“I had a lot of fucking reasons. I told you she was a virgin because I thought you’d want to know. Figured I wasn’t the only one worried about what might have happened Silverside. The meltdown at the abbey about Shazam made me think she might have had a child.”
I softened. “Oh. So, how did it end up between you two?” My darling Dani. She’d gotten rejected first time out of the gate. I hated that. I didn’t want her to ever be rejected. Why on earth did she have to pick Ryodan? When she’d first come back as Jada, I could have seen it. But she wasn’t that icy woman anymore, and the more she thawed, the younger she appeared. I groaned, understanding her motive. “She always said she wanted her first time to be epic. That’s why she wanted you. None of her other options were available. Barrons was out of the running and V’lane turned out to be Cruce.”
He snapped, “None of her other—wait, she wanted to give her virginity to Barrons? She said that?”
I shrugged. “She was a teenager.”
“Barrons and Dani would never work,” he said tightly.
“Nobody said they would. That would be as wrong as me and you. Ew.”
He bristled. “What the bloody hell is wrong with me?”
“And there you are,” I said. “See? You don’t want to have sex with me but it sure burns when I reject you.”
He shot me an icy look. “You didn’t reject me. I wasn’t offering. But if I felt like it, I could change your mind.”
Oh, God, men. Sometimes there was nothing else you could say.
Barrons growled low in his throat.
“Not that I want to,” Ryodan said hastily. “Or would ever want to.”
Barrons growled again.
“Christ, let’s just end this conversation,” Ryodan said tightly. “It’s going nowhere.”
“Let’s,” Barrons agreed.
“Let’s not,” I said. “How did it end with you and Dani?” I pressed, worried for her.
“I left, that’s how the fuck it ended. I got out of there as fast as I could.”
“So, you don’t know where she went?” I needed to find her. Talk to her. See if I could help with her bruised…pride or feelings or whatever she was going through now. I said to Barrons, “I’m going to sift to her and see how she is.”
Ryodan stiffened, sucking in a harsh breath. “Ah, fuck! Don’t,” he growled, turning his back to me, hands fisting at his sides.
“Don’t tell me what to—”
“Don’t sift to her. Your timing would be terrible.”
I stared at him. His back was ramrod straight and he shuddered. He turned and shot Barrons an unreadable look crammed so full of an unfathomable conversation and I desperately wanted an interpretation.
Barrons went still, closed his eyes and rubbed them.
“What’s going on?” I said softly.
Without opening his eyes, Barrons murmured, “Dani is having sex.”
My gaze whipped back to Ryodan. “You can feel that because of the brand on her neck?”
Ryodan said nothing, just stood there like he’d been turned to stone, nostrils flaring, eyes sparking crimson. His fangs extended, protruding from his mouth.
My gaze shot back to Barrons, and I was just about to speak when he said to Ryodan, “You knew when you tattooed her what it would do to you. You knew the price.”
“What price?” I demanded.
“She went straight from me to him,” Ryodan said nearly inaudibly.
“Him, who?’ I practically shouted.
“Her fucking kid genius,” he hissed.
I couldn’t help but smile. She was with Dancer. That was the epic I’d wanted for the woman she’d started to become. For Dani “the Mega” O’Malley epic could only be the one thing she’d never had: normal. Then my heart sank as I remembered the condition of Dancer’s heart. I got lost in my thoughts a moment, hoping she didn’t…well, surely she wouldn’t be too…vigorous. Dani was super strong, she vibrated when she got excited. Oh, I really needed to stop thinking about this. I shook my head to scatter images and said to Ryodan, “You did the right thing. You should never have been her first.”
He looked at me like I was absolutely insane. “Of course I shouldn’t.” Then his face hardened and something I couldn’t define stirred in his ancient eyes. “I’m going to be her last.”
Without another word, Ryodan shifted into the beast and was gone.
DELETED SCENE FROM HIGH VOLTAGE:
Before I began writing the novel, I needed to see the decision Ryodan made to leave, to fully understand the emotion and motives behind it. I wrote this scene between him and Barrons to flesh it out in my mind…
“What are you waiting for?” Ryodan demanded.
Jericho Barrons paced the flagstones with such violence, his boots kicked up stone dust with each step. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
Ryodan said coolly, “I didn’t ask you to think. Just do it.”
“And if we need you?” Barrons whirled on him so sharply that the fabric of his long coat cracked like a whip.
“It’s five years.” The corner of Ryodan’s mouth lifted in a mocking smile. “Surely you can muddle through without me for so short a time. In Faery with Mac, it may pass as a mere month or two for you.” Time crawled in that liminal place where the ancient Fae held formal court.
“And if something goes wrong? You haven’t thought this through,” Barrons snarled.
Ryodan arched a brow. He’d never been accused of that before. He considered every detail, often looking centuries ahead, patiently recalibrating. Linchpin theory was his specialty. He who knew how to destroy a thing, a person, a society, controlled it. “Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?”
“I’m talking to the bloody idiot who thinks something like this is a viable option,” Barrons snapped.
“I’ve taken precautions. Dani will be safe.”
“She’s not our only concern. There’s also Dageus—”
“Lor will get word to you if he scents wind of the Tribunal. You know where to find me.” Time also seemed to move more slowly in that strange, terrible place the Tribunal dwelled; a lair they’d never been able to find. It might be decades before retribution came slamming down. He’d sometimes entertained the notion that the Tribunal deliberately took their time, allowing the offending member of the Nine to think they’d gotten away with taking a human, so when that person was stolen from him, it cut deeper. Then again, it might be never. There had always been ten of them. The Tribunal had only ever come when that number was exceeded. With Barrons’s son dead, they might never come.
“This bloody well isn’t the answer, Ryodan,” Barrons said impatiently.
“I killed for no reason and not to feed. I don’t take life without a reason. There may be little to distinguish us from the Fae, but that’s one of the defining characteristics.”
“You had reason. I’d have done no less.”
Ryodan smiled mirthlessly. “And scatter a trail of bodies behind her?”
“She doesn’t look back.”
“There is that. But one day she will. And hate me for it. She protects the innocents. She doesn’t kill them because something pisses her off.”
“You don’t know he was innocent.”
“He wasn’t. But according to her rulebook, he didn’t deserve to die.”