“He is dangerous, mon ami.”

“Very dangerous,” I said. “You hurt his ego and you damaged his reputation. He’s still fighting to regain the respect of his own hyenas.”

“Kane says that the hyenas have gone back to their old ways and it is business as usual.”

“If Kane truly believes that, then he’s delusional in more than one way,” I said.

“How is he delusional?” Asher asked.

“That someone as vindictive as Narcissus won’t get his revenge on Kane and you.That obsession is the same thing as love. That if you’re possessive enough and want it badly enough, the person you love will love you as much as you love them. That any one person could keep you content.”

“Even I thought that the right person could do the last part.”

I shook his hand where he still held mine. “You were delusional, too, remember?”

He smiled. “Yes, I do.”

“We really do need to get going, Anita,” Nathaniel said. I looked at him and there was a new, more serious person looking back at me. He’d probably been stronger and more sure of himself for a few months, but I hadn’t quite realized it until this moment when he stood there holding someone he’d been in love with enough to want to offer a ring, and he was ready to leave him and the apology of epicness behind.

“My words have not moved you,” Asher said.

“The apology is great, almost perfect, and if you can do the same for Dev, then we can all sit down when we come home and talk about being together again, but I’m still going to Ireland.”

“Do you think I am lying?”

“No, but we will be with the police and one of the good things about vampires being known under the law is that they have to obey the law, too, so if she tries to harm Damian, or me, or Anita, the human authorities can come down on her.”

“What can they possibly do to her?”

I said, “I keep hearing about her castle by the sea. I wonder what would happen with a few well-placed bombs, or even missiles. We are going to be playing with military friends.”

“Blowing her lair up would not rescue Damian, or Nathaniel, or you, but only make you die with her.”

“I’m just explaining that once we can bring the full weight of human intervention into vampire hunting, the options get really fun.”

“Mon ami, the Harlequin and other bodyguards are also going with them. It is not merely human police and soldiers who will be protecting them.”

“Then I must be content with that.”

“Yeah, you must,” Nathaniel said.

Asher looked at him. “You are very angry with me.”

“Yes, I am. Did you expect that I would accept your apology and everything would just go back to the way it was?”

Asher did that long blink that meant he was thinking. “Perhaps.”

“I’ve had months of you not with me. I didn’t just curl up into a corner and wait for you. I never dreamed you’d work through your issues and be willing to get on medication.” Nathaniel let go of Asher’s hand. “None of us expected that from you.”

“It is a sign of how much I want to be well enough to be with you again.”

“It’s a sign of how unhappy you are with just Kane,” Nathaniel said.

As if his name had conjured him, Kane swept the drapes aside and strode into the room. If I could see him objectively, he was tall, dark, and sort of handsome. Okay, maybe he was handsome, but the scowl on his face and the sourness of his energy just sort of ruined the packaging for me. His hair was almost black, but cut short and styled close to his head so that the hairdo looked like a hundred you see every day. He was attractive but in a totally mundane sort of way. He looked like someone that my college roommate might have wanted to date, but not someone that should have been Asher’s main squeeze. Maybe it was having so many memories of him with Jean-Claude; after that, everyone else looked sort of ordinary. Okay, not everyone. Nathaniel wasn’t, or Micah, or . . . maybe it was love that made people more than ordinary, and I so did not love Kane.

“I knew it. You are poisoning him against me!” was Kane’s opening remark.

“You do your own poisoning,” I said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked as he came farther into the room.

One of the guards moved in front of him. Kane snarled at him, the echo of his beast trickling through it so the hairs on the back of my neck rose. “Are you so afraid of me that you have to use bodyguards?”

“Last time you took a swing at me, I bloodied you and put a gun to your head, Kane. I think the guards are to protect you, not me.”

The snarl turned into a growl that reverberated through the room. The guard said, “You start to shift and I’ll hurt you.”

“Asher, are you going to let them talk to me this way?”

“We have a plane to catch, Anita,” Nathaniel said, and this time he meant it because he went for the far drapes that led to the door up and out.

I started to follow him and then looked back at Jean-Claude. “Let’s say good-bye some more on the way up the stairs.”

“I think that is an excellent idea, ma petite.” Acknowledging it was his way of admitting that he didn’t trust himself alone with this new contrite Asher either.

I held my hand out to him and he came to take it.

Asher said, “Am I forgiven anything?”




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