Page 113 of Golden Eagle

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she whispered, and found that her voice was the unsteady one, now. “With work, with the Institute. With…everything. But we’re better together.”

“Yeah.”

“Interrupting anything?” Will Scarlet’s voice called, and they sighed, and pulled back.

They traded a look, one moment of understanding, of affection, and loyalty. It went a long way toward soothing her nerves.

Then she turned to their accomplices for the evening. “No. We’re ready.”

~*~

Sasha had wanted to come with them.

“No,” Nikita told him, too stressed to be sorry for the command in his tone. “Absolutely not.”

They’d stood in a shadowed patch of grass between the parking lot and the street, the constant flow of traffic offering them an urban kind of privacy. Before they’d left home, Sasha had scraped his hair back in a tight bun; had dressed all in black, his combat boots laced tight. He’d stood there in the dark, hands curled into fists at his sides, chin lifted, jaw tight.

“Why not?” he’d asked, voice controlled, gaze hectic, vivid blue, even in the shadows.

Nikita had stood there in front of a Taco Bell, autumn breeze tugging at his hair, and felt like he was choking. “You know why,” he gritted out, and tried to turn away.

“Nik.” Sasha grabbed the front of his jacket with one hand, pulling him up short. He was stronger than he looked – much stronger. Nikita knew that, but the reminder was good, now and then. His face was flushed, a faint pink along his cheekbones. “You don’t need to protect me.”

Nikita bared his teeth. His fangs felt long. “After what happened last time, do you think I’d let you go back in there? So they can–” He couldn’t say the words. He closed his eyes, briefly, against the memory of Sasha too-thin and sallow, eyes sunk in his head, retching over the toilet bowl as his body burned through the last of the narcotics they’d used on him in Virginia, to keep him docile.

“Nik.” Sasha tugged at his jacket, and pressed his other hand to Nikita’s chest, over the pulse that pounded through skin, and bone, and sweater. When Nikita opened his eyes, Sasha said, “Bind me.”

The words hit him like a slap. He took a step backward, and Sasha let him go, crestfallen. He didn’t give up, though.

“Bind me, and no one could ever compel me. I couldn’t be forced into being anyone’s Familiar. No one would even want me for anything. It wouldn’t be slavery – it would keep me from being someone else’s slave.”

The worst thing? Sasha was right. Binding him would be like putting a lock on his mind. A bound wolf, a true, bonded Familiar, couldn’t be compelled by another vampire; couldn’t be bound to another. A bond, as Will had explained, only severed by death of the master.

But the word itself:bind. Sasha would beboundto him. Would be powerless against any direct orders; against compulsion. And Nikita would never –never…but what if he did it on accident? What if something as innocent as “pass the salt” turned into a command he was unable to refuse? What if it was as harmful as some murmured bit of desire whispered out in bed? And Sasha did something against his will, without consciously wanting to, just because he was Nikita’s Familiar.

Not his lover, not his partner, not his friend, but a servant,boundto obey him.

“And what if you were my slave?” he forced himself to ask. “What then?”

Sasha let out a breath. Not a sigh, but a gut-punched sound of disbelief. “Do you distrust yourself that much? Do you think anything would change?”

“How could it not?”

Sasha blinked, and then turned away. A muscle in his jaw leapt as he ground his molars. “I want to come with you,” he said tightly. “I don’t want to be left behind like a useless child.”

“You’re being left behind because I won’t put you at risk. Not now, not ever again.”

Sasha turned back, eyes glittering wetly, face gone pale. “We talked about this,” he said, low and hurt. “After Virginiawe talkedabout you risking more than me.”

“We did. And right now, I’m less at risk in that building than you.”

They stared at one another. Nikita would have done anything to wipe the unhappiness off Sasha’s face – anything except let him come with them.

Sasha turned away first, his shoulders shrugging up toward his ears. “Fine.” And it wasn’t fine at all.

Then Will and Much had shown up, with an unexplained plumber’s van, and Nikita tucked all his personal turmoil away.

He tried to. Sasha’s face haunted him, even as they approached the lit glass doors of the Institute’s public patient entrance. He could see people sitting in hard plastic chairs inside, in pairs, in groups. One man caught his attention, simply because he was alone. A pair of crutches was propped up against the chair beside him, and he surveyed the room with the hooded, hawk gaze of a soldier. Unlike the others waiting, he had no support. No confidante, no hand to squeeze.

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