“The thing is . . .
We need him, too. The Northwest needs Koen precisely because of everything I just told you. And that’s why I’m not going to tell a soul.” Her lips, I realize, are quivering. “No one will ever know where he’ll spend the next few days. He’ll be yours for a while, Serena. But after, you must return him. So think of it as a loan.” One last, sad smile. “What I always tell my daughter is that all lies come to light. Let’s hope that I’m wrong.”
A few minutes later, the cabin falls silent. Everyone leaves- except for Koen.
Indecent. Filthy. Outrageous. Lewd, in the best possible way. Those are the words he’s thinking of.
SHOWERING FEELS LIKE A THOUSAND FOUNTAIN PENS SCRAPING my body head to toe, but smelling like blood, grime, and my deranged aunt’s homemade tea is worse than the pain, so I grit my teeth and do it anyway.
Heat, I’m starting to realize, might not be a misnomer. I put on a sleeveless top and shorts, sweating despite the cool November air. When I walk into the living room, Koen is facing away from me, talking on the phone about winning friends and influencing people. Regular Alpha stuff.
I lean against the doorway, eager to observe him, unobserved, for a moment. The strain in his broad shoulders constricts my chest. But he must pick up my scent, because he spins around to face me, and it feels a little like his senses are sloping the room, giving him no choice but to roll toward me, and-
The phone slips out of his hand and thuds against the wooden floor. Several pieces break off and skitter in every direction, but he doesn’t even glance at them.
“I think you dropped your phone?” I say, pointing at his feet.
He keeps staring at me. Suddenly, I feel immensely aware of my body. The way it pushes against the clothes’ fabric. My exposed skin. Koen’s dark, shifting eyes roaming it.
In a heartbeat, he crosses the room and cups the side of my head to inspect the base of my neck. That’s when I remember.
“The stains?” I trace the green ribbon-like twist below my palm. “It’s not blood or anything. Just dye.”
“Who did it?”
“Nele.”
“The Human girl marked you?”
“Irene instructed her to. And you know how it is, when you’re in the middle of an unlawful detainment and people start asking wacky stuff of you, and you really don’t wanna say yes, but you decide to pick your fights and throw them a bone so that maybe later when you refuse to rob a bank they won’t take it too personally, and . . . Koen?”
After several seconds and a substantial amount of effort, he manages to tear his eyes away from my neck. His Adam’s apple shifts.
“I cannot figure out whether you’re offended by these, or . . .”
A step back. He clears his throat. Shoves his fists in the pockets of his pants. “Not offended,” he says, hoarsely.
“Glad to know that I’m not a walking insult. What are they?”
“Markings. Around your glands.” He licks his lips. “They are used in mating ceremonies.”
“Right. Irene had grand dreams for my Heat. I showered, but they didn’t come off.” I shuffle my feet. His eyes on me are feral. Carnivorous. He’s a predator, tracking every movement of a prospective kill. “Koen? You’re being a smidge weird about this.”
“Right.” Another step back- somehow, he drifted closer again. “Did they do the one on your back, too?”
“Yeah, but maybe it washed off.” I lift my hair. “You can check- “
“Don’t.”
I freeze.
He swears under his breath. “The marks are . . .” He jerks a hand through his hair. Opens his mouth about four times before settling on “Beautiful.”
“Beautiful.” My face tingles with heat. “That’s not the word you were thinking.”
“No.” His jaw tightens.
“I can scrub harder. Or cover them.”
“Absolutely fucking no.” At last, his mouth softens in one of those self-effacing, disarming smiles that I already know I’ll bring to my tomb.
Confusing, all of this. I busy myself and crouch down to pick up the phone. The screen is cracked, but the other pieces easily fit back together. “Here. Wanna call them back?”
“It was Lowe. I’ll text later. Say that you tackled me.”
“Credible. Did you tell him I was missing?”
“And promptly regretted it. The Vampyre called for updates every ten minutes.”
“Did you give her your number, or did she just help herself to it?”
“The latter.”
Unsurprising. I look down at my toes. Study them for a minute. “Can I ask you not to tell her about this?” I make a vaguely neurochemical-imbalance-shaped gesture. “She’d never let me live this down.”
Koen crosses his arms, stern. “I doubt someone who’s regularly having interspecies sex has a single toe to stand on. Besides, she rarely needs to ask to find out shit.”
He’s right. I just feel so . . . exposed. Wrung out.
“Why are you so ashamed of this, Serena?” He sounds genuinely confused.
“I don’t know.” I snort out a laugh. “Maybe it’s just easier to worry about what people are thinking than about . . . about the real shit.”
“Such as?”
“That my father killed your parents. And you killed mine.”
I can’t believe it all fits in exactly ten words. Our pasts, woven together. One- no, four more reasons we could never work. As though we needed them. They come with a garbled mess of questions that I haven’t even begun to wrangle free. Do I resent him? Does he hate me? Am I angry? How much of this is his fault? Should I carry my parents’ sins? Can I forgive? Can he? Is there anything to forgive here?
He’s just as stumped. Fiddling with these impossible thoughts. Gives me a stuck, resigned look and says, “Couple goals, am I right?”
I laugh. The low, rolling sound that slips out of him could be laughter, too. We regard each other like that, no judgment, no fear of being judged. I could live in this weird limbo for the next century.
“I would do it all over again,” he murmurs at last, eyes never letting go of mine. “Even knowing what it did to you. And for that, I’m sorrier than I’ll ever be.”
We are not Human.
His pain squeezes my chest. “I don’t want you to . . . If when you look at me you see Constantine, I don’t want you to- “
“Serena.” He shakes his head. “When I say that I would do it all over again, I also mean that I would go through what he did all over again. If it brought me to you.”
It’s a lovely thought: that the mistakes of our parents could have as little impact on our relationship as a butterfly flapping its wings. That us is a choice we can make. That we might not be constantly running out of time.
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