The Shadows (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #13)(151)

“Oh, my queen—”

“About you.” As Trez recoiled—’cuz that was the last thing he expected her to say—she cupped his face. “Seeing that anger in Luchas, that hatred for the world and everybody in it … I’m worried that after I go, that’s where you’re going to be.”

Forcing himself to be calm, he said, “Listen, I—”

“Don’t lie to me or yourself. Whatever you say here, it has to be honest.”

Well, didn’t that shut him up good.

“Having you be that angry scares me more than anything that’s going to happen to my body or my soul. Whether there’s life eternal or nothing at all at the end, what I’m really concerned about is you.” Her eyes bored into his. “I want you to promise me—I want you to swear on your heart and mine—that you’ll keep going. That you’ll stay here with iAm and the Brothers and let them take care of you. That you won’t let the grief destroy you. I can’t … I won’t be able to help you, so you’re going to have to let them be there for you.”

“Selena, first of all, you’re not going anywhere—”

“My hands are beginning to feel stiff. My feet and ankles, too. I don’t think we have a lot of time left, Trez.”

As Selena spoke, she smoothed Trez’s eyebrows when they threatened to clench up tight. She had practiced the words for hours in her head, trying to find the right combination so he wouldn’t reject the message.

This was very important. She had to say these things and he had to hear them.

“It is going to be so much harder on me to go through this if I’m worried about you.”

She could feel the emotions coursing through him, and wasn’t surprised as his black eyes flashed brilliant green in his dark face—and she wished like hell she could spare him this, but she couldn’t.

“I need you to swear to me,” she said, “here and now, that you won’t close yourself off from the world, that you’ll—”

Trez burst up to his feet and walked around, hands on his hips, head down, like he was trying to get some control over himself.

“Trez, I want you to keep living after I’m gone.” As he started shaking his head, she cut in, “Because that is the only thing that’s going to make any of this okay for me.”

He threw his hands up. “All right, fine. I’ll keep living. Now, can I get dressed so we can go down to the clinic—”

“Trez. Don’t lie to me.”

He stopped and pivoted toward her, his magnificent body full of tension, the muscles in his thighs and his shoulders twitching under his smooth, hairless skin. “What do you want me to say?”

“That you’ll let people help you. You’re going to need it—I would need it if you—”

“And I will! Fine! I’ll even see Mary—I’ll wear a f*cking sign around my chest that reads, ‘Processing Grief,’ for f*ck’s sake. Happy? Now can we f*cking stop talking about this.”

As he barked at her, she closed her eyes in exhaustion. “Trez—”

“You say you can’t imagine leaving me, right? Well, I can’t even think about it. I don’t think about—I refuse to even construct in my mind”—he jabbed his forefinger into his head—“a reality where you’re not here. So not only can I not project what the f*ck I’m going to feel like, but I sure as hell can’t swear to a hypothetical.”

“You’d better start thinking about it,” she said roughly. “You’d better begin to prepare. I’m telling you right now that the endgame is coming.”

He seemed to deflate in front of her, even as he stayed his same height and weight. “Don’t talk like that.”

“And I want you to find another female, sometime far off in the future. I want you to…” At this, her voice cracked from a pain so great she could have sworn it was going to leave a bloodstain in the center of her shirt. “I don’t want you to spend another nine hundred years sleeping alone.”

As she fell silent, the devastation in him was so great, he stumbled backward and all but fell into the chaise longue.

“I thought you loved me,” he said in a voice that didn’t sound like his.

“I do. With all my—”

He rubbed his sternum. “Then what’s this all about. Why do you want me to go and find some other female—”

“Trez, listen to me.” But he was gone, having retreated to somewhere in his head that she couldn’t reach. “Trez, I do love you, and that’s the point—”

“Then why would you ever tell me you want me to be with anyone but you?” His eyes were crushed as they swung around to her. “Why would you want that? Ever? It’s a violation of everything I thought we felt for each other.”

“Trez—”

“I’ve bonded with you. You know this. Why would you ever tell a bonded male that he has to go out and have sex with someone else?”

“You’re missing the point.”

Shit, it wasn’t supposed to go like this. He was supposed to give her his vow—and take her permission to heart so that, a million years from now, when he’d moved on from her and everything they’d meant to each other wasn’t so raw, he wouldn’t feel guilty about finding someone else to be happy with.