“I’m the monster now, right, love?”
She didn’t look at him. Couldn’t look at him.
“How long?” she asked. “How long has this been here?”
He exhaled loudly. “The room was already built when I bought the place. I customized it to my taste.”
The shock was starting to wear off, and horrific, nightmarish reality was moving in, quick and painful. “It’s perfect.”
“Petra . . .”
“You still plan on using this, don’t you?” She turned from the living nightmare and finally looked up at him. He was the most gorgeous male in the world, and the most haunted. She shook her head at him. “With me and the balas here. Are you fucking out of your mind?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “You don’t understand.”
“You lied to me!”
“Yes,” he ground out.
“Then I understand perfectly.”
“Petra—”
“Your emotions are definitely back, Syn. And they’re just as sad and dated and misguided as they ever were.”
She didn’t spare him or the room of torture another glance. She turned and walked through the open doorway, pushed back through the closet. She’d been so right to be wary when all she wanted was to believe in him, believe that he could let this shit with Cruen go so they could build a family together.
“Stop right there!” he called, coming after her. “Where the devil do you think you are going, Petra?”
“Does it matter?” she called back, hurrying out of his bedroom and down the hall.
“Of course it fucking matters!” he shouted after her.
She ignored the grinding pain in her gut, ignored the love she had in her unbeating heart. She would have to ignore it forever now. “I’m going home, Syn. Where I belong.”
When she reached the entry hall, he was right beside her, his hand hitting the front door at the very moment hers curled around the knob. “No.”
She turned around and pushed at him, but it was like trying to move a slab of ten-feet-thick granite. “You don’t get to say no to me.”
“We’re a bloody family, Petra.”
She froze. How dare he . . . How fucking dare he . . .
She whirled on him, poked her finger in his face. “You don’t know what that word means. You’re an empty shell, Syn. No life. Nothing real. And that’s been your choice from the beginning.” Her jaw as tight as her resolve, she glared at him. “No matter what you think happened that day near the caves, I didn’t save your life. Because you were already dead before I got there.”
His eyes went wide and his lips parted, but nothing came out. And the second he took his hand off the door, Petra yanked it open.
“There’s no future for those who continue to live in the past. Good-bye, Syn.”
A heavy sob threatened to burst from her chest, but she managed to hold back her tears until the elevator door closed and she was racing down to the lobby.
22
Syn stared down at the diamond key, glittering on the hardwood floor. When had she ripped it from her throat? When had she tossed it away so carelessly?
His gut tightened painfully and he groaned.
He was one to talk about careless. It was all he’d been for months.
He leaned down and picked up the key. It fairly burned in his hand. The platinum and diamonds didn’t want to belong to him. Not after they had been resting against someone, something so pure.
Fucking hell, what had he done?
His mind and gut screaming in unison now, he left the hall and stalked past the kitchen and the metal artwork on the walls to his bedroom. Her face. Shite, her eyes, when she’d walked through the door into his ready torture chamber. He would never forget it. It was imprinted on his mind.
Utter horror.
Entering the closet, he pushed through the wool and leather and stumbled back into the room. He looked around, trying to take in everything as if for the first time. Witness it as she had witnessed it.
Fucking utter horror.
And it had been exactly what he’d wanted. All he’d wanted. The place where, he’d been convinced, vengeance would finally be his.
He moved into the room and grabbed one of the blades from the wall. Three feet of deadly polished steel. He slashed it through the air, cursing, hating himself more than usual.
Cruen had killed his first love. Now Synjon was allowing the mad vampire to destroy his last.
Sighing with frustration, with confusion, with misery for the life and future he’d just lost, he dropped onto the hard metal bench. He hated to admit it, but his need for revenge had started to wane the day he’d been abducted by the pussy brothers, placed in a cabin by the river, and given the opportunity of a lifetime: to feed his veana and his balas.
He stared at the blade.
Out there, in his living room, under a sweet-smelling pine, were baby books, a tub shaped like a duck, two stuffed toy rabbits, and a shirt with the words “Little Fangs” printed on it.
Syn’s throat went scratchy and tight. Bullocks. He had been about to bring filth and hatred and sickness into this house, into that sweet and innocent perfection. And the very worst, he’d lied to the veana he loved. The veana who had done nothing but save him. Over and over.
His gaze shifted from one implement of torture to the next. Cruen had no place here anymore. Maybe he never did.
Unfortunately, convincing Petra that he understood now, that he’d changed, that he saw what was real and right, and acknowledging that “desperately sorry” would never make up for what he’d put her through, was going to be a nearly impossible task.
But impossible hadn’t seemed to contain him lately. Not his emotions, and definitely not his capacity for love.
• • •
“I made ice cream,” Dani said in a playful singsong voice that she reserved for very special occasions. Like breakups, and Battlestar Galactica marathons. She circled her bowl in front of Petra’s nose. “You know you want some.”
Sitting in a chair on the tree house porch, overlooking the Rain Forest under a dome of twilight sky, Petra gave the female hawk shifter a tight smile. It was blatantly forced, but Dani knew that was how things were right now.
Broken heart and all.
Dani dropped into the chair beside her and started going at it, her spoon deep in the center of the chocolate scoop. “You sure? It’s the best I ever made.”
The soft, warm breeze blew Petra’s hair off her face. She’d missed it here. She’d been a fool to leave. She’d just been a fool, period. “Sorry, bestie. Blood’s my thing now.”
Dani made a retching sound. “Well, I ain’t offering up that.”
“Good,” Petra said with a soft laugh. “’Cause I hear yours is a little sour.”
Her mouth dropped open in mock surprise. “Who’d you hear that from?”
“Oh, one of the many males you hang out with.”
Dani pointed her spoon at Petra. “Now I know you’re lying because I don’t let anyone bite me.” She pretended to shiver. “That’s so weird and gross. How do you do it?”
A shock of memory barreled through Petra. Her fangs in Syn’s vein, his fangs inside her. The most perfect meal in the world, and she could never have it again.
“I don’t do it,” she said softly. “Not anymore.”
Dani sighed. “You’ll get over it, Pets.”
“I don’t know.” And she really didn’t. She’d allowed herself to believe in him, and in them as a family. How did you just get over something like that? Everything you ever wanted, desired, dreamed of, there for the taking. Then ripped from you without even a warning, or some heavy-duty pain-killers.
“You will,” Dani assured her, her ice cream momentarily forgotten. “And, girlie, it wasn’t meant to be. You know that.” She tilted her head to the side, her eyes filled with empathy, anger, love. “His whole deal, his world, his purpose was wrapped up in destroying your father. Now, granted, your father sounds like a big old douche, but seriously, that romance was doomed from the start.”
Maybe, Petra thought morosely. Probably. But even knowing that, admitting that, she wouldn’t wish it away. The beautiful times with him had been the very best times of her life. They may have been wrapped up in something ugly, but they’d been absolutely beautiful.
“Brodan?”
Dani’s one-word shock bomb had Petra turning to glare at her. “What?”
Dani laughed at her expression. “Just asking.”
“Seriously, Dani? Now? Right now?”
Shrugging, Dani slid a massive spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. “I’m just saying. Don’t waste too much time. Brodan’s been in love with you forever. All you’d have to do is say the word.”
The only words Petra wanted to utter with the bear shifter were friendly, brotherly ones. “Brodan deserves way better than me.”
“There is nothing better than you, bestie.” Dani granted her a wide grin, complete with chocolate-stained teeth.
Petra laughed in spite of herself. “You’re so pretty.”
Dani started laughing too. They almost didn’t hear a rustle down below, at the base of the tree house. Only when they quieted for a moment, listening, did they hear the sound.
“We have company,” Dani said. They both jumped to their feet and raced to the porch railing. Leaning over it, they saw Sasha crawling up the rope ladder.
“Oh, jeez,” Petra muttered, releasing a sigh of relief. “It’s just my brother.”
Dani eyed her. “Who’d you think it was? Or better yet, who’d you hope it was?”
“Your ice cream’s melting,” Petra said.
“Nice. Very smooth.”
“I try to make my evasions quick and sweet-tasting.”
Dani glanced down at Sasha, who was nearly at the balcony. “I wondered when they’d hear about this, you returning home and all, and come running. Or climbing.” She snorted at her joke, and the moment Sasha swung his large body over the balcony, she attacked. “What do you want, Whiskers? For fuck’s sake, can’t a girl and her best friend have some—”
