He slapped the door hard enough that it rattled. “You won’t even give me that, will you?”

I had the black T-shirt on now. Just boots to tie on and I’d be dressed. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

He slapped the door one more time and then I felt him move away. For a second I wondered if he was backing up to kick it down, but nothing happened. It was quiet—as the old movie line goes, too quiet.

I might have thought he had gone, but I could feel him on the other side of the door. I could feel him like a thrumming energy in the air. He wasn’t gone. We were going to talk. I couldn’t think of anything pleasant to talk to him about. Fuck.

20

HIS ENERGY HAD calmed some by the time I came out of the bathroom. He was sitting on the edge of the bed closest to the door. He’d finger-combed his blue-spiked hair, but without more gel, it had just taken the spikes out and showed me that his hair actually had a natural part to one side. It was really too long on top to part well, but it was there. His shoulders were rounded as if he were hunching in on himself. But it was only as he sat up straighter that I saw he had found his gun in its holster, because it was there on the bed beside him. Not good. But honestly he didn’t need the gun to hurt me.

“You’re never going to forgive me for what I did to your two pet lions, are you?” he said.

“You mean almost beating them to death?”

“Yeah, that.” He sounded tired.

“You told me once that you think, What would Anita think of me if I did this or that? That you worried that if when you did bad things I’d think less of you. How the hell did you think I’d react to what you did to Noel and Travis?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Did you think I’d be happy?”

“I was pissed. I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I just wanted to hurt you, Anita. I wanted you to hurt the way I’ve been hurting, so I hurt someone you cared about.”

“Oh, that makes it all better then,” I said, and the first heat of anger was there. I took a deep breath and let it out slow. I had a right to be angry, but I wasn’t sure what it would do to my lioness to get angry with him. I didn’t have any other animals in the room to help distract my lion. I sure as hell did not want to turn into a werelion for real now.

“You make me crazy, Anita.”

“I don’t make you anything, Haven. You choose to lash out at people. You decide that you want to hurt me so you hurt Noel. Lashing out at people is what muscle does, not a leader. Kings don’t let anger control them.”

“You felt the power between us last night, Anita. You know I’m the most powerful lion in this city.”

“It’s not always about who’s the most powerful, Haven.”

“Then what is it about?” he asked.

“Control,” I said.

“What, like your bleeding-heart Ulfric?”

“Richard stepped up tonight.”

“And just like that you forgive him everything? All the shit he’s done just wiped out because he finally tried.”

“I give points for trying,” I said.

“You forgive him because you love him,” Haven said. He looked at the floor as he said it.

“I don’t know if I love Richard, but I did love him once.”

“You’ve never loved me, have you?”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I waited too long to answer, because he said, “I guess not answering is an answer.”

“Do I say I’m sorry?” I asked.

“You shouldn’t have let me kill the old Rex, Anita. You never should have let me move here.”

I looked at him, all that male pride hunched in on itself, and said the only thing I had left: the truth. “You’re right. I should have said no.”

He looked up at that. He looked startled and his face looked more real that way. I realized that most of the time he wore a cocky, nothing-bothers-me mask, but the face he turned up to me was naked of its mask. There was real pain there, and it made my chest tight to see it.

“Did you ever really want me?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“But you don’t want me now,” he said.

“Right this moment, no.”

“Why not?” he asked, and his eyes were so angry when he looked up at me.

I stopped moving forward. “Nothing’s changed, has it? The power last night and knowing that we have one of the scariest vampires ever hunting us doesn’t make any difference to you.”

“Why should it?” he asked, and his big hands were gripped in front of him.

“Because you’re one of the leaders of this city. Because you’re the Rex, the king, and you’re supposed to care about things that could hurt or destroy your lions.”

“I don’t care about my lions. I don’t care about anything but you. I tried to be a good boy for you. I tried to be the kind of man you needed, but no matter how good I am it’s never enough for you. There’s nothing I can do to be more important in your life.”

“Yeah, there is, but you won’t do it.”

“What? Tell me. What do I have to do to be higher up on your list?”

“Share better,” I said.

He glared at me, and that hot, trembling energy rose a notch so it felt like the air was pressing on my chest. It was hard to breathe through the heat of his power.

He stood up, and the energy radiated off of him like heat from a summer road. I could see it in the air around him. “I am Rex, and I don’t share, because I don’t have to share. It’s my pride and I get to run it the way I want to run it, and that means I don’t share my Regina with anyone.”

“Then find a nice little subservient werelion to settle down with and you can be master of your little kingdom, but I don’t work that way.”

He gave a harsh laugh. “I thought I was God’s gift to women before I got to St. Louis, and you. But I can’t be nearly as good as I think I am, or you wouldn’t have been able to kick me out of your bed for almost a year.”

“You tried to slice up Nathaniel and Micah, Haven. What did you think I’d do?”

“I was trying to make a point.”

“And that point would be?”

“That I can kick both their asses. You do know that I could have taken all three of you, but I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“I know you stopped fighting as hard when I joined the fight. I appreciate that, but you need to appreciate that I didn’t get a gun and shoot you when you started cutting up the men I love.”

“They aren’t men, Anita. They’re wereanimals, and in our world if you can’t fight your way out, you don’t lead, you don’t win, you don’t get to fuck the queen.”

“So why do all the other wereanimal leaders listen to Micah?” I asked. I was angry now, too, or just frustrated to a point where I didn’t know what else to say but the truth.

His hands were flexing into fists at his sides. “They shouldn’t.”

“But they do. Why is that, Haven?”

All the energy, all the fight seemed to go out of him at once and he sat back down on the bed. “Because everything I was taught about what it means to be a man and a werelion doesn’t work here. Rafael and his wererats could eat your wereleopards for breakfast, but he bows to Micah, and to you. Physically he could take Micah. Hell, all the other leaders fought their way to be leader, but not Micah.”

“Who told you how Micah became leader of his wereleopards?”

“Merle, the leader of their group before Micah. He’s bigger than me, and he fights dirty. I wouldn’t want to turn my back on Merle in a fight.” That was high praise from Haven.

“Merle’s a good guy in a fight, and he’s a lot happier being able to go back to a regular job than just be muscle to the new Nimir-Raj,” I said.

“Yeah, he loves working on the motorcycles.”

“Harleys. He always reminds us he’s a Harley mechanic,” I said.

Haven gave a small smile. “Yeah.” The smile vanished as he looked at me. “Wereanimals from the group that Chimera brought to St. Louis still talk about him. I’m a bad man, Anita, and I’ve done bad things, but I’ve never heard of anyone doing some of the shit he did.”