him confused with one of them. “We’re identical quadruplets and I look a lot like my other brothers too.”
She shook her head in denial. “I know. I met all of you. I was here the night the wolves attacked.” Her gaze went up to where the roof still bore a small trace of fire damage from their fight and her eyes darkened with sympathy. “I’m really sorry about your parents…and that we didn’t do a better job of protecting them.”
He didn’t know why, but that touched him. “Thanks for the assist. I know all of you did your best.” They all had. But the number of their enemies had been overwhelming. In all honesty, it was a miracle any of them had survived.
But for the Dark-Hunters and their allies, they wouldn’t have.
A shadow of pain masked her expression as if she had her own demons buried in those words. “Yeah, but sometimes it’s just not good enough and no amount of sincere apologies ever makes it okay. That being said, I really am sorry. For everything.” She glanced inside the bar before she recovered her earlier zest. “Name’s Sam Savage.”
Samia Savage…
That was a name he’d heard bandied about by other Dark-Hunters over the centuries. She was one of their fiercest—hence the surname the other Dark-Hunters had given her several hundred years ago as an homage to her brutality in a fight. As immortal slayers who protected humans, all Dark-Hunters came from horrific backgrounds. Each one different, they all had one thing in common: Someone had betrayed and killed them in a manner so foul that they sold their souls to the Greek goddess Artemis for a single act of vengeance against their betrayer. Not something someone undertook lightly and he couldn’t help wondering what had happened to Sam to make her sell her soul.
Who had killed her and why had that event turned her into something so brutal even the stoutest male Hunters tended to cut her a wide berth? All the stories he’d heard about her had never answered that. They only said that this woman lived for the thrill of the fight.
The bloodier the better.
“You were an Amazon general at the end of the Trojan War.” The granddaughter of their greatest queen, Hippolyta, Sam was said to have been the one to escort Helen home after the war. Something that had been extremely difficult given how many Greeks had wanted to kill Helen for causing the war that had kept them away from home for over a decade.
One corner of her mouth quirked up. “You say Amazon like it’s a bad thing.”
Dev laughed. “I’ve met a few of you over the centuries. Not bad, just…interesting.”
The Amazons were the goddess Artemis’s chosen people. It was why there were so many who were Dark-Hunters. When Artemis had set up her army to fight for humanity against their preternatural predators, the Amazons had always been her first choice and were rumored to be paid ten times more than the rest of the Dark-Hunters. A little favoritism that led to hard feelings from some of the other Hunters toward any Amazon in their bunch.
For Dev, it just meant he had to watch her since the Amazons tended to be ferocious partiers who liked to brawl.
“So what brings you here tonight?” he asked her, changing the topic to a pertinent subject.
Sam paused before she answered. “Don’t know really. I had a feeling that something wicked this way headed. So I thought I’d beat it here in order to grab it by the throat and hurt it before it did any damage.”
He tsked at her. “Ah baby, don’t you know I’m the only thing wicked here?”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “Are you flirting with me?”
“Depends. Is there an ass-whipping in it and will you be naked when you do it?”
She gave him an arch stare. “So you like to have your ass whipped?”
“Not really, but so long as you’re naked when you do it I could take it quite happily….”
She laughed. “Kinky. I like that.”
He had no idea why he was flirting with her. While he was as much of a manwhore as any of his unmated brothers, he didn’t normally waste time on women he knew were off his menu. And sleeping with Dark-Hunters was a key no-no in their world…for many, many reasons.
But he couldn’t seem to help himself. There was something about her that invited him straight to suicide. “More horny actually. It’s been a while.”