dominance.” Russ hadn’t been controlling Athena through her wolf. “Just a case of bad taste, I guess.” Her gaze met Kenji’s. “Woman like Athena, once she makes a choice about a man, she’s stubborn enough to stick to it no matter how bad the situation is for her.”
Those beautiful shoulders tensed, Kenji’s response holding the edge of a growl. “Seems to me she made a choice to stay. And when the situation became toxic, she walked away.”
Garnet had never walked away—Kenji hadn’t given her that chance. And even now, she wanted to ask him why. The question had dug into her brain for years. They’d been friends. If he’d had cold feet about a possible relationship, why hadn’t he just told her? Why hurt her? Why create a distance between them that had remained unbridged until they both became lieutenants and had to find a way to deal with one another?
They’d settled on biting wit, sarcasm, and razor-edged flirtation.
“So,” Kenji said when she stayed silent, his voice still rough. “We’ve done everything we can here. You want to have another look around before we leave?”
“Yes.” Suiting action to words, she began to cover the room, but there wasn’t much in the living area aside from the furniture she’d already noted, including the small glass-fronted display cabinet that held honors Russ had won in his field. He’d stripped the cabinet of all traces of his life with Athena, including the photos that had once fought for space atop it, while Athena had taken the sampler she’d made for the wall above.
Garnet had seen the room’s pre-breakup state the times she’d spoken to Athena while Russ was away at work. She’d talked to Russ, too, made it clear she was unimpressed by his controlling attitude toward his lover.
His response echoed in her memory.
“I would never hurt Athena.” Face stiff and shoulders squared, he’d ground out the words. “Just because our relationship isn’t what you think it should be doesn’t give you the right to interfere.”
Garnet had been forced to concede that Russ did love Athena. It hadn’t been a warm, generous love. No, it had been small and jealous and suffocating, but it had been a kind of love nonetheless. That understanding was why Garnet had made certain an older packmate checked in on Russ after the breakup—she’d known he wouldn’t talk to her, but she’d hoped he’d confide in a peer who was a friend.
He hadn’t, had shut down all efforts to offer comfort or friendly companionship.
Chest aching because Russ would now never have the chance to make another choice, she walked out of the living area and down the hallway to his bedroom.
She saw nothing she hadn’t seen earlier.
The bed was messed up, but there was no smell of sex. Just two masculine scents—Russ’s and Shane’s. Given their relationship, the only thing they were likely to have been doing in here was fighting. Sheets were tangled and half pulled off the bed and there were holes in the internal walls.
Like the main SnowDancer den, Garnet’s den was hewn out of stone, but the internal rooms were created much the same as rooms anywhere. Russ’s apartment was near the center of the den, which meant only the floor was stone; Russ had placed carpet over that. The same pale shade as in the living room, the carpet nonetheless clearly showed the flecks of white paint and fragmented shards from the damaged walls.
Rubbing a fleck between her fingers, Garnet had a thought. “Kenji,” she said without raising her voice, “did you notice if either Russ or Shane had broken skin on his knuckles?”
He answered from Russ’s study. “Russ, yeah. Not sure about Shane.”
Making a note to check that, she continued to examine the room. She even forced herself to go through the cupboards and drawers again. It was in the lowest drawer that she found a photo of Athena; Russ had hidden it facedown under a stack of math papers . . . but he’d kept it. “Ah, hell.”
People were so damn complicated.
• • •
Kenji exited the study and went to stand in the doorway to the bedroom. He could’ve gone elsewhere, but he wanted to watch Garnet work, wanted to drink her in. As it was, her scent sank into his cells between one breath and the next. Or that was what it felt like. As if she was already branded into his skin, a place only a lover or a mate had the right to be.