Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Plus his mate was dead.
So why did she feel like the two of them were suddenly going their separate ways? And wasn’t that what she had wanted, what she had demanded of him before she had taken his vein?
“Do what you have to do.” She turned back to him. “And listen, if you really want to go down to Caldwell and ‘start somewhere,’ there’s no time like the present. We’re safe here. Plus it’s clear none of you are going anywhere tonight, and there’s a good number of hours before dawn left.”
He stared at her. “This is not about you.”
Trust me, she thought. I know that.
“It’s all right.”
To his credit—or maybe his guilt—he didn’t leave right away; he stayed where he was, on a folding chair that didn’t look like it could support his full weight, his gaze still staring off into space.
“I just want the past to leave me,” he said abruptly. “I want it gone, out of my head. And not only Cordelhia, but the prison camp, too. I don’t want to ever think about that place again. I don’t want to go back there and I sure as shit don’t want to think about how I ended up in that pit of suffering.”
She understood that, better than he knew.
“I need answers, Nadya. I feel like if I had them, I’d be able to let it all go.”
When he looked over at her, she took a deep breath and nodded. “I get that. Like I said. Do what you need to do.”
* * *
Fools’ paradises were good things.
Until the real world came back.
As Kane stared across the hood of an old, beat-up car, he knew he was fucking Nadya’s head up. But when he’d been on the mountain, making the decision to go back to the prison camp, he’d realized in a stark way that as long as the past was not behind him, he was not fully free.
The prospect of returning to the place he’d been sent to for a murder he did not commit had brought everything to the forefront.
And in contrast to the way he’d been, now he had a future and a life he wanted to defend. Protect. Fucking enjoy.
He’d like being happy with the female he’d fallen in love with.
He wanted his life to be his own.
Getting to his feet, he knew where he was going to start—and he was frustrated that, on the night of the murder, he hadn’t fought harder against the accusations. He should have been angrier at her brother. He should have hit back at the male and taken control of the situation.
“Nadya,” came a voice from down below. “Lucan has a question about his drain?”
“Coming.” His female gave him a tense smile. “You know where I’ll be. Take care of yourself out there—”
“Nadya.” He caught her hand. “I don’t regret what happened today. Not at all. And I want to be with you again.”
Her expression eased a little. “Really?”
“I swear. I’m doing this so I can lay the past to rest. So we can be together, if you’ll have me.”
His female took a deep breath as if she were trying to believe him. “Good. Because that’s what I want, too.”
Leaning in, he kissed her. “You take care of your patient.”
“I will.”
Kane watched her disappear down the stairs, and then he double-checked his gun, made sure the safety was off, and stepped out of the garage. Looking up at the sky, he saw that there was no moon tonight. Clouds had rolled in.
Funny, that he still knew where Caldwell was.
Closing his eyes, he sent himself off in a southerly direction, and he intended to go to Cordelhia’s brother’s estate. Instead, he went to where he had once lived for a year and some months, re-forming off to one side of the trail he’d taken his horses on, the one that came at the manor house from the rear.
The landscape had changed some, but the gardens had been largely kept as they’d been. And the mansion… was exactly as he remembered. Beautifully appointed, carefully tended, a place of elegance and standards.
He had expected that, in two hundred years, things would have been altered more; but in many ways, it was all so utterly preserved.
His boots started walking of their own volition, and as he approached from the rear, he thought of that last birthday party he had enjoyed. It had seemed so perfect.
Everything had seemed so perfect.
Off in the distance, a dog barked, and he could hear a rushing of cars. There was a road close by now, one on which the vehicles were permitted to travel at high velocity.
Lights were on behind the old-fashioned bubbled glass, and he had a thought that the draperies were not the same. Did vampires even live in it? Or had the estate found its way out of her brother’s hands and into human ownership?