And she should leave, Jane thought. He wouldn’t want her to see him this way—not even before everything had fallen apart between them. The male she knew and loved and had mated wouldn’t want any witness to this—
It was hard to say what got his attention . . . and later she would wonder how he had picked that moment just as she was going to dematerialize to look up at her.
She was instantly incapacitated: If he had been pissed off about what had happened with Payne, he was going to hate her now—there was absolutely no going back from this invasion of privacy.
“Butch called me,” she blurted. “He thought you’d—”
“He hurt me. . . . My father hurt me.”
The words were so thin and soft that they nearly didn’t register. But when they did, her heart just stopped.
“Why,” Vishous asked. “Why did he do it to me. Why did my mother? I never asked to be born to the pair of them . . . and I wouldn’t have chosen to be if either had asked me. . . . Why?”
His cheeks were slick with tears that spilled over his diamond eyes, a ceaseless flow he neither noticed nor appeared to care about. And she had a feeling it was going to be a while before the leaking stopped—an inner artery had been nicked and this was the blood of his heart, spilling out of him, covering him.
“I’m so sorry,” she croaked. “I don’t know any of the whys . . . but I know that you didn’t deserve it. And . . . and it’s not your fault.”
His hands uncupped himself and he stared downward. It was a long while before he spoke, and when he did, his words were slow and considered . . . and as ceaseless as his quiet tears. “I wish I were whole. I wish I could have given you young if you’d wanted them and could conceive them. I wish I could have told you that it killed me when you thought I had been with anyone else. I wish I had spent the last year waking up every night and telling you I loved you. I wish I had mated you properly the evening you came back to me from the dead. I wish . . .” Now his shimmering stare flipped up to hers. “I wish I were half as strong as you are and I wish I deserved you. And . . . that’s about it.”
Right. Okay. Now they were both tearing up.
“I’m so sorry about Payne,” she said hoarsely. “I wanted to talk to you, but she’d made up her mind. I tried to work with her, I really did, but in the end, I just . . . I didn’t . . . I didn’t want you to be the one to do it. I would have rather lived with the horrible truth on my conscience for an eternity than have you kill your sister. Or have her hurt herself even more than she was.”
“I know . . . I know that now.”
“And to be honest, the fact that she is healed? It gives me the cold sweats because of the near miss we had.”
“It’s all right, though. She’s okay.”
Jane wiped her eyes. “And I think when it comes to . . .” She glanced over at the wall that was draped in a buttery yellow candlelight that did nothing at all to soften the sharp spikes and even sharper implications of what hung there. “When it comes to. . . things . . . about you and sex, I’ve always worried that I might not be quite enough for you.”
“Fuck . . . no . . . you’re everything to me.”
Jane put her hand over her mouth so she didn’t lose it completely. Because it was exactly what she needed to hear.
“I never even got your name in my back,” V said. “I thought it was stupid and a waste of time . . . but how can you feel like we’re mated without it—especially when every single male at the compound has been marked for his shellan?”
God, she hadn’t thought of that.
V shook his head. “You’ve given me space . . . to hang with Butch and fight with my brothers and do my shit on the Internet. What have I given you?”
“My clinic, for one thing. I couldn’t have built it without you.”
“Not exactly a bouquet of roses.”
“Don’t underestimate your carpentry skills.”
He smiled a little at that. And then grew serious once again. ?
??Can I tell you something that I’ve thought every time I’ve woken up next to you.”
“Please.”
Vishous, the one who always had an answer for everything, seemed to get tongue-tied. But then he said, “You’re the reason I get out of bed every night. And you’re the reason I can’t wait to come home every dawn. Not the war. Not the Brothers. Not even Butch. It’s . . . you.”
Oh, such simple words . . . but the meaning. Good lord, the meaning.
“Will you let me hug you now?” she said roughly.