together. And he had the sense that he wasn’t going to get another chance to talk to her. Ever again.
“Thank you for coming with me,” he said roughly.
She shook her head, and he figured she was going to it’s-not-about-you him. When she didn’t say anything, he frowned.
“What,” he asked.
It was a while before she answered him. Then again, given their history and all the things they had never discussed? Lot to choose from.
“Why did you keep going after them?” She looked at him. “That lab. Those scientists. Those humans. Why did you hunt them?”
Murhder recoiled. “Are you serious?” When she just stared at him, he cursed under his breath. “How could I not. They hurt you. They nearly killed you.”
Xhex refocused on the meadow ahead. “We weren’t like that, you and I. I wasn’t a mate to ahvenge.”
“On my end, we were.”
“I lied to you.”
“I know.”
As she exhaled, her breath came out into the cold as a haze that dispersed quickly. “I’m sorry. For everything. For not telling you what I am. For my bloodline and what they did to you up in the colony. I’m really sorry.”
Murhder opened his mouth. He intended to tell her it was all okay. That he was fine. That he …
But they both knew that wasn’t true, and he refused to lie. At least out loud, that was.
“I never blamed you for that,” he said roughly. “Not telling me about the symphath in you, I mean.”
“Why?”
“You were protecting yourself. As a fighter, I get that.”
Back then, no one with mixed blood would have ever come forward for fear of getting deported. And he assumed that was the same now—although so much had changed since he’d been around, who knew.
Abruptly, she turned to him. Her eyes were shadowed and not just because there was no moon out. They were filled with pain, and he knew what that felt like.
As the cold wind blew his hair around, and sadness darkened the night even further, he realized that even though the pair of them were not destined to be together, they would never fully be apart, either. Their relationship had carved runes in the bedrock of their souls, the suffering on both sides longer lasting than any resonant joy could have been.
“You make me ashamed of myself,” she said hoarsely. “You kept going after those humans. I stopped. Otherwise, maybe I could have saved this female. And her young.”
Murhder shook his head. “Don’t blame yourself. There’s no right answer when it comes to healing from tragedy. You took care of yourself. That is what matters.”
Okay, so that was some serious bullshit. He hadn’t healed a damn thing in himself, so he really didn’t know what he was talking about when it came to recovering from anything more serious than a broken bone. Still, he wanted to ease her conscience. After everything that had been done to her, she deserved freedom, and not just from that cage she’d been kept in.
“You were there the night I burned that lab down, weren’t you.” As he nodded, she continued, “How did you know where I was?”
He closed his eyes and fought against going back to the past. And if it hadn’t been for the rock-solid conviction that they were never seeing each other again after this, he probably would have let it all go.
Instead … he found himself answering, the words bubbling up his throat and coming out of his mouth on shaky syllables.
“When your people gave you over to the humans up at the colony, I broke free and tried to save you. I saw you get put into a van with blacked-out windows and there was a logo on it. I would have followed, but …” Well, her relatives took control of his brain again and that had pretty much ruled his roost. “After Rehv got me out sometime later, I searched for the laboratory that matched the logo. It was dumb luck that I happened to find it the night you lit that fire.”
Dumb luck … or part of the Scribe Virgin’s grand plan. If you believed in that kind of thing.
He touched the shard of seeing glass through his shirt. That van had been how he’d eventually found the other two vampires. As he had watched Xhex against the flames she had started, a vehicle that he had not thought much about at the time had driven off. Only later, after he had decided to leave Xhex alone and had dematerialized away from the site of