Too much like work.

Under the spray, she tried not to think about what she and Murhder had done in that hospital room’s shower. And when she stepped back out and toweled off, she tried not to think about everything she had just washed off of herself.

Little by little, she was losing pieces of him. Of them together. Of her happiness.

She was familiar with this phenomenon. After Gerry had died, she had monitored the gradual forgetting. Like the first night she was able to sleep through. Or the first day she didn’t think of him at all. Or the first week she went without tearing up.

This was going to happen with Murhder, what she had refused to let him do to her mind on a oner occurring anyway because of time’s passing.

But at least now it wasn’t going to be a complete erase.

As she got dressed in front of her bureau, she felt as though she were putting on a stranger’s clothes. And as she brushed her wet hair out and tied it back, there was a stranger staring at her in the mirror. And when she went over and sat down on her bed to use her landline, she didn’t remember what the switchboard number at BioMed was.

That last one wasn’t a very material lapse as it turned out. She managed to recall the digits after a couple of pattern tries on the number buttons, but just got a recorded message stating that the laboratory was closed.

She did find something interesting on her own voicemail. Her colleague from Stanford was looking to meet with her, and not just for networking. He had a real-life lab position that was opening up.

She’d have to think about that.

Before she left her room, she went over to the duffel and decided to empty it so she had something to put the few personal effects she had at her workstation in. And there might be employee severance packets or something.

Who knew. Who cared.

Unzipping the top flap, she—

Murhder’s scent, that incredible dark spice that she loved so much, wafted out and she had to blink quick as her eyes watered from sadness. It was a good minute before she could start the unpacking, and as she took her clothes out, the shirt and the pants, the sweatshirt, the bra—

“Oh … God …” she choked.

With a hand that shook, she reached in and pulled out a thick length of braided rope.

It was black and red, and tied on both ends with leather strapping.

Murhder’s beautiful locks.

Running the heavy weight through her hands, she collapsed backward onto the floor and lowered her head. He had cut it off for her, she realized.

He had wanted to leave her something more of him, even if they could not be together.

There was no blinking away anything as she cradled the unexpected gift to her heart and then touched the necklace he had tied around her neck. The talisman and the braid were all she had of him.

Sarah wept until she felt sure that her soul cracked in half.

The attic in Eliahu Rathboone’s house still smelled the same.

As Murhder sat at the trestle table, his sole companion was a single candle in an antique holder that burned steadily before him. The small flame that hovered at the top was unmoving, the yellow glow perfectly round at the bottom where it fed upon the wick, the tip like that of a paintbrush’s fine point.

The softness of the light made him think of the head of a dandelion gone to seed, downy and gentle.

Down below, he could hear humans moving around in the house. Doors shutting. Voices trading places in conversation. Footsteps. The fact that this was their active time, that these daylight hours he could not safely enjoy were the basis of the men’s and women’s lives, was a reminder of the divide that existed between the species.

The divide that could not be crossed in his and Sarah’s case.

There was a cheap pen on the old wood panels of the table and he picked it up. Blue ink, its plastic body marked with the logo of an orthodontist’s office in Virginia. The thing had been left behind by a guest, and he had used it to sign those papers Wrath had wanted executed.

The guests did that often—leaving things behind, that was, the incidentals forgotten in their haste to repack what they’d brought with them on their break from their normal lives. The lost-and-found down at the front desk was a series of Rubbermaid bins tucked under the check-in counter into which all manner of human detritus was stored in the event the owners called looking for their sunglasses, reading glasses, regular glasses. Sweaters. Socks. Retainers and bite plates for teeth. Keys. Belts. Books.

He had always told the people who worked for him to send the things home as requested, no matter if the postage required was greater than the intrinsic worth of the object.

As an exhile from what he considered his home in the Black Dagger Brotherhood, he had always felt badly for the objects left behind.

Staring into the flame, he pictured Sarah’s face with all the specificity his memory could provide, everything from the curve of her lip to the arch of her brow, her nose, that beauty mark on her cheek. He had never seen her with makeup on. Her hair done up with false fancy. Her body clothed in the distraction of “fashion.” She had never presented herself as anything other than exactly what she was, and he had loved her for that and so much more.

But what would have happened to them in the far future, as his much longer lifespan outpaced hers? And what of her family? He knew her parents had both passed—she had shared that with him during one of their quiet times—but surely she had friends. More distant members of her bloodline. Acquaintances.

As his mind churned over everything she would have had to give up to be in his world, he knew he was trying to find footing in the reality that they were not together.

Great loss, like death, required time to become real. The brain needed to get trained in the absence, the never again, the there-but-now-gone.

Emotions, after all, could be so strong that they could warp reality—not in the sense that mourning could resurrect what had been lost, but more like grief could sharpen recollection to such painful degrees that it was as if you could call the person to you, touch them … hold them.

The brain had to learn to accept the new reality.

Sarah, his love, was a human he could not have. She might as well have died.

And he should have taken her memories. That had been a mistake. She had weakened him with her logic, but he should have done the right thing even if she hadn’t wanted it.

Except Tohr was right.

Murhder’s nature was that of impulse, and it was because of this, as much as his insanity, that the Brotherhood had kicked him out: He had never bowed to even their loosest rules, even as he had fought beside them in service to the race.

He had been born a loner.

And he would die one, as well.

Sitting back in the spindle chair, the creaking wood was a loud, familiar sound in the silent attic and he reflected on how he had been right. When he had headed up to Caldwell, summoned by Ingridge’s letters, he had known he wasn’t coming back … that he was on his final mission.

His premonition had proven to be too right.

As a bonded male without his mate? He was dead, even as he had a heartbeat and could still draw oxygen.

The fate he had known was coming had in fact been realized. And as for committing suicide? Given how numb and cold he was … that seemed just plain redundant.

I thought this place was closed? Didn’t you see the news?”