“I meant it,” he barked. “When I told you I would get you a baby if you wanted one, I fucking meant that shit!”

“I know you did. What you didn’t expect was to be the one who had the hollow pit in the middle of his chest.”

He stopped dead and talked to the Oriental rug. “It doesn’t matter. This doesn’t matter. It’s going to go away—”

“Beth told me something else.” Mary waited for him to look over, and when he did, she brushed away a tear. “She said that Vishous came to you before the attack. She said . . . he told you that you were going to die. That he tried to get you to leave the field—but you wouldn’t.”

Rhage cursed and resumed walking around. Dragging a hand over his face, he found himself just wanting to go back to the early days of their relationship. When it had been easy. Nothing but good sex and greater love.

Not all this . . . life bullshit.

“Why did you go out there?” she asked in a halting way.

He waved away the question. “He could have been wrong, you know. V doesn’t actually know everything or he’d be a god—”

“You went out early into the fight. You didn’t wait . . . you went out there by yourself. Into a campus full of the enemy. Alone—right after one of your Brothers, who hasn’t been wrong yet, told you that you were going to die out there. And then you were shot. In the chest.”

Rhage didn’t mean to crumble.

It was weird, though. He was upright . . . and then he was down on the floor, his legs collapsing under him at bad angles, his torso following suit in a sloppy fall of arms and shoulders. But that was what happened when a warrior lost his fight—he was nothing more than a gun dropped from a shooting hand, a dagger let loose from a palm, a grenade released, not thrown, into thin air.

“I’m sorry, Mary. I’m so . . . sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .”

He just kept saying the words over and over again. There was nothing else he could do.

“Rhage.” As she cut into his rambling, his Mary’s voice was so sad that the sound of it was worse than that lead bullet through his heart. “Do you think you went out there alone because you wanted to die? And please, just be honest with me. This is too big . . . to just sweep under the rug.”

Feeling like utter shit, he put his hands up to his face and talked into his palms. “I just needed . . . to be close to you again. Like it always was. Like it should be. Like it has to be for me. I thought . . . maybe if I were on the other side, and you came to me, we could . . .”

“Do what we’re doing right now?”

“Except then it wouldn’t matter.”

“About having a child?”

“Yes.”

As they both went quiet, he cursed. “I feel like I’m betraying you in a different way now.”

When she inhaled deeply, it was clear she knew exactly what he was referencing—that moment when he had come back to her after that other female. But she recovered quickly. “Because I can’t give you what you want and yet you want it anyway.”

“Yes.”

“Do you . . . do want to be with another wo—”

“God, no!” Rhage dropped his palms and shook his head so hard the thing nearly snapped off his spine. “Fuck, no! Never. Ever. I would rather be with you and never have young than—I mean, Jesus, it’s not even close.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Absolutely. Straight up, I am one hundred percent certain.”

She nodded, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was back to focusing on her feet as she flexed her toes, then separated them out wide, then curled them under and moved them upward.

“It’s okay if you do,” she said quietly. “I mean, I would understand if you want to be with . . . you know, a real woman.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Mary considered herself a total feminist. Yes, it was true that most men could deadlift more than most women—and that was a reality among both humans and vampires—but other than that largely insignificant physical disparity, there was absolutely nothing, in her view, that males could do better than females could.

So it was a bit of an eye-opener to find herself feeling like a total failure when, in fact, she was merely in the position all men were in.

Entities who were born with masculine sex organs could not bear children, and neither could she. See? Total equality there.

God, this hurt.

And it was painful in the strangest kind of way. The sensation was cold; it was a cold emptiness right in the center of her chest. Or maybe it was down lower, even though the metaphor of having a nothing-ness where her uterus was seemed just a little too Lifetime movie.

But that was what it felt like. A hollow space. A cavern.

“I’m sorry,” she heard herself mumble. Even though that made no sense.

“Please,” he begged. “Don’t ever say that—”

Oh, hey, look, he’d come over and was kneeling in front of her, his hands on her knees, his teal eyes staring up at her as if he were about to expire from the thought of having hurt her.

She placed her palm on his cheek, and felt the warmth of his face. “Fine, I won’t apologize for that,” she said. “But I am sorry for the both of us. You don’t want to feel like this and neither do I, yet this is where we’re at—”

“No, it’s not where we’re at, because I reject all of it. I’m not going to allow this to affect me or you—”