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  Each breath became an event.

  Each heartbeat a victory.

  And then the demon’s cry of triumph became something else. She sensed the change as much as heard it, as the demon screamed, sending its eerie, high-pitched voice into the night to be swallowed by the black. Pushing her from it, the demon staggered back and Julie lay insensible on the sand. Absently she watched as it glared at her, confusion and desperation racing through it as it tried to understand what was happening even while it clawed desperately at the river of her blood still raining down its body.

  The dark stains crept over its flesh, sliding, spilling, moving as if alive. The demon cried again, screaming in anguish as its skin began to bubble and steam. Fury, frustration, disbelief, each emotion chased the next across its features as it dropped to the sand and writhed, limbs twitching in spasmodic jerks.

  Kieran clutched the wound at his side and ran to Julie. His gaze locked on the beast, he watched, spellbound at something he’d never seen in more than four centuries of life.

  The demon was dying.

  Gathering Julie up in his arms, Kieran cradled her against his chest as if he could somehow stanch the flow of her blood if he just held her tightly enough. And while he held her, the demon shrieked one last furious call, then flashed into fire and disappeared.

  At once, the storm around them quieted, the sea calmed, the water lazily stroked the shore with lacy fingers, the wind died into a sighing breeze and the lightning shattered itself behind the clouds.

  “Julie,” he whispered, smoothing her hair back from her face. So pale. Her skin shone like fine porcelain in the dim shadows cast by the subtle shafts of lightning.

  “Don’t go,” he said, cupping her cheek in his palm, tipping her head back. His heart ached, his battered soul wept. “Please don’t go.”

  “Kieran.”

  “Yes. God, yes. Julie. Stay with me.” Frantic now, he covered the wound in her chest with one hand and felt her life’s blood pour from her in an everslowing stream. For the first time in his long, long life, Kieran felt helpless. His strength, his power, his prowess with a blade meant nothing as he knelt in the sand and watched the woman he loved slowly die.

  “Have to tell you,” she whispered, and her voice was hardly more than a sigh of sound that slipped into his soul and settled there. “Love you, Kieran. Always.”

  His heart shattered in his chest and agony like nothing he’d ever known welled up inside him. He was loved and he was losing her and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  “I love you,” he said and dipped his head to take one sweet kiss. To feel her mouth beneath his one more time. To know the brush of her breath on his skin.

  He stared into her eyes and in a rush of knowledge, ancient words came to his mind unbidden. Taking her hand in his, he felt the power of those words slam into him and the need to say them to her was overwhelming. When he spoke, his voice was no more than a whisper of sound, softer than the wind, more powerful than the sea. “Destined Mates, through time, through eternity. Bound together by ties no man can break. Two bodies, one heart. I claim you and offer you all I am.”

  She smiled and then sighed her last breath.

  Clutching her to him, burying his face in the curve of her neck, he lost himself in the warmth still clinging to her skin, the scent of her faint, floral perfume and the silky feel of her hair.

  Emptiness yawned inside him, swallowing his heart, his soul, leaving him a hollowed-out shell of a man. And in his mind, the centuries stretched out before him like eternal torment. He tightened his grip on Julie and holding her close, leaned his head back and shouted at the heavens.

  “Damn you, bring her back!” As his fury mounted, the storm began to churn again in response to the earthshaking power rattling from him. But Kieran was past caring. The demon was dead—but so was Julie and someone was going to pay. Staggering to his feet, Kieran held her body in his arms and screamed his rage at the Fates who would give him his Mate and then take her from him.

  “Michael, hear me!” he shouted, his voice raw with the agony stabbing at him. “Restore her. She wasn’t a part of this!”

  Thunder crashed overhead, lightning arced in white-hot bolts that stabbed the sand in a wide circle around him, but Kieran stood his ground, a warrior ready to battle whatever he had to. All he cared about…all he’d ever loved in four long centuries, was dead in his arms. Dropping to his knees, Kieran gave in to the pain racking his soul, bent his head to Julie’s and felt hot tears pour from him in a flood of emotions that had been dammed up for far too long.

  When another bolt of lightning appeared right beside him, Kieran didn’t even look up. “She’s dead, damn you,” he muttered to the man who stood close.

  “I know,” Michael said and went down on one knee beside his old friend. He glanced across the sand to the blackened spot where the demon had been destroyed. “The demon’s dead. She killed it. ‘Blood of the innocent.’

  Her freely given gift of selflessness has banished the evil. This time permanently.”

  Kieran lifted his head and glared at the tall, dark-haired man he’d known so well for so long. “Do you think I give a damn about the demon?” He shifted his gaze back to the woman lying so lifeless in his arms and stroked one hand along the line of her jaw. “I care only for her. Restore her, Michael. This wasn’t her fight. I won’t let her die.”

  “And if it’s her fate to die?” Michael asked.

  “The hell with Fate,” he shot back, snapping a glare at the other man. “You brought me back from the dead. Do the same for her.”

  Michael studied him for a long, thoughtful moment, then reached out with one hand and touched Julie’s cheek. Instantly her eyes fluttered, opened, and she smiled. “Kieran?”

  He grinned and felt his cold, dead heart jump to life again. “Julie. Thank God. How do you feel?”

  “Strange,” she admitted and clumsily pushed out of his arms, looking around her as though trying to figure out where she was and how she’d gotten there.

  Kieran’s arms felt empty without her, but he fisted his hands to keep from grabbing her again. Whatever happened next, he wouldn’t interfere. He wouldn’t try to make her stay with him. He would let her go if that was the price for her life. At least he would know that she lived. Silently he stood, then held out one hand to help her to her feet. She looked at the man beside him and asked, “Who are you?”

  “I’m Michael.”

  She shot a quick look at Kieran. “Michael?”

  “Yes,” he said and couldn’t take his gaze off of her. Blood stained her dark blue sweater and shone in the pale wash of golden light that seemed to always surround Michael.

  “I don’t understand,” Julie said, worry glittering in her eyes. “What happened? Kieran—the demon?”

  “Dead.”

  “Dead? How?” She pushed her hair back out of her eyes and looked from one man to the other, obviously confused.

  “What do you remember?” Michael asked.

  “The fight,” she said instantly, biting at her lower lip and furrowing her brow as she tried to make sense of too many things at once. “The demon, it stabbed Kieran and I was so furious, I grabbed a rock and—” She stopped, stared at Kieran and said, “It stabbed me. I fell and you were there and you kissed me and I…died.” She staggered back a step or two, wrapped her arms around her middle and whispered, “Oh God, I remember dying. The whole bright light thing and everything.” Her gaze snapped up.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Before Kieran could speak, Michael silenced him with a look. “You killed the demon with a selfless sacrifice,” he said and his voice was almost like a song, perfect and slow and beautiful. “And now, there are choices to be made.”

  “Choices?” Kieran’s gruff voice interrupted and he took a step toward the other man as if readying to do battle again. “The choice is made. She lives. And she will continue to live.”

  Michael held up one hand and swept his
dark gaze from Kieran to Julie and back again. “No one saw this coming,” he admitted with a shrug. “We didn’t know that you were Destined Mates—or that Julie would sacrifice herself for you, Kieran.”

  “We?” Julie asked pointedly.

  Michael ignored her. “As Destined Mates, though, you must be allowed to remain together. The question is…how?” Drawing a deep breath, the big man continued slowly. “Kieran can choose to leave immortality and the never ending struggle against the darkness behind and become human. To live a mortal life with you, Julie.” He paused a moment to let those words sink in before adding, “Or…you can choose to become a Guardian. An Immortal.”

  Silence dropped over the three of them until Michael spoke up again. “The choice is yours, but you must decide quickly.”

  Kieran ignored his old friend, stalked across the space separating him from Julie, grabbed her arm and walked her a few steps farther away. Cupping her face in his palms, he stared into her eyes and smiled, really smiled for what felt like the first time ever.

  “I will make the choice, Julie,” he whispered. “I’ll become a mortal. I don’t need this life. All I need is you. If you will have me.”

  Julie reached up and covered his hands with her own, drawing in one tentative breath as if testing to see if she really was alive again. But she was. He felt warm and solid and wonderful. She remembered the words he’d spoken to her as she lay dying and they echoed inside her with a power she couldn’t deny, even if she’d wanted to. Which she didn’t.

  “Kieran, I know you love what you do—”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but she placed her fingers on his lips to keep him quiet. “And what you do is too important for you to walk away from.”

  “No,” he argued, kissing her fingertips. “Nothing is more important than you.”

  “Thank you.” She smiled and asked quietly, “But, if I were to become an Immortal, could we get married? A real wedding, with guests and my family and everything?”

  “Of course.”

  “Could we have children?”

  That beautiful smile faded a little as he shook his head. “No, immortals cannot have children. You would be surrendering your right to ever have your own family.”

  She took his hands tightly in hers as understanding dawned. “That’s why you give so much to children’s causes, isn’t it? Why you so enjoy spending time with kids.”

  He nodded and leaned in to kiss her forehead. “We could have that, Julie. Share in the world’s children. Even adopt if we wanted to. Other Immortals have.”

  Swallowing hard, she sadly let go of the dream of her own children and opened herself up to other possibilities. Then she asked, “Can I maintain contact with my family?”

  “Certainly,” he said, his thumbs stroking her temples. “For a while, anyway. Eventually you would have to settle for phone calls and e-mail, since you would not age and they will.”

  Never to grow old. How strange that seemed. “And I would have you?”

  “Always,” he said, his voice a sigh of want and need and love. “For the first time in my too-long life, I know what love is. It is you, Julie Carpenter. You are my heart. My soul. My life. And I will love you, eternally.”

  “And I will love you just as long, Kieran MacIntyre.” Taking a breath, she gave him back the words he’d given her just before she died. “Destined Mate. Two bodies, one heart.”

  Finally the decision was so easy. To live forever in love with Kieran? How could she possibly turn that down?

  Together, they turned to face Michael and his wide smile let them know how pleased he was by their choice. Stepping forward, he laid one hand on Julie’s forehead and she stood still as a flood of warmth and strength and power rushed through her body, tingling every nerve ending, filling every vein.

  The wind felt stronger, the roar of the ocean somehow purer and the light shimmering around Michael was so beautiful her eyes ached with it. Every sense she possessed was heightened as she took her first deep breath as an Immortal.

  “Welcome to the ranks of the Guardians, Julie Carpenter,” Michael said as he stepped back from them. “See that your Mate trains you well.”

  And in a blinding flash of white-hot light, he was gone. The storm slowly blew out over the ocean, clouds dissipating to allow the moonlight to stream down onto the beach, illuminating Julie and Kieran in a pale glow that felt like a blessing.

  Leaning into the man she loved, Julie wrapped her arms around his middle and turned her head to look up the cliffs at the school they’d left what felt like a lifetime ago. “I suppose you’d better get back in there and finish entertaining the kids.”

  He held her tightly to him, then turned her face up to his for a long, soulbinding kiss. “I think the children have had enough storytelling for one evening.”

  “But we can’t just disappear. What will everyone think?”

  “They will think that the eccentric and reclusive Kieran MacIntyre wanted some time alone with the woman who stole his heart.”

  “Oh,” she said and smiled up at him. “In that case…” She looked around them at the empty beach and the miles of sand stretching out on both sides of them. “Now that I’m a Guardian, too, does that mean I can make myself hidden, too?”

  “It does,” he said and his eyes flashed as he picked up on her intentions.

  “Then why don’t we take advantage of that little trick right now?”

  “Woman, you will be the death of me,” he said, smiling as he followed her into the moonlit darkness.

  “Don’t worry, love,” she said as she stepped into his arms and lifted her face for his kiss. “We’re Immortals.”