Knowing that pissed Kel off even more than the smirk on Rafe's face. "I don't know why in the hell I like you so much," the older vampire muttered, shaking his head.

Instead of responding, Kel turned away and headed out of the room. Behind him, Sheila gave Rafe a warning glance and he just rolled his eyes, but fell into step behind Kel silently.

Rafe might have been the local Master, but there was little question about who really ran things in the enclave. Soft, pretty, with a deceptively sweet face and that slow Southern drawl, Sheila was one of the weaker Hunters and she'd never be a Master.

But she had Rafe wrapped around her little finger.

She had him so wrapped, he'd never get untangled from it and Rafe knew it. He adored her with all his heart and soul and losing her would kill something inside of him.

"You plan on following me around all damn night?" Kel demanded, shooting Rafe a narrow glance as he mounted the stairs.

"No. Just until I see you feed."

Kel's eyes narrowed. But he kept whatever he wanted to say to himself as he moved through the house. The main level was mostly quiet. The other vampires living in the enclave were either out Hunting, feeding or doing whatever they preferred when they weren't on rotation. Most of the shifters, by preference, preferred to sleep through the night. The only shifter awake now was Toronto, but that was nothing new. The shape-shifter tended to live a very nocturnal lifestyle.

But he didn't show his face as Rafe followed Kel through the library, the dining room, on through the kitchen to the back of the house. A huge garage had been added since Rafe had taken over this piece of land, housing the vehicles of the Hunters living here.

He didn't head for the garage, though, just slipped between the hodgepodge collection of buildings. A gym, a greenhouse, the grouping of smaller, recently built homes for those who didn't want to live in the main house. They weren't big, designed just to sleep one or two people. Sooner or later, when money allowed, Rafe planned on adding a few more.

Kel slid past all the houses, bypassed the utility shed at the far end of the grounds and disappeared behind the tree line. Rafe kept right behind him and tried not to get too irritated over the fact that he was babysitting one of his Hunters when he could be back at the house and making love to his wife.

Even as that thought circled through his head, guilt surged through him. When the night was over, Rafe would return home and crawl into the bed with Sheila, hold her soft, sweet body against his as they slept.

While Kel spent the daylight hours alone and caught in the daytime prison-like sleep that came over the younger vamps, unable to fight the dreams that would come on him. And knowing when he woke, the memory of those dreams would still be there to haunt him.

Rafe couldn't imagine the hell Kel must be going through. Kel never talked about it, but the kid had the shitty luck of living in close quarters with the type of people who didn't need him to say a word for them to feel his misery, taste it or scent it on the air.

Every emotion had a unique feel, a unique taste, a unique scent. The scorching scent of rage, the sweet tang of joy or amusement. The bitter taste of rage, coupled with the acrid burn of misery, they hung around Kel so thick, so strong, the only time they eased was when his hunger spiraled out of control.

Rumors circulated around Excelsior about the girl who Kel had bonded with, a girl who nearly went crazy after Kel disappeared from her life. Feeling his hunger, his bloodlust, his depression-falling into the death-like sleep of the newly Changed.

A soul-mate bond, Rafe suspected, one forged between the two mortals before Kel had been yanked unceremoniously out of his normal, happy life. Sometimes, he was amazed the two of them had survived. Rafe had heard rumors of soul -mated pairs among non-mortals who'd lost their mate and ended up dying shortly after. Death by loneliness, he could get.

Sheila had left him once. Each day she'd been gone, he had felt as though he died a little more inside. But he hadn't physically been fading away. Neither had she.

He loved his wife, but theirs wasn't a soul-mated love. If it came right down to it, he preferred it that way just because it meant they were together because they loved each other.

Not because they had to be.

The star-crossed, soul-mated deal was a bitch as far as Rafe was concerned. Hell, look at what it had done to these two. The pretty lady Kel had been forced to leave behind almost went crazy because of their bond.

Kel had spent the past twelve years miserable and alone. Rafe had given up on him ever getting over the girl.

Shit, the girl. She was another responsibility he didn't want, and a human one, no less. He had his hands full with his enclave and watching his territory, but that hadn't kept fate from dumping the welfare of one Angel Pierson in his lap.

The feral who had attacked Kel had never been caught. Slimy bastard had slipped away and disappeared. Rafe wasn't the optimistic sort and he knew the vamp was probably still alive and preying on innocent people, but he hadn 't ever come close enough to set Rafe's radar off. Without that radar, he had no way of tracking him, no way of finding him and killing him.

No way of getting justice for what had been done to Kel or Angel.

Not that justice would help Angel much. Because of the attack on her, she was vulnerable.

Vulnerable in a way that could get her killed if they didn 't watch her and if Kel hadn't damn near pushed her straight into madness, none of them would have known.

A few months after Kel's Change, word came down from the Council that there might be some trouble brewing for the girl left behind. By an unspoken code of the Hunters, Rafe had been charged with checking on the girl. She'd been close to the end of her rope, hanging onto sanity by a thread. What Rafe had seen upon his reluctant visit to Greenburg was a woman who would most likely find death a sweet release. She was so filled with pain, so tormented by what she thought were hallucinations, Rafe wouldn't have been surprised if she'd already tried to end it a half dozen times over.

It had been coming. Rafe had sensed that without any trouble, at all. The older man who intervened was the reason she was still alive, of that Rafe had no doubt. It hadn't taken much work for Rafe to learn that the older man was Kel's dad. Angel, the poor girl, only had a mother who didn't really give a damn and a step-dad who barely knew her.

If it hadn't been for Jake Saunders, Angel probably would have just ended it.

And that would have been on them. On him. Rafe hated realizing how close he 'd come to letting some innocent girl grieve herself to death.

Hunters ended up stepping in on a lot of lives, he knew that. Trying to help, sometimes succeeding, but sometimes coming too late, like in Kel's situation. Rafe was an arrogant bastard, but he knew he couldn't take on the welfare of every single human life that might somehow come in contact with his Hunters...even on the fringe side.

But the families of the victims, when he failed, they were his responsibility. Angel had been a responsibility and he'd failed her.

It wouldn't happen again. That was a promise he'd made himself, standing in the shadows and watching as a middle-aged mortal helped a young woman place one foot in front of the other, walking down a pretty, flower -lined path. She'd signed herself into a mental health facility and it hadn't come soon enough.

Rafe could still remember how painfully thin the girl had been, how grief-stricken, and the look of utter dejection on her face.

Beyond that driving pain, though, Rafe had seen something else, something that made him feel that much more a failure.

Shooting Kel a dark look, Rafe wished the kid would at least speed up his pace a little. Long-ass walks like this through the woods made for entirely too much thinking time.

Angel had been attacked that night too. Kel still wouldn't talk about it, but Rafe figured Kel had walked in on the attack and by either divine intervention or just plain dumb luck, he'd distracted the vampire before he could drain Angel. Which would piss off any predator. Taking away a predator's meal could make you the replacement. Rafe figured that was what had happened with Kel.

For all Kel's attempts to save his lady, he hadn't been able to stop something from happening to her. Angel hadn't emerged from that night unchanged. At some point, between biting her and attacking Kel, the feral had also forced some of his blood down Angel's throat.

From time to time, some vampires outside the Hunters took on a regular feeding companion. It wasn't exactly forbidden-the Hunters couldn't damn well police every single non-mortal in the world. They were charged with watching those who were a threat to humanity. They weren't there to babysit each and every last vampire, witch, shifter and were in existence. Just the ones that were a threat.

The problem started when a civilian vamp took a regular feeding companion and shared blood. That, in and of itself, posed another problem. The risk of exposure was too damn high. The typical vamp had the common sense to wipe away, or at least alter, any memory of a blood sharing. But there were idiots everywhere and vamps weren't excluded.

With a few minor exceptions, the few times there been a decent risk of exposure, they'd been able to move in time, sending in a vamp with enough power to wipe away memories whether the mortal wanted it or not-and dealing with the vampire dumb enough to get caught in the situation.

Those exceptions were, from time to time, seen in tabloids or on websites, places where nobody would give it much attention.

But sooner or later, Rafe suspected it was going to happen to somebody who could garner attention from some place other than tabloids or some of the Goth communities.

It was part of the reason he forbid any vampire in his territory to have a regular, mortal feeding companion unless the mortal was somehow already aware of their existence. The Council had resisted trying to forbid it among the general population, but they left it up to individual Masters to decide how they'd police their territories.

It was a problem Rafe didn't need or want, so the few times it happened in his land, the offending vamp ended up getting a visit he'd rather not get. But how he ran his territory wasn't going to make a lick of difference to what had happened to Angel. Sharing blood didn't automatically make a mortal a vampire. Some mortals could take a sip or two of vamp blood and it wouldn't do much of anything to them. Others, like Angel, underwent a change of their own, and usually one they weren't even aware of.

Vampire bait.

For some mortals, something about the blood-sharing altered their makeup, made their blood that much more enticing. Over the past few years, there'd been a couple of scientific types among the non-mortals who were bent on figuring out answers to centuries-old questions.

Why the Change killed some and not others.

Why some were born with magick and others weren't.

Why they were even real creatures, instead of myth.

Those science-minded types had a theory. Not all mortals who shared blood with a vampire were going to end up vampire bait. Not all of them would have their blood and genetic makeup altered in the least. It only happened to a fraction of them.

The theory was that those who ended up altered-or vampire bait-were mortals more likely to survive the Change, if a vampire made the attempt to bring them over.

Rafe didn't know, didn't care about the science or the answers, unless it offered a solution. Because vampire bait was a problem. They took on an otherworldly appeal and it wasn't one the weak could easily ignore.

That was the danger. In the hundred plus years that Rafe had been a Hunter, there had been a few accidental deaths when one of these altered humans crossed paths with a vampire who couldn't resist temptation. Draining them to true death, taking so much that the mortal died before the vampire even realized they'd taken too much.

Couldn't even try to Change them at that point-dead bodies can't swallow the blood needed to jumpstart the Change. A vampire could kill in self-defense and while it was frowned upon, it wasn't a violation of Council law. But if a vampire killed outside of self-defense, that was all it would take to trip the internal radar of whichever Hunter was nearby. Whether the mortal death was accidental or not, it ended in a death sentence for the offending vampire.

Over time, most of the civilian vampires decided it wasn't worth the risk. Blood sharing was seen less and less.

Too damn bad nobody had bothered to inform the ferals.

Angel's life had been turned upside down by that attack in so many different ways. One fucked-up night. Violence so rarely affected just a few, but that night had been for the books.

Because of that night, Angelica Pierson was permanently on their watch list. Not because she was a threat, but because too many of their kind might prove a threat to her. The feral that had attacked her probably intended to Change her, but he was interrupted before a full blood exchange was done. Instead, he'd forced enough of his blood down her throat that it had altered hers. She was now vampire bait and that pretty much painted a huge, glaring neon target over her head and now the vampire population, both the good and the bad, presented a threat to her.

A threat she didn't even know existed.

Even Rafe, so in love with his wife he hurt with it, had felt a siren 's call when he looked at Angel. Just before she 'd disappeared into the hospital for a voluntary commitment, he'd felt it.

She was too damn thin, too damn weak, as pale as a ghost and what he should have felt was a need to protect her, a need to fix the damage he'd unwittingly allowed to happen. But instead...he'd felt hunger.

Despite her weak, obviously unwell physical state, he'd looked and he'd hungered. She had a surreal quality, the scent of her blood was like ambrosia and even as laden as she was with grief, the pulse of life inside her was entirely too tempting. Entirely too sweet. She all but shone with it.

Vampire bait. No vamp could possibly look at her and not have the compulsion to feed. Compulsions could be ignored, but walking away from Angel had taken an act of will. He hadn't even understood the why of it until later.

The next day, in fact, trapped inside a hotel while the sun burned overhead, he'd been beating himself up, half-sick with guilt and confusion and then it had come to him. Rafe knew himself. Damn well. He loved his wife. Full stop. All there was to it. Loved her blindly, completely.

In all the years since they'd married, he hadn't once felt tempted. Oh, he'd noticed women. His eyes worked just fine. But the urge to take something he had no right to take? That was new and until he 'd laid eyes on Angel, he wouldn't have seen it happening.

He knew it wasn't normal for him, craving something he couldn't and shouldn't have...so he'd made himself look deeper. At Angelica Pierson, and at his unexpected response. The following night, he'd figured it out. She'd been asleep, but finding her inside the hospital had been easy.

It was almost like something had guided him there, and that in itself was another clue.

Bait. It wasn't the man who had responded. It was the vampire, that dark, surging force inside him, that craved.

Any and every damn vamp who saw her was going to have the same visceral response and not all vamps were the nice type who would just admire, wish and walk away.

So Angel was watched. Treated just like one of the kids the Hunters watched from a distance, the kind who possessed a latent power, the kind of power that called to the evil in the world.

Watched and protected.

Watched. Protected. Hell, just like her sweetheart. The sweetheart in question was still walking on, heading towards town with single-minded focus.

Rafe sighed, shoved a hand through his hair and wished he'd sent Toronto after the kid.

Kel stopped dead in his tracks and turned around to glare at Rafe. It was a moonless night and under the trees the darkness was thick and weighted, but they both saw the other fine.

"If I tell you that I'll feed before I head back tonight, will you leave me the hell alone?" Kel demanded, his voice harsh with aggravation.

A familiar light gleamed in the younger vamp's eyes, but Rafe wasn't about to give Kel the fight he was so desperately looking for. "No. You want me off your ass, you'll just shut the hell up and find somebody. After you feed, I'll leave you alone."

Eyes narrowed down to slits, Kel said, "I can handle this on my own."

Rafe snorted. "Sure you can. But you aren't. You never do. So tonight, I'll make sure you do. And if I have to do this on a regular basis with you, fine. Until you get it in your head that you can't ignore the hunger like this, I'll just play babysitter."

The kid was looking for a fight. Even though he was weak from hunger, Kel was in the mood to brawl. Par for the course.

Happened regularly enough that everybody in the enclave knew the signs. For some, they took them as a signal to give Kel a wide berth until he'd either fed or got the fight he was looking for.

And the others had no problem giving Kel that fight.

Better one of their own than having Kel look outside the enclave for a fight. When that happened, the cleanup got messy. He never went after people who couldn't handle a pissed, heartbroken vampire, which meant he either went on the Hunt or searched out their own kind.

He'd picked plenty of fights that he would have lost, and lost in a big, rather final way, if he hadn't had others watching out for him.

But Rafe was getting tired of making his Hunters play babysitter when Kel got into one of his moods. He was tired of doing it himself, and he was tired of dealing with the cleanup end when Kel's inner rage took control. This shit seriously needed to stop.

Kel took a step forward, his chin angling up. Rafe was tempted to just plant a punch right there, nip this mess before it started.

But until Kel fed, he'd be hanging onto control by a thread. Could be that punching him would just delay the mess. Sure as hell wouldn't prevent it.

"What you going to do, spoon-feed me or something?" Kel gave him an obnoxious smirk.

"If I have to." Rafe looked at Kel, focused-watched as the younger vamp's pale features contorted in a grimace, a muscle jerking near his temple as he fought Rafe's control.

Wasn't too pleasant for Rafe, either, but Kel had to get a grip on reality. Had to accept his life for what it was. If he kept fighting it, it was going to kill him.

Of course, maybe that was what he wanted.

He maintained control over Kel's mind for long, tense moments, forcing the younger vamp into a submissive silence that probably rubbed him raw. Self-disgust tangled with the need to do whatever was necessary to protect his territory, his Hunters.

Including protecting Kel from himself.

Slowly, he released the control and watched grimly as Kel staggered away, swearing at Rafe in a ragged voice.

"I can make you feed, Kel. You know I can."

Angry eyes cut towards Rafe, anger, shame, misery. Did the kid ever feel anything else? Ever let himself? "You son of a bitch, you got no right doing that."

Shaking his head, Rafe said, "You got that wrong. You took a blood oath when you decided to come here. You made vows.

You signed onto a life where you protect people...and right now, you need to get it through your skull that we also have to protect them from us."

Kel slashed a hand through the air. "When have I ever hurt somebody innocent?"