Page 134 of Golden Eagle

They left the way they’d come, on foot; everyone headed in more or less the same direction.

Dante and Alexei broke away first; Jamie tagged along after them with a regretful glance back at the rest of them. He looked lost, Nikita thought, and then pushed any worry he might have felt to the side. He had bigger worries, tonight.

When it was time to say goodnight to Trina and Lanny, Nikita knew a sudden, unexpected urge to touch his great-granddaughter. To pull her into an embrace, and reassure himself that she was safe and whole.

He settled for offering a tight smile and an admonition to be careful.

He was pleased to see Lanny put an arm around her as they went into the lobby of her building.

Then he and Sasha were alone.

Cars still drifted past, and pedestrians still moved up and down the sidewalks, heads ducked against the wind that was kicking up, hands in jacket pockets. It wasn’t a midday crowd; just enough company to feel that they were public.

A ways ahead, a couple walked with hands linked. A simple touch; commonplace; chaste.

Nikita could have reached for Sasha’s hand. That was allowed, now, between them, and in front of the world. It was celebrated, even.

On a different night, he would have. But tonight…

Sasha didn’t speak. The silence burned, and left Nikita acutely aware that it was Sasha who always lightened the mood. It was Sasha who cracked a joke, or pointed out a beautiful vignette. Who teased Nikita into a good mood, usually just by being his usual, joyful self.

Now he stared down at the sidewalk, hands tucked in his pockets, the wind blowing his hair across his face, shielding his gaze totally from view. Nikita caught the faint strains of distress on his scent, but couldn’t puzzle out the particulars of it. Was he angry? Embarrassed? Wishing he’d gone with Val?

Nikita was thoroughly paranoid by the time he closed their front door behind them, locked it, and slid the chain home. He stood a moment, hand pressed flat to the panel, and listened to Sasha shrug out of his jacket and hang it up. Tug his boots off one at a time and line them up neatly against the baseboard.

Then he stilled; in the quiet, Nik could just make out the quick thump-thump of his heartbeat. “You’re mad at me,” Sasha said, in a very small voice.

Nikita turned, and braced his shoulders back against the door to keep himself from going to his mate. The soft hurt in Sasha’s voice was a sound that threatened to send him flying across the distance, arms open. Wanting to hold, and soothe, and reassure.

“No,” he said, and meant it, but his belly clenched.

Sasha tucked his hair behind his ears, his chin still tucked in what was either defensiveness, or apology. With his face drawn, his mouth downturned, he looked terribly young, and terribly vulnerable. “You don’t like Val.” He sounded young, too, a little lost, a little simplistic – painting things inmadanddon’t like.

No, he started to say.I don’t like him. But here was the evidence, looking at him uncertainly from beneath lowered lashes, of Sasha’s own love for the prince. One of them needed to try to unravel the strange tangle that had formed around the two of them tonight, and since he’d been the one to start it – flat-out refusing in a parking lot – he supposed he ought to be the one to do it.

They’d spent too many decades keeping their deepest thoughts to themselves. It had only hurt them.

He pushed off the door and held out his hand. “Come sit down.”

Sasha took his hand, a quick clasp, like grabbing for a lifeline. Followed him to the couch, where they both sat sideways, facing one another. He picked at a loose thread on one of the back cushions, gaze landing on Nikita’s face, and then flicking away again, like he was afraid of the answer.

Nikita hated how putting his feelings into words was still one of the most challenging things he ever did.

He took a deep breath. “It isn’t about liking or not liking him.” Though he couldn’t say hedidlike him. Val was showy, and provocative, and impractical, and nothing at all like Nik himself. “It’s that I don’t trust him, and I think you know that.”

Sasha tugged lightly at the loose thread, and one corner of his mouth quirked up in knowing acknowledgement.

“What he was able to do – get inside my head, and Trina’s at the same time. Take her dream-walking back to the past with me…that’s a kind of powerful I didn’t even think existed. And it’s psychic power. Harder to measure than physical power, maybe, yeah, but that’s why it can be abused so easily. If he could do that while he was imprisoned, what can he do now that he’s loose?”

“He isn’t going to hurt us,” Sasha said, sounding affronted, meeting his gaze head-on. He still looked young and lost, but there was a firmness in his gaze that hadn’t been there before. He trusted Val, and he was willing to argue about it. To defend him.

“Maybe he wouldn’t,” Nikita said; he’d already stated his own distrust. “At least not on purpose. But it’d be really easy to make a wrong step while you were playing around in someone else’s mind.”

“Speaking from experience?” His tone was soft, but the words were cutting.

Nikita fought to keep from having a visible reaction to them. “Do you believe his story?” he asked, changing tacks. “That he and Vlad patched things over and that Vlad actually helped him escape? With both those wolves? He was so unwilling to let you go that he was going to run me through with a sword. Asword, Sashka.”

Sasha shuddered, and turned his face away again, blinking.

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