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“I am not referring to you being Nimir-Ra for real,” Rafael said. “From the moment I met you, Anita, you have half hated what you are. As Richard has run from his beast, so you have run from your own gifts.”

“I don’t need a philosophy lesson, Rafael.”

“I think you do, and badly, but I’ll let that go, if it bothers you so very much.”

“Don’t even start on me,” Reece said. “I’ve had people preach to me all my life that I’m blessed and not cursed. If my entire family couldn’t convince me of it, you might as well not even try.”

Rafael shrugged, then turned back to me. “Let’s pick a different topic, because we are only minutes away from the lupanar, and I saw Micah’s beast—his energy—pass through you, and your beast responded.”

“You saw it?” I asked.

He nodded. “His energy is very blue, and yours is very red, and they mingled.”

“So you got what, purple?” I said.

Micah hugged me a little tighter, a warning I think not to be flippant, but Rafael was more direct. “No jokes, Anita, if I saw it, so will Richard.”

“He’s my Nimir-Raj,” I said.

“You don’t understand, Anita. Micah said he thought birthmarks in the shape of your beast was legend. Well, until just now, I believed talk of a perfect mate was legend. Like true fated love, just a romantic story.” Rafael’s already serious face got even more solemn. “You recognize some bond from the beginning, so the stories go, but it’s only after you have sex for the first time that your beasts can roll through each other’s bodies. Only physical intimacy will allow such metaphysical intimacy.”

I glanced down from those hard, demanding eyes, but finally made myself look back up. “What are you asking, Rafael?”

“Not really asking, telling. Telling you that I know you had sex with Micah, and that, even though Richard has dumped you and publicly declared that you and he are no longer a couple, he won’t like it.”

That was an understatement. I pulled away from Micah, and he let me go, no lingering touches. I moved away, and he allowed it. It earned him brownie points. “Richard dumped me, Rafael, not the other way around. He doesn’t have any right to bitch about what I do.”

“If he dumped her, then she’s free to do what she wants,” Reece said. “The Ulfric has only himself to blame.”

“Logically, you’re right, but when has logic dictated how a man acts when he sees the love of his life in someone else’s arms?” The bitter way Rafael said it made me look at him, study his face. He sounded like he was speaking from experience.

“As Ulfric to my Nimir-Ra, he has no authority over me.”

“Tonight is going to be dangerous enough, Anita. You don’t need to make Richard angry.”

“I don’t want to make things worse. God knows they’re bad enough as they are.”

“You’re angry with him for dumping you,” Rafael said.

I started to say no, then realized he might be right. “Maybe.”

“You want to hurt him.”

I started to say no, then stopped and tried to think—really think—about how I felt. I was angry and hurt that he could just cast me aside. Okay, it hadn’t been that simple, but still . . . “Yeah, I’m hurt, and maybe a part of me wants to punish Richard for that, but it’s not just him dumping me. It’s the mess he’s made of the pack. He’s endangered people I care about, and he’s doing his usual Boy Scout shit that doesn’t even work well in the human world, let alone with a bunch of werewolves. I’m tired, Rafael, I’m tired of it, and him.”

“It sounds like you might have dumped him if he hadn’t beat you to it.”

“I came back to make it work. To see if we could make some sense of it all. But he has to give up that moral code of his that has never worked for him or anyone around him.”

“To give up his moral code is to give up being who he is.”

I nodded. “I know.” And just saying that made me feel worse. “He can’t change, and staying who he is is going to get him killed.”

“And maybe you and Jean-Claude with him,” Rafael said.

“Does everyone know that part?”

“It’s standard that if you kill a vampire’s human servant, the vampire may not survive the death. And