Page 2 of Her Immortal Mate

But there's something different about her. Most humans cower or simper around us. This one moves with quiet confidence, completely focused on her task.

The firelight catches her hair again - not just copper, but threads of gold and deep red that remind me of autumn leaves. She tucks an errant strand behind her ear as she works, revealing a delicate profile with high cheekbones and a determined set to her jaw.

"Their fever should break by morning," she tells another healer, her green eyes reflecting the flames as she glances up.

For a moment, those eyes meet mine across the camp. Something electric passes between us before she looks away, returning to her patient.

I watch the woman's capable hands as she ties off a bandage. There's a quiet strength in her movements, a resilience that draws me in despite myself. When she stands, brushing dirt from her knees, I notice she's built like a fighter - lean muscle and controlled grace.

"The venom is mostly neutralized," she reports to the head healer. Because now the dark elves have started sending venomous animals after us. Not that we can't fight it off but it incapacitates for a while. "But they'll need monitoring through the night."

Her clinical detachment intrigues me almost as much as her beauty. No hysteria, no desperate attempts to curry favor. Just calm competence in the face of supernatural warfare.

I find myself wanting to know her story. How she came to be here. What makes her so different from the other humans we've encountered.

"Getting attached to the new medic?" Dominik materializes beside me, his own wings tucked close against his back. "I've seen that look before."

I don't take my eyes off the copper-haired woman. "What look?"

"Like you're already planning how to claim her." He crosses his arms. "Don't bother. More and more people are being Changed. And you know how humans end up here — either they prove useful enough to keep around as servants, or..." He lets the implication hang.

They're sustenance.

"She's different." The words come out before I can stop them.

"They're all different until they're not." Dominik's voice carries centuries of cynicism. "You better hope they don't find out she's got some kind of magic. That would really do her in."

I shake my head, watching as she moves to another patient. Her movements are too genuine, too focused. "I doubt she does. But she's too useful to kill." Unless a dark elf gets his hands on her during an attack.

Sometimes I forget how much more fragile the humans are than us.

Dominik's tone softens slightly. "Listen, I get it. She's beautiful, she's capable. But we never know where these humans will end up. Better not to get invested." He sighs, looking around. "To anyone. This is war, Eike."

I want to argue, but when he puts it like that, I can't. I've been trained as a soldier for a long time, and I know what happens in war. It's unpredictable.

Still, something in my gut tells me this woman is different. The way she holds herself, the quiet strength in her movements...

"Just watch yourself," Dominik adds before melting back into the shadows.

I remain at my post, but my eyes keep drifting to her as she works. Dominik's warning echoes in my head, but it doesn't sit right. Something about her calls to me on a level I can't explain - and for the first time since being Made, I find myself hoping. Wanting.

I thought I had lost that.

2

MAE

My legs burn as I scramble up the rock face, fingers searching for purchase on the cold granite. Screams echo through the valley below.

"Keep moving!" I shout to Anna, who's roped in below me. Her blonde hair whips in the wind as she follows my path up the cliff.

The sound hits before I see them - a deep thrumming that vibrates in my chest. Dark shapes slice through the clouds above the Bavarian Alps, blocking out the afternoon sun. My chalk-covered hands shake as I clip into the next anchor point.

"What are those things?" Anna's voice cracks with panic.

I squint upward, my years of emergency room triage kicking in. Stay calm. Assess. Act. "Just keep climbing. We're almost to that ledge."

The shapes descend, picking people off the side of the mountain. Large bat wings carry them away, my climbing mates screaming as they are snatched out of the air.

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