Where Winter Finds You (Black Dagger Brotherhood #18)- J.R Ward Page 0,21
be so presumptuous as to suggest so much as a wardrobe change to someone they served, much less form a consensus on a person’s mental stability. Or lack thereof.
“Look,” he gritted out. “Will you just get on with it? No offense, but I got business to take care of.”
Not really, the club ran itself. He had to play what cards he had, however.
As the silence stretched out, Trez took an inventory of his former boss. Rehv’s purple eyes were utterly level, the color reminding Trez of Rhage’s GTO. And between that huge body, and all that fur, the chair that ordinarily was perfectly big enough for anyone who sat in it looked like dollhouse furniture. Worse, as the king of the symphaths just sat there, batting his walking stick back and forth between his knees, his white suit and white shirt like he’d worn the storm indoors, the male seemed content to ride out the bad weather. Until, like, August.
“What.” Trez sat forward and fiddled with two accounts payable reports. “Can we just get this over with.”
“Ehlena says hi.”
“And you came all this way to tell me?”
“Well, not everything has to be on text. Have you heard about the privacy concerns going around? Smartphones are evil.”
“Fuck you,” Trez said in an exhausted voice. “No offense.”
Rehv got to his feet and strolled over to the glass wall, that sable coat flaring out behind him, the glittering cane flashing in the dim lights from overhead. As Trez watched his old friend, he realized it had been so long since he had hung out with the male. Both of their lives had changed so much, although only Rehv’s for the better.
“You know I’m still on the dopamine, right?” Rehv said as he angled his sight downward toward the dance floor.
Trez swiveled his chair around so he could face the male. “I hadn’t really thought about it one way or the other.”
I’ve been too busy playing out what drowning would be like, he added to himself. Shit gets so hectic during this human Christmas season, dontcha know.
But as he considered his former boss, he supposed the guy had to still be on the sauce, so to speak. Symphaths were known to get into things like other people’s emotions, and never in a good way, never in a therapeutic, supportive fashion, more like a shove-you-off-your-ledge way. They were a subspecies that you didn’t want to show your underbelly to, although the prejudice they’d been subjected to hadn’t been right, either.
When Rehv had been out in the world more, he’d taken dopamine as a way to regulate himself so that his bad side stayed under wraps and his true identity remained hidden. It had been the only way for him to seem like he was just the same as everyone else. And after he was mated? Apparently, he kept on using the stuff.
Trez shrugged. “I guess I am a little surprised you’re still dosing. I mean, everyone knows what you are. Everyone who matters, that is.”
And more than that, he had forged a political alliance with Wrath. He was super safe.
“It goes deeper than suppressing my identity,” Rehv murmured. “My instincts are much more controllable now, it’s true. My love for Ehlena is responsible for that. So are my relationships with Wrath and the Brotherhood. I am what I am, however, and if I’m going to live my fullest life with my shellan and allies, I want to be able to focus on things other than just curtailing my difficult side.”
“Okay.”
Trez ground his molars. He had no idea where this was going, and the fact that he didn’t really care seemed like one more thing to add to his long list of losses. He and Rehv went way too far back for him to push the guy out, especially as Trez couldn’t remember when they had sat down together last. Grief changed your priorities, however.
He thought of sitting in his BMW, out in the cold, getting buried in snow.
“So I was talking to my Ehlena,” Rehv continued, “about some pharmaceutical options for you.”
Trez jerked forward. “Excuse me?”
“I wanted to see if you could get some help.” Rehv’s amethyst eyes swung over. “To see if you can find some relief, as I have.”
An irrational anger curled in Trez’s gut. “I’m not a symphath.”
“You’re suffering.”
“My shellan fucking died. You think I should be throwing a party?”
“I know where you’ve been going,” Rehv said calmly.