first tipoff that things were really bad between them. Or rather … the first tip-off that was a conscious thought of hers instead of a weighty feeling she had resolutely ignored.
He’d never worn the suit, obviously. Had barely tried it on before they’d had to come back here so he could return to his study, his computer, his work.
Running her hand down the slacks, she found the fine wool smooth. There were no cuffs yet on the bottoms of the legs because they’d needed to get it fitted, but she’d known better than to try to get him to wait until the in-store tailor had been done with another customer.
There would be time, she’d told herself.
Nope. No time.
With a curse, she bent down into the box and picked up the jacket, pulling it out—
Something dropped to the bare floorboards.
An envelope.
Nate had no idea where he was or what he was doing.
Okay, he was outside in the woods somewhere and it was cold. Oh, so very cold. He had on a borrowed parka that was puffy as a cloud. Borrowed shirt and pants that were huge in terms of size and yet fit him. Borrowed underwear. Borrowed boots.
He had been out here for now three hours and forty-five minutes. Give or take.
So in a way, he had grown used to how much he didn’t like looking around. Too much of a vista, and everything was overwhelming: the spindly trees, the fluffy trees, the spiky undergrowth, the sense that there was an incalculable distance to be traveled in any direction. And he really didn’t like looking up at the vast sky above: The incalculable number of little pinpoints of light shining through a dense blackness made him worry he was going to fly off the earth and get lost up there.
And the smells. The complex bouquet of earth, animal, and air was just too much for his brain to handle. His heart was pounding like he was being chased, he was too hot under the parka, his eyes were darting everywhere and making him dizzy.
Then again, he had been working hard.
As his eyes watered, he brushed at them with impatience. The cold dry wind. Yes, that was it.
He absolutely was not crying. From fear of how big the world was. From anger that he had been cheated out of twenty years of his life. From sadness that he was out here for his mahmen.
“They should arrive soon,” a female voice said. “Any minute.”
Nate looked over his shoulder. Xhex, the female who had been kept in the same lab as his mahmen, stood with her back to the wind. Her short hair was smudged by the gusts, moving this way … another way. She was dressed in black leather, and her face was grim.
He wondered, if his mahmen had survived for another two decades, whether she would have turned out to be as tough as this female clearly was. Or would she have remained as he remembered, kind, gentle, but scared.
He wanted to ask what Xhex recalled about his mahmen and the lab, but he had a feeling he didn’t want to know. He’d seen enough for himself. He’d had enough done to him.
“Are you over it?” he asked roughly. “What they did to us?”
It was a while before the female answered. “No. I don’t think about it much, but I don’t believe it’s because I’m over it.”
“Am I going to be okay?”
“Yes, you are. I promise you that.”
Nate shivered and braced himself … and then looked over at the simple pine coffin that had been put on a platform in the clearing. He had hammered himself the latter from trees that he had cut down with an axe and honed as best he could. His palms were torn up. His work was shoddy. And the scent of pine sap was still thick in the air.
But he had made the pyre himself. As was proper.
The coffin had just appeared, about twenty minutes ago. Murhder and John had driven it into the clearing on the back of a beautiful truck, and they had just taken the vehicle back to wherever it had come from—
One by one, two figures materialized in the clearing. Murhder and John reappearing.
“Hey, son,” Murhder said as he came over.
They embraced, and the older male said, “You did fine work with this. Very fine.”
Nate took his hands out of his pockets. He meant to say something, but he choked. His torn up palms spoke for themselves, though.