The Beloved, page 22
Bitty waved to the other social worker over her shoulder, and refused to look too closely at why she didn’t want anyone to know who she was meeting. She was also absolutely not going to go into how excited she was. Or how fast she moved as she blasted out onto the porch, all but skipped down the steps and then skidded around the corner of the—
“Hi,” she said breathlessly as she halted in the snow.
God… he was huge. And as L.W. tromped down toward her, his long strides and heavy shitkickers making quick, crushing work of the distance, he got even bigger.
As Bitty measured the breadth of his shoulders under the black leather that covered them, she realized she’d never seen him in “civilian” clothes. Never blue jeans or a sweatshirt. Absolutely never a jacket and tie.
“Are you cold?” he said as his jade green eyes narrowed.
Wow. His eyelashes were as jet-black as his hair, and just as thick. Like usual, he had a thick braid running along the center of his head, the long tail disappearing down his back, and the sides had had a fresh shave. He’d also put in a pair of black earrings. Black diamonds? Set in black metal?
Would it kill him to wear a color—
“Bitty? I asked you, are you cold?”
As if she’d stroked out from the zero-degree temperatures or something.
“Oh, no. I’m fine.” She crossed her arms and rubbed her upper arms. “I was getting stale at my desk, so your timing is great. What’s up?”
For a moment, that hard stare circled around the yard behind her, even though he had to know nobody got onto the property without clearance. Which was how she’d been sure it was okay to open the window and look out. The Brotherhood’s monitoring never failed.
And when he was finished casing the place, he just looked at her—so it was her turn to focus off to the side, on the ring of trees. Dimly, she noted the wind coming through the hibernating maples, the straggler-leaves that had refused to fall back in October like shrunken flags, rattling instead of waving on their stems.
I should have guessed, she thought as she figured out why he’d come.
“I’m not going to be able to tell you much more,” she said roughly.
“How do you know I have a secret?”
Bitty shook her head, aware of a biting disappointment. “I don’t know how I know so I can’t help you with that. If I can’t answer that question for myself, I certainly can’t answer it for you.”
“Do you know what it is? What I’m hiding?”
Her eyes swung back to him. And she opened her mouth to tell him no—
The strange, off-the-planet pall that always preceded a revelation came over her, dulling her senses and slowing down her body and mind. Blink… blink… blink…
“You’re back,” she heard herself say. Then she frowned as the message began to warp. “After you’ve been gone for so long… you have returned… and yet you were here all along. There are two halves to the whole, which must not be separated…”
When nothing else came, she floated in space for a moment. Then, kicking herself out of the trance, she tried to fake-laugh and couldn’t hold the smile. “I don’t know what I’m—”
“You know exactly what you’re saying.” L.W.’s shoulders shifted, his arms coming up. “Wait, hold on.”
“What?”
The next thing she knew, he was taking off his jacket and draping the heavy, warm weight on her narrow shoulders. Instinctively, she grabbed on to the lapels so it didn’t drop to the snow, and—oh, wow. It smelled like him, and it was so heavy.
Twenty pounds? Thirty?
As he was just wearing a black muscle shirt now, she couldn’t help but look at his upper arms. They were so cut, they cast shadows, and she loved the ink in his skin. Not many males had as much as he did. Nate did… and that was about it.
Not that she checked out males very much.
“Bitty?” He waved a hand in front of her face. “You there?”
“Sorry.” She cleared her throat and tried to pull herself to attention. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. About… whatever it is.”
“Nobody knows. So, yeah, please keep quiet. No offense.”
The wind swirled around again, and she huddled into his jacket. Good thing he hadn’t tried to get her arms into the sleeves. They’d never find them again.
“You better go inside,” he told her. “And I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come.”
“I don’t mind. And I wish I could tell you more.”
“I just want to know what I’m angry about.” His eyes moved up and over her head. “I don’t know what it is. That’s a problem.”
Bitty tilted her head and studied the hard cut of his jaw. “You don’t know?”
“No. But it comes out sometimes.”
“When,” she said grimly. Even though she could guess. “It’s when you’re killing lessers, isn’t it… at the end, right before you stab them back to Lash.”
His brows popped and he recoiled a little.
“It’s okay. You can tell me about it.” When he stayed quiet, she reached out and put her hand on his forearm. “I’m not afraid of what you do, no matter how ugly it gets. Violence for protection’s sake does not scare me.”
His eyes searched her face. “You keep surprising me. I don’t get surprised.”
A flush went through her. “It’s just because you think you know me and you don’t. If you knew… where I come from, you would know that I’ve survived so much worse than the truth you live in and what you do to keep us all safe.”
Those eyebrows sank down low, making him look positively evil. “Who hurt you.”
Not a question. And she had the very clear thought that if her birth sire were still alive, L.W. would have hunted the male down and hurt him. Very badly.
“He’s dead.” She kicked her chin up. “My father killed him.”
“Good.”
“You don’t mean that,” she chided.
L.W. seemed surprised again. Then he laughed in a low rumble. “Are you always so honest?”
“Only when people try to hide. And you are too strong a male to have to take cover behind falsities.”
“Even if they’re for someone else’s benefit?”
“Not mine,” she countered. “You don’t have to buffer any kind of truth for me. I will say it again. I am not afraid of you.”
L.W. crossed his arms over his chest, his pecs flexing underneath his skintight muscle shirt. As the hollows under his cheekbones undulated, it was clear he was grinding his molars.
“You’re right,” he said after a moment. “I wish whoever hurt you was still alive.”
“So you could take him to his grave yourself.”
“Yeah.” He reached out and stroked back a streamer of hair from her face. “People like you shouldn’t be hurt.”
Dearest Lassiter, he was so close, and the proximity made her feel like she was seeing him for the first time. He was as his father was, as her adoptive sire was, as the members of the Black Dagger Brotherhood had always been: A killer. A predator.
Under the veil of what civilized him to some degree was an animal.
“No one should be hurt,” she intoned gravely.
His lips flattened in disagreement. “That’s a dangerous lie, Bitty. And if you know what I’m like and what I do, you know I’m right—”
All at once, her body stiffened, and her vision went dark as her eyes rolled back. The last thing she was aware of was her own voice, speaking in the Old Language:
“Be of care with thine anger, Little Wrath. Your wrath shall be the death of us all.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I thought I’d check on you.”
As Nalla’s mahmen spoke up, Rahvyn backed off into the living room. And the female must have gone down to the basement because there was a clicking sound as a door was shut.
“Fresh cookies?” Bella asked as she hovered in the archway. “How nice. May I have one?”
Oddly, Nalla noticed the wool coat first. It was red and black, the colors alternating in big squares that shouldn’t have worked, but really did, especially with the red scarf around her neck and her black slacks. Her hair, which was a rich chestnut, was shiny and bouncy, cut in a long bob that no doubt would be left to grow out so that come spring it would be down between her shoulder blades and ready to be pulled back for the summer’s heat.
The female was tired. There were shadows under those blue eyes, and sadness in them, too.
Coming to attention, Nalla cleared her throat and pushed the plate forward on the counter. “Of course. There’s plenty.”
“They smell so good.”
Bella came forward and peeled off her coat. Laying the folds on the back of one of the chairs at the long table, she rubbed her bare hands together and seemed to force a smile.
“It’s cold tonight,” she said as she inspected the plate. “My cheeks are windburned and I wasn’t out on the porch for long at all.”
When her mahmen was done choosing, Nalla took a cookie for herself. So her fingers had something to futz with. “Winter’s gotten serious.”
“Sure has.” Bella broke her Toll House in half and took a test bite. “Oh, perfection—”
“I’m okay,” Nalla cut in, more brusquely than she’d intended. “They just need me to chip in here a little bit. It’s busy.”
Bella nodded. “Someone’s on maternity leave, right? I heard Mary talking about it the other night.”
“That’s it, yup.” When Nalla tried hers, all she tasted was cardboard. “Short-staffed, you know how it is—”
“Your father is really worried about you.”
As those blue eyes became direct, Nalla stopped chewing. Then she rubbed the center of her chest. “Is he.”
“We both are.”
“But you came because of him, right.” She cleared the corner of her mouth with the tip of her tongue. “You’re worried about him.”
“Of course I am.”
“Right. Of course.”
Bella frowned. “Is it so bad that we both care about your safety?”
Don’t do it, Nalla thought. Now, not the time, here, not the place, and all that jazz.
And there was another reason to just let it go. People had conversations with others in the hopes of improving things… communication, connection, situations. But she knew that nothing was going to change. There was no combination of words, backed up with whatever expressions were necessary to convey proper meaning, that could get her what she wanted from her mahmen.
Part of it was the sheer selfishness of how she felt: It was a two-year-old’s temper tantrum in a grown-ass adult, and that was not only unappealing, it was embarrassing to some degree. Except have fun negotiating with your emotions.
Once, just once, she wanted to be the number one priority to Bella.
For Nalla’s entire life, their household had been all about her father: Was he eating? Had he slept well. How were the sessions with Mary going? Who was his partner in the field tonight. When was he coming home? Did he need anything. Did he want anything? Was he injured, who was treating him…
And then the big one, even bigger somehow than the mortal threat he faced every night in the field: Had he been triggered by something, a hole poked in his shield against his inner demons, one of them escaping and having to be contained before it hurt him even worse.
There had been good times, sure. But the darkness inside that male had defined their lives, and everything had been second fiddle to it.
“Do you care about me, really?” Nalla said softly.
Bella recoiled as if she’d been struck. “How can you ask me that?”
And there it was. Honest surprise.
“Sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying.” Nalla tried to wave away everything with her cookie. “Anyway, how’s things at home—”
“What’s gotten into you?” Bella indicated the kitchen. But clearly meant so much more than the room they were in. Or even the house. “You’ve never done this before.”
“I work here. I’ve absolutely done ‘this’ before.”
Sick of pretending she wanted the frickin’ cookie, Nalla went over and chucked it into the garbage disposal. Then she ran some water and hit the switch on the wall. The whirring was loud and she wished she could just keep the thing on to drown out the conversation. She really didn’t want to fight with either of her parents.
Maybe that was a sign she’d finally given up.
“You’ve never not come home at day,” Bella pointed out as the InSinkErator was silenced.
“I texted you. Both.”
God, why had she and Rahvyn done all the dishes? There was nothing else to put away, either.
“Nalla, you can tell me what’s wrong.”
Lowering her head, she braced her hands on the lip of the sink, splaying her fingers out, looking at the short nails she had clipped just days before. Funny, when she’d been doing that snip-snip stuff, she could never have guessed where her life would go in a mere forty-eight-hour period.
Bitty. Her father. Now… this.
“I love you, Nalla. I want to fix whatever’s wrong between us.” There was a choked sound. “We used to be close, you and I. I don’t understand what’s happened.”
Memories of when she’d been a young at that grand mansion came back to her, and she relived those nights of getting jacked into party dresses, and having her hair brushed, and of bows and nail polish, of Mary Janes and short white socks. There had been dolls, too. And tea parties.
Her mahmen had been there for all of that. It had only been after the great divide, as Nalla had always thought of it, when they’d all left the mountaintop and the grown-ups had gotten grim, that things had begun to shift. Or maybe it was more like she’d started to get older and had recognized all the autopilot that was going on, time that was precious to her not being as significant to Bella because of all the other things the female was more concerned about.
“Were we ever really close?” Nalla said dully. “Or was it because you were in charge of keeping me alive and fed and clothed?”
“Nalla…” Those blue eyes welled up. “Of course we were, and I want to bring us back to where we used to be—”
“You want to fix what never was.” Tears came to her own eyes and she slashed them away. “And I do think you love me, although only because there’s a piece of him in me. It’s never been about me. It’s always about—”
“That is not true! I can’t believe you’re saying this—”
“I know what was done to him when he was a blood slave.” That shut her mahmen up, Bella’s face going pale. “You think I don’t know what those bands are on his neck and wrists? I know what he was.”
Bella put her hand out in what looked like a blind way, locking a grip on the back of one of the table’s spindle chairs as if her balance was off.
“We’ve never kept that from you.”
Nalla shrugged. “You never talked about it, either.”
There was a pause. And then in a hoarse voice, her mahmen said, “Some things you are not going to want to hear about firsthand. And I’ve always worried about you, too—”
Nalla pointed to the archway her mahmen had come through. “You walked in here, supposedly to check on me, but the first words out of your mouth are that he’s worried about me. It’s the story of my life. ‘Let’s not upset your father—’ ”
“I’ve never said that.”
“You don’t have to. The subtext is there—and please don’t deny it. We both know what’s been going on.”
“But you never talk about your life. I don’t know anything about—”
Nalla yanked her fleece down, exposing the still-raw bite mark on the side of her throat. “I fed a male of worth tonight and I do not regret it. I’m not going to apologize for it, either. And if you think I’m in a big hurry to talk to you two about what happened, you’re out of your mind. Father already hates him, and I know that you’re going to back your hellren—and I’m not interested in having this male threatened by a member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.”
And no, she didn’t care that Nate had promised not to see her. This was her business, and her father needed to back the fuck off.
“Nalla, we want you to go out and live your life.”
“Maybe, but on your terms.” She threw up her hands. “Do you want to know what happened to me last night? A bunch of males at a club bet who could get me. They think it’s a game, proving who can bag the Brother Zsadist’s daughter—and live to tell about it because my father is so fucking scary.”
“That is terrible.” Bella shook her head. “There’s no excuse for that kind of behavior. But we can’t control what others do, you have to know that.”
“Yeah, well, it’s just one more way him being who he is affects my life. I have spent so many festivals sidelining things because no guy wanted to ask me to dance in front of him, so many nights alone, no future except work—”
“Again, I’m really sorry, but your father didn’t have anything to do with that—”
“Yes, he did. He threatened four males I know about, and God only knows how many I don’t—oh, he didn’t tell you?” As her mahmen continued to look surprised, Nalla nodded forcefully. “I always heard about it afterward, when I was hoping for a second date or even a first one, and the guy went hands-off because your hellren decided to ‘set them straight.’ ”
Bella rubbed her eyes like her head hurt. “He is protective of you, but that’s crossing a line.”
“You think? He was going to throw one of them off the bridge downtown if they treated me wrong. And before he tries to excuse it by saying he’s just watching out for me, those males didn’t even take a chance on me. They just up and left. I never had an opportunity to even try to find a relationship—and finally, I just gave up. I sat alone in my room…” Or with Bitty, who was naturally shyer. “… and didn’t live because it was easier than dealing with him.”
Bella dropped her hands as if in defeat. “You have to understand where your father is coming from.”
“At some point, that doesn’t matter anymore.”
“He really wants to support you. I’m not saying he’s doing it in the right way, but he loves you and he wants the best for you. If you brought home a male you—”
