Darkness had fallen by the time the storm ended. Kaylee walked out onto the back porch and looked out at the yard, lit up by the glow of the porch light. She looked down the long porch and saw Jake and Angela cuddling on the porch swing. Kaylee walked with bare feet down onto the wet grass and across the yard to the swing set. She sat down on one of the swings and suddenly the urge to become a little kid again came over her.

She began to turn around and around, twisting the chains until they could not be twisted any more and then with a laugh she lifted her legs and held on tight as the swing spun quickly and her red hair was sent flying around her. Her stomach flipped and her adrenaline rose all as she laughed happily.

Things were so much simpler as a kid... Back when the hardest thing she faced was a ticked off uncle Jake in the mornings when her yelling would wake him up. Back before the wars and the killing. Back before chasing after murderers and thieves. Back when she still had her parents and she hadn't yet given her heart to a demon she could never really have.

She was just about to twist the chains of the swing again when a body suddenly appeared in the grass at the edge of the porch light. She heard Jake growl and jump to his feet and she stood as well and took a deep breath to catch the scent of the newcomer.

It was familiar and smoky and it made her heart race. 'Damien?' she thought and the next word to flash through her mind had her knees buckling and her grabbing onto the swing for support.

'Mate!' the wolf inside her screamed. 'The mate is hurt! Help the mate! He is bleeding. He is in pain! Save the mate! Comfort him!'

Damien was her mate? He couldn't be... Surely the wolf in her must be mistaken. She had known Damien for almost twenty years... If he was her mate she would have realized it before now!

"Damien!" Kaylee screamed loudly as she ran across the yard toward him.

"Stay away Kaylee!" Jake warned as he walked off the porch.

"Jake, that's Damien!" Kaylee replied. "He's hurt! I have to help him!" Jake stopped walking suddenly when he caught both Kaylee and Damien's scent join together on the breeze. They were mates. He had not noticed it before and he wondered why... A demon in the family? This was going to be interesting.

Kaylee fell to her knees beside Damien. He was laying on his stomach, face down in the wet grass. His long muscular body was naked and covered in blood. She rolled him over and gasped when she saw the shape he was in. His body had been ripped apart. The flesh and muscles all ripped through and mutilated across his stomach and chest. Kaylee was not a woman who fainted or panicked easily but the sight of Damien looking so pale and near death had her coming nearly undone. It did not help that the wolf in her was panicking that the mate was in pain.

"Damien, wake up..." she said gently as she laid her hand on his pale, face that was drawn tight with pain. He gave no indication that he heard her or that he was even alive.

"Angela, save him." Kaylee said looking up at her aunt with helplessness. Angela nodded and stepped forward but Jake grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

"No." he said.

"Yes!" Kaylee exclaimed. "You can't just let him die!"

"He will not die, Kaylee."

"Let me heal him, Jake." Angela said, even though she wasn't sure just what she could do... His body was a mess.

"No, Angela. Demons do not like accepting help from anyone. He would not want you to heal him because he would not like feeling as if he owes you."

"Jake, he needs help!" Angela argued with her hands on her hips. Jake nodded.

"We'll take him inside and put him in a room. He'll heal on his own... I'm not sure why he hasn't healed already." Jake bent down and picked Damien up, tossing the bloody demon over his shoulder. He carried him into the house with Angela and Kaylee on his heels and up to the spare room that Vanessa had used before fully mating to Kayleb.

Kaylee dropped to her knees beside the bed and stared at Damien's pale face. She wanted to see his eyes... His blue eyes that always looked at her with such caring. She still didn't understand why the wolf in her was just now realizing he was her mate. All she knew was that she was finally allowed to love the man that had her whole heart and she could be with him forever...

"Kaylee, did you know?" Jake asked from the doorway. Angela had already left to their bedroom and Jake knew she angry with him for not allowing her to heal Damien. Kaylee turned to look at him.

"Know what?" she asked. Jake pulled off his blood covered shirt and ran his hand through his long black hair.

"That he is your mate?" Kaylee shook her head.

"Not until tonight."

"How long have you known him?" Kaylee turned and looked back at Damien, running her fingertips gently along his tense jaw.

"Almost twenty years. I guess I don't really know him though.... He has always just shown up when I've needed him and I've never understood why." Jake looked thoughtful when she turned back to him and she stood up.

"What are you thinking?" she asked.

"Kaylee, your wolf should have known right away."

"I don't understand...."

"There has to be a reason your wolf didn't know.... And a demon does not just make friends with werewolves, Kaylee."

"What are you saying?" Kaylee asked suspiciously.

"He is a demon. He knows magic. There's a good chance he knew all along that he was your mate."

"Damien would not do that to me." Kaylee said, growing defensive.

"It's the only explanation I can think of." Jake replied with a shrug. "He must have been hiding it from you whenever you were together but now that he is unconscious his defenses have slipped."

"Get out, uncle Jake!" Kaylee demanded, stomping her foot and reverting back to the angry teenager she had once been. Jake nodded and walked out of the room without another word.

Kaylee stood beside the bed and looked down at Damien lying in the bed. The wolf in her craved to be near the mate. To curl up against his mangled body and provide him with warmth and comfort. But the woman in her was not so quick to forget what her uncle had said.

She wished she could just forget his words and tell herself that Jake did not know what he was talking about but that would be a lie. Her uncle Jake might be overprotective and easily angered but he was smart and he knew just about everything there was to know about all immortal creatures.

Kaylee herself knew that demons were cold heartless creatures who felt they were above the 'lower creatures' such as weres, vampires and mortals. They fed off of innocent souls and pain and were completely evil. Damien had been the exception to that rule. Or so she had thought.

Was he heartless and cold enough to hide the fact that he was her mate from her? She looked into her limited knowledge of demons and realized that she had never heard of a mated demon pair. She didn't think demon's even had mates. Maybe Jake was wrong and Damien hadn't known. But then why had he kept such a close eye on her the last twenty years? She thought back to the day she had met him.

The bombs and gunshots were blasting all around her in the desert heat. She was screaming both telepathically and out loud for Kayleb but she couldn't find him anywhere among the rubble that was left of the building they had been in.

All the mortal troops were dead and still the rebel fighters kept firing shots. Maybe they didn't know they had already completed their task or maybe they just hated the American soldiers so badly they were hoping to kill them all over again.

Kaylee had screamed and been overwhelmed with pain when a barrage of machine gun fire cut through her. She could no longer hold herself upright as her legs were turned to hole filled, useless stumps and as she fell the shots moved higher and higher until she was completely riddled with bloody holes.

She laid on the ground, staring up at the cloudless blue sky and wondered if there was anyone alive who had eyes that blue... She would love to have eyes that color instead of the plain brown ones she had been born with.

She heard the silence as the gunshots ceased and then she heard the sound of boots and voices speaking a language she did not understand. The brightness of the sun was hidden as a figure stepped over her and looked down at her face.

She could tell the instant he realized she was still alive. His face contorted with disgust, fear and rage and she knew why. If she was mortal she would already have died from loss of blood. She could feel it all pooling beneath her.

"Demon!" he hissed. If Kaylee hadn't been in so much fiery pain she would have told him he had the wrong mythical creature. He pressed the barrel of the rifle he was holding against her forehead and Kaylee closed her eyes and prepared herself for the pain she knew she would feel. But instead of a gunshot, the air was filled with a deafening primal scream of anger.

At first Kaylee thought maybe Kayleb had come to her rescue but the yell sounded wrong. She opened her eyes when she heard the rebels around screaming with fear as their guns once again roared to life. She couldn't sit up because the bullets had rendered her body useless but she turned her head toward the action and saw a blur moving so quickly she could not tell if it was a person or a shadow. It took only seconds before silence fell over the hot desert wasteland. The rebels all lay dead and bloody on the dusty ground.

"Kayleb!" Kaylee called out weakly. She didn't know what the hell had just killed all the rebels but she didn't want it getting her next. Where the hell was her brother?

"Are you okay, wolf?" A deep, cold but somehow soothing voice asked. Kaylee looked back above her at the new figure currently blocking out the sun and felt her breath catch in her chest. He was tall she could tell, he had long lean legs wrapped in dark denim jeans that were faded just slightly at the thigh. His white button down shirt looked clean, stark and spotless, which she found odd considering he had just single handedly killed thirty armed men. He had lean hips, broad shoulders and his muscular frame was clearly defined in his clothes... But it was his face that truly took her breath.

She had never seen a man more handsome in all her life. His blond hair was curled slightly and it was just long enough to look careless without looking messy. His face was boyish, almost angelic and it was expressionless as he stared down at her with eyes as bright a blue as the cloudless sky behind him.

"Yes. Are you going to kill me now?" she asked, figuring it was better to know than to be caught completely off guard. His left brow raised ever so slightly and he studied her with concentration as if he was trying to piece together a very difficult puzzle.

"No." he replied simply. He knelt down beside her and his smoky scent filled her nostrils and somehow brought her comfort even as she realized what he was.

"You're a demon!" she gasped as she tried to move away from him, more out of habit than actual fear. A demon was not a creature you wanted to get very close to. She thought for sure she saw hurt in his eyes as he stood back up but then decided it must have been a trick of the light as his eyes once again turned cold.

"You will live. I must go." he said and he turned to walk away.

"Stop!" Kaylee called. She couldn't explain why she didn't want him to leave but for some reason his presence brought her comfort despite her pain. He turned and looked at her keeping that indifferent look on his face.

"What?"

"Thank you for stopping that man." she said. "And all the others." she added.

"Do not thank me." he said. "I was going to kill them anyway." Kaylee nodded and pulled herself into a sitting position as her body began to heal.

"I'm Kaylee." she said holding out her hand. He stared at her hand for several long moments as if trying to figure out what she wanted him to do and then he reached out and grasped her hand gently.

"Damien." he replied and Kaylee felt sparks of heat at his touch. Then a sensation came over her and the air surrounding their hands began to glow with a white light. She looked at his face but his eyes were closed.

Her soreness and pain faded away and she looked down at her body to find that every single wound was gone. He released her hand and moved away from her. He stared at her yet again as if she was a puzzle and then he turned and disappeared into the dusty haze surrounding them.

Kaylee looked down at Damien lying unconscious and bloody on the bed and suddenly realized that he had known. He had known all this time that he was her mate and he had hidden it from her. She did not know why he would do such a thing but it would explain the puzzled way he had looked at her back then and the way he had always seemed to show up when she needed him.

Suddenly all her sympathy for his current condition left her and she just felt angry. How dare he hide something like that from her? She had spent twenty years fighting against her feelings for the demon because she'd been waiting for her real mate and all along he had known that he was the mate she was waiting for!

She stood and walked out of the room slamming the door behind her. She walked down the hall to her own bedroom. She pulled off her clothes, slipped into a pair of lounge pants and a pink tank top and climbed in her bed. Whenever that damn demon finally woke up he had a heck of a lot of explaining to do.