This was not a man who wanted to give up his mate. This was a man trying to do the honorable thing—and give her a choice, no matter hiw much it cost him.

I told them," he said in a clear, carrying voice, "that they should not give someone as old and powerful as I a daughter to love. That it would end badly.

I suppose we must work on being gracious and grateful until we can do for ourselves. Someday the wheel of fate will put us in a position to be of use to them, and we will remember how much easier it is to give help than it is to accept it.

My grandfather would have loved to have met you," he told her huskily. "He would have called you 'She Moves Trees Out of His Path.' " She looked lost, but his da laughed. He'd known the old man, too. "He called me 'He Who Must Run into Trees,'" Charles explained, and in a spirit of honesty, a need for his mate to know who he was, he continued, "or sometimes 'Running Eagle.' " " 'Running Eagle'?" Anna puzzled it over, frowning at him. "What's wrong with that?" "Too stupid to fly," murmured his father with a little smile.

He was like Superman, but with fangs and oddly impaired morals.

Any idiot can put up a website.

Then he'd come back home and found out that war didn't cause fear- love did.