Rurik replied in kind. “No. She is asleep. What’s wrong?”
“She’s a hunter for the Brotherhood.”
The words were a punch to Rurik’s gut. “How do you know this? I know of her ties to the Brotherhood, but I swear on my life she isn’t a hunter,” Rurik said quietly. She couldn’t have lied to him, not after the way he’d questioned her. She was chemist, not a hunter.
“You can’t trust your instincts. Your dragon is blinded by desire. Remember what happened to Mikhail five hundred years ago? He got too close to the queen of England and ended up in an English prison for forty years.”
Rurik didn’t care for the reminder of their brother’s suffering. He wasn’t Mikhail, and this wasn’t the sixteenth century. He trusted Charlotte. If she said she wasn’t a hunter, she wasn’t.
“I know you don’t want to
