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never belong—”
    “Who said anything about bringing them here?” She was purposefully obscuring the issue. The children were entitled at the very least to financial support, guidance for the ones able to shift. The Yaguara called them mutants and until recently had barely recognized their existence.
    Gabriel had been one of the lucky ones, raised in a building owned by a Yaguara who’d chosen to live in the human world with his human mate. He’d grown up surrounded by others like himself. He’d been cared for, made to understand what he was. He’d been taught how to shift and how to fight. Word had spread of their community and by the time he’d returned home from school, that building was full. Gabriel had opened a new shelter, this one a run-down two story home he’d fixed up with his own hands. They now had three shelters in different cities. There had been four until the fire. His fingers flexed into her soft skin and he saw her wince. He gentled his hold but did not release her. “Remember— you came after us. We were content enough on our own until you decided that we were a liability.”
    She frowned at him and if he didn’t know any better, he would have believed the innocent confusion on her face. But he did know better. He knew exactly who she was—the Silveira champion—and she had no claim to innocence.
    ***
    Iada stared at him, shocked beyond speech. Gabriel was speaking to her as if she’d been out prowling the streets of human cities preying on little children. She’d wanted to find out more about her husband before she was forced to confront him. Her uncles had always kept her apart and she’d been focused on her training to the point of almost absolute isolation this past year. Her plan had been to win the tournament and then her life could finally begin. She didn’t know what Gabriel was talking about. She didn’t know anything about him except that he was a mutant, a warrior, undeniably attractive and possibly insane.
    Except she didn’t really believe that he was insane. She thought that she was beginning to understand—Gabriel’s accusations, snippets of overheard conversations between her uncles, the growing unease among the older warriors. It was possible that her uncles had decided to eliminate the mutants, at least those who could shift. She knew they feared exposure to the human world and that they considered the mutants a liability. They’d spoken once of the mutants organizing and Arturo had ordered Vin to look into it. It hadn’t concerned her then and she hadn’t paid it much attention. She didn’t think they’d spoken of it since.
    If her suspicions were true—and that was still a big if—then what Gabriel planned was…noble. How her uncles would laugh over that. At least, they’d laugh over Gabriel’s corpse when this was done and that seemed wrong to her, wasteful.
    She needed to be careful here but she couldn’t think clearly, distracted by the warm hand splayed over her hip, the fingers on her jaw that had gentled and were now softly stroking over her skin. The rain had plastered Gabriel’s dark hair to his head, catching on his thick lashes and running down his sculpted body like water over stone. Steam began to rise from his broad shoulders. Something deep within her that cared nothing for politics or position hummed in appreciation. Mate. She pushed that something down and shook her head to clear it.
    The kind of selflessness that would make a man risk his life for such a cause didn’t really exist. It had been a very long time since she’d believed in such things. It was far more likely that Gabriel was here for the wealth, the position—for the power, just like everyone else. And he would use her to get it if she let him, just like everyone else.
    “Less than a quarter of Yaguara-human pregnancies survive to term,” he was saying. “And of those children, few survive their first change, mostly because there is no one to guide them through it. It