Page 143 of Golden Eagle

“No, thank you.” Jamie sat down in one of the two chairs by the window, a little sitting area with a small table between, and a view through sheer drapes of the street down below. He glanced out at the cars creeping along, and tried to be stealthy about running his clammy palms down his thighs. Becoming a vampire might have cured his asthma and fixed his eyesight, but it hadn’t done a damn thing for his anxiety.

Will settled across from him and offered a sideways smile. “Forgive me for assuming, but I don’t get the impression this is a social call.”

“What? No. Um.” His fingers drummed and he forced them still. Took a breath. How rude to show up like this looking for answers from a stranger. He shouldn’t have come. He should apologize and leave. What would Lanny and Trina think if they knew he’d come here to talk about them? Oh, God.

“Hey.” Will leaned forward, expression softening. He reached out a hand, but didn’t touch Jamie; let it hover, like he was trying to calm a frightened animal.

Which Jamie very much felt like right now.

“It’s alright,” Will said. “I didn’t expect you to bring us biscuits and ask after our health.” He smiled to show he was joking. “If I can help you in some way, I’ll gladly do so. What do you need?”

Jamie let out a deep breath. It shivered in his lungs and throat. “It’s not – I don’tneedanything. Nothing like that. I just…” He bit his lip, and felt very much like he was betraying his pack.

If they even were his pack. If they intended to stay that way. If everything didn’t crumble apart…

“Jamie?” Will prompted.

“Why can’t everyone just leave us alone?”

Okay, that wasnotwhat he’d meant to say. The anxiety had swelled inside him in a black tide, and the words had come spilling out without permission.

He meant them, though, even as he clapped a hand over his mouth.

Will’s brows went up in mild inquiry. “Beg pardon?”

In for a penny…

He lowered his hand, and knotted it with his other, fingers clenched together tightly. Fine tremors stole through his arms and legs, but he tried to ignore them. “Alexei didn’t turn me. Someone he’d turned did. I guess that makes him my grandsire? I don’t know. But when it happened, things were upside down. Trina had just found Nikita, and I woke up in a morgue drawer, and Lanny was dying, so Alexei turned him. Everything seemed to be going a hundred-miles-an-hour after that. Chasing Alexei down, fighting, and then Sasha got kidnapped, and that whole thing in Virginia happened.”

That had been the first time he’d heard gunshots at close range. The first time he’d seen men fall, and die, and bleed. It hadn’t felt real until then; it was easy to pretend he was the same when he was sipping microwaved pig’s blood out of a coffee mug. But when he’d put his fangs in a throat, and human blood had flooded hot and fresh across his tongue…

He shuddered. “I thought maybe things could settle down after that. Go back to normal. But then there’ve been the murders. And Lanny’s been an idiot with the whole fighting thing. And we’ve gotta deal with this Gustav guy, who is clearly a bad dude. And then you show up and want Nik and Sasha to join your freakingarmyor something. And we went back into that building, where they have killer kids with – with fuckingfire. And…” He was babbling, and forced his mouth shut. His teeth clicked together. He breathed sharply through his nose, lungs aching like he still needed an inhaler.

Just stress, just stress, he told himself. No human ailment could kill him now. But the pain was there. The breathlessness. It felt real, even if it wasn’t.

“Why can’t people just leave us alone?” he said again, voice small and strained. “I just want – tobe. That’s all.” His gaze had dropped to the rug, a pattern of rich reds and golds, tasteful swirls and leaves. He lifted his head, and forced himself to look Will in the eyes. Swallowed and tried to wet his mouth. A full-on panic attack loomed on the horizon; its threat buzzed just under his skin. “Sorry.”

But Will didn’t look offended. He tipped his head to the side and considered him thoughtfully, concerned notch between his brows.

A darted glance showed that Much had turned away from his screen, and watched Jamie through a screen of pale hair, expression unreadable.

Will said, “Something Rob told me right after I was turned: ‘It’s up to those with exceptional strength – of body and of character – to look after those in need.’ It’s become something of a motto for all of us. And I suppose we’re guilty of sometimes carrying it too far. Projecting it onto those who don’t feel the way that we do.”

Jamie blinked at him a moment, and then frowned. “That sounds like it could be an insult.”

“Quite the contrary.” His smile looked genuine; it touched his eyes and lit them up from the inside out, warm and dark as coffee. “I’m apologizing. For myself, and for the rest of my team. I’m afraid you can take Robin Hood out of Sherwood forest, but…” He shrugged. “Rob is good at fighting. The good fight, he thinks of it. And it suits the rest of us, too, I suppose, or we wouldn’t go along with it so happily. We’re in the business of defending innocents; we begin to think that other immortals are, too – but that isn’t always the case.”

“Still insulted.”

Will made a face. Shrugged. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to.”

It was quiet a beat.

Jamie thought about getting up and leaving – but dashed the idea as rude. He’d been the one to reach out, and come all the way here. He was the one who’d dumped his feelings out on the rug. He could at least respect a differing opinion.

He glanced toward Much again, but the other wolf had gone back to his computer-staring, and it felt pointed this time.

“The thing is,” Will said, and his tone had shifted; less formal, his accent softer. He sounded more like the modern young man he looked, and less like a relic from a bygone century. That, Jamie realized with a jolt, had been his presentation voice; his sales pitch. This was what he really sounded like, unguarded and without artifice.

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