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He had to face his demons, not hope he could outpace them or deny them.
Tavia had been teaching him that by example from the moment he first laid eyes on her. He'd just been too thick-headed to grasp the concept.
He'd hurt her earlier, scared her, and he needed to repair that damage - if she'd let him. He didn't know how to live with someone, how to love someone the way a special female like Tavia deserved, but he wanted to try. As unsure as he was about proving himself worthy of her, he could not imagine his life without her.
He loved her, and if it took locking himself up below the Order's new compound to starve the Bloodlust out of him, then he was damn well good and ready to get started.
His bare feet flew over the snow and ice of the forest floor. He felt none of the cold, only the warm promise of a future he hoped to convince Tavia to share with him as his mate.
But as the sprawling bulk of the stone-and-timber compound appeared in the distance ahead of him, Chase realized she was gone.
He felt her absence even before he climbed back in through the window she'd left open in the bedroom where they'd made love. Where he'd fallen on her like the animal he was and fed until she was weeping and terrified. His blood told him she was nowhere near now.
By the vacant chill of his veins, he guessed that she was easily miles away. He'd lost her, probably forever.
He should be relieved, for her, if not himself. She'd made the decision for him. The safest one. The only one that wouldn't put her life at risk every time she got near him.
He sat down on the edge of the empty bed, naked, bereft.
Dawn was rising, sending slivers of pale pink light down through the thick canopy of pines outside. He watched it for a moment, unable to summon the desire to close the shutters. The house's electronic security took care of it for him, automated steel louvers locking tight, blotting out the morning.
He didn't know how long he sat there. When the hard rap sounded on the door behind him, his voice was a rusty sound in the back of his parched throat. "Yeah."
"Harvard." Dante spoke through the closed slab of hand-hewn wood. "You two decent in there, man?"
Chase gave a faint scoff. "She's gone," he murmured.
The door opened and Dante stepped inside. "Jesus, it's freezing in here. What do you mean, she's gone?"
Chase pivoted his head to meet his old friend's confused frown, turning amber high beams on him. The warrior lifted his chin, dark brows rising as he took in Chase's feral appearance. "Ah, shit. You didn't - "
"I drank from her," Chase admitted. "Things got ... out of hand. I scared her pretty bad. I hurt her, and now she's gone."
Dante stared at him for a long moment, studying him. "You care about this female."
"I love her. That should be reason enough for me to let her go, right?" He slowly shook his head, considering how much better off she'd be without him. "I'm the last thing she needs in her life."
"More than likely," Dante replied, grave. No mercy in his voice or in the sober eyes that held Chase's amber-swamped gaze. "She doesn't need you in her life like this, my friend. Nobody who cares about you wants to be there to watch when you crash and burn. I'd say least of all her. I don't mean to be harsh. You're trying to get your shit together, I can see that."
"Yeah," Chase agreed. "I have to. I want to prove to her that I can beat this."
Dante shook his head. "No, man. First, you have to want to prove it to yourself."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
DAWN WAS COLD and brittle, clouding Tavia's breath as she stood on the stoop of the little house she'd called home until roughly a week ago. Yellow crime scene tape sealed the front door, which was still festooned with a ribboned Christmas wreath and sleigh bells that jangled as she broke the tape and stepped inside.
The house was silent, tomblike. A shell that now felt as empty and foreign to her as the life she'd been living inside its walls.
The lies she'd been living.
Tavia moved through the place with a sense of detachment. None of what was here belonged to her. Not the homespun furniture or cheery fixtures. Not even the photographs on the walls - snapshot collages of another time, a scattered chronology of her childhood and teenage years. Time that had been carefully monitored and manufactured, constructed of countless falsehoods and betrayals.
These mementos of her past had seemed so real once. Her life had seemed so normal until a week ago. She'd been happy for the most part, enjoying her home life and her career, accepting that the world she lived in was the one in which she belonged. How could it have seemed so real for so long, yet been nothing more than a monstrous lie?
It didn't matter anymore.
She let all of it go, here and now.
