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So he'd shunned the responsibility.
He'd run away from it, a disgrace that was only made worse for the way everyone concluded that he acted out of the same shining integrity that had guided his kin before him. And he'd let the facade stand, all those years. Even after he'd joined up with the Order, he'd continued to play his holier-than-thou role. But it hadn't lasted. No, they'd seen through him soon enough. He'd been a fraud all his life. Golden and impeccable on the outside, yet festering and sick to death of himself within. All the worse after Quent was killed. Thanks to his rising affliction, this dangerous dance with Bloodlust, Chase no longer cared to hold up the mask he'd hidden behind for so long. The effort was too much.
Now he wore his sickness on the outside. Even his talent for bending shadows had all but deserted him. He was naked now, exposed. Nothing could conceal him anymore.
Rowan heaved a sigh, disrupting the dark path of Chase's thoughts. "There are days - many more than not, if you want to know the unvarnished truth - that I don't even know what the Agency stands for. I took my office because I thought I could make a difference. I haven't. The corruption has been there too long, and it goes too deep. It's a cancer whose tendrils have touched nearly everyone in the organization."
Chase understood. He'd felt the crush of that weight himself. "Things in the Agency have been on a downward slide for a long time. To clean it up? Christ." He shook his head, considering the breadth of changes it would require. "You'd have to turn the whole place inside out. Start all over, with a handpicked few and reconstruct from the inside. New philosophies, new measurables. Reform the Agency, piece by piece."
Rowan was watching him closely, nodding along in agreement. "Maybe one day you'll come back and help me do just that."
"Fuck." Chase scoffed. "Not me. I was glad for the chance to get out when I did. It never had been a good fit for me."
Rowan grunted, his dark brows coming together in a frown. "I thought maybe you left the Agency for a different reason. I guess I wondered if maybe you left to follow Elise. You know, to make sure she wasn't making a mistake, getting involved with one of the warriors of the Order," he added, when Chase snapped a hard look on him.
"She couldn't be in better hands," Chase said, meaning it too. "Tegan adores her, as well he should. He's a good man, worthy of her. And she loves him, maybe even more than she did Quent."
"Yes. I've seen that for myself too," Rowan replied. "But at the time ..."
Chase picked up his old friend's trailing thought. "At the time I quit the Agency, I didn't know what I wanted. I only knew that if I wanted to keep my sanity - keep my damned soul - I needed to get out."
He gave Rowan the truth now - as much as he was willing to share. There were some things he didn't divulge to anyone. Things he had never shared, shames from his past that he expected he would keep to himself forever.
"And now?" Rowan asked after a moment.
Chase exhaled a humorless chuckle. "I don't worry about those things anymore."
"Maybe you should." Rowan reached over and put his hand on Chase's shoulder. "You and I go back a long time, my friend. I've seen you at your best. Even at your worst, you're a hell of a lot better than most of the assholes calling themselves my friends inside the Agency. You ever need anything, I've got your back."
Chase frowned, reluctant to accept so undeserving a gift. "I wouldn't ask it of you, Mathias. Except - "
"The female upstairs," Rowan said with a grave nod. "Jesus Christ, Chase. I've seen her with my own eyes, but I still can hardly believe it. Dragos engineered a female Gen One in his labs?" "More than one, according to the patient records we saw at the clinic tonight."
Rowan kept his voice low, so as not to be heard by any of the other civilian residents of his Darkhaven. "Do you realize what that means? What that means to the future of our entire race? That young woman up there changes everything."
"Yes," Chase said. "And that's why she needs to be protected. The safest place for her is with the Order. I'm hoping you'll make sure she gets there."
"You can do that yourself, Chase." Rowan's shoulder lifted in a vague shrug. "I told you I had to inform Lucan about all of this. I called him as soon as we got back. He's sent Tegan and a few of the others down to collect the female. They're en route already, should be here within the hour."
Chase swore under his breath. When he walked out of the Order's mansion and into police custody with the humans a few mornings ago, he'd done it as an act of finality. His way of releasing his warrior brethren from the burden of his presence and all the failures he'd been at the center of since he'd begun to lose his battle with Bloodlust.
His walking out had been a last-ditch effort to scrape together a small bit of honor - a feeble grab at redemption - by sacrificing his own freedom for theirs. He didn't think he'd ever face Lucan or Dante or Tegan and the rest of the Order again. He sure as hell didn't want to see their rightful contempt now.
"You'll have to do the honors for me," he told Rowan. "I'm not planning to stick around that long."
"Where else do you have to go?"
The question wasn't posed with any challenge, but the concern wasn't welcome either. Chase got up and began a tight prowl around the kitchen. Above his head was the private guest room Tavia had been shown to on their arrival. The water from her shower was still running; he could hear the muffled whine of old copper pipes through the thick plaster walls. "She's been up there a long time. Do you think she's all right?"
"Considering everything she's gone through today alone, I'd say she's holding it together remarkably well."
"Yeah," Chase said. "Tavia is ... remarkable."
He thought back on the past several days and nights. All the astonishing revelations. The unexpected concern - the unwanted caring - he felt for a woman who'd been a stranger to him not even a week before. And yes, there was the added complication of his desire for her. All the more reason for him to cut and run now, before he let himself get entangled any further. "Shit." Chase raked his splayed fingers over his scalp on a deep sigh. "I gotta go. It's better this way. Better for her. Hell, it's better for me too."
Rowan studied him now. The shrewd Agency director didn't need anything more to understand just how intimately Chase had fucked things up with Tavia already. "What am I supposed to tell her?"
Chase swore again, more vividly this time. "Just tell her I'm sorry. For everything."
