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She had been…in love with him.

Her heart had truly been his.

Now her eyes welled and spilled, the screen growing wavy and indistinct, the pictures of the blown-out club washing away. She had fallen in love with Rehvenge. It had been fast and furious and hadn’t lasted, but the feelings had bloomed just the same.

With a spearing pain, she remembered his warm, surging body on top of hers, his bonding scent in her nose, his huge shoulders bunched and hard as they’d made love. He’d been beautiful in those moments, so generous as a lover. He honestly had enjoyed pleasuring her—

Except that had been what he wanted her to believe, and as a symphath, he was good at manipulation. Although, God, she had to wonder what exactly he’d gotten out of being with her. She had no money, no position, nothing that benefited him, and he had never asked anything of her, never used her in any way….

Ehlena stopped herself from sliding into any kind of rosy view of what had gone down. Bottom line was, he hadn’t deserved her love, and not because he was a symphath. Strange as it seemed, she could have lived with that—although maybe that just proved how little she knew about sin-eaters. No, it was the lying and the fact that he was a drug dealer that killed it for her.

A drug dealer. In a flash, she saw the ODs that had come through the doors of Havers’s clinic, those young lives in danger for no good reason. Some of those patients had been revived, but not all and even one death caused by what Rehvenge had sold was too much.

Ehlena wiped her cheeks and rubbed her hands on her slacks. No more crying. She couldn’t afford the luxury of being weak. She had her father to take care of.

She spent the next half hour applying for jobs.

Sometimes the fact that you were forced to be strong was enough to actually turn you into what you had to be.

When her eyes finally threw in the towel and started crossing from exhaustion, she turned off the computer and stretched out on her bed next to her father’s manuscript. As she let her lids fall, she had a feeling she wasn’t going to sleep. Her body might be calling it quits, but her brain didn’t seem interested in playing follow-the-leader.

Lying there in the dark, she tried to quiet herself by imagining the old house she and her parents had lived in before everything had changed. She pictured herself walking through the grand rooms, going by the lovely antiques, pausing to sniff at a bouquet of flowers that had been cut fresh from the garden.

The trick worked. Slowly, her mind vested itself in the calm, elegant place, her racing thoughts downshifting, then braking, then parking in her skull.

Just as rest crept upon her, she had the oddest conviction strike the center of her chest, the surety of it flowing throughout her whole body.

Rehvenge was alive.

Rehvenge was alive.

Fighting against the knockout tide, Ehlena struggled for rational thought, wanting to pin down the why and what-the-hell of the belief, but sleep seeped into her, carrying her away from everything.

Wrath sat behind his desk, hands traveling gently across the surface. Phone, check. Dagger-shaped envelope opener, check. Papers, check. More papers, check. Where was his—

There was a knock and a scatter. Right, pen holder and pens.

All over everywhere. Check.

As he gathered up what he’d spilled, he heard Beth come forward to help, her footfalls soft on the rug.

“It’s okay, leelan,” he told her. “I got it.”

He could sense her hovering over the desk and was glad she didn’t intervene. As childish as it seemed, he needed to clean up his own mess by himself.

Patting around, he found every last pen. At least, he thought he had.

“Any on the floor?” he asked.

“One. By your left foot.”

“Thanks.” He ducked under, felt around the floor, and locked his fist around the smooth, cigarlike body of what had to be a Mont Blanc. “That would have been harder to find.”

As he straightened, he was careful to locate the lip of the desktop and make