Richard snapped his fingers, and the sharp noise brought my attention back to him. He was frowning. "Are you actually turning me down?"

This was too hard a question for me. I closed my eyes so I couldn't see either of them. "Not exactly, but I need to know what to expect, Richard. I need to know what this changes."

"Every third day or so, I come to your house, and you feed the ardeur. "

I opened my eyes then. "Just a little sex, and that's it."

"What do you want from me, Anita?"

I pushed away from the door, because now I was getting angry. "Not dating, just fuck-buddies, is that it?"

"You're living with two men now, I don't think there's room for me in your life."

What I wanted to say was, if you can just fuck me and nothing else, then we were never really in love. What I said out loud was, "It's not just the sex I miss, Richard. I miss weekend movie marathons. I miss going places with you. I miss you, not just your body, Richard." I almost kept the next part to myself, but I had to know. It was time. "Do you miss me, Richard, or just my body?"

I managed to make it neutral, very neutral. Brownie points for me.

He looked down, and emotions fought across his face. His power flared like a warm wind, then died down. When he looked at me, there was pain and anger in his eyes. "You're the one who said it first, Anita. We don't work as each other's one and only. I'm working hard to accept my life as it is, but I can't live like you do. I still want one woman to be my forever person. I still want marriage, and maybe kids. I want a life, Anita. I know now that I can't have what I want with you." He reached out toward me, then his hands curled into fists. "But I miss you. Not just the sex. I miss the smell of you on my pillow, on my skin. I owe you an apology. When everything happened in Tennessee, I blamed my beast first, then I blamed you. It took six weeks of therapy to get me to see that I was pissed at you for saving my mother and brother when I couldn't do it."

"You would have given your life to save them," I said.

"Yes, but then we'd all be dead." It wasn't just pain in his eyes, it was anguish. The kind of emotion that eats you up and spits you back out. "You did horrible things, Anita, horrible things to find out where they were in time. You tortured a man, cut him up to get the information. I couldn't have done that. I wouldn't have let anyone do it in front of me. It wasn't just that you saved them and I didn't, it was when I heard all that happened, I realized that even if I'd been there with you, they would have died. My mother and Daniel would have died because I wouldn't have let you do what was necessary to save them."

I just looked at him, because I couldn't think of anything good to say. I wasn't proud of what I'd done in Tennessee, not all of it anyway, but I didn't regret any of it, because to save Charlotte and Daniel, I would have done worse. My only true regret had been that I didn't get there before they were raped and tortured. I would go to my grave regretting that part, because I'd seen Charlotte break into tears in her kitchen. She would say, "I don't know why I'm crying. So silly." It wasn't silly, and I'd recommended a good therapist I knew. The one I usually recommended to people wanting to join the Church of Eternal life, as a forever member.

"You're the Bolverk for my pack. The evildoer, the one who does what the Ulfric won't, or can't do. Raina was Bolverk for Marcus."

"Yeah," I said. See, I could still talk, but I still didn't have anything good to say.

"I want the white picket fence, Anita, and I know you don't."

"It's not that I don't want it, Richard, it's that it's too late for me. My life won't fit in that picture."

He nodded. "I know, and maybe mine won't either, but I still want to try. There are Ulfrics that have a wife and family separate from the pack. I've been trying to find a new lupa for the pack, and no one measures up. No one is you."

I was back to not knowing what to say, so I said nothing. I rarely got in trouble keeping my mouth shut.

"I think the reason your beast got out of control today is that you've been spending too much time with just one animal. I think if you have personal contact with something besides leopards that your beast will go back to being just amorphous, more metaphysics than physical. I want your permission to send some of the wolves over to bunk with you."

"Richard—"

"I don't mean fuck them, but sleep with them. Or take some wererats home, pick an animal, but if your power only touches leopards, it's going to think it's a leopard."

"And you're one of the wolves that will be stopping by?" I couldn't keep the irony and the unhappiness out of my voice.

"I don't mean it to be casual, Anita. I mean, be our lupa. Bring the leopards with you, and they can hunt with us on the full moon."

"I'll be your lupa, which means, what? What changes?"

"We're a couple within the lycanthrope community. You'll have more contact with my wolves outside of just crisis situations. Micah has really been working his tail off helping everybody out. We need at least one other person full time on the hotline. He's running himself ragged."

"I didn't know you were keeping track."

"I'm trying to pay attention, Anita. I'm trying to see what's there, not what I want to be there. I couldn't share you the way Micah shares you with Nathaniel, not every day, every night. I don't think I could tolerate you dating Jean-Claude and Asher. I certainly wouldn't be able to play blood donor on as regular a basis as Micah and Nathaniel do."

I just blinked at him, because this was a talk I never thought I'd have with Richard. It was way too logical. "I agree with everything you said in that last bit. But it doesn't change anything, does it?"

"I felt the power of your triumvirate with Damian and Nathaniel. Damian's not a master, and Nathaniel is no Nimir-Raj, but the three of you together are an amazing amount of power. What would we be, the three of us, if we did this right? If we did this the way it was meant to be done?"

"That so doesn't sound like you," I said.

"Tell me you haven't thought about it since you did the other triumvirate?"

I couldn't in all honesty, so I didn't try. "I felt what Jean-Claude and I could do at his club when Primo got out of control. I felt what Jean-Claude could do when I let him feed the ardeur in a way that was closer to a full feeding with other women. So, yeah, I thought about it, sort of."

"You said it yourself, Anita, we don't have enough soldiers. We need to look strong and not just for the vampires that might want this territory. Our pack has a bad rep, thanks to me, and Raina and Marcus before me. My reputation is shit among the other Ulfrics. They think I'm weak, and I've had some scouts from other territories that have too many dominants and not enough land. So far our pack is so screwed up that they leave without a challenge. No one wants the mess I've made of it. But as I get a better handle on my wolves, that may change. If we all joined together the way you and Jean-Claude did last night, if we were really a triumvirate of power, no one would touch us, Anita, no one would dare."

It was almost a direct quote from something I'd thought earlier. I looked past him to Jean-Claude. "We're parroting what you've been thinking for months, aren't we?"

He shrugged those lovely bare shoulders. " Oui, but I did not put the thoughts there, ma petite. I believe that both of you have come to the same conclusion at the same time. Is that so hard to believe?"