Kiernan wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. He wanted to quit. He’d tried to keep going, but he’d failed, and now he was going to die. Starve to death, freeze to death, get murdered by a man who was both Highly Annoying and Absolutely Terrifying . . . did it really matter?

Vin had given him a mission. A task. And he’d failed to complete it.

He supposed that honor demanded that he keep going. He should stand up and head east, back up the valley, find a way up the cliff—could he get that far? Maybe, if the weather stayed good. No food, and no real way to get food—the snares had sounded useful. He wished he knew how to make snares—and no tent, no pot, no blankets, no axe. Nothing that would help him survive. If he made it up the cliff, how much farther would it be before he’d be out of the mountains? The man had said fifteen days in good weather. That couldn’t be right, but even if it was what Kiernan had originally been told, a matter of several more days, he didn’t see how he could manage it with no food and no equipment.

Not even any breakfast. The rabbit had smelled good as it was cooking, and he’d been tempted to eat some while he waited for the Horrible Man to return, but had thought it would be rude. Rude! The stranger had assaulted Kiernan, robbed him, threatened him, and Kiernan had worried about breaching etiquette?

He’d let himself think the man wasn’t so bad. That had been his mistake. They’d slept together, warm and trusting, and woken up together as if it were natural, as if it were just fine, and Kiernan had let his guard down.

He’d been a fool. And now he was going to die because of it.

Well. He was going to die because the man was a liar, a thief, and a brute. And because Vin sent you into the mountains without a guide or enough food to reach your destination.

But that voice was a traitor, almost literally. Vin was the son of the man Kiernan had sworn himself to serve; Vin would, someday, receive Kiernan’s oaths of loyalty himself. If Vin thought something was important enough to risk Kiernan’s life over, then who was Kiernan to disagree?

His friend. His—

No. He wouldn’t think like that.

Kiernan pushed himself to his feet. The mission had been delayed, that was all. Unexpected obstacles had arisen. But Kiernan wasn’t beaten.

He also wasn’t stupid. If he continued on right then, he’d fail. So he wouldn’t travel east, not yet. He’d go west, and catch up with the murderous bastard. He’d keep his mouth shut and learn from the man and eat his food and sleep by his fire. Sleep in his arms.

He’d do what he had to do in order to stay alive, and when he had the chance, he’d take it. He’d reclaim his gear, take whatever extra he could, and find his way back through the mountains. Back east, where he was supposed to be. Where Vin had sent him.

Kiernan wouldn’t give up. Not ever.

Grif had moved fast at the beginning. Leaving camp, frustrated and confused, he’d let his emotions give him power. He’d had the sense to shed his outer jacket before he started sweating, and then he’d pressed on.

He kept up that pace for longer than he should have, but by midmorning he forced himself to slow down. The fuel of one rabbit was enough to keep him moving, but he had a great distance to travel and it was dangerous to let himself get too tired. He could never know when he might need his energy reserves.

And you want to be sure the pup can catch up.

No, that wasn’t it. He was pleased to be rid of the brat.

Still, he took a long break midmorning and sucked every bit of meat off the bones of the first rabbit without touching the second. It was strapped to the back of his pack, half frozen, waiting for . . .

For dinner, damn it.

When he started out again and hit a wide alpine meadow, he let himself get almost across and then turned to look behind him. And when he saw the dark shape in the distance, struggling along, following Grif’s trail through the snow, there was an unfamiliar warmth in his chest. Kiernan was coming. He wasn’t gone.

“Stupid kid,” Grif growled to himself, but he made camp earlier than he needed to that evening, and he left the rabbit by the fire, thawing, as he went out to set the snares.

He was tired by the time he started back to camp, and that wasn’t good. It had been a fairly light day’s work and he wasn’t that old, yet—he’d lost track of exact years, but there hadn’t been all that many. Was he a decade older than the kid? Maybe.

But some of those years had been damn hard, and by the time he’d been Kiernan’s age, he’d already been on his own for half his life, scrambling in the mud and the blood, fighting for every scrap of bread or blanket. He’d killed and he’d whored and he’d left his childhood behind in so many different ways he wasn’t sure he could count them all.

Kiernan, on the other hand?

Grif couldn’t say for certain. Maybe the kid wasn’t innocent and protected; maybe he was just stupid.

But Grif didn’t think so. Mostly because it wasn’t possible for a stupid person to stay alive as long as Kiernan had, not unless he was also being protected by someone. So Kiernan was either stupid and sheltered or smart and sheltered, but the sheltered seemed undeniable.

Hells, why was Grif wasting any of his energy thinking about any of this?

He was looking for an angle. That had to be it. If someone had taken care of the kid in the past, that same someone might still want to see him protected. Might be willing to pay a reward to someone who’d gone to the trouble of making sure the kid made it home safely.

Yeah, that was it! That was what had been driving Grif all along; his selfish motives were just too deeply ingrained for him to have realized what he was doing. Of course he’d been trying to turn this all to his advantage. He didn’t care about the kid as a person; he was a prize, a chance at profit.

That was reassuring, and Grif found himself significantly less tired as he retraced his steps back to the camp.

Kiernan didn’t eat the rabbit that was sitting by the fire. He hadn’t eaten anything all day, had been allowed only scraps the day before, but he wasn’t a thief.

At least, he wasn’t a thief yet, but if the rabbit sat there much longer, if the Dangerous Man stayed out in the forest for only a few more moments—

“You came to your senses.” The rumbling voice was close behind Kiernan, and he spun around, startled. How did such a big man move so quietly? And why did his first words have to be so aggravating?

“I can’t survive without my equipment.” Kiernan hoped he was speaking with quiet dignity, but worried he might sound like a petulant child. Although, why did he care what tone of voice he used when addressing a murderous thief?

“You can’t survive without food, either,” the man said, and he stepped easily to the fire, crouched, and started hacking at the rabbit with his belt knife. Cutting it—cutting it in half.

Kiernan’s mouth moistened in anticipation. Food! Meat! Not the carefully seasoned and lovingly roasted morsels he would have enjoyed at home, but he was far past caring about that.

He braced himself, though. What humiliation would be required in order to receive the meal? He wasn’t fooling himself; he’d do what was required of him, no matter what it was. His hunger had been strong before the man had returned, but with the first cut of knife into flesh, his need had become almost overpowering. He was dizzy with it, drunk on it, and whatever the brute said, however he abused his power—

But the chunk of meat was passed to him without comment, without demands. Without eye contact, even, as the man busied himself with his own half of rabbit and ignored Kiernan entirely.

A few moments of trying to find the trap, and then Kiernan gave up. He didn’t care about the trap.

He bit into the meat, tore at it, swallowed huge chunks and almost laughed as he thought of his father, his insistence that all meals be treated as special occasions, with proper dress, proper table manners—what would he say if he could see Kiernan now?

What would he say if he could see Kiernan’s dining companion?

Kiernan glanced over at the man and froze midchew. The man was watching him eat, and his gaze was unsettling. There was something almost predatory in it, something that spoke to Kiernan’s body, woke a hunger quite different than the one he was currently satisfying . . .

No. That was unthinkable. Disgusting.

Well, no. Kiernan remembered his thoughts from earlier, when he’d been hunting for the damned imaginary sword. Clearly it hadn’t been unthinkable, and it hadn’t been disgusting, either.

It had been a fantasy. Just an imagining.

All these thoughts raced through his brain as he stared at the subject of his dreaming. And then the man dropped his gaze.

He looked away.

The man—he’d been staring at Kiernan, presumably because he saw something there that he found interesting, or worth staring at. But when Kiernan had stared back—

It made no sense, not according to any social rules Kiernan knew, not according to his own instincts. The man was dominant—absolutely, brutally dominant—so he had the right to direct his gaze wherever he wanted. But he’d turned away. Because . . .?

It was an important question, but Kiernan had no idea how to go about answering it. Instead he said, “Thank you for the food.”

The man glanced back at him, grunted a sort of acknowledgment, and took another huge bite of his own meat.

Kiernan should let it go, but of course he didn’t. “In the future, assuming I ever make it off this snow-cursed mountain, if there was any reason to need to track you, I think a description would be every bit as effective as a name—there aren’t that many men of your size and appearance in this part of the world.” Not as many men as overpowering and dangerously handsome as you. “So I wonder if possibly you’d tell me your name? Just— Well. I don’t like the idea of calling ‘bear’ every time I need your attention.”

“You think you’ll be needing my attention?” And there it was again, a little extra flick of the eyes, the slightest stress on the word attention as if it were standing in for a different word. A much more interesting word. But before Kiernan had a chance to figure out how to respond, the man looked away. “Grif,” he grunted.

“Grif? Is that short for something?”

No response. Possibly because Grif’s mouth was full of rabbit, but it did seem like a strange time for the man to start observing proper dining etiquette.

So Kiernan took a bite of his own rabbit and tried to be satisfied. He’d received food without having to beg, he’d learned his companion’s name, and soon it would be time to sleep, and that meant they’d be under the same blanket again, Grif’s bulk warm and somehow comforting at Kiernan’s back.

None of it made sense. But maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe having the experiences was enough, without having to understand every single detail of the context and implications.

He took another bite of rabbit. He’d made the right decision, following the man—following Grif. It wasn’t the company he would have chosen, maybe, but it was far, far better than being alone.