High Voltage (Fever #10)(90)

He snarled, “Don’t you dare try to blame that on me! You bloody well know why I left. You won’t let yourself think about it. The person you’re angry with is you.”

“Bullshit.” I fisted my hands at my sides and locked my legs down to keep from lunging at him.

“For a woman who always seizes the moment, I’m the one moment you sure as fuck never seized. And I was right there for the seizing.”

“No, you weren’t. That’s exactly my point. You left. You went off into the world and had adventures and sex and a life without me and you wouldn’t even be back now if I hadn’t wished you back and AOZ granted it, thinking the starving black beast would bite me in the ass somehow!” I exploded in a heated rush.

“You wished me back? That’s how I got here? Bloody hell, and you’re just now telling me that? Barrons and I wasted half a day trying to figure that out!”

“And if I hadn’t wished you back,” I yelled, “you’d still be out there having a life while I was here by myself, trying to handle this whole bloody city alone, turning black and slipping away and you wouldn’t even know it! You know why? Because you don’t care! You didn’t text or call me even once. You don’t fucking care about me at all!”



His head whipped back and he roared, hands fisting, body straining, and he morphed so swiftly into the beast that his clothing exploded off him in pieces, shirt ripping down the back, sleeves and pants splitting, falling away as he transformed from a six-foot-four, 240-pound man to a nine foot, nearly five-hundred-pound beast.

Then back to the man.

Then the beast, then the man.

Beast.

Man.

Sound of bones cracking, tendons grating.

Beast. Man. Beast again. Faster.

Back and forth he went at a dizzying speed and I watched with horror, struck by the sudden fear that he might kill himself if he didn’t stabilize his body fast, from the sheer stress his organs were undergoing in the rapid, incessant transformations. Not to mention his skin and bones! And, no matter how angry I was with him for ruining our lives, I can never stand to see that man die.

“Ryodan, breathe! Get a grip on yourself!” I cried, but my words were gasoline on his fire and the morphing sped up and he began to bay, jaws wrenched wide, then he was a man roaring, then a beast howling, such a terrible, desolate, fractured sound, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say so I shouted, “Ryodan, goddamn it, I love you! Stop hurting yourself! Don’t you dare die! I can’t deal with that right now!” Not only did I hate watching him die, I’d have to wait days, maybe even weeks for him to get back so we could finish this damned fight, and who knew if I’d even still be here?



The beast jerked, stumbled, dropped to a knee, shuddering violently, then began to turn back into a man, bit by bit, first his hands, then his arms, his shoulders, and finally his face.

I held my breath, refused to say anything, in case it pushed him back into that terrible morphing of forms again. For years I’d wanted to see the great Ryodan lose control. I’d just learned a painful lesson. I never wanted to see it happen again. I’d kill anyone who ever tested his control, protect him. Never let him break. This man was my…bloody hell, my hero and I wanted him to always stay strong and whole.

He knelt, gasping for breath, chest heaving, tatters of clothing hanging on his trembling body.

Then, chin tucked down, he glanced up at me from beneath his brows, eyes still crimson and ground out, “Never. Tell. Me. I. Don’t. Care. You can fling any other insult you want at me, but not that one. Never that one. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you. Everything.”

He lunged to his feet and stalked toward me, naked but for odd bits of clothing here and there. I yanked my gaze to his face, in no mood to torment myself further.

“Don’t touch me!” I stepped hastily back. “And put something on.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” he growled. “Suggesting works better at times like these.”

“You tell me what to do all the time and it’s—”

“You never listen.”

“—not like we’ll be having future times like these because—”

“We’ll always be butting heads like this. You’re too goddamn stubborn and so am I.”

“—our time is up, Ryodan. That’s my point and it’s your fault.”

He snarled, “What did I say to you in the cemetery that night?”



“You told me you were leaving,” I snarled back. “And that I couldn’t come.”

He stalked past me, into the bathroom, and came out with a towel wrapped around his waist, dusting part of a sleeve from his arm. “That’s not what I mean and you know it. The thing you boxed. The thing you never once looked at. The final words I said to you.”

“You told me to never come to you,” I said hotly. He was getting too close and he was right, I was angry with myself and had been for a long time.

“After that. Goddamn it, Dani, what did I say right before I left? I know you heard it. I know how acute your hearing is.”

I closed my eyes. He’d said, until the day you’re willing to stay.

“You had my number! If you’d called me, I’d have come. But you didn’t.”