Adam never wanted to be a Para. But now that she was giving him this impossible choice?
Turned out it wasn’t so impossible after all.
“I’ll take my revenge.”
“You know,” purred Alexis, immediately following through on her threat. Adam stared as she poured the last of the elixir onto the floor before smashing the vial container to shattered glass. “Somehow, I thought that would be your answer. Ah, well.” With a glance at Rafe, she held out her empty hands, cocked her head slightly to the side. And her smile widened. “Sorry, my king. You can’t say I didn’t try.”
Then, after blowing a kiss right at Adam, Alexis stepped off of the dais and whirled away.
Adam barely noticed the female vamp leaving the room through a door behind the dais.
For one mournful moment, he looked at the point on the tile where the elixir hit the floor. There wasn’t a single drop left. If there had been? He might’ve lapped it up and hoped for the best. He still desperately wanted to be human.
He just… did he want it bad enough to be blood-bonded to the blonde Nightwalker?
He had his answer. No. If she waltzed back in with another tube, he’d do it all over again. His revenge was more important to him.
His revenge—and his future with Tabby.
She might have destroyed his chance of being human again—because, deep down, his cop instincts told him she’d been totally honest when she told him that was the last known vial of elixir in existence—but, by walking out of the room, she was turning her back on whatever Adam did to Rafe.
Who was—
Ripping his stare from the tile, he met Rafe’s curious silver gaze. “You’re the king?”
“Our kind needed someone to rule, to look out for the rest of us. We had a different king once, but he died. I took his place.”
Wait—
Why was Rafe telling Adam all of that as if he didn’t know? As if he wasn’t there?
Holy shit. The bastard really didn’t recognize him, did he? That’s why he hung back while Alexis performed her negotiations, and why he didn’t attack even when it was obvious that Adam wanted little more than to chop off his head.
“I know.”
“You do?” For the first time, Rafe actually seemed to look past the Nightwalker features. The shades. The fangs. The claws. His silver eyes sparkled. “You look familiar.”
“Yeah?”
Come on, asshole. Figure it out.
Adam wanted the bastard to remember on his own. In all of his fantasies of revenge, Rafe took one look at him, remembered attacking him, realized that Adam had lived—and that he’d come to take his head.
It, uh, wasn’t happening like that.
“Well, look at that. It’s the traitor.” Rafe slowly rose from his throne. Good. Adam was glad to have finally gotten some kind of reaction out of the Nightwalker. “The night Priscilla threw her temper tantrum… I didn’t want to believe one of my own would turn against his kind. You partnered with the dogs.”
“That’s not the first time I buddied up with Colt,” Adam told him.
Keeping his eyes on Rafe, he lowered just enough to jerk his jeans up over his sheath. He grabbed the dagger, angling it so that the whole thing was on display.
Rafe breathed in deep.
Finally.
“The cop.” Rafe’s model-handsome face twisted into a look so ugly, Adam realized he struck a nerve. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
Adam shrugged, hoping it would piss the Nightwalker off even more. “You tried, but you forgot we had a healer on our side.”