“Yes. He has been gentle with me, but I like him better when he is fierce and monstrous and broken, like me.”
Lana reared back, her cheeks paling. “I…I don’t know what to say.”
Too much honesty. She’d forgotten that was only for Grif. “You don’t need to speak, then. I am comfortable with silence.” She gave the female a small smile in hopes of rectifying her mistake. “I think it is better anyway. I am not so strong with New English words and I do not think you have a good sense of Grif or me at all.”
The female’s eyes went wide and then her lips titled downward, tiny sharp creases appearing at the corners. “I’m only trying to help. What happened to you…it happened to me, too.”
Nayla stiffened. “With Grif? He did the same to you?”
“What? No.” Lana looked horrified, then sad. “Other men. Horrible men.” She shuddered.
Nayla’s chest went tight. It was clear the female had suffered. “I understand.” She patted Lana’s shoulder, mimicking the gesture the female had done to her the other night. “I had a horrible male hurt me, too. Many times. I will never forget. But that is not what happened with Grif.”
“I saw the shackles, the bench,” Lana persisted. “Even now, he bosses you around, telling you where you can go. I thought he was so good, but he’s brainwashed you and you don’t even realize it.”
A wave of protectiveness crashed over Nayla, but this time it was not for the female, but for Grif.
He had told her many times how much he liked that she got to see the real him, but she had not understood until now just how hemmed in he had been by the expectations of others.
She’d witnessed their adulation and respect and not realized those like Lana were only pleased with one side of him. They liked that he had found the location of the missing females, they liked that he had rescued them, but they preferred to pretend they did not know what it took for him to achieve such results, or who it turned him into.
They didn’t know him fully. Not like she did. They did not accept him fully. Not like she did.
He might have had his crew, but he’d still been alone.
He might not have been forced to wear the anazi, but he’d been unseen.
“It’s okay, Lana.” She patted with female’s shoulder again. “I understand now.”
Grif needed her, too. It was another revelation, and another first.
Her heart swelled, the whispering, negative voices inside her head that sounded a lot like Talg wholly silent for once. She could be as good for Grif as he was for her.
“I’m glad to hear it’s finally starting to sink in.” The other female looked surprised, then relieved. “Time away from him will be the ideal way to clear your head and realize positive feelings for our captors are wrong. Of course, it would be best if he removed himself from our lives altogether, but that will never happen.”
Grif go away? Because of her? The negative voices returned with a roar. “Y-you want him gone?”
“Of course.” Fury flashed in Lana’s gaze. “After what he did to you, he should be cast out.”
Ice slid down Nayla’s spine. She knew what it was to be Gazi. To be punished, ostracized and reviled.
She would never allow that to happen to Grif.
37
“This seems like a long way to go for a bathroom break.” Grif forced his voice to remain low though he wanted to roar, the pain shredding his chest making the monster inside him near feral.
Several lengths ahead, Nayla froze. She whirled around. The sleeping blanket she’d stolen tumbled to the ground. He saw it all with crystal clear clarity thanks to the glowing danashe crystals imbedded in the cave walls. It might be night on the surface, but the underground space was always awash in a golden glow.
It was far too bright for his current mood.
He’d thought things between them were going well. She’d told him she liked being a part of his team. She’d shown his team the underground river and sicced her vicious pet on the creatures trying to eat them. She’d smiled at him and shown him the glowing rocks. She’d melted against him and made those sweet sounds he doubted he’d ever forget.
Except here she was, sneaking away from the campsite through one of the caves in the underground wall when everyone was asleep.
So much for his excellent second-in-command instincts.
Had she been playing him all along? Was this some kind of trap just as Malin had said?
Only thing that didn’t make sense: she hadn’t taken Sharluff and she hadn’t hightailed it back into the water and just slipped away, leaving them stranded. Instead, she’d snuck through a crack near the cave walls and was picking her away across the rocks.
He couldn’t figure out why. Unless she’d come out here to meet someone.
“Grif.” Hearing her say his name in that sweet lilting accent of hers only hurt more. “You need to go back.”
“Oh, I will.” He pulled his rope from his hip. “But not without you.”
She shook her head. “I cannot.”
“You waiting for someone?” If it was that Ramm bastard he was going to rip him apart and wear his fangs as a fucking necklace.
“Waiting for someone?” The three faint lines at the bridge of her nose wrinkled in that way he found adorable, and he wanted to howl. “No.”
“Bullshit.”
Raina had snuck away, too. She’d crept outside while his father was off drinking and Grif was sleeping—his breathing heavy and deep, his dreams filled with escape plans, so sure that with his father out he could relax his guard for a few hours and his sister would be safe. Instead, she’d strung their father’s favorite rope from the rooftop and hung herself.
Nayla might not have snuck away to take her own life, but the end result was the same: desertion.
Her tiny fangs poked at her lower lip. “You need to return to the others.”
“If you think I’m just walking away while you break your promise to me and run, you don’t know me as well as I thought.”
“I not leaving.” She seemed genuinely outraged by his words. “I give my word to help. I not just slip away. If you think that, you don’t know me well.”
His heart beat fast. “Then what the hells is going on here?”
“I-I travel separately.”
“Excuse me?”
She took a deep breath as if bracing herself. “You not the only one who can take care. I take of you, too.”
Another burst of rage. “I don’t need you to take care of me.”
Raina’s note had said the same thing. I do this for you, Grif. Because you won’t leave without me. Because I’m not like you. Because it’s too late for me. Bullshit. If she’d really fucking cared she would have stayed alive and had faith that he’d somehow find a way to keep them both safe.
“Too bad.” Nayla’s voice shook. “You say before that I free to make my own choices. Traveling separately is my choice.”
His confusion increased, though the red fog of fury clouding his brain lessened as the fact that he might have misread the situation finally penetrated. Mostly because she sounded so earnest, and outraged.