The beast shuddered.
We ripped into it. It was the creature or us, do or die.
The beast stumbled, careened to the side, and crashed down.
I looked up, breathing hard. Across from me Raphael stood, covered in gore. His muscular furry chest heaved. Between us the beast lay, the bones of its rib cage bare. We had nearly stripped its carcass. It should’ve died ages ago, but the magic must’ve kept it alive.
I sank to the floor. My body was red with blood, some of it the beast’s, some my own. Long scratches marked my side and right leg from the hip down—gouges from the beast’s claws. The cuts burned. If I were human, I’d have needed hundreds of stitches.
We won. Somehow we had won and both of us had survived. It was some sort of miracle. I was bone tired. The floor looked so nice. Maybe if I just lay down here for a minute and closed my eyes…
“Andrea.”
Raphael’s eyes glowed with ruby fire. His face, a meld of human and hyena, didn’t mirror emotions well but his eyes stared at me with a chilling determination.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I’m taking you home.”
My mind chewed on his words, trying to break them into chunks. Take me home? Take me home…Home. With him.
My fatigue evaporated in an instant. “No.”
“Yes. You’re coming home with me. We’ll take a bath and eat and make love, and everything will be fine.”
I got my ass off the floor. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m done doing things your way. Your way means we don’t talk for months. You’re coming home with me.”
“You hurt me, on purpose, but everything is cool now, because you didn’t sleep with Rebecca and we can go home.”
“Yes!”
“It doesn’t work this way. I’m not going home with you. You and I are done.”
“You’re mine,” he snarled.
What the hell. Maybe the fight had knocked some screw loose in his brain.
“You’ll always be mine.” He stepped on the carcass and started toward me. I looked into his eyes and saw bouda insanity glaring back. The fighting had tipped the balance between rational thought and crazy passion. Raphael’s emergency brake was malfunctioning and he and I were on a collision course. “You know it and I know it. We love each other.”
“We’re bad for each other.”
“You’re not leaving me again!” he growled.
The adrenaline still coursing through me surged up. He was challenging me! I marched toward him, put my muzzle as close to his as I could, and said slowly, clearly pronouncing every word, “I am leaving you. You don’t get to play with me. I’m not your pet and you don’t get to hurt me because you think I should be punished.”
Baiting him was stupid. I knew that, but I couldn’t help myself. The crazy cocktail of biochemicals and magic that got me through this fight drove me on. I knew I should stop, but it was as if there were two of me—the rational Andrea and the emotion-crazy beastkin—and right now the rational Andrea was being dragged off by a raging river of hormones, while the beastkin Andrea waved good-bye from a cliff nearby.
I bit off words. “You broke my heart and now I’m walking away from you. Watch me.”
He’d hurt me. He would pay.
“This is me walking away.” I turned and took a couple of steps. “Are you watching?”
He lunged at me, and we went down, rolling in the dirt, arm over leg. My back hit the floor and Raphael pinned me in a classic schoolyard bully mount, sitting on my stomach. One of the worst positions you can be trapped in. Great.
“Not walking away now,” he said.
I bent my knees, planted my heels in the ground, and bridged under him. He pitched forward, his right hand coming down on the ground. Got you. I dropped my hips, caught his right arm, pulling it snug against my chest, stepped my right foot over his, capturing him, and bridged sharply to the right. Raphael pitched over and I rolled up on top of him. He clamped my shoulders with his hands.
“I’m getting up and walking out of here. You’ll have to fight me to stop me. Your call.”
Raphael opened his arms. He was letting me go. I had known he would.
I jumped to my feet and walked away. A part of me was screaming, What are you doing, stupid? Run back. I kept walking, holding on to the memory of Raphael telling me, “I know exactly how much it hurt.” This thing between us was too complicated and it hurt too fucking much. I had nothing left in me now and I couldn’t deal with it.
Behind me Raphael roared, shaking the ruin. I kept walking. The sound of his frustration chased me until I finally broke into a run. My body hurt. Fever heated my face from the inside—the Lyc-V was trying to mend my battered body. If only mending other things were that easy.