"Your rules, not mine."
"Yes." He paused. "I thought we had agreed that we should—"
"No," I snapped back. "You decided we should attempt to ignore this. I had no choice."
"Because of the danger—"
"To whom?" I swung around and stabbed a finger into his chest. It felt like I was hitting steel. "Not to me, buddy boy, and don't pretend otherwise. You're protecting your ass here, not mine."
"True." His expression was as enigmatic as ever, and yet there was an undercurrent in the air that was both frustration and anger. At himself, at me, at the situation. "But you have no idea of the dangers I face."
"No, because you won't fucking explain them to me." I glared at him for a moment, then shook my head and walked on. "You know what? Forget it. It's not important."
"If it wasn't important, you would not be this angry."
I snorted softly and just kept moving. He was silent until we got to the SUV, then appeared in the passenger seat.
"As I said before," he commented, as I pulled out into the traffic, "the longer I remain in flesh form, the more I take on certain human characteristics."
"So? It's not like a little human emotion is going to destroy you or anything, is it?"
"That," he said, his voice holding an edge that suggested he was barely holding on to his patience, "is where you are very wrong."
I glanced at him sharply. "How the fuck is that even possible? I mean, emotion isn't a physical force. Being emotional can't destroy you." I paused, then remembered Jak, the man I'd thought I would marry one day, and all the heartbreak he'd caused me. "Although sometimes it does feel like it can."
"While gaining the emotions that come with flesh form is, of itself, not dangerous to us, the fact that you and I are connected at a chi level makes it so."
I slowed down as the lights ahead went to red, then said, "Why?"