Page 65 of Let Sleeping Vampires Lie

I pressed my teeth together.

Con took a slow breath, as if he were choosing each word too carefully to rush them.

“I’ve watched you since the day I met you,” he said. “Back then, you still carried old resentments in your eyes. Every mission, every battle, you moved as if you expected not to walk away. Like walking away would be a surprise, not the baseline.”

I looked away. “Old habits.”

“They’re not as old as you think,” he replied. “And you haven’t unlearned them. You’ve just gotten better at hiding them.”

He wasn’t wrong. That annoyed me.

“People die,” I said. “I’d rather it be me than⁠—”

“No,” he said quietly. “I will never accept that trade.”

My gaze snapped back to him.

His eyes had gone darker, gold deepened into amber. He sat very still now, every line of him carved with intent.

“You don’t get to make that choice alone,” he said. “Not anymore. Not when your death would tear this clan apart. Not when it would kill Raven and Rene in ways their bodies might survive but their souls wouldn’t. Not when it would finish whatever’s left of mine.”

The bluntness of the last part stole whatever deflection I’d been about to throw.

I swallowed. “You’d survive.”

“Physically,” he said. “Yes. I’m very hard to kill. That’s not what we’re talking about.”

His gaze didn’t waver. It pinned me more effectively than any weapon.

“I’ve seen you ripped to pieces and still crawling toward the fight,” he went on. “I’ve watched you bleed and pretend it didn’t hurt. You mask it with sarcasm and stubbornness. You tell everyone you’re fine. You walk it off. You compartmentalize.”

“It works,” I muttered.

“It doesn’t,” he said. “It just delays the break.”

My fingers curled into the blanket.

“You can’t keep asking other people to value your life when you don’t,” he finished softly.

I flinched.

“That’s not fair,” I said.

“It’s true,” he said.

He fell silent again, letting the weight of it sit between us.

My chest tightened, breath catching partway. “I don’t throw myself at death because I want to die.”

“I know,” he said.

“I do it because I know I can take hits others can’t.”

“I know that, too.”

“Then what are we arguing about?” I snapped.

“About the part where you don’t consider the cost to the people who love you,” he said.