Alarms went off in my head at that. "Why would you want to force me to do something I didn't want to?"

"To keep you away from him," he sputtered. "To keep you from constantly running to him for solutions, for comfort. To keep you from loving him."

"I love you." Stunned as I was by this unprovoked outpouring, it took me a minute to comprise a more intelligent statement. "I feel for him what I presume all sires feel for their fledglings. Am I wrong?"

Nathan's gaze was so intense it could burn. "And what do you think that feeling is?"

He'd never come so close to saying the words. I was speechless for a moment. He took advantage of my state to continue. "If I open myself up to my sire, I don't know what will happen. Maybe he'll ignore me. Maybe we'll learn everything we need to. But maybe I'll get lost again, and this time you won't need me enough to get me back."

I pulled him to me, wanting to draw some of his fear into me, to relieve him of the burden of it. "How could you think that? I love you. When you were under his control before, I risked my life and my soul to save you. I would do that a hundred times more if I had to."

"But I wouldn't." His throat moved as he swallowed. "I couldn't go through that again. Not with what he has to use against me."

Ziggy . "Nathan, he can only use it to control you if you still feel guilty. And what happened to Ziggy wasn't your fault."

"Wasn't it?" he snapped, as if angry that I would even suggest otherwise. "I kicked him out—"

"He ran away."

"Well, I didn't try to stop him." Nathan stood and paced, and I eased back a little farther on the bed. Not that I thought he would hurt me, but I'm always uneasy around people in such an agitated state.

"Nathan, this is your problem. You push everything down until you're forced to deal with it, and when that time comes, you can't. This guilt is like… it's like gangrene. If you don't treat it, it eats you up."

"That's a fine example, but the only procedure I know for treating a morbid limb is amputation. I'll be damned if I'm going to cut off my memories of my son." He sat again, as if it was too much effort to bear the weight of standing and the weight of his grief at once. "But it's not just for myself I'm worried."

He took my hands in his and lifted them to his lips, kissing my palms, then my fingertips. Nathan rarely indulged in such intense physical contact unless it would lead to sex, but through the blood tie I felt only desperation. When he looked at me, I saw the meaning behind his fear before he spoke the words.