she wasted years on me, years that, as it turned out, she did not have to spare.”
“You can’t blame yourself for what happened to her,” Boone said. “And you have no idea what the future would have held one way or the other.”
“It was my fault. Those wasted years were my fault.”
Boone frowned. “No offense, but what does this have to do with you and me?”
“If I’m with young, you’re going to want to get mated.”
“Of course I will. How could I not?”
Helania shook her head. “But I don’t want that. I don’t want you falling on another sword of duty.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Really? You think? How is my being pregnant any different from an arranged mating?” As he gritted his teeth, she could tell by the set of his chin that he knew she was right. “You always do the proper thing. I get it. But here’s the issue. If I ever get mated, I’d like to think . . .” Pain lanced through her chest. “I’d like to be chosen out of love, not obligation—and please do not say ‘I love you’ right now. Those three words are sacred, not a panacea because you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings or ignore the reality that you and I find ourselves in. We are essentially strangers, and you know this. And yet we’re facing something that could change both of our lives forever.”
He shook his head and cursed. “You make it sound like a car accident.”
“It is one.”
Abruptly, he rubbed his face. “Well, then, let’s go to the fucking clinic. Because isn’t that what one does when one is in a goddamn car accident?”
Helania looked away sharply. And then the words she’d been holding in broke out of her. “I don’t want to be pregnant.”
“Yes,” Boone muttered, “I believe you’ve made it very clear that you do not want my young. But be that as it may, Doc Jane is going to check you out and we are going to do whatever else she says because we’re adults in an adult situation of our own creation.”
“You didn’t know I was going to go through my needing. So this is on me.”
“Like you could control when it came? And besides, you did go through it, and I was with you right beforehand. And I’m not arguing about that or anything else about going to the clinic anymore.”
The bitterness in his voice brought her eyes back to him. Boone’s face was taut, his brows down, his unfocused stare trained somewhere in front of him.
The sight of him looking so unhappy made her feel even worse, and she knew, if she kept this attitude up, she was just going to destroy them both. Maybe right here and now.
Besides . . . perhaps it was all over nothing.
“Fine,” she said, “gimme a minute and we’ll go.”
Boone just nodded without looking at her. “I’ll meet you in the car.
It’s out front.”
* * *
Boone went out the back way of the apartment building so he could get some fresh air. As he walked around to where Fritz was waiting in the Brotherhood’s black Mercedes, his chest hurt so badly, he wondered whether emotional pain could cause a heart attack—and then didn’t particularly care about the answer.
Because hey, if he dropped dead in a snowbank, at least he wouldn’t feel this shitty anymore.
As he rounded the corner and saw the car, he was tempted to tell Fritz to drive away and then text Helania that he wasn’t going to make her do anything she didn’t want. After which he would go jump off a bridge and take a nice long swim in the Hudson.
And following that, maybe he’d find some alcohol.
What he was not going to do was take out his frustrations by mutilating a slayer or a human. While he’d been tossing and turning all day, determined not to call or text Helania because it was clear she wanted space, he’d been haunted by his own actions in that alley. The fact that that particular man, that assailant, had more than deserved what had come his way was beside the point—and the terrifying thing was the question that Boone had refused to voice to himself.
But God, what if the man had not deserved it? What if Boone had crossed paths with an innocent human who just happened to be out walking the streets?
He liked to believe he wouldn’t have done anything. He wanted to believe he would have kept going until he found a lesser