Pritkin, it’s a hotel room, not a death trap!” A glance over his shoulder showed him impatient blue eyes under a fall of messy blond curls. “Anyway, you’re here.”“I can’t protect you from everything,” he forced himself to say, because it was true. It was also frankly terrifying in a way that his own mortality was not. He’d never had children, but he sometimes wondered if this was how parents felt when catching sight of a fearless toddler confidently heading toward a busy street. Not that his charge was a child, as he was all too uncomfortably aware. But the knowledge of just how many potentially lethal pitfalls lay in her path sometimes caused him that same heart-clenching terror.And the same overwhelming need to throw her over his lap and spank the living daylights out of her, he thought grimly, when she suddenly popped out of existence. “Cassie!

You look furious,” Pritkin said, watching me.“I just—I can’t understand not fighting for your life— for what you want. Just giving up—”A corner of his mouth quirked. “No. You would not understand that. You never stop trying, do you?”“What else is there?”“Despair. Hopelessness. Anger. Depression.”“But those don’t get you anywhere.”He huffed out something that might have been a laugh, only it didn’t sound happy. “No. They don’t.