Page 166 of Hunters and Prey

Bad Wife

“YOU WOULD KILL me if I did this to you.” He stared at me with those inhumanly bright gold eyes of his, his voice deathly cold. “You would fucking kill me, Miriam. I’d wake up with a goddamned knife at my throat!”

My head was pounding.

Usually it was me who was angry.

Usually I was the one who got pissed off at him.

Usually it was for a good reason.

This time, I was completely in the wrong and he was completely in the right.

I knew he had every reason to be angry with me––every right to be angry with me––but I struggled to focus on everything he was saying. Whatever part of me that could still function and think like a member of his quasi-military employee team more or less clicked into autopilot, even while I was being reamed out.

It wasn’t the reaming out per se that brought on my blank stare.

It was the having too much to say, too much to tell him, and not knowing how to talk to him given how completely enraged he was at me. As much as I knew his anger was justified, I didn’t want to talk to him about this.

I wanted to talk to him about my sister, Zoe.

I wanted to tell him about how I’d vanished out of the Conservatory of Flowers after finding out my sister was a goddamned vampire––and how I somehow ended up back in our bed, with no memory of how I got there.

In terms of what I’d done to him, I didn’t have anything useful to say, anyway.

I felt sick with the emotions cascading off his light. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was, but I knew he didn’t want to hear it, not from me, not yet anyway, so I didn’t.

I could feel so much off him, I knew nothing I said would help.

As a result, I said nothing at all.

I glanced towards the glass doors of the outdoor terrace where we were instead, noting that two of his employees stood there, wearing the basic, day-to-day uniform of Black Securities and Investigations. Both guards, who I recognized as Jax and Jusef, both of them seers, were studiously looking at everything but the two of us, trying to pretend they hadn’t been listening to Black shout at me for the last however-many minutes.

When I didn’t speak, or look over at him, Black’s seer aleimi exploded out of him in another set of erratic charges, raising the hairs on my arm and neck. I turned my head, looking at him, and saw his flecked gold eyes flare brighter still, making them appear even more alien than they did normally.

I watched him try to control it.

Turning away from me, he picked up the green smoothie drink he’d made for himself, right after he got back from the building’s gym. He snatched it up off the glass table in front of me, where it had sat across from my coffee, both drinks more or less untouched, for the past half hour.

He just stood there for a few seconds, glaring around the terrace, glaring at Jax and Jusef, glaring at everything but me, gripping the glass in his hand without raising it to his lips.

I watched the light in his eyes grow brighter as he stared out over the skyline.

That light flashed out of him in a fire-like arc a few seconds later.

That time, it was so intense, I felt it travel up my feet and legs, seemingly through the steel, concrete, and glass.

“I guess I should be fucking grateful you even told me about it.” He glared at me, gripping the glass so tightly, I was amazed it hadn’t shattered under his fingers. “Is that it, Miri? Am I supposed to be fucking grateful?”

His voice shifted, bleeding sarcasm.

“Gee… thanks, doc. Thank you so much for confessing to me that you drugged me in my goddamned sleep. My own fucking wife. In my own fucking bed.”

I looked up at him, still trying to decide if I should answer.

Before I could decide, he wound up his arm, the same one holding his drink.

When the glass exploded against the far wall of the outdoor balcony, I flinched, but more from the sound.

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