a big old ‘not.’ Hera is . . . she’s a fantasy, an amalgam of all the stuff that tests high in market research, along with a few of my own preferences. She was living inside my head years before I started working on the first
Alexis didn’t like the way he was talking about this computer construct as if she were a real woman, and suspected she was seriously going to hate where this was going. “Tell me about her,” she said carefully.
Not looking at her, he said, “She’s brash and bossy, she’s a top fighter, she can do low-level magic .
. . and she’s big and loud and scary, and pretty much guaranteed to rip the balls off of any guy who gets in her way.” He glanced at Alexis now, and she couldn’t read the emotion in his eyes when he said, “She looks like you, or you look like her; I’m not sure which is more accurate. The first time I saw you, when I came looking for Strike and you opened the front door, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”
“That was why you fainted?” She’d always wondered about that, why a big, tough guy like him had done the eye-roll-and-drop thing about thirty seconds after he’d stepped through the front door of Skywatch.
“That was dehydration,” he said, sticking to the story he’d maintained ever since the incident. But something in his voice suggested there had been a good bit of shock in the mix, as well.
Alexis just stared at the TV screen, which was so big that her—or, rather, Hera’s—image was nearly life- size. “You can create something like this, years before we met, and still deny that we’re supposed to be mated?”
“Just because Strike saw Leah in a dream doesn’t mean
She told herself not to ask, but it came out anyway. “Why not? We’re good in bed. Am I really so awful outside of it?”
He exhaled a long, slow breath. “That’s not what this is about.”
Which didn’t answer her question in the slightest. “Then what
He was staring at Hera when he said, “I don’t do well with the idea of sex as a commodity.”
Everything inside her went still. “I don’t remember offering to pay you.”
“But you’d be trading sex for power. We both would be.” Something in his eyes said he wasn’t talking solely about Nightkeeper magic, and the idea unnerved her.
She didn’t say anything, didn’t know what to say, because it was both true and untrue. For her, the sex was a joy and a revelation, but yeah, it was also a means to an end. And when she looked at it that way, she got a strange, squirrelly feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“Besides,” Nate continued, “I don’t do well being told what to do.” His expression, and the locked-
tight rigor of his muscles, suggested there was more to it than even that, but she wasn’t sure she had the strength to keep fighting him right now.
“That’s an understatement.” Her voice came out a little choked as the held-off exhaustion started to hit. She was suddenly tired and sore, and so depressed she could barely think straight, never mind getting the rest of the story out of Nate, and trying to understand where he was coming from, and where they could go from there. Besides, why bother? she thought, realizing she’d made her decision without being aware of it. She was done trying to make it work with him, done trying to meet the gods halfway. Nate didn’t want her, plain and simple. Or rather, he wanted her body, but not much else about her, and she was finished trying to fight that fight.
“For what it’s worth,” he said softly, “I’m sorry. I wish it could be different.”
“Me too.” To her mortification, the words came out choked with tears. She spun on her heel and headed for the door.
“Alexis, wait.”
She stopped, but didn’t turn back. “What.” It wasn’t really a question.
“What are you going to do?”
She swallowed hard, knowing what she had to do, and hating it. “You don’t want to work within the prophecies? Fine, then neither will I. I’ll find myself another protector. That’ll let you off the hook.”
“Who?” His eyes were dark and angry, but he didn’t seem at all surprised, which meant that he’d been thinking about it, too, about how, if she took another one of the guys as a lover, she might be able to transfer the protector’s bond. Maybe.
The fact that he’d already gone there in his planning was an added blow, but she didn’t let him see it, saying only, “Well, my choices seem limited to Sven and Michael, don’t they? Izzy approves of the stone bloodline, so I guess I’ll start with Michael and see what happens.”
Figuring that was as good an exit line as she was likely to get, she slipped through the door, closing it behind her and hoping he wouldn’t follow, because she was too tired to argue anymore.
She headed back to her suite, knowing she couldn’t do a damn thing until she got some sleep.
Tomorrow would be soon enough to choose her new lover, she thought, and tried not to let the idea echo hollowly in her heart as she shucked off her clothes and dropped into bed naked. Soon she was asleep.
And in sleeping, she dreamed of Nate, the man who wore the matching mark that proclaimed him as hers, but wouldn’t let himself be caged.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Nate was pissed off enough that he couldn’t get to sleep even though his body badly needed rest. He lay awake on his bed, staring out the window at the shadow of the ceiba tree, dark against the darkness. The canyon night was cool, the AC off, so he had the window cracked to let in the air. A breeze brought the faint howl of a coyote.
He didn’t have a good reason to be pissed, he knew. He’d gone to Alexis’s room intending to have pretty much the convo they’d wound up having. Granted, he’d meant to offer himself for the sort of sex-only protective relationship she was now looking to find somewhere else, and logic said her theory was better. That didn’t mean he liked the plan, though.
In fact, he fucking hated it.
He despised the thought of her with Michael, loathed the idea with both halves of himself, the magic and the man. He was logical enough to recognize that it wasn’t fair, and to know he didn’t have the right to block her from taking on one of the other Nightkeeper males if he wasn’t willing to be what she needed. That didn’t dampen the rage, though. If anything, it made it worse.
He cursed aloud, feeling raw from the fight with Alexis, and guilty that he’d called Hera’s name in the moment of orgasm. Worse, he wasn’t sure which one of them he’d betrayed. Which was just fucked-up beyond words, and made him think he should maybe have a chat with Jade, who’d been a therapist of some sort back in the real world.
At the thought of Jade, he wondered what she’d say if Alexis wound up taking Michael as her lover.
Jade and Michael had been together in the months between the bloodline and talent ceremonies, in much the same way as Nate and Alexis had been. Actually, Jade and Michael had been more open about their relationship, more prone to public displays of affection until they’d gone their separate ways. They seemed to get along well enough in the aftermath, but the Nightkeepers were a small fighting unit, and their quarters were close. What would happen if the singles started trading partners?
Nate tried to imagine it, and just got more pissed off.
Torturing himself, poking at the raw spot, he tried to imagine what it’d be like if Michael turned Alexis down—hard to imagine, but what if?—and she hooked up with Sven. The youngest of the male Nightkeepers, Sven came off more like a college party animal than a warrior. He’d been a little more serious about his training since the equinox battle, and his rank within the Nightkeepers would undoubtedly shift now that he had the translocator’s talent mark. The rank might matter to Alexis, as might her desire not to mess with the dynamic between Jade and Michael. Still, though, Nate couldn’t see her being attracted to Sven’s surfer-dude ’tude or the relatively low rank of the coyote bloodline.
“So probably not Sven,” Nate said aloud, feeling something loosen in his chest, only to have it tighten back up when his thoughts circled back to Michael, whom he could picture all too easily being to Alexis’s taste, not the
