Unwillingly, her gaze was pulled back to the corner. Fen stared at her with a lost expression on his face. When she took a step in his direction, he turned away.
“I’ll try.” She didn’t care if he didn’t want to talk to her.
“Raquel—”
Shaking off Christian’s hand on her arm, she stalked across the bar. She knew exactly when Fen realized she was coming after him by the way his body tightened. Supersenses and all. His back stiffened and his shoulders set, but he didn’t lift his head or turn around.
“Go away, Rocky,” he growled.
Ignoring that, she addressed Carly. “Would you give us a moment please?”
Carly nodded and even though Fen raised his hand to stop her from leaving, she slipped past and he let her go.
Head bowed, Fen released a heavy sigh and then faced Raquel. He wore dark jeans and worn boots, a T- shirt that wrapped the muscles in his arm perfectly. Rubbing a hand over his face, he gave her a look that was more weary than annoyed. “What do you want?”
“You can ask that?” He knew exactly what she wanted and this was his way of putting it out of reach for both of them. Forever. “Don’t do this.”
Her voice trembled and he hesitated, but only for a moment. “I’m not betraying my friend, my pack or my clan.”
“We haven’t
His mouth twisted. “You think the way I look at you isn’t already a betrayal? Give Christian a chance. The two of you could be happy. If you don’t think you can make it work, I’m pretty sure they’ll release you from the contract. I won’t be the reason for it.”
“That’s it?”
“I’m not right for you. For anyone. It’s past time I accept that. And you...” He flinched. “It’s better for you too. This way you’re free to look somewhere else.”
Her blood went cold and then flashed hot. “Do
Except he wasn’t pretending. She could see that. The idiot man thought he was doing the right thing, saving her from herself.
Fen was silent for several breaths and the look in his eyes broke her heart. When he spoke, his voice was low and strained. “You deserve more. I already have a family and I won’t have children.”
“We could adopt.”
He gave her a disgusted look. “And we live happily ever after? It doesn’t work like that.”
She could see what he wasn’t saying.
And maybe it didn’t usually work out for hounds, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t work for them. She’d been raised in a clan and was well aware of all the pitfalls that came with bonding a hound. She understood that he would be tied to his pack as tightly as to a mate—maybe more so for him because he led the hounds and because of the man he was. Fen took that responsibility seriously.
Her eyes were open. Despite all the difficulties in their path now or the ones that might lay ahead, they belonged together. From their first conversation, she felt as if she knew him, had known him forever. Every moment they spent together felt right except this one. Couldn’t he see that?
“Please,” she said, because if he didn’t understand how wrong this was, she didn’t know how to change his mind.
He picked up his coat and glanced at someone behind her. Carly, she imagined. For one moment, Fen looked directly at her and Raquel thought he might change his mind. His face was stark. The neon light that had been so kind to Carly only highlighted the hollows of his cheeks and eyes. He looked so painfully unhappy that she couldn’t help but take a step closer. He started for the door, his arm bumping her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
She thought about tripping him, knocking him over the head, spelling the door. But she couldn’t do any of those things. She’d made her choice. She had to let him make his. There was nothing else she could do to change his mind. She was right about them. What was between them was good. Truer than pacts or curses or prophecies. They belonged together. She felt that all the way down to her bones. She hoped Fen would realize it too, before he did something phenomenally stupid.
They left without eating and Christian didn’t speak until they pulled into her driveway. The porch light was on and she saw the curtain move before Christian cut the headlights. Of course, her mother would be waiting up for her tonight of all nights.
Christian reached over and lifted her hand. “I knew there was an interest. I didn’t realize how strong it was on both sides. I’ll talk with him, but I don’t know if I can get him to see sense. He can be so damned hardheaded it drives me crazy.”
“I didn’t see it happen. If I’d known it was going to...” She couldn’t make herself say she would have prevented it. She wished things were different, but not that way.
She couldn’t quite read the expression on Christian’s face, but he didn’t seem angry. “Let me go stop him. We’ll figure everything else out later.”
“Do you think you can?”
Christian squeezed her hand. “Even if Fen changes his mind about Carly, I doubt he’ll change it about taking a wife. His parents were reasonably happy, but that’s rare for hound matings. And Fen’s father was never pack leader. The clan’s expectations are hard enough to deal with. Add pack ties to that and you can see why he wouldn’t want another collar wrapped around his neck.”
A collar. Is that really how Fen saw her?
“I don’t want to collar him.”
Christian held her gaze for a long time and then nodded. “Don’t screw around with him, Raquel. He’s my friend. I won’t help you hurt him.”
“Go stop him from making a huge mistake even if you have to beat him over the head to do it. Regardless of what happens, I don’t want to see him hurt.” She blinked back tears. “Christian?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want you hurt either.”
He cupped the back of her neck and pulled her forward. A quick kiss to her forehead and then he let her go.
“We’ll talk later.”
At times, it wasn’t so bad. There were moments, brief and precious, that kept him from sinking into darkness. The way the blue-tinged light filtered through ice, casting kaleidoscope patterns on the bare rock. The special game he’d made of recovering Asgard’s most sacred treasures before Surtr could claim them. The peculiar triumph of escaping a pack of demons on the hunt. He knew it was dangerous to become addicted to the rush of adrenaline, but it was one of the few pleasures left to him.
He didn’t age. He didn’t feel hunger, leastways not for food. But he was slowly fading into the twilit world of Asgard, this cursed place of frozen death suspended between worlds. He’d been cast out of Vanaheimr. Rightfully so. His pride had cost countless lives. He could appreciate the justice of it, had even been resigned to accept his sentence. Exile. Death in the world broken by his hand.
But death wouldn’t come.
It would come soon though. After all these years, it crept over him inexorably as a rising tide. The cold presence at the edge of his consciousness claiming more with every breath. Surtr, in a fit of pique, had melted the ice he stood on, sealing him to the hip and binding his power with scraps of the same chain that had once held Fenrisulfr. The chain alone would have restrained him. The ice was overkill, was, in fact, slowly killing him—
