~ 3 ~
Bergen, Norway
2005
Renata paused in the hallway outside her flat; the distinctive scent and magic she sensed was unmistakable.
Fucking Maxim.
She turned the knob and walked into the apartment, dropping her bag by the front door.
Max was stretched on the futon, his long legs hanging over the end. His arms were folded behind his head and he was grinning.
She wanted to slap him. And sink her teeth into his bicep. This was not an uncommon reaction to Max.
“What are you doing here?”
“How was your trip, darling?” His smug smile never wavered.
“How did you find this place?” She took off her coat and very pointedly did not remove her weapons.
Max swung his legs over the edge and stood in one smooth movement. He was astonishingly graceful for a large man, and it drove her crazy to watch him move. Watching him fight was even more of a turn-on. He knew it and he used it.
Which also drove her crazy.
“You told me I’d never find your home,” he said. “You can’t say things like that and not expect me to search for you.”
Her secrets were not only about pride. The haven where her community of sisters lived was not that far away. Yes, it was hidden in a valley farther north and guarded by old and powerful magic, but even being in the same country felt too close. Too intrusive. Not unlike Max.
“This thing we have,” she said quietly. “It is not a relationship.”
“The hell it isn’t.” His smile died. “You can tell yourself that if it makes you feel better, but we both know the truth.”
“It’s not a relationship,” she said. “And it’ll stop being anything at all unless you back off.”
His eyes flashed. “I can see you didn’t kill quite enough Grigori on this hunting trip. Need to burn off some energy?”
“Fuck off.” She unstrapped her weapons and hung them in the entryway before she locked the deadbolts on her door and set the alarm. How the hell had he broken in? She’d stopped trying to figure out how Max did anything a few years before. He had skills and contacts she didn’t know about, and she refused to ask. Asking only made whatever this was feel more real. More intimate. More permanent.
It wasn’t. Her reshon was dead. She wasn’t looking for a mate. Max could never compare to Balien.
But Renata knew part of her anger stemmed from the gratitude she felt seeing him. She was tired. Worn out. And part of her was happy to not walk into an empty flat. She wasn’t going to tell him that.
She slept with Max because he was a skilled lover, and Renata knew both of them needed some level of connection. She even considered him a friend. But that was all. That was all it was ever going to be.
She went to the kitchen and filled the electric kettle. She’d flown into Bergen from Aberdeen and hadn’t even bothered to get her car from long-term parking. She was too tired. She’d taken a cab to her apartment and spent most of the short drive home thinking about her bed.
And possibly thinking about a strong pair of arms to hold her, but the last she’d heard, Max had been in Istanbul.
She didn’t go there. He wasn’t supposed to come here. Those were the rules, and he’d broken them.
Renata felt him come into the kitchen. Max’s energy was unmistakable, and her betraying body responded. She braced her hand on the counter when he came behind her. Without a word, he brushed her long hair away from her neck and started kissing her. She angled her head to the side and let the tension and manic energy drain from her body into his. He licked and scraped his teeth against her skin, sucking on the spot that sent her pulse racing. His arms came around her, one heavy hand palming her breast as the other went low on her belly and pressed her body into his. She felt his arousal as he unbuckled her belt.
“Let me,” he whispered. “You need it.”
She nodded wordlessly, and his hand slid beneath her panties. She gasped and clutched the edge of the counter when his fingers found her wet and swollen.
“Fast now.” He bit her neck and squeezed her breast. “Slow later.”
“Yes.”
He brought her to mind-shattering orgasm before the kettle boiled.
Max turned Renata around when she could barely stand. His kiss was long and lazy. “Go lie down,” he said. “Get out of those clothes, and I’ll make the tea.”
She nodded and did what he said. If she was less exhausted, she’d be more angry at his high-handed orders, but she simply didn’t have it in her. She was emotionally and physically wrung out.
She went to the bedroom and shut the heavy drapes, dropping her clothes on the floor before she tumbled into bed and let her eyes close.
Safe. When Max was with her, she knew she’d be able to sleep. Knew that if the monsters came knocking, he could kill them even faster than she could.
She didn’t tell him that either.
A few minutes later, he brought a cup of tea in and set it on the bedside table. He stripped off his shirt and pants. His boxers were tossed on top of her clothes. Then he drew back the sheet and slid into bed beside her.
“Come here,” Max said, hooking her leg over his hip. He was already hard when he kissed her. She could feel the length of him pressing against her. She was half-asleep, but she wanted him. She wanted to fall asleep with his weight on her.
“Fuck me,” she murmured, guiding him into her body. She let out a groan of relief when his hips bucked against hers. He was seated to the hilt, his muscled arms caging her in, his massive shoulders blocking everything from her sight except him. Only Max.
“I’m not fucking you,” he whispered in her ear. He moved in steady rhythm, and his weight pressed her into the bed. “That’s not what this is.”
She didn’t argue. He was going to make her come again. She hovered on the edge.
“You know what this is,” Max said. “You know what we are.”
She cried out when she orgasmed and let the tears come when he finally groaned his own release and lowered himself beside her. She wrapped her arm around his shoulders and didn’t say a word when he tucked his face into her neck. Max’s arm fell over her torso, and he let out a long breath.
“Sleep,” he whispered. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
They wouldn’t. She couldn’t bring herself to end it even though she knew she should. No matter how many Grigori she killed, she still felt dead inside. She was hollow, and she needed him too much.
Cardiff, Wales
2010
She picked up her phone on the second ring, but all she heard was silence.
“Max?”
There was nothing but ragged breath on the other end of the line.
“Max, what’s wrong?” Renata stood, leaving the table where a map of the city was spread out. She ignored the confused stares of her companions. She was working on a job with two Irina from North Wales, hoping to exterminate a nest of Grigori that was running a hostel in the mountains where young women were going missing.
She walked out of the room and up the stairs of the narrow house they’d rented. “I’m alone. What’s going on? Where are you?”
“I’m not hurt.” His voice was rough. “I just… I needed to hear your voice.”
“Where are you?”
“It’s not important,” he whispered. “Are you safe?”
Renata took a deep breath. “You have to stop asking that.”
It had become a bad habit in the past couple of years. Max never used to ask her about her jobs. She’d tell him or she wouldn’t. He didn’t ask what she was doing or where she was going. A few times a year, one of them would text the other. When they needed to, they would meet. That was all that was allowed. Sometimes they went over a year without seeing each other, though that was more Renata’s stubbornness than anything Max wanted.
“I know how to take care of myself,” Renata said. “You know that.”
“I just lost a friend.” His voice was hard. “Indulge me.”
Her senses went on alert. “Where are you?”
“Oslo. Are you in Bergen?”
Damn. “No, I’m in the UK.”
“Where?”
She thought about the Irina downstairs. If she brought a scribe in, they’d leave her without a backward glance. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Damn it, Reni. All I want—”
“I’m in the middle of something,” she said. “I’m with good people. Competent people. That’s all I can give you.”
“You’re never willing to give me much, are you?” His voice was bitter. “I suppose I should be used to that by now.”
She’d be angry, but his grief was too raw. “Is Leo with you?” He’d told her about his family, even when she tried to ignore him. It was too much intimacy, but Max told her anyway. “Is Malachi? Rhys?” A tremor of alarm. “Are your brothers all right?”
“It wasn’t one of my brothers,” Max said, his voice going dead again. “It was a friend. I should let you go. You’re busy.”
“Max, I’m—”
He hung up.
“Sorry,” she whispered. I’m sorry.
Vienna, Austria
2014
Someone was pounding on the door of the rented flat, and she knew it could only be Max. He’d left his key with her. She went to open the door and backed out of his way as he stormed in.
“‘I’ll see you when I see you?’” he shouted. “What was that, Renata?”
She closed her eyes and let his anger smash and fall against the hard wall she’d erected. Then she walked back to the bedroom and continued packing her things.
She’d been in Vienna too long.
The Battle of Vienna would be one to write songs about. If she were still an archivist, she’d already be composing one. The battle of the four archangels, two of them sacrificing themselves in a grand attempt at redemption while giving the Irin and Irina warriors time to fight back the army of Grigori that flooded the city, joined by their new allies, the free Grigori and their newly discovered sisters.
It would be a beautiful and frightening song. Threaded between the grand battles, Renata could sing a softer harmony of quiet nights and peaceful mornings spent with the scribe currently storming through the apartment.
Max stood in the doorway of the bedroom they’d shared, glaring at her and the suitcase on the bed.
“This is it?” he asked her. “This is what you’re doing?”
“What did you expect me to do?” she asked. “Run away to Istanbul with you? Leave my life behind?”
“Everything has changed!” he shouted. “The Irina have come back. The singers’ council has reformed. You don’t have to hide anymore.”
Her mouth fell open. “You did. You expected me to abandon my sisters and run away to be your little mate.”
Max grabbed her shoulders. “Would that be so awful? To be my mate? To have a life with me?”
She wrenched herself away from him. “You know nothing.”
“You’re right.” He slammed the bedroom door shut. “Because you refuse to tell me. It’s been fifteen years, Renata. I don’t even know where you were born. I don’t know who your parents were. I don’t know what your training was. I don’t know anything about your life before every damn thing in our world went to shit.”
She ignored him and went back to packing.
“Who was your mother?” He stood behind her, looking over her shoulder. “What was her name? I’ve told you everything, and you tell me nothing. Who was your father? What is the mark on your forehead? Does it have something to do with who you were?”
“You want to know who I was?” She slammed her suitcase and spun around, shoving him back.
“Yes!”
“I was a fool!” she shouted. “I was a little girl who sang songs about history and magic and thought they meant something. I was a weakling who thought that a mountain and the warrior I loved could protect me from anything.”
She saw his eyes narrow.
“Did you think there was only you, Maxim?” She pointed to her forehead where Balien’s mark still shone when her magic was high. “I was supposed to be mated. That’s what this mark is.”
There. She saw the hurt in his eyes. Is that enough knowledge for you?
“You know what?” he said through gritted teeth. “I don’t care. You’re lying to yourself if you say we don’t have a relationship. We’re good together, Renata. Hell, we have the exact same job. There’s no reason we shouldn’t work together. We make the perfect team.”
He was right. And she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t do it to him. Deep in her gut, she knew that one day Max would find his reshon and it wouldn’t be her. He’d find the woman heaven had created for him and it would be perfect harmony. He deserved that. He deserved more than a half-dead woman whose heart had been ripped from her chest.
For months she’d used the excuse of them working together to indulge herself. She’d slept next to him at night, fought by his side, laughed and eaten meals with him, pretending that what they had could be something more.
How could she say goodbye?
She felt the tears in her eyes and hated them. Hated her weakness.
Max came to her and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Just tell me why. I’m tired of this, Reni. I’m done pretending it’s enough. I want more. I want a life together. I’d never leave you in Istanbul. Why would I? I want you to fight beside me. I love—”
“Don’t tell me you love me,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut. “You don’t know what love is.”
His hands dropped as if she’d burned them.
“The warrior I almost mated? His name was Balien of Damascus. He was a great man. A warrior who fought in the Crusades. He was a knight of Jerusalem, a Rafaene scribe, and my reshon. We knew the moment we saw each other, and his voice…?” She wiped away the tears that poured down her cheeks. “He was the other half of my soul. Loving him was the most beautiful thing in my life, and no other joy has ever compared to it. He gave his life saving mine.”
Max was like a statue. She couldn’t meet his eyes. She felt nothing from him. No anger. No pain. She kept her shields clamped shut, afraid to hear the voice of his soul.
“You’re going to find that joy someday,” she whispered. “And you deserve to. You’re going to find your reshon, Maxim. Find your true mate.” She took a deep breath and cut the last delicate ties holding them together. “But it’s not going to be me. You’re right. We should stop pretending.”
By the time Renata looked up, all she could see was his back as Max walked out the door.