Page 78 of Roman

Roman continued, “You’ve been trying to get my attention for an awfully long time, Luc. What do you want from me, really? Do you even know?”

Luc tilted his head. “And you felt you had to lure me out to the middle of bumfuck nowhere to have this conversation why?”

“You know why.” Roman tried his best to keep the growl out of his voice. “I don’t want you anywhere near my mate.”

“Ah, yes.” Luc’s smirk grew, fangs glinting from between his lips. “Your precious little mate. What a lovely choice you’ve made. He’s so…cute. So breakable.”

It took all Roman’s self-control to keep his muscles from tensing and his demon from growling. He knew Luc was trying to rile him up, set him off. For someone who’d been trying to get Roman’s attention for decades, the man couldn’t seem to resist antagonizing him once he got it.

“I know you aren’t really feral,” Roman bit out, trying to move the subject off Danny. “Your actions have always been too deliberate, too calculated. So are you really just a run-of-the-mill violent psychopath now or is there actually something you want from me?”

Luc straightened from his slouch, uncrossing his arms and sliding his hands into his pockets. Roman did tense then, preparing himself to be rushed, possibly with a hidden weapon, but the other vampire didn’t make any move toward him. “You know,” Luc mused, “for the longest time, after the dust settled and my rage died down a little, I wanted you back. My friend. My brother. But you kept running away. Wouldn’t let me get close.”

Familiar guilt tugged at Roman. Past failures, past cowardice. He wished suddenly that he could see Luc’s eyes.

Luc carried on, “I figured I was too wild for you now. Too aggressive, too violent. You were clinging with both hands to your own humanity, and I was a risk to that.” He began stepping closer, but Roman held his ground. “So I started thinking. If you were just a little more like me, we could be brothers again. If you weren’t so caught up in your own control. So focused on your own sanity.”

Roman tried to make sense of what he was hearing. “You were, what, trying to push me into becoming feral?”

Luc shrugged, halting his forward progress a few feet from Roman. “I wouldn’t go that far. I just wanted you a little…untethered. Thought maybe if you had to cut ties with humanity for a bit, had to keep moving, you might welcome your old friend back.”

“You were murdering people just to keep me on the move and push me back into your brotherly arms? A little extreme, do you not think?”

“I never killed anyone who didn’t deserve it. Mostly.”

So Danny had been right—Luc was choosing his victims deliberately. Not completely lost, then.

Roman took his own step forward, remaining just out of Luc’s reach. “And if I were to have you back in my life, how could I be assured Danny would be safe?”

Luc laughed then. It wasn’t the old, carefree laugh Roman had loved to hear from his friend once upon a time. It was cold. Bitter. “I think you misunderstand. Iwantedyou back. Past tense, mon ami. Things have changed—for the both of us, I think.”

Roman wasn’t exactly surprised. He couldn’t see the pair of them picking up where they had left off either. “And what do you want now, Luc?”

“Before I answer that, I want to know something.”

Roman nodded for him to continue.

“What made you a believer? Why are you so certain, now, that you’ve found your mate?”

Even with the sunglasses, Roman could feel the intensity of Luc’s gaze as he asked the question. Roman considered not answering, considered pushing the conversation away from Danny again, but if some honesty was required to end this toxic chase, Roman needed to provide it. “I could just feel it. When I met him. My demon…calmed. My mind cleared. I just…wanted him.Wanthim. I can already feel him tethering me, and he hasn’t even turned yet.”

Roman watched as Luc’s face tightened and his lips twitched. “Fascinating,” the other vampire murmured.

”Is that how you felt about Victoria?”

“You know what I want now?” Luc asked, ignoring Roman’s question. “I want toknow.” Luc took off his sunglasses, tucking them into his jacket pocket. Black eyes settled on Roman’s. “You said—even your little mate has said—that Victoria couldn’t have been my mate, seeing as how she chose to die rather than be with me. I would think it goes to say, then, thatyourmate, choosing between death or turning…he would choose you, right? I want toknow, Roman.”

There was a sinking feeling in Roman’s stomach. “You will not touch him,” he growled.

Roman barely saw Luc move. Roman’s reflexes were accelerated even in his human form but not as much as they would have been with his demon out. And Luc’s demon was always out.

Before he knew it, Roman found himself on his stomach on the asphalt, his arm pulled back at a painful angle and Luc’s knee digging into his back.

Roman heard the crunch and felt the white-hot heat of his arm breaking. He stifled his groan. “What is this, your go-to move now?”

He had been so stupid. He should have had his demon out the whole conversation. He should have been on higher alert. He stupidly hadn’t wanted to antagonize Luc, had wanted their meeting to be friendly.Friendly.

“Don’t worry,” Luc was saying. “I won’t kill you, mon ami.” Roman felt the tug of Luc digging into Roman’s back pocket, and then there was another crunch, this time the sound of metal and plastic splintering into pieces. Roman’s cell phone. “Just don’t want you giving away the game before it starts,” Luc explained.

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