My chest heaved with each successive breath, and my nostrils flared. The words coming out of his mouth were so unexpected I could barely understand them, let alone believe them.

“Why?” Nik asked once more. Demanded.

“Because it’s not their fault,” I snapped, standing. I stalked across the room, not caring in the least that I was wearing only a T-shirt and underwear. “Because they’re not our enemies, no matter what the Senate or Ouroboros or Initiative Industries want us to think.” I spun around when I reached the front door and headed back toward the kitchen. Pacing always helped me think, helped the words flow, and I was ready to unleash on Nik. “Because innocent people shouldn’t have to pay for a war they know nothing about. That’s the real bullshit, Nik, and I’m not about to walk away from these people just because they’re a different species. Just because walking away would be easier. They deserve better than that. I don’t run when things get hard.” I glared at him. “I’m not a coward.”

A slow, wolfish grin spread across his face. “But I am?”

I glanced at him, but kept on pacing. “I never said that.”

“Not in so many words.” He stood and rounded the coffee table, coming to stand directly in my path.

I tried to turn away from him, but he took hold of my arm, and I knew better than to test my strength against his. He would win that battle, every time. I settled on a question instead. “Why did you leave?”

Nik was quiet for so long I doubted he would answer. But finally, he did. “I needed some time. It was too quiet in my head after Re was gone. I didn’t know how to be just me.” He was talking about the time he disappeared a little over three years ago, after waking up from a decades-long coma and finding his body housing one soul instead of two. But that wasn’t the time I was talking about.

I jutted my jaw forward to keep my chin and lips from trembling. “Not then,” I said, my voice hushed. “Before, when I—when we . . .” I cleared my throat. I was referring to the one and only time we kissed, two decades ago, just downstairs. It was back when the shop had sold magic and mysticism rather than ink and fortunes. The kiss had been both wondrous and disastrous. It had been the beginning of the end.

Again, Nik let that long silence settle over us. “Re and I had an agreement,” he finally said, speaking of the other, godly being who’d shared his body for millennia. “One of many. Where certain things were concerned, my body was mine alone. He agreed to forgo pleasures of the flesh, so long as I only pursued them when he was dormant.”

My gaze wandered up to Nik’s face.

A bitter smile twisted his lips. “Over the centuries, Re became more and more resistant to voluntarily going dormant.” Nik’s grin grew sly. “But I’d learned early on that he detested physical pain, so if I found myself, well, wanting, all I had to do was drive him away with pain, first.”