Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

Nathaniel studied my face. “I didn’t see the decision in your mind.”

“You got distracted,” I said.

He grinned. “You always distract me.” He reached for me again, and Micah stepped in the way.

“I love you both, but this is serious. If Anita is going to make Rafael her rat to call, I need to know and so do Jean-Claude and Asher.”

Nathaniel wasn’t smiling as he shook his head. “She hasn’t decided yet.”

“And you know that how?” Benito asked.

“It wasn’t in her head just now.” He said it as if it was a perfectly reasonable answer.

“Do you know everything she’s thinking?” Rafael asked.

“No, but a decision that big would have been in the front of her thoughts, and it wasn’t,” he said, again so reasonable. Nathaniel had taken the new power level between the three of us in stride a lot more than I had, or even Damian had.

“I have never seen your eyes blaze with Jean-Claude’s blue when he wakes for the day,” Rafael said.

“He has more control over it,” I said.

Nathaniel said, “It’s not just that, some of the Harlequin’s eyes change when their masters wake and they have control.”

“It’s a shorthand for them to know everything that’s happened during the day while they slept. We can just tell Jean-Claude or Damian.”

“Why does it bother you so much when it happens?” Nathaniel asked. His eyes were fading from the deep violet of happiness toward the normal lavender.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Do you know everything that your moitié bêtes know?” Benito asked.

“No,” I said.

“But you could read their thoughts if you wanted to,” he said.

I thought about it and then nodded. “But it’s more sharing memories than thoughts.”

“Perhaps I have not understood all the possibilities of our king becoming your moitié bête , Anita,” Benito said.

“Unless you have a vampire who shares rat as their animal to call included in the mix, it won’t be as intimate as what Anita shares with Nathaniel and Damian,” Micah said.

“How do you know?” Rafael asked.

“I’ve talked to Jean-Claude at length about it.”

“But Damian is not a master vampire, so he has no animal to call,” Rafael said.

“One of them is the master vampire,” Micah said, motioning at Nathaniel and me.

“So, Anita,” Benito said.

“I’m not so sure,” Claudia said, and she was looking at Nathaniel as if she saw something in him she’d missed or hadn’t noticed before.

“If we take this step together, Anita, will our secrets be safe from one another?” Rafael asked.

“I won’t peek on purpose, but to say anything else is too close to a lie. The truth is, I’m not sure. What’s happening between Nathaniel and Damian and me is different than how it feels to be with Jean-Claude and Richard, so I just don’t know.”

“Richard hates being a werewolf too much to be a full third in your triumvirate,” Nathaniel said.

No one argued, and Rafael had been Richard’s friend and ally before he was mine. Rafael asked, “So you think that your comfort level with being a wereleopard is what makes the difference between the three of you?”

“Yeah, I know now that Richard’s conflicts cripple the power that Jean-Claude could have from their triumvirate, well, that and . . .” Nathaniel stopped in midsentence.

“He was about to say that Jean-Claude is too careful of Richard and me to bind us as powerfully as he could,” I said.

“You finished his thought?” Rafael asked.

“No, we’ve had the conversation before,” I said, not like I was entirely happy about it.

Rafael looked at all of us, including Micah, who was trying for a blank face. “What am I missing here?”

Surprisingly, it was Claudia who answered, “Nathaniel’s not conflicted about what he is and what he wants.”

We all looked at her. “I didn’t know you were paying that much attention to what I wanted,” Nathaniel said.

She looked uncomfortable, but said, “You almost picked a fight with Bobby Lee when you came into the power of your triumvirate. He told the other bodyguards so we wouldn’t underestimate you.”

Nathaniel looked embarrassed, which you didn’t see often. “I didn’t understand that power could be like drugs. It was like being high and I’m not good when I’m high, which is one of the reasons I got clean and stayed clean.”

“The powerless are sometimes only good because they are not strong enough to be evil,” Rafael said.

Nathaniel gave him startled eyes and then looked away and nodded. “The temptation was there, but Damian and Anita deserved better than me acting like an asshole.”

“But you’re the only one who isn’t conflicted about your supernatural powers, and . . . the sex,” Claudia said, like she wished she hadn’t had to say it. “I didn’t realize that it limited Jean-Claude’s power with Richard and Anita so much until you showed us all how much power could be gained without that hesitation.”

“Being nicer about it limits the power, too,” he said.

“Maybe,” she said, “but it still shows us what the other triumvirate could be.”

“I want the power of being your rat to call, Anita, and I am not conflicted about it.”

“Without a vampire in the mix to make this a three-way, metaphysically speaking, that’s not as important.”

“I am glad that Jean-Claude calls only wolves.”

“So am I, because I think you would have been far more willing to compromise in ways that Richard wasn’t,” Micah said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean if Jean-Claude had needed a rat instead of a wolf to call, well, Rafael just said it, he’s not conflicted about wanting power and being a wererat, so he would be closer to how Nathaniel is with you and Damian.”

“More power,” I said.

“And no room in your life for other people, maybe,” Micah said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Our king would not have allowed Jean-Claude more liberties than the Ulfric allows him,” Benito said, and he was angry enough that his beast flitted along my skin, but standing this close to Nathaniel, it didn’t bother me like it had before.

“Hush, Benito, there is no shame in loving who you love,” Rafael said.

Benito seemed to realize that he’d just insulted several people in the hallway by implying that guy-on-guy sex was shameful, because he tried to fix it. “I did not mean . . . what the Nimir-raj does is his own business and Nathaniel is Nathaniel. I just meant that . . . I . . .”

Claudia fought to turn her laugh into a cough.

“For the kind of power that Jean-Claude has now, I might have done many things years ago.”

I think Rafael had just admitted he’d been willing to have sex with Jean-Claude to cement a triumvirate with me and him. I think I was surprised, and then I remembered something that Richard had told us years ago.

“Richard said you were the one who urged him to come back to Jean-Claude and me once, that if you could have offered yourself in his place to keep us all safe, you would have done it.”

“Richard has thrown away more power than most of us in the supernatural community are ever offered,” Rafael said.

“You wouldn’t have thrown it away,” Micah said.

Rafael looked at him, and they had a long moment of understanding between them. I wasn’t sure exactly what they were understanding, but I knew that was what they were doing.

“Through Anita I now have a chance for some of that power.”

“You started to gain power when Anita started feeding on all of the wererats through you,” Micah said.

“As Anita and all of Jean-Claude’s people gained through the feeding,” Rafael said.