Page 169 of Hunters and Prey

When he didn’t move, didn’t stop staring at me, I decided he wanted me to say something, that he wanted an actual answer.

“You know why, Black.” Wincing against the pain in my head, I leaned back in my deck chair, glancing at the coffee I still hadn’t touched, that was probably lukewarm by now, before I looked back at him. “Apparently you get some of it better than I do.”

Exhaling, I made that seer clicking noise under my breath, watching him scowl.

“You would have never let me go,” I said. “Knowing you, you would have put me under house arrest if I even raised the question––”

“You’re damned fucking right I would have!” he exploded, breathing harder as he stared at me. “And I would have been right to do it!”

Opening my mouth, I shut it again, seeing the look in his eyes.

Even so, I frowned.

For some reason, I got a strange feeling of déjà vu when he said that.

Dismissing it, I shook my head, rubbing my temple when it started to pound so hard, my vision blurred.

I probably should have waited on telling him what I’d done.

I should have waited at least until I’d processed everything on my own end––but the truth was, I couldn’t. The mate thing made it pretty much impossible to want to lie to him.

Well, it made it impossible to lie to him any longer than I had to, anyway.

Meaning, any longer than it took to keep his impetuous, half-cocked, stubborn-as-a-mule brain from getting us both killed.

“Miri––” he began in a growl.

“You know why I did it!” I said, rubbing my temples, wincing against the pain. “You know why, Black.”

“The fuck I do. I know the bullshit line you’re probably telling yourself––”

“It’s not bullshit.” Dropping my hand into my lap, I stared up at his face. “I’m not letting you work for Charles, Black. I’m not letting you work for Charles. Not for any reason, but definitely not because of what Nick did to me.”

He stared at me, his expression shifting from that colder fury to a near bewilderment, somehow without losing any of the actual anger.

“What the fuck is that supposed to––”

“You know exactly what I’m saying.” I stared up at him, clenching my jaw, as much against the pain in my head as at him.

“…You can tell yourself this was about me trying to save Nick all you want. But I know you, Black. You were going to call Charles. You were getting ready to sign over your whole damned life to him, to convert into a full-time vampire killer again. Regardless of Charles being a damned psychopath. Regardless of the fact that he’d hook you into a Barrier construct that would completely screw with your head. Regardless of whether you’d be helping my uncle not only kill vampires but enslave every human in the country… along with most of the seers.”

His expression grew even more bewildered.

Looking at him, I knew, though.

I knew I’d been right.

I’d been right about the construct too, although that was more or less a semi-educated guess. Constructs were one way seers controlled living light. They were generally created by seers over a specific geographic area, but they were also created over specific groups of seers and/or humans.

My uncle currently had one over most of the United States.

That one, I’d known about, mostly because Black told me about it… but I strongly suspected my uncle controlled the light of his immediate followers much more tightly, and with more of an iron fist.

“Of course he does,” Black growled, frowning. “Every military unit does some version of that, Miri. We have a construct here, over this building––”

“You’re not a psychopath––”

“According to Nick, I was––”

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