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adopted over the centuries. The vast majority of them were much older and therefore strangers to Simone, having left Tor's pride long ago to follow their own paths throughout the world. Of all Tor’s children, she knew only the four Sekhmi who had remained with the pride—and Antar.  
    Antar was a winged demon and leader of the Legacy of Tyr, a powerful organization whose members included several thousand highly trained immortal warriors of different species. The Legacy was the law enforcement arm of the Confederation of Immortals, an umbrella political body initially formed to prevent the discovery of immortals by humans. It required member species to abide by two main laws: No-Kill and No-Show. Known collectively as the Code, these rules forbid killing humans and revealing the existence of immortal powers to them. The Confederation’s role—and by extension, the Legacy’s—later expanded to encompass general protection of immortals and regulation of interspecies conflicts. The importance of all of these functions meant that the Legacy and its leader, Antar, were granted virtually unlimited power.  
    Simone had been infatuated with Antar for as long as she could remember. As a child, she’d followed him around and spied on him when he came to visit her father. He didn’t pay much attention to her, focusing instead on grown-up business with the King, but sometimes he’d bring her an exotic animal that he’d picked up during his travels. The gifts he chose—mostly lizards and other reptiles, and once a tarantula—were hardly romantic, but Simone had relished the attention as a kind of flirtation.  
    Her childhood crush had changed dramatically when she was sixteen. She’d been in the palace’s library, setting aside the materials from her French lesson and preparing to leave, when the door swung open and Antar stepped into the library.
    It felt like all of the air had been sucked out of the room. It had been three years since she’d last seen him, and she was astonished by his demonic beauty. He was magnificent, towering over six and a half feet, with broad, densely defined muscles bulging in his arms and chest and unruly obsidian black hair falling loosely around his face and neck. He radiated confidence and power even to Simone, who lived surrounded by the most powerful of her species. And what most assaulted her emotions at that moment had been the combination of that power and his incredibly soulful eyes, dark brown pools filled with care and kindness, betraying the depth of his capacity for empathy.  
    Seeing her, Antar smiled broadly. “Hi, Sim! It's been a while since I last saw you. How’re you doing, baby?”  
    It had driven her absolutely apeshit, she remembered, that he called her “baby.” Even though Antar was something like five hundred years old and she was only sixteen, it didn't give him license to call her a baby. She considered herself an adult and wanted to be treated like one— especially by him.
    “Did you bring me a gift?” Simone asked him, flirting.
    “Of course.”  
    He reached into his pocket, retrieving something in his fist, then opened it like a magician. A lizard appeared in his palm. Grinning, he stepped closer to Simone and dropped the cold, slippery thing under the collar of her blouse. Her humiliation at her shrieking, wriggling reaction had transformed to fury when she finally shook it loose only to find that it was just a skillfully made toy. How had she mistaken him for being kind? She threw the lizard at Antar and ran from the library.  
    Later, lying in bed, unable to sleep, she replayed her reaction to seeing Antar. At the memory of his glorious body and dark, mysterious eyes, a liquid heat gathered between her legs. She felt swollen, like she might burst. Seeking relief, she covered the area with her hands, then found herself pressing and rubbing herself, imagining that it was Antar’s hand, and maybe something even more intimate. A moment later, she