like she was taking his vitals with her eyes. “I overheard V telling Jane that he needed to cleanse you tonight. That’s three times in the last week.”
Annnnnnnd Butch went back to staring at the counter again, like the scotch was his best friend. “Was it that much? I don’t think it was—”
“Yes. Three times.”
Closing his eyes briefly, he said, “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I can’t talk about work right now. I just can’t. There are eleven hours between this moment and when I have to leave to go out into the field again. I need to spend this precious time thinking about something, anything, else than the war.”
Assuming that was even possible.
After a moment, Marissa resettled beside him and tucked her feet under herself. Leaning into his chest, she tugged his heavy gold cross out of his shirt.
“I love how this gets warm when it lays on your skin,” she murmured. “It makes me feel that you’re protected.”
“I am. God is always with me.”
“Good.” As her eyes became teary, she blinked fast. “I know you don’t want to talk about this… but I love you and I don’t want to live my life without you. You’re everything to me. If something were to happen—”
“Shh.” He covered her hand with his own, so that they were both holding the symbol of his faith. Then he leaned in and kissed her mouth. “Don’t think like that. Don’t talk like that. I’ll be fine.”
“Promise me that you’ll…” She looked deeply into his eyes, as if she could pull something out of him by will alone. “… be careful.”
He had a feeling that she wanted to make him vow to get through the Dhestroyer Prophecy alive. But the sadness in her face told him she was confronting the fact that that was not his call. Being careful with himself? That was within his control to some degree. Being upright in his boots at the end? Way above his pay grade.
She cleared her throat. “Do you remember when they found you, after the Omega got ahold of you and did… what he did to you?”
“Let’s not talk about—”
“They brought you to my brother’s clinic, the one he had before the raids.” She carefully tucked the cross back inside his shirt, as if she wanted it closer to his heart, closer to his soul. “I remember when V told me where they were keeping you. I ran to that isolation room. I was relieved you were alive, but horrified by the condition you were in—and you didn’t want me in there with you.”
“Only because I couldn’t have you infected with the evil. And that’s still true to this day.”
“I know.” Marissa took a deep breath. “The thing is, I’ve been through a lot in my life. All those centuries as Wrath’s unclaimed shellan. The trip across the ocean from the Old Country when I didn’t think we were going to make the crossing alive. Being judged by the glymera, by my brother, by the Council. Things only got better when I met you. You made me feel alive… you were such a revelation. And then I almost lost you.”
“Don’t go back there—”
“That’s my point. I don’t want to ever mourn you again.”
“You aren’t going to have to.”
In a small voice, she spoke the very thing that worried him most. “The prophecy only provides that you eradicate the Omega. It doesn’t say anything about what survives.”
Butch stared somberly at his mate. “With everything I am, and all that I will ever be, I swear, I will come back to you.”
Eventually, she nodded. And she was looking at where the cross hung under his shirt when she did.
“Let me hold you,” he murmured as he drew her against his chest.
Making circles with his palm across her back, he felt his love for his female take on a new dimension… but not for a happy reason. The sense that their time together could be cut short deepened his emotions to a painful degree, and in the overwhelming quiet of their home, he felt true fear. It was as if their separation was in the wind, a leaf falling through the air. Whether it landed on his grave or not, no one knew.
“I just have this bad feeling,” she said against his pec.
Butch kept his mouth shut on that one, closing his eyes and running through some Hail Marys in his head. It was the only thing he could think to do, and that reality