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"Tegan wasn't freed until his body had withdrawn from its Bloodlust addiction. It took many months of near starvation and absolute agony for him to be able to walk out of that cell on his own legs. When he realized what I'd done, I thought he would try to kill me. But he didn't. The Tegan I knew didn't come out of that cell at all. Something colder did. He's never said the words, but I know he's hated me ever since."
"Not as much as you hate yourself."
His jaw was clenched hard, drawing the lean skin tighter across his cheekbones. "I'm used to making difficult choices. I'm not afraid to take on the hard tasks, or to be the target of anger, even hatred, because of the decisions I make for the betterment of the Breed. I don't give a damn about any of that."
"No, you don't," she said gently. "But you had to hurt a friend, and that has weighed heavily on you for a long, long time."
The look he gave her begged to argue, but maybe he didn't have the strength. After all that he had been through, he was tired, bone tired, although she doubted he would be willing to admit that, even to her.
"You're a good man, Lucan. You've got a very noble heart underneath all that heavy armor."
He grunted, dismissive and sardonic. "Only someone who's known me less than a few weeks would make the mistake of presuming that."
"Really? I can think of a few people here who would tell you the same thing. Including Conlan, if he were alive."
His brows went low, like a thundercloud. "What can you possibly know about that?"
"Danika told me what you did for him. The funeral rite. Bringing him topside as the sun came up. To honor him, you let yourself burn."
"Jesus Christ," he snapped, shooting to his feet. He started to pace in an agitated, halting track near the bed. His voice was coarse, a barely contained roar. "Honor had nothing to do with it. You want to know why I did that? It was guilt. The night of the bombing in the train station, I was supposed to be running that mission with Niko, not Conlan. But I couldn't get you out of my mind. I thought maybe if I had you - if I finally got inside you - it might satisfy my itch and I could move on, forget about you. So, that night I put Conlan on the job in my place. It would have been me in that tunnel, not Conlan. It should have been me."
"My God, Lucan. You're unbelievable, you know that?" She slammed her palms down on the table and let out a sharp, furious laugh. "Why can't you cut yourself some fucking slack?"
The uncontrolled outburst got his attention when nothing else had. He stopped pacing and stared at her. "You know why," he said, his tone level now. "You know, better than anyone else." He shook his head, mouth twisted with self-contempt. "Turns out Eva knew something about it, too."
Gabrielle thought back to the shocking exchange in the infirmary. Everyone had been appalled at Eva's actions, and stunned by her crazed accusations against Lucan. All except him. "Lucan, the things that she said..."
"All true, as you have seen for yourself. But you still defended me. That's twice you've kept my weakness from being exposed." He scowled, turning his head away from her. "I won't ever ask you to do that again. My problems are my own."
"And you need to address them."
"What I need is to get some clothes on and go take a look at those pictures Gideon is uploading. If they give us enough info on the asylum's layout, we can hit the place tonight."
"What do you mean, hit it tonight?"
"Take it out. Shut it down. Blow the fucking thing sky-high."
"You can't be serious. You said yourself it's probably full of Rogues. Do you honestly think that you and three other guys will survive going up against unknown numbers?"
"We've done it before. And there will be five of us," he said, as if that should make a difference. "Gideon has said he wants in on whatever we do. He'll be taking Rio's place."
Gabrielle scoffed, disbelieving. "And what about you? You're barely on your feet."
"I'm walking. I'm well enough. They won't be expecting a retaliation so soon, which makes it the best time for us to strike."
"You must be out of your mind. You need rest, Lucan. You can't do anything until you get your strength back. You need to heal." She watched a muscle work in his jaw, a tendon ticking beneath the sallow, drawn slope of his cheek. His features were harder than normal, too lean. "You can't go out there the way you are."
"I said, I'm fine."
The words rushed out of him, a coarse rasp in his throat. When he looked at her again, his silver irises were shot with bright amber flecks of color, like fire licking through ice.
"You're not. Not by a long shot. You need nourishment. Your body's been through too much recently. You need to feed."
She felt a surge of coldness sweep the room and knew it came from him. She was provoking his anger. She'd seen him at his worst before and lived to tell of it, but maybe she was pushing too hard right now. She could sense he'd been itchy and uptight, his temper on a short leash ever since he'd brought her to the compound. Now he was dangerously on edge; did she really want to be the one to shove him past his threshold of control?
Screw it. Maybe that was just what was needed.
"Your body is beaten down, Lucan, not just from your injuries. You're weak. And you're afraid."
