“It has to be?”
He stood and walked toward the window. “When a Huntress dies, she takes part of her Hunter with her. He will never be the same again. Those twenty-four girls who have died over the years? Most weren’t even Huntresses yet, but their Hunters were changed, made weaker, less stable. They can never fight again for fear of critical injury. They become our scholars, tied to the texts, questing for answers and constantly burdened by tremendous grief over women they didn’t even know. But at least most of them had it somewhat easier. Their women died before they were actually bonded. The wolves got to those women before we could bring them here.” He paused to suck in a deep breath before releasing it in one long sigh. “Only a few have lost their Huntress after the bonding took place, after they’d allowed themselves to fall in love.” He shook his head. “Those men, they lost everything, sometimes their will to live, but usually their sanity itself. I can’t open myself to such vulnerability. I have to stay distant. I can’t allow myself to let deeper emotions form—I’ve seen what it does to a man.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat. “So you’re worried that I’m going to die?”
Cal kept his back to me but shrugged. “It’s more than that. But yeah, I guess I am.”
“So you’re doing this to protect yourself?” There was something about his words, the tone, that didn’t seem quite right, like he wasn’t being totally honest. “Turn around and look at me. I want to see your eyes.”
Cal’s shoulders tensed. When he turned to face me, his expression was hard. “I’m doing this to protect both of us. I can’t promise you sunshine and rainbows, but I can give you strength and power.”
I stayed quiet for a moment. This time all I heard was truth, his eyes unable to hide the conviction of his words. “You said that I mean something to Lazarus—what is it exactly?” Without waiting for him to answer, I continued, “He said that I’m his bride, so he believes that we’re destined to be together.”
“Yes, he wants you because you’re the only female, his bride, who would be able to carry his young.”
“But he’s a werewolf!” My stomach lurched.
“Not all the time. He can transform into a man as well.”
So that was the other half of Fiona’s prediction—this was the choice I needed to make. One man, part beast, wanted me as his queen to propagate his pack, while the other wanted me to fight while keeping me at arm’s length. It seemed like heartbreak and pain no matter what the decision. Status quo as far as my love life was concerned.
What made it worse was that I felt something for Cal, and I knew he felt something for me. Was it only lust? I wasn’t sure, but I certainly wasn’t going to test it out and risk losing my heart again, and I definitely wasn’t going to be either a pawn in anyone’s power struggle or the victim of some beast’s violent desires. I stood from my chair. “So when exactly am I supposed to fight this wolf?”
Cal frowned, my detached tone clearly catching him off guard.
I motioned for him to speak, sighing when he didn’t. “You said I was special, that I’m the only Huntress available to kill Lazarus. So when is this supposed to happen?”
“The lunar eclipse is three weeks away. Lazarus is the most vulnerable on that night. It’s the one night that you have the best chance of killing him. He’s too powerful otherwise, even for a Huntress,” Cal said.
“Three weeks! I can’t be ready to fight a monster in three weeks!”
“You would be if you bonded with me. If you had my power.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “And I’m the only one who can do it?”
Cal nodded slowly. “Kelly is incapacitated and Candy is too young to bond with Jeremy yet, but besides that, you’re the only Huntress who can get close enough to Lazarus while he’s vulnerable. The Hunters can wound the wolves, but they’ll always come back. It’s only the Huntress who can kill them.”
“So the way I see it, there isn’t really a problem.” I tapped my fingers on my arm, my voice rising as I lost my cool edge. “You need me to kill the king of the wolves, to help you save humanity, but in order to absorb the power that I need to do that I run the risk of losing control of my desire and being intimate with you.”
Cal nodded again, a flicker of hope crossing his face as he took a tentative step toward me.
I glared at him. “And I’m not willing to take that risk. I’m not going to have sex with you just for the sake of killing Lazarus.”