“Yeah.” Fuck. What the hell did he say?

“I know you had your reasons.”

“Yeah.”

“And I know you didn’t mean to hurt me.” This was spoken with a lift at the end, the words a question, rather than a statement.

“I absolutely didn’t mean to.”

“But you knew it would, didn’t you.”

Wrath put his elbows on his knees and leaned into his heavy arms. “Yeah, I did. That’s why I haven’t been sleeping. It felt wrong not to tell you.”

“Were you afraid I’d refuse to let you go out or something? That I’d turn you in for violating the law? Or…?”

“Here’s the thing… At the end of every night I came home and told myself I wasn’t doing it again. And every sunset I found myself strapping on my daggers. I didn’t want you to worry, and I told myself I didn’t think it would continue. But you were right to call me on that. I had no plans to stop.” He rubbed his eyes under his wraparounds as his head started to pound. “It was so wrong, and I couldn’t face up to what I was doing to you. It was killing me.”

Her hand went to his leg and he froze, her kind touch more than he deserved. As she stroked his thigh a little, he dropped his sunglasses back in place and carefully captured her hand.

Neither said a thing as they held on to each other, palm-to-palm.

Sometimes words were less valuable than the air that carried them when it came to getting close.

As the cold wind blew across the backyard, causing some brown leaves to crackle by in front of them, the lights went on in Beth’s old place, illumination flooding the galley kitchen and the single main room.

Beth laughed a little. “They put their furniture right where mine was, the futon against that one long wall.”

Which meant they had a full view of the couple who came stumbling into the studio and beelined for the bed. The humans were locked lip-to-lip, hip-to-hip, and they landed on the futon in a messy scramble, the man mounting the woman.

As if embarrassed by the show, Beth got off the table and cleared her throat. “I guess I’d better get back to Safe Place.”

“I’m off rotation tonight. I’ll be at home, you know, all night.”

“That’s good. Try to get some rest.”

God, the distance was horrid, but at least they were talking. “You want me to see you back there?”

“I’ll be fine.” Beth burrowed into her parka, her face sinking into the down collar. “Man, it’s cold.”

“Yeah. It is.” As the time for parting came, he was anxious about where they stood, and fear made his vision fairly clear. God, how he hated the lonely look on her face. “You can’t know how sorry I am.”

Beth reached up and touched his jaw. “I hear it in your voice.”

He took her hand and placed it over his heart. “I’m nothing without you.”

“Not true.” She stepped out of his hold. “You are the king. No matter who your shellan is, you are everything.”

Beth dematerialized into the thin air, her vital, warm presence replaced with nothing but frigid December wind.

Wrath waited for about two minutes; then he dematerialized to Safe Place. She had so much of his blood in her after all their time of feeding from each other that he sensed her presence inside the stout walls of the security-laden facility, and he knew she was protected.

With a heavy heart, Wrath dematerialized again and headed back to the mansion: He had stitches to get removed and a whole night to pass alone in his study.

TWENTY-ONE

An hour after Trez took the tray back down to the kitchen, Rehv’s stomach was in full revolt. Man, if oatmeal was no longer a viable food afterward, what was he left with? Bananas? White rice?

Fucking Gerber baby gruel?

And it wasn’t just his digestive tract that was screwed up. If he’d been able to feel anything, he was pretty sure he had a headache along with the tossing nausea. Anytime there was a light source, like when Trez came in to check on him, Rehv’s eyes went on autoblink, flickering up and down in an uncoordinated, ocular version of the Safety Dance; then he’d start to salivate and swallow compulsively. So he had to be nauseated.

As his phone went off, he put his hand on it and brought it to his ear without turning his head. There was a lot going on at ZeroSum tonight, and he needed to keep tabs. “Yeah.”

“Hi…you called me?”

Rehv’s eyes shot to the bathroom door, which had a soft light glowing around the jambs.

Oh, God, he hadn’t had a shower yet.

He was still covered with the sex he’d had.

Even though Ehlena was about a three-hour drive away and he wasn’t on a Web cam, he felt absolutely nasty just talking to her.

“Hey,” he said in a rough voice.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah.” Which was a total fucking lie, and the gravel in his voice made that obvious.

“Well, I, ah…I saw that you’d called me-” As a strangled sound came out of his mouth, Ehlena stopped. “You’re sick.”

“No-”

“For God’s sake, please come to the clinic-”

“I can’t. I’m…” God, he couldn’t bear to speak to her. “I’m not in town. I’m upstate.”

There was a long pause. “I’ll bring the antibiotics to you.”

“No.” She couldn’t see him like this. Shit, she couldn’t see him ever again. He was filthy. A filthy, dirty whore who let someone he hated touch him and suck on him and use him, and force him to do the same to her.

The princess was right. He was a fucking dildo.

“Rehv? Let me come to you-”

“No.”

“Goddamn it, don’t you do this to yourself!”

“You can’t save me!” he shouted.

In the aftermath of his explosion, he thought, Jesus…where had that come from? “I’m sorry…it’s been a bad night for me.”

When Ehlena finally spoke, her voice was a thin whisper. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t make me see you in the morgue. Don’t do that to me.”

Rehv squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m not doing anything to you.”

“The hell you aren’t.” Her voice cracked on a sob.

“Ehlena…”

Her moan of despair came through the phone all too clearly. “Oh…Christ. Whatever. Kill yourself, fine.”

She hung up on him.

“Fuck.” He rubbed his face. “Fuck!”

Rehv sat up and fired the cell phone at the bedroom door. And just as it ricocheted off the panels and went flying, he realized he’d busted the only thing he had with her number in it.

With a roar and a messy scramble, he launched his body off the bed, quilts landing everywhere. Not a great move on his part. As his numb feet hit the throw rug, he went Frisbee, finding air briefly before landing on his face. On impact, a sound like a bomb had gone off rumbled through the floorboards, and he crawled for the phone, tracking the light that still glowed from its screen.

Please, oh, fucking please, if there is a God…

He was almost in range when the door swung open, narrowly missing his head and clipping the phone-which shot like a hockey puck in the opposite direction. As Rehv wheeled around and lunged for thing, he shouted at Trez.

“Don’t shoot me!”

Trez was in full fighting stance, gun up and pointed at the window, then the closet, then the bed. “What the fuck was that.”

Rehv sprawled out flat to reach the phone, which was spinning under the bed. When he caught it, he closed his eyes and brought it close to his face.

“Rehv?”

“Please…”

“What? Please…what?”

He opened his eyes. The screen was flickering, and he pressed the buttons fast. Calls received…calls received…calls r-

“Rehv, what the hell is going on?”

There it was. The number. He stared at the seven digits after the area code as if they were the combination to his own safe, trying to get them all.

The screen went dark and he let his head fall down on his arm.

Trez crouched beside him. “You okay?”

Rehv pushed himself out from under the bed and sat up, the room spinning like a merry-go-round. “Oh…fuck me.”