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his eyes were shiny. “I’ve let you do my killing for me for years. I’ve forced you to do terrible things because I’m too squeamish. I comforted myself at one point by saying that it didn’t bother you, it didn’t mean anything to you, to do the wolf pack’s dirty business, but that was just to make me feel better. Everything you’ve done to keep us safe, and make other shapeshifters and vampires think twice before attacking St. Louis, had a price. I told myself that you didn’t pay that price, that you were cold about it. Today I saw your face when you realized Noel was dead. I saw your face after you’d killed Haven. I saw the pain. I saw the price, and I am so sorry that you’ve had to pay that price on your own.”

I looked into those brown eyes and didn’t know whether to pinch myself or him. “What are you saying? That you’ll help me kill people now?”

He shook his head. “I’ll defend the wolves with violence when it’s needed, but I’ll never be a shooter, Anita. I don’t regret that, but I am sorry that you have to pay more of the price for our safety than I do, because I’ll never be . . .” He stopped as if he didn’t know what to say.

“You’ll never be a killer like me?” I said.

He looked up and shook his head. “I did not say that, I wouldn’t have said that. Haven had to die. He was too dangerous, too unpredictable to be allowed to stay as Rex.”

“I didn’t kill him because of that,” I said.

Richard studied my face. “I don’t understand.”

“I killed him because Noel did a brave thing. Noel pushed Nathaniel out of the way of the shot. Noel who was one of the weakest of all of you guys, but he was brave when it counted, and he should have lived through that. He should have lived and gotten to be brave and get his master’s degree and have a life. He was only twenty-four and now he’s dead, and we can’t even tell his parents that he died a hero, because we can’t tell them the truth about what happened. They’ll never know that he died brave, and he died well, and he died saving the man I love, and all I could do was walk across the room and shoot his killer in the face until he died, too.” I was crying and didn’t mean to. “I didn’t kill Haven because it was the best thing for the city, or for the lions, Richard. I killed him because if Noel had to die, it was the least I could do for him. I killed Haven because he tried to kill Nathaniel, and that is not allowed. For that he had to die, because I looked into his eyes and knew that while he was alive, Nathaniel wasn’t safe, and I’d do anything to keep him safe.”

Jean-Claude held me tight, murmuring comforting words in French. Richard buried his face against my legs again and wrapped his arms around them. They held me close, and I let myself cry for Noel, and for Nathaniel, and for the knowledge that I’d killed one of my own lovers, killed him with the taste of his body still on my lips, the feel of him still like a memory inside me, and I’d looked him in the same eyes that had looked up at me in bed while we made love, and blown his face into so much meat and bones.

And in the end, that last was what made the crying build to screams.

26

I FINALLY WENT to relieve Micah at Nathaniel’s bedside. We had a series of rooms that had been made into hospital rooms so that when our people were hurt they didn’t all have to go to the lycanthrope hospital that the wererats had set up years ago for the local shapeshifters. Human hospitals didn’t always like treating lycanthropes. The room was smallish with a twin hospital bed, subdued lighting at the moment, but I knew that the brightest lights in the entire underground were in these rooms. It had been yet another remodeling project when we did everything else. Jean-Claude was really trying to make this our home. I missed windows.

I’d gotten my hysterics out of the way. I sat there holding the hand that wasn’t attached to a freshly shot shoulder. Nathaniel smiled at me, and that was enough. I