Like when someone in their ranks turned traitor—someone he knew, someone he had laughed with, drank with, shared stories with.
Those deaths hurt.
Those deaths stung him.
Which was why he chose not to have friends after a while. It just made life easier. The only people he trusted to never betray him were the ones he would choose to keep around. Which was precisely one. Ivan.
He thought it would be two. Nadi.
But here he was.
Nadi.
He loved her.
And he had never told her.
Now he never would.
He dreamed of her atop him. Of her beside him in bed. Of the sight of her sleeping. Of her in the bath. Of the sound of her laughter.
Of the flash of her dark-scaled tail as she swam in his pool.
He had never seen this. But he had imagined it. And he had wanted to see it, so very badly. Her, in her natural form. In her true environment.
It came to him in a rush.
He felt himself crawling along the floor of his watchtower apartment. The wound in his stomach was still an open gash. His tongue was missing. He was dying. Standing before him—Nadi.
Nadi.
He loved her.
And he had never told her.
Now he never would.
Her blood was singing to him. And he was crying for it. For her.
Digging his nails into the wood, he needed her. Needed what ran through her veins.
Or he would die.
He didn’t attack her…he didn’t overpower her…did he?
She knelt at his side. “Raz…”
No. No, no, no. He remembered now. He hadn’t before. Weakly, desperately, he had begged her to run.
He remembered the girl in the alleyway now too.
Pressed against the wall. Her family dead on the street behind him. Tears streaking down a face that wasn’t hers.
He’d told her to run.
That night she’d listened.
But the night he’d been dying? She’d stayed.
