He shook his head. “No, Gabby. You’re no monster. Christos was a monster. Ganelon’s a monster. But you’re not.”
“But you think I have Ganelon’s blood in me.”
His anger slapped against her, riding the link created by the trickle of blood that still ran down the back of her throat. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t pull away from me.” He yanked her close, his breath fanning over her ear as he ground his erection against the hollow curve of her belly. “No more running, Gabby. No more denying. There’s too much between us for you to be pulling that sort of bullshit anymore.”
A chill settled into her bones, erasing the warmth that had filled her with his touch. Too much between them. Too much lust? On that she could agree, but even as she tried to justify it as that alone, she knew she was kidding herself. This was more than lust. She’d pushed away the nagging suspicion before, convincing herself he was simply a man and she a succubus, but now, with his blood being absorbed into her very essence…he cares.
The thought shook through her being, rattling her confidence and stealing her lungs of air. She shook her head in denial. She was the monster. She wouldn’t, couldn’t let him ruin his life by being with her. And she would not let him steer her from her plans of revenge either. “Don’t let some misguided savior complex confuse you. You don’t want me.”
His grip shifted to her arms, anger flaring in his bourbon gaze. “Don’t tell me what I want.”
“You want to bed one of the creatures responsible for Angeline’s slaughter?” She forced a laugh even as acid churned in her gut. “The other Paladin are right. You really are sick, aren’t you?”
He stiffened, the impassive expression that settled over his face not matched by the tense grip of his hands. But even if she hadn’t been aware of the infinitesimal change in his grip, she would have known how much her words had hurt him. Valin was definitely stronger at projection than she’d suspected, because it felt like a knife had just been driven into her chest.
“What do you know of Angeline?” he asked softly. The words carried like deadly darts on the breeze.
Damnation. How could she be so stupid? No, not stupid, cruel. She twisted her head, unable to look him in the eyes. Why of all the cards she could have played had she tossed down that one?
“How do you know?” He shook her so hard her head rapped against the access door.
Knowing there was no escaping the ball of hot shame coating her innards, she lifted her chin. Cruel or not, the damage was already done. She could run and most likely face him and his questions later, or she could finish the job and ensure that he’d not only leave her alone but run so far and fast that she wouldn’t have to worry about being the one doing so.
And why did that hurt so damn much?
Backbone, Gabby. You have one, use it.
“Christos told me,” she said, striving to keep her voice even and unemotional, as if breaking his heart like this didn’t affect her at all.
“Christos,” he repeated.
She nodded. “He just loved reliving the details of the bloodbath, especially when I’d done something underhanded that would help one of you…Paladin.” She sneered the word Paladin, injecting some of Christos’s own hatred into her voice. After all, if it hadn’t been for them, Gabby wouldn’t be here to be breaking this man now. Or at least, without their blood running through her veins, perhaps she wouldn’t have cared. “It was his crowning moment. The slaughter of so many, the turning of one of you do-good Paladin…oh yes, he loved describing every beseeching word, every bloodcurdling scream.”
There was no hiding the emotions in his expression now. It was all there, plain as day: anger, misery, pain. Tears were openly running down his cheeks, the ache of his agony tearing at her own rib cage. The urge to reach out and comfort had every nerve in her body vibrating, but she had to stay strong if she was going to drive him off.
He swallowed, taking a deep breath. “How…how did she die?”
She stiffened in shock, her breath freezing in her lungs. He didn’t know? How could he not know? From everything she’d been told she’d assumed he would have felt his mate die. Had Angeline somehow blocked the link between them? Had Christos? But even then, wouldn’t Roland have told him?
His jaw tensed, his mouth thinning as if he could sense her reluctance to answer, which couldn’t be true; the blood bond was a one-way street when it came to reading another’s thoughts and feelings. “What did he do to her, Gabby? You know, don’t you?”
She shook her head, closing her eyes tight so she didn’t have to look upon his misery-ridden face. No, she couldn’t tell him that. To do so would be beyond the cruelty she’d already inflicted. To know the details of his mate’s death would be…soul-consuming.
He smacked the door next to her head, scattering flaking paint chips and leaving a good-sized dent in it. “Damn you! You started this. Tell me how she fucking died!”
Gabby swallowed, sickened when the action brought with it the glorious aftertaste of his blood. She had started it. And if she had that backbone she claimed to have she’d finish it.
“He saved her for last. So Roland…” She swallowed, pushing away the vivid image her maker had painted of that fateful night and sticking to the facts that mattered. “So she’d die knowing what kind of monster her brother had been turned into and so Roland would know that his failure was at the cost of her life.”
Air hissed in and out of his flared nostrils, his throat bobbing as he swallowed. “Do you know…was it quick?”
She could read the plea in his eyes. Knew he desperately wanted her to tell him it had been. But she couldn’t, not without lying, not without showing him a compassion that would go against everything she hoped to accomplish when she started this cruel task of driving him away. Still, the next words she said seemed like the hardest ones she’d ever uttered in her life. More than any lie. More than anything Christos had ever forced her to do or say.
“No. She screamed for a very long time. But never for help; it was too late for that. She screamed for you. Prayed that you would be okay…and begged for you to save not herself, but her brother.”
Chapter 10
There wasn’t enough space on the face of earth to run from the pain, so Valin resorted to the one other place he knew he could hide—the black and gray shadows of the shade embracing him into its bleakness. Not part of His realm of holy creation, nor part of the black chaos of Lucifer’s evil workshop, the shade was a kind of neutral zone on the battlefield of good versus evil; a mixed motley of not quite good but not all bad where neither could comfortably tread. Valin didn’t have such problems. He found a strange solace in the shades of gray between His light and complete darkness. He didn’t have to be perfect here. Unlike the bathing radiance of heavenly light, in the shade there was no itch or subconscious need to squirm under the weight of his failures, nor was there room for such nagging things as extreme emotions.
At first he raced from shadow to shadow, hiding from reality. With the suffocating feelings of grief, loss, and impotence crashing over him, it had been all he could do not to strike out at the source of his renewed pain.
God, Gabby. He’d been so angry at her. She might not have been there to be part of the destruction of his life, but the fact that she’d known the details, had spoken of them so casually, heartlessly even…It had hit him low in the gut that he was mated to a coldblooded monster. But now, here in the gray shadows that took the edge off the sharpness of reality, he could look back on that moment and see more. The little movements that spoke of her discomfort, the tension in her body: She hadn’t wanted to tell him about Angeline’s death. Yes, she’d started the conversation, but he’d been the one to drag the details of Angeline’s death from her, ignoring the nagging tickle from their bond that told him she hated herself for every word she uttered.