Amber Fire by Lisa Renée Jones Page A

from shifting and ripping Mike’s throat out—to hell with his gun and to hell with the populated area—but suddenly Mike jerked forward, his eyes rolling back in his head. An instant later, blood poured from his mouth and he collapsed into the room. Mike was dead. Evelyn had killed him.
    â€œHe was lying,” Evelyn whispered, dropping her gun and her barely raised head back to the ground. “The letter,” she whispered, barely audible. “In the duffel bag—his . . . car.”
    Amber broke for the door, but Jareth snagged her arm. Sirens sounded in the distance, the human officials on their way. Chase would handle them. Jareth had not doubt Chase was the reason they hadn’t been attacked again. “Wait, baby.” He sensed no imminent threat, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Not with Amber. “Once I know it’s safe out there, we’ll get the letters. We’ll find out the truth.” He thumbed away the dampness on her cheeks. “I promise. You’re not alone in this. You’ll never be alone again.”
    She hesitated, and then buried her face in his chest. “Neither will you,” she vowed, wrapping him in warmth. He held her close, where he planned to keep her for the rest of her life. He would never let the Hunters, or anyone else, hurt her again.

Epilogue
    C offee and the Danishes that Amber adored in hand, Jareth returned to the London hotel room they’d been in for more than two weeks to find his mate lying on her stomach across the bed, in nothing but a pair of red panties and a matching bra, her perfect creamy white butt cheeks in full, perky display. In the three months he’d been given—or rather ordered to take by the council—to honeymoon, the woman had kept him in a perpetual state of erection that he would have acted on relieving again now, if not for the letter she was reading. Her mother’s letter.
    â€œHi,” she said, sitting up and disposing of the letter on the nightstand. She rubbed her hands together. “Yum. You got them.” He sat down and opened the lid, displaying the chocolate-filled, flaky pastry. Her eyes lit and she reached for one. “I love these things so, so much.” She bent forward and kissed his cheek. “And I love you.”A smile filled him. He’d never get tired of how easily she said that to him.
    She savored a bite of her pastry and then sighed. “Have I mentioned I’m really glad that being a Yaguara does not mean eating raw meat?”
    He laughed. “Several times.”
    â€œThe whole die-in-childbirth thing is bad enough,” she said. “I’m just relieved the mating cycle for the men is once a year. But for the record, the raw meat would have really been the final straw. I might have left you.”
    â€œIs that so?”
    She nodded and ate another bite of her pastry. “Oh yes,” she teased. “Most definitely. I’ll have to find a new pastry indulgence when we get back to Nevada.” She turned serious, abandoning her food. “The Sentinel duty thing does make me nervous. I think I might become the insanely protective mate, rather than you. I saw how crazy the Hunters are. How out for blood they are.”
    â€œIs that what has you reading your mother’s letter again?”
    She nodded, flicking a bit of chocolate from her lip. “The tragedy of it all tears me up inside. My mother knowing she was going to die. She didn’t want to go to her people. She knew she had the pregnancy sickness that had killed so many Yaguara before her. She didn’t want my father to spend the entire nine months grieving. I can’t imagine what he must have felt when he read her letter explaining it all. Even expressing regret that she wouldn’t be around to teach me about my heritage. She loved her people and he had been hunting and killing them.”
    â€œYour people too,” he reminded her. He slipped