I can’t imagine my life without her, but every day it seems more likely that she’ll be taken from me.

Max rubbed his eyes and reread the sentence. So far, Nathan’s journal had provided insight into only one area of his life. The mopey, insecure part.

Looking up from the book, Max studied Bella. She lay on a nest of blankets and pillows she’d fashioned into a dog bed—her words, not his, tossed playfully at him when he’d asked what on earth she was doing—intently reading a tattered copy of The Sanguinarius. Max didn’t put much stock in the book himself, but it seemed easier to let her read it than try to give her his own crash course in vampire lore.

It had surprised him when she’d said she’d never read it. Though it was at the top of the required reading list for vampire assassins, she’d told him the book had never been made available to werewolves during their Movement training. Max hoped he wasn’t breaking any rules by sharing the book with her, but then remembered just how many rules they’d both broken already.

“Are you going to continue staring at me or are you going to finish invading your possessed friend’s privacy?” She didn’t look up as she spoke.

Max sighed. “I’m not getting anything here. Just pages and pages of how much he loves Carrie and how much pain it causes him.”

“That is something.” Bella sat up, the movement graceful and catlike, despite her canine heritage. “Sometimes all you need to reach the trapped soul is a piece of personal information. Perhaps if Carrie spoke to him—”

“There’s other stuff, too.” Max wanted to get Bella off that dangerous line of thinking. He wasn’t going to be the one who fessed up to Nathan that he let Carrie read his diary. “Like his ex-wife.”

“He is divorced?” She made a face. “I will never understand that human custom.”

“It’s not a custom, it’s an exception,” Max corrected. “I don’t understand it, either. If you just don’t get married at all, it makes things a lot simpler.”

“What I meant was, it is unnatural to be separated from your mate.” She tossed a pillow at him.

He caught it and threw it back. “Nathan’s not divorced. His wife died. He killed her.”

“Why would he do such a thing?” The knowledge seemed to wound Bella.

Max flipped back a few pages and read, “‘Every night I wish I’d done it differently. I wish I had let them starve me. If I had been strong then, I would be dead now, instead of living with this guilt.’” He snapped the book shut with one hand. “I’m guessing he ate her. Wasn’t that in his file?”