Page 92 of White Wolf

He shrugged. Glanced away.

“Then why do you do it?”

He snorted, eyes coming back, look sayingreally?“I do what I have to so that I can–” He caught himself, biting his lip a moment.

“Serve your country?” she guessed.

He shook his head. Said down to his boots: “So I can stay alive long enough to save it, maybe.” He breathed a humorless laugh. “That sounds incredibly arrogant.”

“Save it from the Nazis?”

“It needed saving long before the Nazis crossed the borders.” He sent her a level look…touched with fear. Just a flicker in his eyes. “Nicholas wasn’t even tsar anymore, and they dragged his children from their beds and shot them all in cold blood. Slaughtered them. What sort of government does that?”

It all slotted into place, then. She thought it did, anyway. She sucked in a breath.

His look dared her to challenge him.There, I finally told you, it said.What do you think now?

“My father,” she started, careful, “always said that sometimes you had spill the blood of oppressors. But,” she rushed to add when his eyes flared, “this, Communism, is worse than anything the tsars ever did. And what they did to the Romanovs was wrong. I do believe that.”

He let out a breath, visibly relieved.

“But it’s more than that to you, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s personal. You’re a White.” And now that she said it, it made so much sense.

He leaned in close, suddenly, in her face, his breath hot. “If you go running back to base and tellanyone–”

“I won’t. I would never.”

Not even the owls dared to breach the silence that descended then. Her heartbeat was loud as artillery fire in her chest, rushing through her ears. Her pulse knocked so hard she didn’t think she could have run away, or ducked, or even brought a hand up to shield her face if she needed to, all her energy focused on not passing out from the sheer force of her thumping heart.

But she didn’t need to do any of those things.

Nikita let out a shaky breath and leaned back from her, reaching to wipe a hand down his face. She heard the rasp of his bristly chin against his palm. “It’s going to get me – get all of us – killed one day. What’s one more admission, huh?”

“I won’t tell anyone,” she repeated.

He cocked his head to the side, studying her. “Do you think me a traitor?” There was just enough moonlight, and his head was tilted at just the right angle, that she could see his pulse pounding in the hollow of his throat, a rapid flutter in the silvered gloaming.

“I…no. Not really.” She didn’t tell him that, in truth, knowing he wasn’t loyal to the state – to the black-clad monsters he represented – eased some last bit of worry inside her. She frowned, though. “You’re pretending to be a Chekist.”

“Yes.”

“All of you?”

“Yes.”

A beat passed, and she let that sink in. “But the people you kill – that’s not pretend. That’s real.”

His jaw clenched, shadow leaping in the side of his face. “We’re not like the others. Raping women and children. Killing just for fun.” He spat the words, disgusted. “We collect the things we’re sent to retrieve, and we only kill when ordered to. Someone would kill those people anyway – better a quick, clean death than the torture someone else would inflict.”

“That’s a convenient way of looking at it.”

“It’s also true.”

And…it was. She guessed. Who knew. Fuck everything.

“You could have joined the war effort as a nurse. A secretary. Why become a sniper? Asoldier?”

And here was her ugly truth: “Because I’m angry all the time,” she said, without any remorse. “If I can’t kill the men who took my family away, I’ll kill every other Nazi stupid enough to walk into my sights.” She was breathing hard by the end, and her throat hurt when she swallowed. But her eyes were dry.

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