Daysider by Krinard Susan

Author:Krinard, Susan [Krinard, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Vampires, Series, Harlequin Nocturne, Paranormal, Contemporary, Romance, Literature & Fiction
ISBN: 037388575X
Publisher: Harlequin Nocturne
Published: 2013-08-02T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

“Very well,” Alexia said, hardening her voice, “let’s talk about what happened yesterday.”

Damon pushed his good right arm through the sleeve of his shirt and took a deep breath. “It was necessary, Alexia,” he said.

So he wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t understand her line of questioning. That was something, anyway.

“Necessary to use sex as a way to make me bite you?” she asked, carefully controlling her voice so as not to reveal how much even the thought of his lovemaking aroused her even now.

“It wasn’t like that,” he said, easing his other sleeve over his injured arm with exquisite care. “I didn’t have it planned.”

“Didn’t you?” Alexia slung the strap of the VS back over her shoulder and turned her back on him, walking to the nearest tree. She rested both palms on the trunk, inhaling and exhaling slowly the way she had been taught in the earliest years of her training. “You said, before we...you said you wouldn’t take my choice from me. You lied.”

“And you broke your promise,” he retorted with some heat. “You tried to back out of it by asking me to remember your exact words. I believe they were ‘hang on as long as necessary.’”

At least he didn’t seem to remember what she had told him when he had been under his “spell,” demanding so ferociously that she stay alive. “That’s right,” she said. “As long as necessary. But once Michael was dead—”

“It was even more necessary,” Damon said, “because you were the sole survivor of your team and the only one capable of completing your mission.”

The anger went out of his voice. “I didn’t even know it would work, Alexia. I could only hope.”

“You’ve used that word before,” she said. “I never thought you really believed what it meant.”

“Have you abandoned it, Alexia?” he said, his voice thick with emotion that only confused her more. “Would you rather have died?”

As much as she wanted to say yes, she knew it wasn’t true. Maybe seeing Damon fight Lysander to the death had made her cherish life more than the principles she had thought were unbreakable. Maybe she valued her own existence more because she valued Damon’s.

No, she couldn’t lie to him. But she couldn’t dismiss her anger, her sense of betrayal, so easily.

“Do you expect me to thank you?” she asked.

“Do you think you had no part in it?” he asked, the edge returning to his voice. “Whether you admit it or not, even you are a creature of instinct, driven to survive.”

He was right. He could not have forced her teeth into his flesh. But she couldn’t admit it, because that meant she was no better than a Nightsider. No better than the monster Michael had become, or the thing inside Damon that would gladly have slaughtered Lysander with nothing more than his teeth.

Damon’s footsteps, barely audible, whispered across the ground behind her. “You were born as you are, Alexia,” he said. “It does no good to fight your nature.”

Or his. Even if she could despise herself, her weakness, she couldn’t despise him.

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