He thought about the abrupt way he'd left things with her: unfinished, unexplained. He thought about his reasons, ironically none of which mattered anymore. Certainly not after what had happened last night. "I couldn't stay." "You couldn't even tell me why? One day we were together and the next you were gone without a word." "I had things to work out," he said. God, he hated that he was still able to feel the punch of uncontainable fear--of shock and overwhelming self-revulsion--that had forced him to run away from everything and everyone he knew and loved. After what happened to him the last time he saw Claire, he'd had no choice but to leave her. He hadn't wanted to harm her, and he couldn't trust himself to be near her, or near anyone, until he'd managed to control the horrific power that had been awakened in him for the first time all those years ago. By that time, he had already lost her to Roth. He gave her a negligent shrug. "I did come back, Claire." "More than a year later," she replied curtly "Or so I heard, after friends in the Darkhavens told me you had finally turned up, back in Berlin again." She shook her head, regret shining in her gaze. "I didn't think you would ever come back." "So you didn't wait."
"Did you give me any reason to?" "No," he said, letting the word slide slowly off his tongue. There was more he wanted to say, things he probably owed her to say, but it was all pointless talk now. Claire was right. They'd both moved on. They'd both lived very separate lives, and despite the fact that those lives were converging now, in violence and bloodshed, nothing he could say would change a thing about the past or what might have been. He was here for one reason: to avenge the wrong that Wilhelm Roth had delivered on him. Reichen started walking again. Claire trailed him, hanging back now as though she didn't want to get too close. "What are you doing?" "I told you. Looking for any intel on your mate's whereabouts." "And I told you--you won't find anything of his here. This is my home, not his." Reichen heard the peculiar comment but he was already moving on. He saw a room filled with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and headed for that open door. "Andreas," Claire said from behind him. "Please, stop this. The library is my space.
It's private. You won't find anything important in--" "Then you won't mind if I have a look," he said, more intent than ever since she was practically insisting that he stay out. What was she hiding in there? He strode past towering shelf after shelf packed with books, past the small sofa and the end table where a ginger-jar lamp still glowed from the night before. Farther into the room, he saw a dark walnut desk in a mild state of disarray, as if the work had been abandoned in haste. And beyond the desk, spread out on a wide worktable, was some kind of architect's scale model. Reichen guessed it to be some kind of Darkhaven project--something that would probably result in another photograph of Claire and her perfect smile, posing as the perfect mate next to Roth and a number of his cronies. But as he neared the model, the hairs at the back of his neck began to rise. He knew this piece of land. He knew the shape of it, the look of it... the feel of it. It was his. The lakefront wedge of property on the model was the site of his Darkhaven. Or, rather, it had been, before Roth's treachery and Reichen's own despair had left it in ruined rubble. "What the hell is this?" Claire came up beside him, her expression anxious. "Andreas, everyone thought you were dead. There were no heirs alive to claim the property. It was going to be auctioned among the rest of the Berlin vampire community--" "This was my land." His voice took on an odd shake. "This was my home."
"I know," she said quickly. "I know, and I couldn't let it be sold. When some of us in the region held the memorial service for you and your family a few weeks ago and I learned no one had come forward to claim the land, I purchased the property myself. No one knew. I wanted to put something special on it. I hoped it could be a kind of sanctuary in remembrance of the lives that were lost." Reichen stared at the model of the tranquil park with its reflection pools and walking trails and meticulously plotted flower beds. The design was lovely. Perfect. Claire had done this...for him. He was astonished. Struck speechless. "It probably wasn't my place to do it," she said. "I'm sorry. I just couldn't stand the thought of your home--and your kin's lives--being forgotten or sold off to the highest bidder. It didn't seem right.
Then again, what I did probably doesn't seem right to you, either." Reichen stood there, silent, unmoving To say he was shocked by Claire's act of compassion was understatement in the extreme. He was moved--more deeply than he had been in more years than he cared to remember. He stared at the architect's model, seeing all the detail, all the care and thought that had been put into the design. For him, and for the memory of his kin. He slowly turned to Claire, knowing his face must have been as rigid as stone by the way she took a step back. Good, he thought. Good. Keep her away. Because all he wanted to do in that moment was drag her hard into his arms and kiss her until neither one of them could breathe. But she was Roth's mate. His enemy's mate. And he was still dangerous, still too near the razor's edge of hunger. If he touched Claire now, he didn't trust himself to stop there. If he'd been honorable at one time in his life, the fire that had been reawakened inside him three months ago had all but devoured that part of him.
He was a threat to Claire, in far more ways than one. "I need to be alone," he muttered, a throaty snarl of sound. He meant that; he couldn't be around her right now. He didn't want to think about the brief but indelible past he'd had with her, or how swiftly his body--his weak-willed heart, as well--still responded to the mere presence of her. He didn't want to look at her now, as she was moving closer to him, her expression tender and caring, her hand held out as if she wanted to touch him. Something he craved in that moment with every selfish fiber of his being. His pulse hammered hard in his veins. His mouth was wet with hunger for her, his sex going tight and heavy with desire. Only a single pace separated her from him now. He stopped breathing as she lifted her hand up and gently placed it against his chest. "Andreas, I'm sorry.