Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [115]
“This shouldn’t have happened,” I said out loud. “You weren’t doing anything wrong. You don’t even have pack status anymore. What would they gain from beating you?” I bit my lip. “How did they beat you?”
I was babbling like a cop, trying to work through the permutations and find the conclusion, close the case. Dmitri showed his teeth. “I disrespected them.” His fists worked. “They were within their rights, fucked up as it is. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I wouldn’t understand?” I demanded, my old anger coming back.
“You’ve never had to deal with pack law,” said Dmitri. “You get off easy whenever you run into territorial borders because you’re so damn willful. I just hope you never hit on a pack with a better hand at dominating other weres than you.”
“Gee, thanks for the thought,” I snapped. Silence again for a minute, while we both tried to stay calm. Finally, I tamped down my frustration and got myself under control. I was getting good at that, lately. “Do you need an ice pack?”
“No.”
“I still don’t understand why you got into a fight in the first place,” I said. “Can’t you just back off, accept that they’re dominant?” I knew that you could, from experience.
“I could,” Dmitri said, his eyes swimming with black. “But I didn’t.”
Oh, Hex it. My skin was full of thorn-pricks in that moment, as the air around me grew cold. “Dmitri. What did you do to those weres?”
His eyes were full black now, the daemon blood coming even as we sat there, calm. “Nothing they didn’t deserve.”
My own were instincts snarled Get away, but Dmitri lunged across the bed and grabbed me before I could move. He was so much faster with the daemon bite…
One hand held the side of my face. The other traced down my body, rough palm on my bare skin. Over my hips, past the V of my thighs. My body responded to him, but my brain was busy thinking Oh shit as I stared into his black eyes.
“Dmitri,” I said softly. “Tell me what you did.”
His hand stopped moving, just shy of its goal. “I didn’t want to,” he said, in a voice so small and wounded I wasn’t even sure it was his. “I was gonna walk away but one of them said something about my mate … about you. They knew who I was, who you were, and I…”
I shut my eyes, all of the fear and tension running out, leaving me rubbery.
“I have no standing in the Redbacks,” said Dmitri. “If they got through me to you, I could do nothing. So when I felt it, the darkness coming on … I let it take me.”
He’d let go of me, and I caught him this time, wrapped my arms around him. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t be around me now,” Dmitri said roughly. He put us at arm’s length. “I just… I need to just forget.”
“No,” I said. “You need to not be alone. And this city needs not to have were packs running loose. Gods-damned animals.”
“Luna, the packs … it’s just the way things are.” Dmitri sighed. “Times change. The packs have been jumpier than ever since that O’Halloran thing, and your department choking out the drugs and brothels downtown hasn’t helped either. You want to do something, tell Vice to ease off.” He found a pair of shorts and put them on, and crawled under the sheet. “Please. Just go and let me heal.”
“Don’t do this,” I gritted. “After what you just told me … please don’t shut down on me.”
Dmitri didn’t answer, just gave a long shuddering sigh as his body tried to work through the daemon inside it and the injuries without.
After another long quiet minute, I went downstairs before I said something bitchy and insensitive.
On the sofa, I lay in high dudgeon for a long time, making myself be as still as possible except for breathing until the urge to tear and hurt had died down to a level where I wouldn’t rip the neck out of the first person to cross my path.
The were had a lot of trouble staying at bay in me sometimes, but I had a lot of experience keeping it in.
One thing was as clear as the bruises and the blood on Dmitri’s body—whatever was in him was getting stronger, and the man I’d met was slipping away. Something cold and black as Dmitri’s eyes uncoiled in my gut at the thought,