“Watching your father reunited with his beloved?” He held up a hand. “Not that I begrudge him her return. I hope your mahmen makes a full recovery. I really do. I totally do. But I didn’t get that—and, listen, I didn’t mean to lead you on. I really didn’t.”

Annnnnnnnd cue her not being able to breathe again. Which was what happened when you swerved off course into a tree. Him missing his shellan and being triggered by her mahmen and her father’s tearful reunion at the bedside? That was tragic, but she could work with it. Talk to him. Help him in some way. “I didn’t mean to lead you on,” though? That was an exit sign over a doorway she was not going to be allowed to go through.

Trez shook his head slowly, regret tightening his features. But before he could go any further, she cut him off.

“It’s okay. I know it’s got to be… too soon,” she heard herself say. “I understand.”

Even though she didn’t. Well, she did in the sense that a loss like that would make it impossible to fall in love with someone else for a while. A very long while. And who was she kidding? Love was what she wanted from him. Because it was what she had… for him.

Shit, she thought. She was in so much deeper than she’d been aware of.

How had she fallen in love with him over such a short time?

Trez came across and put his hands on her shoulders. His voice was low and intense, his black eyes grave, his muscular body still. “I don’t want to hurt you. You have to know that. You have to believe it. I never meant… I don’t want to hurt you.”

So this is really happening, she thought. They were breaking up. Even though she wasn’t sure exactly what they had to break up.

“I know you didn’t do this on purpose, Trez.” You wanted to be independent, right? she said to herself. “And… I’ll be fine.” She forced herself to smile tightly at him. “I’m totally going to be fine. I mean, I’ll make sure of it. I have my family and—”

“I’m so sorry,” he said as he brushed her face with his fingertip. “And I didn’t want to do this here or now. I didn’t.”

She thought back to him weeping the night before and knew this made so much sense. All of that pain was still inside of him—locked down at the moment, but never far below the surface. It was going to be a long, long while before he was in any condition to love anybody, and she didn’t question that he cared for her. He’d taken her hand as they’d rushed in to see her mahmen. And he had only ever tried to take care of her, with the house rental, with the financial arrangements, with… well, sexually, of course.

“I know you must still be in love with her,” Therese whispered. “And I know she must have taken part of you with her unto the Fade. So this isn’t… it’s not about me. I mean…”

“No,” he said. “It’s not you. I swear to it.”

* * *

This is the right thing to do, Trez told himself.

In spite of the pain in Therese’s eyes, the tension in her body, and the determined way she was keeping herself together… it was the right thing to do.

This was what iAm had warned him about. Therese was bearing the pain of something that should never have been started.

“You deserve,” Trez said roughly, “to be loved for you, and you alone. Not because you’re taking the place of someone else. Not because you’re a tool for someone to try to save themselves with. This is all on me. Just because you looked like her, I should never—”

Therese frowned. “What?”

He tried to replay what had been coming out of his mouth, but he was caught up in his own emotions, so it was hard to recall. Instead, he just wanted to repair some of the damage he’d done—even though that was like trying to put a burned room back together with duct tape and twist ties.

“You’re amazing,” he said. “You’re an incredible female who’s beautiful and smart and funny—”

She stepped back. “No. About what I look like. What did you say?”

As he traced her face, her hair, her body, with his eyes, all he saw was Selena, and he allowed himself to linger on the comparison one last time. After this, it was unlikely he and Therese were going to see each other again because he knew, without asking, that she was going to go back with her family.

“You said I look like her,” Therese repeated slowly. “But I don’t just resemble her, do I.”

When he didn’t immediately answer, she crossed her arms over her chest. “I look exactly like her, don’t I.”

Taking a deep breath, he nodded once.

There was a long pause. And then she walked off some distance down the corridor. As she strode away, he wondered if he shouldn’t have lied about the appearance part. But that was a pussy move. She deserved the truth, and he deserved her anger.

Abruptly, she halted. Pivoted around to him. Came back.

“You said you lived with the King, right?” When he nodded again, she looked away. Looked back. “So the Black Dagger Brotherhood is his personal guard, correct. So that male I waited on—Rhage—with his shellan, they know you, right? Because they live there, too.” He nodded again, aware of exactly where this was going. “So they knew her. Didn’t they.”

When he nodded once more, she started pacing again. “And that’s why they did the double take when I went to wait on their table. And that’s why your brother has always been weird around me. It’s why the two of you fought last night—and it’s why Xhex, your head of security at the club, also stared at me like that. They all saw it. They all saw what you did in me. Which was someone else.”

“Yes,” he said. “And I’m so sorry—”

She put her hand up. “Stop. Just… stop with that right now.”

“I didn’t mean—”

Jacking forward on her hips, she narrowed her eyes on him. “You didn’t mean to use me? Explain to me exactly how that argument works. How you somehow didn’t intend to substitute me for your dead mate when I apparently look like the female. Explain to me how, when you were fucking me, you didn’t think of her the whole time.” When he went to say something, she talked right over him. “What you really need to tell me is how the hell you didn’t call me by her—”

Therese stopped. Then massaged her temples like she had a headache. “You never used my name, actually. Did you. You never said my name when we were intimate. God, I didn’t even see it. I didn’t even—the feeding.” As the color ran out of her face and she covered her mouth like she was sick to her stomach, he felt like he’d been kneed in the balls. “You didn’t take my vein, even though you were starved, because you didn’t want to know my blood tasted different. You didn’t want anything to break the fantasy, to remind you I wasn’t her.”

As Trez watched the depth of his betrayal sink in for her, he wanted to take it all back. The whole thing, from that first night when he had tried to get her to take him to Havers to what they had done in the passageway at the club to everything that had happened at the little house. He wanted to spare her everything she was feeling now.