Page 1 of Protector Unmatched

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“You’ll be murdered!”

At the words, Pearce spun around, hair dripping wet, feet bare, and nearly dropped the towel he’d been about to remove from where it covered his naked skin from waist to knees. He held the damp towel in place and stared at the intruder.

It was an unwritten rule at the compound that nobody entered a warrior’s private quarters without invitation. In the many years that he’d lived in Baltimore, nobody had ever intruded his privacy. Even though there were locks on the doors, nobody ever used them. What would have been the point? A Stealth Guardian could walk through walls and doors as if walking through air, thus rendering locks useless. However, the human wives of his compound comrades were another matter—they didn’t possess the abilities of their preternatural husbands. Same went for the female psychic in their midst. Although she had supernatural skills, walking through walls wasn’t one of them. Hence she’d simply opened the door—without invitation and, apparently, without knocking first.

“What the fuck, Winter?” he growled at her.

Brushing away the reprimand as if she didn’t care, Winter approached. “Didn’t you hear me, Pearce? You’re going to get stabbed!”

“Yeah, I believe it. Just as soon as Logan finds you in my quarters!”

Winter’s mate, his fellow Stealth Guardian Logan, was a fiercely possessive man and skilled with his deathly dagger. If he found Winter in Pearce’s rooms, wearing a bathrobe over her flimsy nightgown, with Pearce half-naked to top it all off, there’d be hell to pay. At best, Logan would beat the crap out of him; at worst, he’d use his dagger, a weapon that could kill even an immortal, to inflict real damage.

“Are you out of your fucking mind, coming here? What if Logan finds you in my rooms?”

She made a dismissive hand movement. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist. He’s in the shower.”

“Yeah, so was I,” Pearce said dryly, making a corresponding motion with his free hand, the one not currently clutching the towel. “And now, I’d like to get dressed.” He pointed to the door. “Without an audience.”

“You don’t understand,” Winter continued, her voice laden with frustration. “It’s not Logan who’s gonna kill you, but Daphne.”

Water dripped into Pearce’s eyes, and he wiped his hand over his face and brushed his wet hair, which was in need of a trim, back. “Who the fuck is Daphne?”

“The woman who killed you in my vision.”

“You had a vision about me?”

She let herself fall onto the couch and sighed. “Finally, you’re getting it. If you’re that slow on the uptake, no wonder you’re gonna get killed.”

Pearce rolled his eyes. “You could have led with this.”

“With what?”

“The fact that you had a vision. And with knocking first.”

“Well, sorry for being concerned, but my visions are never wrong.” She rose with a huff. “But if you’d rather run into danger without being prepared, be my guest.” She headed for the door.

“I’m sorry, Winter. Don’t go.”

At the door, she hesitated, then turned slowly. “So, you believe me now?”

“I never said I didn’t believe you. I just wasn’t pleased about your mode of delivery. It’s not every day that a man finds out he’s gonna be murdered.”

“Stabbed by a Stealth Guardian dagger, to be exact,” she said. “By a woman!”

“A female demon,” Pearce corrected her.

Winter shook her head, though the motion was hesitant. “I don’t think so. I can’t say for sure, but I think she was human.”

“What makes you think that?”

“She had an injured arm. The wound was bleeding. Red.”

“No green blood? You sure about that?” There were two ways of recognizing a demon. One was their green blood. “And her eyes? Were they green?”

“I couldn’t tell the color, but they didn’t glow poison-green like I’ve seen in other demons.”