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“Yes,” she said at last. “I do love him. I think I’ve been falling in love with him from the start, but I couldn’t let myself admit it. Besides, things were so messy with my ex for so long, it was easier just to pretend to myself he was only my best friend. But I want more than that now.”
“Then you’re going to have to take it,” Kat said simply.
“But how? When he won’t even talk to me? When he’s still stuck in the past?” Andi demanded.
Kat looked thoughtful.
“You have to understand…the way a Kindred warrior loves his mate isn’t the way a human man loves his wife. Human love can be broken and distorted and twisted—it can fade away or even turn to hate. But with a Kindred, it’s different—they love us with the same intensity that a parent loves a child. You know how you feel for your daughter? Like you’d kill anyone who hurt her or die to protect her and no matter what, you’ll always put her first?”
Andi nodded.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “That’s exactly how I feel for Lindsey.”
“It’s how I feel for my three little monsters too.” Kat smiled as she nodded to a holo-portrait of her three sons sitting on her desk. “And that’s how a Kindred warrior feels for the woman he loves. So when he hurts her…well, just imagine how bad you feel even if you hurt your kid by mistake.”
“I accidentally slammed Lindsey’s fingers in the car door once,” Andi confessed. “I didn’t even see her—I was distracted talking to someone and shut the door without looking.”
“Ouch!” Kat winced. “Was she okay?”
“Oh yes—no broken bones or anything, thank God. But she cried and cried and I cried with her,” Andi said. She winced. “I felt so bad. God, I still feel so guilty when I think about it and it was ten years ago!”
“So now you know how Thrax feels right now,” Kat told her. “He probably hates himself for what he did to you. And if he’s got other, unresolved issues from his past on top of that, well…that’s a big mess.”
“But what can I do about it?” Andi asked. “I’ve gone to his suite and begged him to come out with me—we used to go at least twice a month to try new restaurants,” she added. “He just shakes his head and refuses to say anything. I’m getting really worried about him, Kat. What if he hurts himself?”
Kat’s face grew grave and her forehead furrowed.
“You know, this reminds me of someone else—it wasn’t a Kindred warrior though, it was his wife.”
“His wife?” Andi shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“She was a pretty little thing—Allara was her name. She came from a people called the Q’ess who have considered the Kindred their enemies for generations. Anyway, they claimed that they would declare a truce if one of their women could marry a Kindred who was on the High Council and Commander Sylvan agreed to the deal. So she married this nice Beast Kindred named Brand.”
“She did? So what happened?” Andi asked.
“Well, she tried to kill her husband,” Kat said matter-of-factly. “It turned out that she’d undergone some kind of conditioning when she was a child and they implanted a command to kill in her brain. So she was kind of a sleeper agent, I guess.”
“Oh my God,” Andi said blankly. “So did she kill him?”
“She tried,” Kat said. “But luckily she didn’t succeed. And her husband, Brand, was very understanding about it. He said the Goddess meant for them to be together and he still loved her. But Allana was really messed up about it, poor thing.” She shook her head. “She tried to kill herself several times. Brand didn’t know what to do for her.”
“What did he end up doing?” Andi asked. She couldn’t help thinking that Kat was right—there were some similarities between the sleeper agent girl and her partner.
“They had a Cleansing Ceremony for her in the Sacred Grove,” Kat said. “It helped purge the trauma from her childhood—I wasn’t there but I heard it worked beautifully. They say that the presence of the Goddess was felt.”
“Do you really think something like that could help Thrax?” Andi asked doubtfully. She knew that almost all the Kindred were devout in their worship of their Goddess, who they called “The Mother of All Life,” but she wasn’t a believer herself.
“I think it’s worth a shot,” Kat said. “Unless you think you can get him to go to therapy?”
“He absolutely won’t,” Andi said flatly. “I already asked.” She sighed. “Which makes me wonder if I should even bother asking about the Cleansing Ceremony. I mean, what if he says no? And how do I set it up if he says yes?”
“You leave all that to me,” Kat said firmly. “All you have to do is convince him to come with you to the Sacred Grove tonight.”
“Tonight?” Andi asked, surprised. “Are you sure it won’t take some time to get things ready?”
“I’ll talk to the priestess and tell her it’s urgent,” Kat promised. “You just get Thrax there.”
“All right.” Andi felt a faint swell of hope in her heart. It had wounded her, seeing how badly her partner was hurting—and how much he hated himself. She wanted to heal him any way that she could.
