by Sue Wilder
He’d told her many times that she didn’t deserve the guilt. They’d both been sinners. Through some miracle they’d found their way back and received absolution in each other’s arms. But she had trouble believing him and he understood why. There were still secrets between them. She made a choice out of fear and blind faith, thinking she was saving his life. She performed a blood bond, a bond with magic that was transformative. It had transformed him into a weapon he didn’t want to be, and it had transformed her, too. The enforcer knew what she wanted, to feel normal again. Mortal again. But her life would never be the same.
She’d been so fierce, his warrior girl, fighting by his side. Now that fierceness was not with him but against him, and the consequences to her could be severe.
“Are you even trying to teach me?” she had demanded halfway through the battle, the accuracy of her accusation nearly forcing his retreat. Frustration had roared through him then. He was Three’s master of war, the goddamned origin myth for the most feared creature in the ancient world. And he couldn’t make her understand.
He had frowned, thought about it, and recalled saying, “I’ve never had to teach someone before. It’s just something I know how to do.”
It was a weak explanation and they both knew it. There were tears in her eyes, causing a stabbing guilt. He could be a royal bastard when he wanted, and—apparently—even when he wasn’t trying.
Later, Christan had explained his confusion to Marge—the one woman who knew Lexi the best. She’d been both friend and therapist, and now extended that role to include Christan. So he told her how out of control he felt. How Lexi could be arguing about one thing and mean something different until every word he said felt like quicksand. It was the day Marge had been listening sympathetically to his side of the current battle. Then she heard the details and like any true diplomat, she switched sides. A battle against the Calata would have been preferable at that point.
But what Christan had wanted to know and hadn’t discovered was how to reach Lexi when she stopped the fighting—which she’d done at the precise moment the battle shifted to his advantage. He’d watched, perplexed, as she bent to pick up a piece of shattered crockery from the floor. When she tossed it into the trash, Christan recognized the shift, knew she was retreating behind walls she’d built over a lonely lifetime, walls he could never breach. He wouldn’t let her drift away.
Just prior to that, she’d been accusing him of never listening, which he would admit was true. The weight of command meant accepting the responsibility and not questioning his own decisions. He was used to thinking on his own, evaluating and executing—a word he regretted using when he saw her flinch. There was something about crying in a bathroom, he recalled, because a claw was growing out of her hand, and he’d tried to dampen her fears by pointing out that the claw was a failed shift, a fluke, and had disappeared on its own. After thanking him for that half second of sympathy, there was a definite shift in her tone.
At that point, Christan had felt his best talents were being wasted. Under any other circumstances he would have simply destroyed his opposition and gone on with his life.
Instead he opted for a strategic retreat. He remained silent.
The result had been disastrous.
He recalled, now, the exact way she said the words. No asking permission. Just stating her decision. She wanted to go back to Rock Cove, to the cottage where they’d killed her cat. He’d felt the beat of his heart, slow and heavy in his throat, the anxiety twisting at a visceral level. What could he say? That I know your life has changed and I did that to you?
His mind had raced, running through the options. But he found no explanation, no argument he could mount to absolve himself or to make her want to stay. His sins began with the moment he’d condemned her to the Agreement without asking her first. He remembered that moment vividly, too. Standing in a shadowed hall with torches flaring from the walls. Three, dressed in white as she always was, explaining what she had done and what he would have to do.
“You have no choice, Enforcer. Your warriors rebelled. The women will be killed. The Agreement is the only way.”
“I have to ask her.”
“There is no time. Do you swear, Enforcer?”
He had dropped to his knees, his head bent, and Three’s voice had gentled.
“She will be safe, Christan. She will be alive. Do you swear?”
“Yes,” he’d said hoarsely, “I swear.”
He hadn’t considered the ramifications of reincarnation, the many attempts to start their love again while still dragging around baggage from past lives she didn’t fully remember. And he hadn’t anticipated the malicious intent of the Calata to disrupt what life they had. They’d fought so hard and come so far—he would not let her throw it all away because the blood bond had changed her and she was unhappy with her life.
But he had also changed, and she’d done that to him.
She had performed a blood bond in desperation and turned him into not just an apex predator but something beyond myth and legend. Something he’d never wanted to be. And his changes had also been irrevocable.
Christan’s expression shuttered as his muscles tensed. He might have understood her frustration if they hadn’t been fighting about it. Hell, he had the same frustrations. But there was no way either one of them could go back. Certainly not to Rock Cove, where her cottage still cried for the cat. Or the villa in Florence, where there was nothing but violence and death. Neither place could be called home—a place to go back to, if that was what she was talking about. He didn’t think it was.
He was leaning against the counter, arms crossed and watching as she put her back to the wall. He hadn’t realized she was preparing to leave the field.
“You could end this fight in a second if you wanted to,” she’d said with such finality Christan had straightened with a hard push of his hips, leaving the counter behind him. There were more attempted explanations. More tears and silent condemnation. That was when the outcome of their battle became seared in his mind. He remembered their conversation, could repeat every single word.
“I can’t live this way, Christan. Not anymore.”
“What would you have me do, cara?” he’d asked with brutal honestly. “There is war. You have enemies now. I cannot change the world back for you.”
“No,” she agreed bitterly. “We both made choices for the other without consideration and now live with the consequences.”
“I want you to be happy. I need to protect you. How can that be wrong?”
He’d forced himself to remain relaxed, watched the light in her eyes dim, knew she could never return to the innocence she had before, where there were no nightmares. He had his own nightmares—blood spilled on a road beneath a black moon, a broken body, pale in the starlight. He would not have her in danger like that again when he’d been unable to save her.
“It must be so easy for you.” She had shrugged as if it no longer mattered, and he moved his gaze to the dark window where the night was black. There were no stars visible in the sky. Silence filled the small kitchen they once loved.
“How, cara?” he asked softly. “How is it easy for me?”
“It’s all or nothing with you. You want. You need. Those are things that have no meaning to me anymore.”
“Do I have meaning to you anymore?”
“You once told me, Christan, not to look for happy endings with someone as far away from me as you are.”
The floor had heaved beneath his feet, heavy with the cold weight of dread. He looked steadily at her.
“What, exactly, are you trying to say?”
“All I asked was that you teach me how to protect myself,” she said as she turned to walk away. “And you have politely declined. I will go elsewhere for what I need.”
He wanted her mouth on his, her body pooling against him as he made love to her on a bed draped in white linen. He pushed forward, thrust a hand through his dark hair.
“Cara.”<
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“No.” She said it out loud, would not talk to him telepathically where their secrets were so easily shared.
“I could make you stay,” he had answered, deep in her mind, not even realizing he was speaking in Italian. “I would ask you instead.”
She had hesitated, but the battle had been won—if winning meant losing everything of value.
“Don’t destroy us over this, Christan,” she said without emotion, pausing in the doorway to the bedroom. One hand was braced against the jamb, her back so stiff he thought it might break. “Not this time.”
He wanted to reach out, bury his fingers in her hair and tuck her head beneath his chin. Just hold her in his arms.
But he was feeling a little too dangerous to risk touching her.
And she was too far away.
