up at the Day of the Dead festival like that.” Angry tears pricked the back of my eyes as I recalled how nice he had seemed, while the whole time he was just collecting data for his brother. Stupid for me to be upset about that part, but I couldn’t help it. I’d had an image of this Chris Wilson person in my mind and my heart, and it hadn’t been real at all, only a mask he’d put on to conceal himself from me.

He ran a hand through his hair. It needed cutting, and fell back over his forehead. “Look, Angela, it’s three in the morning. Do you think we can hash this over later? Like, in the morning after we’ve gotten some sleep?”

Panic washed over me at the thought of sleeping here in his apartment with him. Even now, angry and frightened and weary as I was, I could still feel the electricity sparking between us. But I couldn’t get out. The place was as locked down for me as a vault at Fort Knox.

What he saw in my face, I couldn’t say for sure, but his expression softened. “I have a guest room. You’ll be fine.”

“I highly doubt that,” I retorted.

“Okay, then you’ll survive.” Bending down, he retrieved a dark duffle bag from where it had been sitting on the floor, halfway hidden by the kitchen cabinets. “I have some stuff here for you.” He extended his arm, clearly intending for me to take the bag.

“What is it?”

“Some clothes. Boots. Underwear.” His eyes glinted, and for just a second he looked a little too much like his brother for my comfort. “It’s the stuff you picked out in Phoenix, and some extra. Damon took it with him that day. He needed to know your sizes so he could have some of the women in the clan get some things together for you.”

So that was why Damon Wilcox had stolen my bag from Nordstrom Rack. I didn’t really want to dwell on him going through it and figuring out my panty and bra size. On the other hand, it meant I at least had a change of underwear. “Thanks,” I said grudgingly.

“Let me show you where the spare room is,” he replied, seeming glad that I hadn’t pushed back on that one.

Just inside the entryway and past the bathroom there was a flight of wooden stairs that doubled back on itself. We emerged in a short upstairs hall. At the end of the hallway was another window, but I couldn’t see anything except black night beyond it. On one wall was a single door, while on the other there were two. He opened the second door and flipped the light switch.

“Here you go.”

It wasn’t very large, maybe ten feet by ten feet. A twin bed covered in a plain brown spread was pushed up against one wall, and there was a table and chair tucked against the opposite wall. More paintings hung in here. A Navajo rug covered the floor.

“The bathroom is next door,” he went on, as casual as if I were just a friend stopping by to hang out for the weekend, rather than the girl his family had kidnapped…as if I weren’t the one somehow fated to be with him, if our physical reaction to one another were any indication. “And I’m just across the hall, so if you need anything, knock.” A slow grin, and he added, “I’ll make sure to put on something besides just underwear.”

The thought of him wandering around up here in just a pair of boxer-briefs was enough to relight that flame in my core. I sucked in a breath, reminding myself of Adam, knocked aside like a rag doll, of my family realizing sometime in that bleak December morning that I’d been snatched from under their very noses. For some reason I thought of all their presents, wrapped and waiting for them under the tree Adam and I had set up in the living room, and the realization that I wouldn’t be there to spend Yule with them made the tears start to my eyes again.

No, I couldn’t cry, and I wouldn’t let myself think that way. There was still time. They would come for me. They had to.

Coldly I said, “Thanks,” to Connor, then turned away from him and set the duffle bag on the floor.

He seemed to hesitate before saying, “Goodnight, then,” and going out to the hallway and shutting the door behind him.

For a minute I didn’t do anything, only stared at the plain little room, at the oddly masterful paintings of canyons and mountains and high desert hills on the walls. Then I went over to the bed and fell rather than sat down on it, my head spinning.

Connor Wilcox was the man I’d been dreaming of since I was sixteen years old. He’d awakened the prima’s fire within me, but it wasn’t completely alive. Not yet. We would have to be together fully as man and woman for that to take place. I couldn’t let it happen, though. That would mean my powers would belong to the Wilcoxes, and not the McAllisters.

I would have to find some way to resist him.

I just didn’t know how.