Her words hit harder than they probably should. Harder than words ever have. I stare at her, struggling to keep my expression neutral. "Is that really all you think you are to me? After all the shit we've been through?"
She tilts her chin up, defiant. "What else, then?"
I freeze, the words catching in my throat. How can I tell her? How can I explain that from the moment I caught her scent, something fundamental shifted inside me? That the idea of her in danger I've never thought twice about running into on my own makes my blood run cold in a way I've never experienced before?
That she's my fuckingmate?
"Yes, Nikolai," Raven says pointedly, his blue eyes glittering with barely concealed amusement as he leans forward, his chin propped smugly on one hand. "What else?"
I glower at him, every muscle in my body locked tight. This isn't how I wanted to do this. Not here, not now, with all these prying eyes.
Not when she's still raw from that royal bastard's betrayal.
Without a word, I push myself up from the table and stalk out of the room. I need air. I need space. I need to hit something—preferably until it bleeds. I ignore the judgmental muttering that follows me out of the room.
I stalk the circuit of Geo's underground empire, my feet carrying me through dark corridors and bustling marketplaces without conscious thought. The further I get from that room, fromher, the tighter my chest feels.
What the fuck is happening to me?
I've never been the type to get attached. I've had my share of bed partners, of business associates, even a few I might generously call friends. But this? This bone-deep need to protect, to possess, to... what?
Love?
The very thought is the antithesis of everything I am. Everything I've made myself into.
Love, genuine connection, attachment—they're all things I've never had the luxury of having. Learned that lesson alongfucking time ago.
Love is weakness, Niko. Never let yourself love something you're not willing to lose.
My father's words echo in my mind all these years later, proven true time and time again.
I round a corner and nearly collide with a group of drunk alphas stumbling out of one of the seedier bars. One of them, a burly bastard with more muscle than sense, takes offense to my presence in his personal space.
"Watch where you're going, asshole," he slurs, shoving me hard enough to make me stagger back a step.
On any other day, I might have let it slide. Might have written it off as not worth the effort. But today? Today I bare my teeth in a feral grin.
"Make me," I growl.
He takes me up on the offer, unlike Geo. But he can't quite manage to follow through.
The fight is short, brutal, and exactly what I needed. By the time the last alpha hits the ground, my knuckles are split and bleeding, but the red haze of rage has receded slightly. It's not enough—not nearly enough to quiet the storm in my head—but it's something.
I continue my circuit, leaving a trail of bruised egos and bloody noses in my wake. Fights are even easier to come by than whores in this place. But no matter how many bones I break, no matter how much blood I spill, I can't shake the image of Cosima's face when she asked me what she was to me.
Fuck.
I don't know how long I wander the tunnels, picking fights and nursing my wounds. But eventually, I find myself back at Geo's quarters. As I walk toward the last room where I keep the few belongings I've managed to accumulate here, I catch a glimpse of movement through the crack of a door across the hall.
Cosima stands in the middle of the room, carefully folding clothes and placing them in a glossy black suitcase she probably got from Raven. Knight looms behind her, his massive frame dwarfing everything else in the room.
She reaches up, touching his silver mask with a gentleness I've never seen her display toward anyone else. The beast actually leans into her touch with a broken purr like some overgrown housecat, his human hand coming up to gently brush her cheek with the backs of his scarred fingers.
What I'm seeing is so far removed from the snarling, feral monster I kept in that pit that for a moment, I wonder if I'm hallucinating.
But his tenderness isn't quite as shocking as hers. Somehow, he seems more capable of it. After all, he crawled out of the same mud as the rest of us. He's a mutated hellbeast, but still mortal. Still a human being, as much as he doesn't look like one.
Cosima, on the other hand…
