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back. “Max, take deep breaths and let it out. Bring your energy down and I’ll move out of your way. You can’t hurt me and you know it.”
    “He says he’s her mate. I don’t want to go through that again.” Linyah turned to look at the men who had come with her. They disappeared as he started to pull the power back. He was going to hurt after this, and he was afraid that his mom would need him. “I don’t want him near us. I can’t let anyone hurt her like that again.”
    His world seemed to close in on him then. There was so much of his power humming through him that he hurt with it. When the darkness rolled over him, Max felt himself being lifted up and knew that it was Carter. He wasn’t going to like this man no matter what he told himself.
    ~~~
    “What the hell was that?”
    Carter sat down with his burden in his arms. Rider got up to pace when no one answered him. The kid was ready to kill him, and Carter had no idea why. He looked at Linyah when she sat down across from him.
    “He and his mother are of a special race. Not many…there are fewer than a dozen left of them, and never have I seen one here on earth.” She turned Max’s head so that Carter could see the mark at Max’s shoulder. “His mother has one too. On her neck. It’s a sigil.”
    “What are they? And how did they come to be here?” She said she didn’t know how these two had survived here, but she told Carter what they were. “And what is that? A Doran?”
    She leaned back, brushing the hair from Max’s face before speaking. “Long ago when we were trying to populate our world, the Doran were plenty. They were killers, I suppose you could call them, a group of fighters that would stop at nothing to keep our world safe. And they did, at great cost to themselves. When I saw young Max today, I spoke to my sister. She said that there are rumors that some of the older ones sent their children here when things were getting bad for them. They were told none survived. I’m thinking that the stories of their death are not true, and that there might be more here than just these two.”
    “But these two did survive. Or one of their family members did.” Carter said nothing as he listened to Rider talk. “When we were in college, she told me some of the things she could do. But there was never anything like this in our conversations.”
    “No, and they have hidden it well. And the fact that no one has figured out what they are makes me think she has some sort of sixth sense as to what she might need to hide and show people.”
    Carter had started to stand when Sina, Linyah’s mother, appeared. She told him to sit down and continued where Linyah stopped.
    “Their bloodline is as long as ours. Their magic—magic that they had long before we met them—was the only thing that kept us from coming to an end. Their ability to fight and to win also kept our borders from being overrun when we were still in the infant stages of getting our lives back. This young man is extremely powerful and has good control of it. I should like to meet his mother now.”
    It looked as if she thought that they should just take her there, but Carter wanted answers too, and shook his head before speaking.
    “She’s injured. Not just from earlier, but from when the blast took out most of the building they were in. She’s in surgery now.” Sina said that she understood and touched her fingers to Max again. Carter felt his cat stir along his skin, and Sina told him that she’d not harm either of them. “I’m sure you won’t, but she’s my mate. Or I think so. I have yet to meet her. But Max smells like her, and I want to protect him as well. So before we take you anywhere near her, I’d like to talk to her first.”
    “Then we shall have to find out.” Max stirred in his arms, but he didn’t wake. Carter wondered if he was going to be all right, and Sina assured him that he would be. “But to take him to his mom like he is will not go over well, I