Page 89 of Tin God

She propped her head up on his chest and looked at him. “We’re not as effective apart as we are together.”

“Exactly.” Let her think it was a battle strategy if it kept her close. “And honestly, we’re coming at the same problem from two different places, and we might be more effective if we joined our efforts and?—”

“Or we might be less effective if Zasha only has one target instead of two.”

He put his hand on her head and forced her eyes to his. “What did you do to Zasha? Why do they hate you so much? I want to hear it from you.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Sometimes I don’t like how smart you are.”

“Too bad.”

She stared at the rock over his shoulder. “I don’t want to tell you what I did because I think you’ll judge me.”

“So?”

She blinked and looked at him. “So youwilljudge me?”

“Of course I will. And you should trust my judgment more than anyone else’s because I love you more than life or eternity, and I will judge you and still love you at the same time.”

Tenzin stared at him for a long time, not saying a word.

“Blood of my blood.” He kept his voice soft. “You are my mate and my destiny. Tell me what you did to make Zasha so angry.”

“I let her live after I killed her mate.” Tenzin frowned. “They were living as a woman then, so the picture in my mind is feminine.”

“Vampires go back and forth,” Ben said. “That’s not the important part.”

“Zasha’s mate said she had no one but him,” Tenzin said. “And I killed him.”

“Because he was part of Zhang’s bloodline. The blood of Temur.”

Tenzin’s eyes flew to his. “I told you I didn’t want you?—”

“You have a reputation in our world, Tiny. I didn’t have to guess much.” Ben had learned a lot, but he needed to let Tenzin know that her secrets were not as secret as she thought. “The Scourge of the Naiman Khanlig. Did you think I wouldn’t hear the stories just because you didn’t tell them?” He played with a strand of her hair. “You didn’t recognize them in Louisiana?”

Tenzin sat back. “I didn’t remember Zasha for a long time. I didn’t connect the woman I left in a cabin in Siberia hundreds of years ago with the sociopath who was tormenting Brigid and wreaking havoc for no reason.”

“But Zasha remembered you.”

“Yes.” She looked over the rainy landscape that spread before them. “Their mate was the last of Temur’s line.”

Ben whispered, “The blood of Temur remembers who you were.”

“He’d been living quietly, but I found them in a house in Siberia. He had been taking humans from the village to feed her, so stories started to circulate. I tracked them down eventually and killed him. When I did that, I promised him I would let Zasha live.”

“So this vampire was hunting humans to feed his mate instead of teaching Zasha to feed quietly,” Ben said. “You killed him and let Zasha live. Where is the guilt coming from? Neither of these two were innocent, Tenzin.”

“I don’t feel guilt.”

“Don’t you?”

“It’s not guilt.” She frowned. “I… recognized her. I could tell the woman I saw had not had an easy life. I didn’t want to kill her for surviving the only way she knew how.”

“Okay, but that’s bullshit,” Ben said. “You said this guy—Temur’s descendant—had been living quietly for centuries. So if Zasha hadn’t come along, you probably never would have found him.”

Tenzin blinked. “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that whether you realize it or not, you have been feeling guilt about killing Zasha’s mate. But he wasn’t an innocent, Tenzin. They were killing humans long before you found them. They were probably taking the most vulnerable people they could find and then feeding on them and throwing them away.”

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