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Kade's wolflike eyes glittered like quicksilver. "There's an after-hours place in the North End that's probably just getting interesting. Plenty of sweet young things just ripe for the plucking."
"Count me in," Chase drawled, coming out of his chair next to Dante to join the three other unmated males as they started heading for the lab's exit.
For a moment, Rio watched them go. But as Nikolai stepped out to the corridor behind the rest of the pack, Rio hissed a curse and shot after him.
"Niko, wait."
The warrior kept walking like he couldn't hear him.
"Hold up, man. Goddamn it, Nikolai. What the fuck is wrong with you?"
As Chase, Brock, and Kade paused to look back, Niko waved them on ahead. They continued moving, rounding a corner in the corridor and disappearing from view. After a long few seconds, finally, Nikolai pivoted around.
The face staring back at Rio in the stark white tunnel was hard and unreadable. "Yeah. Here I am. What do you want?"
Rio didn't know how to answer that. Hostility rolled off his old friend like a winter chill. "Have I done something to piss you off?"
Nikolai's sharp bark of laughter scraped against the polished marble walls. "Fuck you, man."
He wheeled around and began stalking away.
Rio caught up to him in a blink. He was about to grab the warrior's shoulder and force him to stop, but Niko moved faster. He spun back and plowed into Rio broadside with his forearm against Rio's sternum, driving his spine into the hard wall on the other side of the corridor.
"You want to die, you son of a bitch?" Niko's eyes were narrowed, amber firing into the blue as a result of his anger. "You want to fucking kill yourself, that's your business. Don't ever use me to help you do it. We clear?"
Rio's muscles were tensed and ready for a fight, his combat instincts rising even though he was facing a long-trusted ally. But as Nikolai spoke, Rio's swiftly igniting battle rage ebbed a crucial fraction. Suddenly Niko's fury toward him made sense. Because Nikolai knew that Rio had stayed behind on that Bohemian mountain intending to end his life. If he hadn't known it those five months ago, he sure as hell knew it now.
"You lied to me," Niko seethed. "You looked me right in the eye and you lied to me, man. You were never going back to Spain. What were you going to do with that supply of C-4 I gave you? Strap it on and detonate the shit for some private jihadist fun, or maybe you just planned on sealing yourself inside that godforsaken tomb for the rest of eternity? What was it going to be, amigo? Which way did you plan on checking out?"
Rio didn't answer. There was no need. Of all the warriors in the Order, Nikolai knew him best. He saw him for the weak coward that he truly was. He alone knew how close Rio had been to ending the whole damn thing - even before his arrival on that Czech mountain.
It had been Niko who refused to let Rio wallow in self-loathing, making it his personal mission to pull Rio out of his dark tailspin last summer. Niko who took Rio topside with him in the weeks that followed, hunting for him when Rio had been too weak to look after himself. Nikolai, the brother Rio had never had.
"Yeah," Niko scoffed. "Like I said. Fuck you."
He dropped his arm away from Rio's chest and backed off with a growled curse. Rio watched him go, Niko's boots chewing up the polished marble as he stormed off to meet the other warriors already on their way topside.
"Shit," Rio hissed, raking his hand through his hair.
This clash with Nikolai was just more evidence that he shouldn't have come back to Boston - even if it meant leaving the problem of Dylan Alexander to someone else to handle. He didn't fit in here anymore. He was an outsider now, a weak link in an otherwise solid steel chain of courageous Breed warriors.
Even now he could feel his temples pounding from the rush of adrenaline that had kicked in a few minutes ago, when it looked like Niko wanted to tear him apart. His vision started to swim as he stood there. If he didn't get moving and find somewhere private to host the oncoming mental meltdown, he knew it would likely be only minutes before he woke up ass-planted on the marble right there in the corridor. And frankly, having Lucan and the others come out of the tech lab to stare over him like he was week-old roadkill was not something he wanted to experience.
Rio commanded his legs to start moving, and with no small degree of difficulty, he managed to find his way back to his quarters. He stumbled inside and closed the door behind him, sagging against it as a fresh wave of nausea swept over him.
"Are you okay?"
The female voice came from somewhere distant in the apartment. At first it didn't register as familiar; his brain was struggling to perform basic motor movements, and the bright, crystalline voice didn't seem to belong in this place full of old, musty memories.
He shoved away from the door and dragged himself through the living room toward his bedroom, his skull feeling like it was going to shatter.
Hot water. Darkness. Quiet. He needed all three right away.
He pulled off his shirt and let it fall onto Eva's ridiculous gold velvet settee. He really ought to burn all of her shit. Too bad he couldn't toss the deceptive bitch into the pyre along with it.
Rio clung to his fury for Eva's betrayal, a feeble grounding, but the only thing he had at the moment. He reached the open French doors to the bedroom and heard a small gasp from inside.
"Oh, my God. Rio, are you all right?"
