Jessica Andersen - Dawnkeepers

Did she have a twin? Excitement spiked at the thought, because the Nightkeepers revered the twin bond. But that excitement drained quickly in the face of knowing that a twin wasn’t something Izzy would’ve kept secret. But if not a twin, then what?

“There was no other model,” Nate said grimly.

Alexis went very still. “You based this on me?”

“Nope. The first VW game came out four years ago.” He grimaced, looking partly proud, partly uncomfortable. “For what it’s worth, Hera has a huge following. Mostly of the under-twenty gamer variety, but still.”

“I don’t get it,” she said numbly, but she was very afraid she did. Afraid . . . and rapidly getting angry at the realization that he’d known her long before he’d met her, and had hidden the connection.

Narrowing her eyes she said, “How in the bloody blazes of hell can you design something like this years before you met me, yet not believe in destiny?”

“I never said I didn’t believe it, just that I wasn’t going to roll over for it.”

She waited for more. Didn’t get it. Fisting her hand on her hips, she prompted, “And?”

He exhaled a long, frustrated breath. “Look, do you think I’m comfortable with this? Trust me, the answer is a big old ‘not.’ Hera is . . . she’s a fantasy, an amalgam of all the stuff that tests high in market research, along with a few of my own preferences. She was living inside my head years before I started working on the first VW game, and she’s been with me on a daily basis ever since. She’s got a fan club, for chrissake.”

Alexis didn’t like the way he was talking about this computer construct as if she were a real woman, and suspected she was seriously going to hate where this was going. “Tell me about her,” she said carefully.

Not looking at her, he said, “She’s brash and bossy, she’s a top fighter, she can do low-level magic .

. . and she’s big and loud and scary, and pretty much guaranteed to rip the balls off of any guy who gets in her way.” He glanced at Alexis now, and she couldn’t read the emotion in his eyes when he said, “She looks like you, or you look like her; I’m not sure which is more accurate. The first time I saw you, when I came looking for Strike and you opened the front door, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”

“That was why you fainted?” She’d always wondered about that, why a big, tough guy like him had done the eye-roll-and-drop thing about thirty seconds after he’d stepped through the front door of Skywatch.

“That was dehydration,” he said, sticking to the story he’d maintained ever since the incident. But something in his voice suggested there had been a good bit of shock in the mix, as well.

Alexis just stared at the TV screen, which was so big that her—or, rather, Hera’s—image was nearly life-size. “You can create something like this, years before we met, and still deny that we’re supposed to be mated?”

“Just because Strike saw Leah in a dream doesn’t mean we’re meant to be together,” he said quietly, answering the question she hadn’t asked.

She told herself not to ask, but it came out anyway. “Why not? We’re good in bed. Am I really so awful outside of it?”

He exhaled a long, slow breath. “That’s not what this is about.”

Which didn’t answer her question in the slightest. “Then what is it about?”

He was staring at Hera when he said, “I don’t do well with the idea of sex as a commodity.”

Everything inside her went still. “I don’t remember offering to pay you.”

“But you’d be trading sex for power. We both would be.” Something in his eyes said he wasn’t talking solely about Nightkeeper magic, and the idea unnerved her.

She didn’t say anything, didn’t know what to say, because it was both true and untrue. For her, the sex was a joy and a revelation, but yeah, it was also a means to an end. And when she looked at it that way, she got a strange, squirrelly feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Besides,” Nate continued, “I don’t do well being told what to do.” His expression, and the locked-

tight rigor of his muscles, suggested there was more to it than even that, but she wasn’t sure she had the strength to keep fighting him right now.

“That’s an understatement.” Her voice came out a little choked as the held-off exhaustion started to hit. She was suddenly tired and sore, and so depressed she could barely think straight, never mind getting the rest of the story out of Nate, and trying to understand where he was coming from, and where they could go from there. Besides, why bother? she thought, realizing she’d made her decision without being aware of it. She was done trying to make it work with him, done trying to meet the gods halfway. Nate didn’t want her, plain and simple. Or rather, he wanted her body, but not much else about her, and she was finished trying to fight that fight.

“For what it’s worth,” he said softly, “I’m sorry. I wish it could be different.”

“Me too.” To her mortification, the words came out choked with tears. She spun on her heel and headed for the door.

“Alexis, wait.”

She stopped, but didn’t turn back. “What.” It wasn’t really a question.

“What are you going to do?”

She swallowed hard, knowing what she had to do, and hating it. “You don’t want to work within the prophecies? Fine, then neither will I. I’ll find myself another protector. That’ll let you off the hook.”

“Who?” His eyes were dark and angry, but he didn’t seem at all surprised, which meant that he’d been thinking about it, too, about how, if she took another one of the guys as a lover, she might be able to transfer the protector’s bond. Maybe.

The fact that he’d already gone there in his planning was an added blow, but she didn’t let him see it, saying only, “Well, my choices seem limited to Sven and Michael, don’t they? Izzy approves of the stone bloodline, so I guess I’ll start with Michael and see what happens.”

Figuring that was as good an exit line as she was likely to get, she slipped through the door, closing it behind her and hoping he wouldn’t follow, because she was too tired to argue anymore.

She headed back to her suite, knowing she couldn’t do a damn thing until she got some sleep.

Tomorrow would be soon enough to choose her new lover, she thought, and tried not to let the idea echo hollowly in her heart as she shucked off her clothes and dropped into bed naked. Soon she was asleep.

And in sleeping, she dreamed of Nate, the man who wore the matching mark that proclaimed him as hers, but wouldn’t let himself be caged.

Nate was pissed off enough that he couldn’t get to sleep even though his body badly needed rest. He lay awake on his bed, staring out the window at the shadow of the ceiba tree, dark against the darkness. The canyon night was cool, the AC off, so he had the window cracked to let in the air. A breeze brought the faint howl of a coyote.

He didn’t have a good reason to be pissed, he knew. He’d gone to Alexis’s room intending to have pretty much the convo they’d wound up having. Granted, he’d meant to offer himself for the sort of sex-only protective relationship she was now looking to find somewhere else, and logic said her theory was better. That didn’t mean he liked the plan, though.

In fact, he fucking hated it.

He despised the thought of her with Michael, loathed the idea with both halves of himself, the magic and the man. He was logical enough to recognize that it wasn’t fair, and to know he didn’t have the right to block her from taking on one of the other Nightkeeper males if he wasn’t willing to be what she needed. That didn’t dampen the rage, though. If anything, it made it worse.