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Once they’d finished eating, he’d gruffly ushered her into his wagon . . . and so now here they were. And he was still glaring at her.
She sighed. “I’m not suggesting you don’t have a reason to be snippy—”
“I told you,” he gritted out, “I’m not snippy.”
Larkin rubbed at her temple. “Right. My mistake.” Tired, she was tempted to perch her ass on his bed, but her clothes were in a gruesome state.
“And for the record, it wasn’t a ‘funny story’ like you said it would be.” He spoke like she’d cheated him out of a few laughs.
“I hadn’t meant you’d find it amusing.” Though with his nonsensical sense of humor, it wouldn’t have been a complete shock for Larkin if he’d found something about the incident worth snickering about. “Now stop shooting me glares. I don’t blame you for being pissed. I get that it couldn’t have been nice for you to hear about it all after the fact—”
“Then why didn’t you reach out to me earlier?”
“The net prevented it. You know that already.” She’d explained everything. “Though it wasn’t like I couldn’t handle three dumbass cambions—something that’s perfectly apparent, considering they’re dead. And there wasn’t anything you could have done anyway, considering you were smack bam in the middle of a battle. Or did you forget that part?”
“I didn’t forget,” he clipped, his hands slipping down to his sides. “I also didn’t forget that you could have telepathed me once you’d escaped the net but you didn’t.”
“There was no sense in me being like oh, by the way, I just survived a kidnapping attempt. Especially when you needed to focus on fighting.” She held up a hand when he would have spoken. “I won’t apologize for making the call I made. It was the right one. You’d have made it in my shoes.”
“No, I wouldn’t have.”
“Okay, that was a complete and utter lie. Don’t even deny it.” She pushed away from the doorjamb. “Instead of being upset with me, be pissed at Holt.”
Teague’s gaze glittered with fury. “Oh, I am.” His eyes bled to black as his demon rose just long enough to rumble an enraged growl, and then it retreated.
Her own entity, totally over the Holt incident at this point, yawned and settled down. Most of its anger had drained away when it’d eradicated the asshole’s existence, and the last of the emotion had dissipated after the demon delivered a little pain to Ronin.
Teague rolled his neck on his stiff shoulders. “I want to resurrect the little fucker so I can kill him myself.”
“It would be satisfying to bring him back for exactly that purpose. He died way too quickly. But death by hell-ice at close range isn’t by any means a painless experience, so there’s that.”
“He deserved worse.” Teague ground his teeth. “I would have tortured him over and over until he begged for death.”
Her entity smiled, finding that sweet. Yeah, sweet. “You really should be careful, Teague, or you’ll make my demon fall for you.” He didn’t yet need to know that the entity was already gone for him.
His face softened slightly. “It doesn’t seem to be riding you hard. I’m assuming it isn’t bothered that you had to kill Holt.”
Her demon snorted, finding it ridiculous that he might believe otherwise. “Not even a little. It despised him.”
Teague slowly crossed to her. “Can’t have been easy for you.”
“What?”
“Killing your anchor.”
“He was never my anchor. Not in any real sense of the word.” Even at the end, he’d only wanted the bond for his own selfish reasons.
“I know that.” Teague slipped his arms around her waist. “But it has to go against the grain on a primal level to harm your psimate. Some elemental part of you must have struggled with it.”
She pursed her lips. “Honestly? No, no part of me rose up in protest or pain. Probably because it was a matter of survival—that will trump anything else on a primitive level. He wanted to take my choices from me; force me to bond with him, leave with him. For me, it was either kill him or be his captive and forever be psychically stuck with him. Nothing in me hesitated at choosing the first option, and I will never regret or feel bad about it.”
She grieved the bond that they could have had if things were different, but she didn’t grieve Holt. And now that he was gone, a psychic weight had been lifted—she couldn’t feel the call of the bond anymore; never would again. The relief of that warmed her very soul.
Stroking Teague’s upper arms, she asked, “Was it hard erasing Ronin’s existence? I mean, he was a total shitbag. But he was also your half-brother.”
“He was never my family, just as Holt was never your psi-mate. I would prefer that I hadn’t been placed in a position where it was Ronin or me, but I can’t say I found it difficult to end him.”
