The universe was going to have to be a little more specific if it was trying to teach him something.
God, he’d been watching Lyric from afar for so long now, he couldn’t remember a time when he’d not snuck glances at her, or pretended to be cool when she’d hugged him as a greeting or a goodbye—or hidden behind his cool, rich fuckboy cloak of don’t-care. When he’d seen that video last night, he’d been reminded that life didn’t last forever, and what the fuck was he waiting for? Maybe he should finally say something.
Yeah, well, the punchline to that stupid idea was that his lifestyle—the drinking, the drugs, the prostitutes—might well be why she wrote him off. And his Sisyphean boomerang on that was that he was self-medicating everything he felt the instant she walked into any room.
Plus, God, Rhamp would kill him.
Then again, that male was going to have to get the fuck in line. The Black Dagger Brotherhood was already first on that list—
Shit, they might actually bury him tonight…
As his reality sunk into his parboiled brain, Shuli realized he’d hit a brick wall and there was a kind of peace that came with the impact—maybe because of an existential head injury, but at this point, he wasn’t going to bother teasing out if this clarity was courtesy of destiny giving him CTE.
Bottom line, he had one hour to find that female and talk to her.
Before Lassiter only knew what was going to be done to him.
When the sky was finally dark enough, L.W. left the mansion, making sure to lock up behind himself. He was stiff as fuck after sleeping on the floor in front of the hearth, and he’d been a block of ice when he’d finally woken up, the embers of the fire having long drifted into their ashy deaths, the warmth gone, gone, gone.
Outside, he looked up over his shoulder. Atop the gargoyle’d roof’s slate peaks, the moon was peeking at him, like it was afraid of his mood and hiding in the forest of old iron lightning rods.
He told his brain to remember this sight, the silvery illumination broken up by those spiked diverters of bad weather strikes, the shapes of the purposely hideous creatures guarding the stone manse like something out of a fantasy novel.
Every time he left this place, he felt like it was a goodbye.
And some night, that was going to be true.
Closing his lids, he dematerialized and traveled in a scatter of molecules to the south, his destination one that he’d visited many times in his mind, and sometimes with his body. When he re-formed, it was in more knee-deep snow and in the shadows of a row of bare-branched trees. As he glanced across the drift-blanketed lawn to the well-lit, well-cared-for Colonial house, he shook his head.
There were footprints marring the snowpack. A lot of them. All his.
Fucking creeper, he thought as he followed his own trail.
Especially given that Safe Place was where females and their young were supposed to take shelter from dangerous males.
Not that he would ever hurt Bitty. Or anybody else in there.
Closing in from the side, he ignored the first level and all the people milling around there, and instead focused on the window that was smack-dab in the lineup on the second floor. The four small panes were all dark, but he fixed that by shutting his eyes again and imagining the profile that he’d come to see.
He’d never been any kind of artist, but his memory drew a picture of Bitty’s bent head as she focused on her computer, her concentration so complete, it was as if she were responsible for the well-being of the whole world through that monitor. Her chestnut brown hair, recently highlighted with red sections, fell forward so her beautiful face was partially obscured, and her slender neck was a temptation even from a distance.
He’d never been inside the house, and he couldn’t go in there now to find her in another room—or even just verify she was at work. Males weren’t allowed to go in.
But she’d come out to him before.
Lifting his lids, he was stupidly disappointed that the female hadn’t magically appeared, and he strained his eyes like he could force the image in his mind to become a reality in the flesh. Shit didn’t work like that, though, and the panic that some night he wouldn’t be able to see her choked him—
Movement drew his attention to the first floor, to one of the windows of the parlor… a female entering into view.
“There you are,” he whispered.
An exhale of relief left his lips on a cloud that drifted toward the house, as if his very breath were called by her as well.
Tonight, Bitty was wearing a pale blue sweater, and her newly tinted hair looked great against the color. She was carrying a tray of cookies, and as she bent down to offer some to a female holding a swaddled young, her lips were moving as she chatted—and then there was that smile. Gentle and kind.
Your anger is your downfall… Unless you can forgive fate, you are going to destroy all of us.
The warning she’d spoken to him—as if it were a message from some kind of divine source—had been something he’d outright rejected. But no longer, not after last night. A hard truth had dawned on him as he’d woken up, and the shit was impossible to ignore: When he’d broken loose from Shuli in the field, it had supposedly been in the noble quest to win the war against the species and take out Lash by any means necessary.
