I let go of the sink and wrapped my arms around his waist. I held on and didn"t know what to say. I said the truth. "I don"t know what to say."
"Say how you feel."
"I don"t feel anything."
He held me tighter, kissing my hair, pressing me against him. "He had to die, Anita."
"I know that."
"But you didn"t have to do it. Any of the guards would have done it."
I pushed against him, until he let me go. I backed away, shaking my head. "I did have to do it. It was my fault. I thought I"d tamed him. I thought it would all be all right and I was wrong. I was so wrong, Nathaniel, so wrong."
"He wasn"t willing to share," Nathaniel said.
"It was more than that and you know it. The signs were all there. He attacked you and Micah and got p.i.s.sed because I helped you win the fight. He kept wanting me to put him first in my bed if not in my heart."
"You told him that wasn"t going to happen," Nathaniel said.
"I know that. I didn"t lie to him. So how did we end up with him trying to kill you and Travis, and killing Noel? How did we end up with Haven dead? How could I have let it get that out of hand, Nathaniel?"
"You did not make Haven do any of this," he said.
"But I"m supposed to be this uber-dominant of all the wereanimals, and I"ve just finished failing the lions so badly. How can I add more wereanything? I can"t handle what we have already. How can I add more when I don"t know what went wrong with the lions?"
"Haven went wrong with the lions," Nicky said.
I looked at him. "You told me just a couple of hours ago that if I"d let you fight him, you"d have killed him, and Noel would be alive and Nathaniel wouldn"t have gotten hurt."
"I didn"t say that," Nicky said.
"You said that I felt guilty about mind-f.u.c.king you and that made me not want to let you and Haven work things out, or something like that."
"But it shouldn"t have been necessary for me to fight Haven. If he"d had his pride well organized I would have just been more muscle, but he let his personal feelings get in the way of being a good Rex. He let his obsession with you ruin everything else."
"Gee, Nicky, that makes me feel so much better."
He sighed, frowning. "I don"t mean it like that. I mean that Haven wasn"t a good Rex, you know that. The fact that he tried to beat Noel and Travis to death for having s.e.x with you when they hadn"t had s.e.x with you says that he was letting his feelings blind him."
"I didn"t have s.e.x with them, not until last night anyway. I still don"t remember everything I did last night, but I know I did something with Noel."
"A strong wereanimal can tell when someone is lying, Anita. We can smell it, taste the pulse speeding, like a furry lie detector."
"I know that," I said.
"But Haven couldn"t tell that Travis and Noel were telling the truth about not sleeping with you."
I looked at Nicky. "Say that again."
"Haven was a powerful werelion. He should have known that Travis and Noel were telling the truth, Anita."
"Yes," I said, "he should have. Why didn"t he know?"
"He let his emotions overwhelm what he smelled, or tasted," Nicky said, and that was an insult among the wereanimals. To say someone was nose-blind, or couldn"t taste his way out of a wet paper bag, meant essentially that he was doing the human equivalent of refusing to see the truth.
Gregory said, "Some men don"t want to believe that it"s them you don"t want. If they want a woman badly enough and she doesn"t want them, then they want another man to blame." He said that very smart thing and took another sip of his protein shake. The twins together sipping on their shakes looked like an ad for a s.e.xy malt shop.
"As long as there"s another man who stole you away," Nicky said, "then the man doesn"t have to look at himself."
"There"s nothing wrong with him," Stephen said from the table. "It"s that you prefer the other man, not that there"s anything wrong with him."
"I could see that if he picked a fight with Nicky, but why Travis and Noel?"
"He knew I"d kick his a.s.s."
I looked at Nicky.
"I think I would have, but more than that, Haven thought so, too."
"I forbade you to fight him," I said.
"You gave me the option that if he or his lions attacked me, I could fight back."
"I was afraid you"d let them kill you if I didn"t give you the option."
He gave that half-shrug. "I don"t know, maybe; you had told me not to fight him, but the last time Haven got up in my face in the gym I told him what you"d said. I told him that if he attacked me in the practice ring I"d be able to fight him. That if he attacked me first we could settle it."
"What did he say?" I asked.
"Nothing, and that"s my point. If he thought he could win against me he"d have pushed it, but he didn"t."
"I was there that day," Dino said.
I looked at the big man. "Do you think that Haven was afraid of Nicky?"
"Haven was a good fighter, but so is Nicky. There"s more than one reason that none of the werelions but Nicky are on guard duty here, Anita."
"I thought we just didn"t trust them," I said.
"That, but Bobby Lee, Fredo, and Claudia looked them over. They didn"t like what they saw."
"How so?"
"They were muscle, and they were ruthless, but for one-on-one fair fighting we didn"t see them in the same league with us."
"With the wererats?" I asked.
"No, with the level of training that Rafael demands from his people. Any of the guards here have to keep up those standards regardless of their animal group."
I raised eyebrows at that. "Graham and Clay meet standards."
Dino smiled. "They aren"t our best hand-to-hand fighters, and Clay seems weirdly awkward with anything but a gun, but they do the training. They hit the gym just like the rest of us. Rafael wouldn"t trust the safety of Jean-Claude and you to any guard he didn"t trust."
I thought about that. "Of the other werelions, who"s the best? Who do you guys like?"
"Payne is too much like Haven," Dino said. "He"s a thug and not a deep thinker."
"Jesse is okay," Nathaniel said.
"I think he"d be softer if he were in a pride that let him," Dino said.
"I agree," Nicky said.
"What about the women?"
"We haven"t seen them," Dino said.
"Haven ran his pride like some of the ultramale prides do," Nicky said. "The women are second-cla.s.s citizens, almost cloistered away from any other wereanimals. Most werelions take a lot of pride in the fact that their lionesses don"t want or need to go outside the pride for s.e.x."
"Most animal groups stay within their own animal, right?" I asked.
Everyone agreed.
"There"s a reason for that," Stephen said quietly. "If we go outside our animal groups, we can have misunderstandings just based on being different beasts."
I almost let it go, but in the end I did the girl thing and said, "You and Vivian aren"t having troubles because you"re a wolf and she"s a leopard."
He looked away. "I know that." His tone, his body language all said, Leave it alone Leave it alone. I did the guy thing; I left it alone.
"So the fact that so many of the St. Louis wereanimals interdate is unusual?" I asked.
"Very," Dino said.
"Haven saw your rejection of him for Nathaniel and Micah, and all the rest of us, as a direct challenge to both his maleness and his lion," Nicky said.
"I couldn"t make him my one and only, and he didn"t share well enough to sleep in big kitty piles with us."
"No, he didn"t," Nicky said.
"Am I missing something here?"
"Anita, you can"t save everyone," Nathaniel said.
"I"m a cop, I know that."
"Do you?" He took my hand in his, and I let him this time. "You"re blaming yourself for Haven and Noel, but the only thing you could have done differently would be to have killed Haven sooner."
I met those serious lavender eyes. I studied his face. "You believe that, don"t you?"
"Even if you"d let Nicky fight him, Haven would still be dead."
"But Noel wouldn"t be," I said.
Pity, sorrow filled his face as he took both my hands in his. "Anita, how do you think I feel? Noel died saving me. If it had been one of the guards, I"d be sad, but it"s their job. It wasn"t Noel"s job to die for me."
"G.o.d, Nathaniel, I hadn"t thought . . ." I hugged him. "I"m sorry; I"m being a selfish b.a.s.t.a.r.d. It wasn"t your fault. You didn"t ask Noel to do it."
Nathaniel pulled me away from him enough to see my face. "It isn"t your fault, either, and you didn"t ask Noel to give his life for mine."
We stared at each other, inches away, our hands on each other"s arms. There was pain in both our faces.
"I don"t mean to be callous," Nicky said, "but whatever you"re feeling, get over it. We need both of you to meet the tigers and be charming and s.e.xy. Guilt is not s.e.xy."
I gave him an unfriendly look, but Nathaniel said, "He"s right."
I looked back at him. "How can you just . . ."
"Forget?"
I nodded.
"I won"t forget, but we need to make this city, this territory, as safe as possible. That means we need the tigers, Anita. We need for you and Jean-Claude to be the Master of Tigers."
"I don"t know if I can do this, be this."
"Just go make nice with the tigers that Micah picked, that"s all, don"t worry about more."
"I could have s.e.x with them, I think, but it"s the idea of keeping them. They"re strangers and suddenly they get to be in the bed with us, too. I"m not getting enough alone time with you and Micah now."
He smiled then and drew me into his arms. "I miss it just being the three of us, too."
"Should my feelings be hurt?" Nicky asked.
I looked at him, but he was smiling. "Yes, they should be," I said, "but they aren"t, are they?"
"No, because my primary drive is for you to be happy. Micah and Nathaniel make you happy."
"Aren"t you allowed to work for your own happiness?" I asked.
"I don"t think that"s what a vampire"s Bride is for," he said, and he sounded so calm about it.
"What are they for?" I asked.
"Cannon fodder, unquestioning obedience, I don"t know."
"You were afraid of what I did to Jamil and Shang-Da in the hallway."
He frowned and looked uncomfortable. "Yeah, that scared me."