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In a flat, cold voice he said, “Careful there, female. I bite.”

“Will you ever say my name?”

—LOVER ETERNAL, p. 346

Phury comes over and separates them. Taking Bella aside, he makes a statement that was so very true before she comes into Z’s life:

“My twin’s not broken. He’s ruined. Do you understand the difference? With broken maybe you can fix him. Ruined? All you can do is wait to bury him.”

—LOVER ETERNAL, p. 346

Later in the evening, Bella ends up following Z to his bedroom. The visit doesn’t end as she hopes, with them together in bed. Instead she learns something about this hard-core warrior she’s so attracted to. This is from after he nearly takes her, when he stops and rolls off her onto the tiled floor:

Jesus, his body was in rough shape. His stomach was hollow. His hip bones jutted out of his skin. He must indeed only drink from humans, she thought. And not eat much at all.

She focused on the tattooed bands covering his wrist and neck. And the scars.

Ruined. Not broken.

Although she was ashamed to admit it now, the darkness in him had been the largest part of his allure. It was such an anomaly, a contrast to what she’d known from life. It had made him dangerous. Exciting. Sexy. But that was a fantasy. This was real.

He suffered. And there was nothing sexy or thrilling about that.

—LOVER ETERNAL, p. 365

As I said before, Bella’s abduction was part of the reason they ended up together, because it opened Z emotionally to her in a way that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. But I think Bella still would have gotten to him, because she’s a great combination of strength and compassion. She’s a realist, though, and does pull out of the relationship toward the end of their book, when Z pushes her away. Their parting, along with other forces in his life, are what prompt Z to make some important changes.

I have to say that, to me, the way Lover Awakened ended with its epilogue was so great. Z’s back working out in the gym where Bella first saw him, but as she comes in and brings little Nalla to her daddy, you get a sense of how far they’ve come. I swear, when Z turns back and winks at the trainee while he has Nalla in his arms?

*sigh*

But here’s the thing: As I’ve said, the reality for me in this series is that these people’s lives don’t stop just because their book is finished. And that is what the novella in this compendium was all about. It’s logical that Z would have trouble bonding with his daughter, and I really value the opportunity of getting to show that part of his development as a male and a hellren and a father.

And speaking of family . . . Phury. You can’t talk about Z without mentioning Phury. Phury has fascinated me ever since that scene in Lover Eternal when he comes back from having beaten Z at Z’s request. Phury’s hollow eyes as he emerges from the training center’s tunnel were what stuck with me, and I was dying to see where he ended up and how he fell in love. And then, in Lover Awakened, he goes even farther for his twin. I think the scene when Phury scars his own face really gets to the core of the trouble he’s in, both psychologically and emotionally. All his life he has been consumed by his twin’s abduction and slavery, and his rescue of Z doesn’t save either one of them from their suffering. When Phury shaves his head and puts a dagger to his own face in order to take his twin’s place at the hands of the lesser who abducted Bella, he becomes the physical embodiment of Zsadist.

More on Phury later, but he was almost too heroic, overbalancing Z’s anti-hero with a personality that was self-sacrificing to a detrimental degree.

One last thing . . . Rehvenge . . . oh, Rehv. Getting a chance to show him off was one of the great joys of this book. He was and is just so flat-out hot and such total and complete bad news that I was jonesing to write his book even back then.

And Rehv was significant for another reason.

He was, in Lover Awakened, the first time I’d ever tried to deliberately obscure a character’s identity. The Reverend, club owner and drug dealer,