Tangled Fates (13 page)

She adopted the same stance and felt the urge to kick his ass right out from her doorway

and back into the elevator behind him. She felt an overwhelming desire to smile when she

noticed that the bruise on his jaw from where she had hit him had turned an awful yellow color.

After a moment, the stare-down ended when he said, “Can I come in?”

“No, you may not.” There was no way she was going to allow him in her quarters.

Sighing, he pushed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and looked at the floor,

reminding her of a child. “I came to apologize to you,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry I’m such an

ass.”

“Fucktard,” Annis said.

Cohen looked up at her. “Excuse me?”

“You are an absolute fucktard, Cohen. I don’t know who you think you are that you can

talk to people the way you spoke to me, but I would rather have you say nothing at all to me

from now on.”

Cohen nodded and studied his feet again. “You’re right. I have been acting awful,

especially toward you. There’s just so much . . . stuff going on inside me, Annis, and somehow

you end up being the target.”

“What have I done that makes me this so-called target, Cohen? I believe you own me an

explanation, especially with your cruelty of the other night.”

He met her gaze, and she was surprised what she saw there. Gone was the angry

demeanor, and in its place was the hurt and anguish he felt. “You’ve done nothing, Annis.

Nothing. In fact, you are the strongest, bravest, most honorable person I know, and I wish I had

those traits within me, but they were lost a long time ago.”

Shock rendered her momentarily silent.

“Cohen—”

“Please. I can’t talk about it, Annis. I just came down to say I’m sorry, and I promise you

that your secret is safe with me. I won’t speak of it again to you, or anyone else in this house. I

was a rude . . . fucktard.”

Annis felt the wind leave her lungs as if he had punched her in the diaphragm. An

apology was the last thing she expected from this visit. As he turned to the elevator, she stared at

his back. The steel doors parted and Cohen stepped in. He turned, leaned against the back wall

while crossing his arms over his chest again, and looked at her. Their stares locked until the

doors closed.

Annis slowly shut the door to her quarters and leaned against it. It was within her nature

to forgive, and she took a deep breath, letting the anger release from her body.

She had been taught in the SR44 military that anger was a wasted emotion because it took

up so much energy, and she was reminded again of how true that was. She hadn’t realized it at

the time, but when she first started in the military, she held a lot of anger toward her mother and

siblings, and even the father she had never known. Her memories took her back to a training

session where she fought a male, Li, who would, oddly enough, later become her lover. He

defeated her at every turn, and she remembered her anger and frustration getting the best of her.

Later, her trainer had worked with her on how to release the anger from her body.

Presently, as she let the anger ebb, exhaustion came over her, and she decided that she

would skip her workout for the night and turn in early.

Cohen had been awful to her, and she would try to forgive and forget. She would also just

keep her distance from him as best she could so he didn’t have the opportunity to hurt her again.

She didn’t understand why she couldn’t hate him. Instead, she found him pathetic.

Yes, she did pity him. Obviously losing his mate was a terrible burden for him, one that

changed him in many ways, from what she gathered from those who knew him before she

arrived. But SR44 males without a mate usually didn’t act out with so much anger. Either he had

an incredible love with his
lovren
, or there was something else going on with him, something

that he obviously didn’t feel comfortable sharing with her.

Annis wondered what it would be like to love someone so strongly, that your world was

literally decimated when you found out they were gone.

At one time she had thought she was in love with Li. They had courted for a time and

eventually ended up joining. As time made one wiser, she now realized that she had latched on to

Li in desperation of wanting to be loved, to feel that emotion within her. She never received that

from her family, and she never felt like she belonged anywhere. Li had been kind to her even

though he bested her at training exercises, but it wasn’t long before they both realized they were

not in love, and socially they went their separate ways.

Liberty had made her watch a TV show on Animal Planet. It had been about a female

who took in stray dogs called pit bulls. Humans feared these dogs, but the female on the show

didn’t. It was as if once she cracked their hard exteriors, there was a gentle, sweet animal that

only wished to be loved.

She couldn’t help but feel that Cohen resembled those pit bulls.

Chapter 17

Cohen sat in a booth with Jovan, Talin, and Rayner in Chukars Sports Casino in the

middle of Fernley, Nevada, watching a football game on the screen above the bar. He sipped his

beer and wondered why the three of them had dragged him out this afternoon, as he was leaving

for Phoenix in the morning and had stuff to do.

“Nice play,” Rayner mumbled as he tipped back his Bud.

“Definitely. That dude can run,” Jovan said.

After a moment, Cohen sighed, set down his beer, and sat back in the booth, feeling a

little claustrophobic trapped in the small space with three huge males. Time to get to the purpose

of this little powwow.

“Why are we here?”

Rayner and Jovan exchanged glances, then Talin said, “They told me I needed to get out

of the house.”

Rayner rolled his eyes. “Well, you do, Talin. You’ve become like a troll all hunkered

down in your quarters.”

“I’d like to know why everyone thinks they know what I need,” Talin said, looking

bored, as if he would rather be anywhere in the world except where he was.

“And that’s why I’m here?” Cohen asked. “Because you think you know what’s best for

me as well?”

Rayner shook his head. “No. We’re killing two birds with one stone on this little outing.

We’re getting troll-boy over here out from his cave, and we want to know what’s going on with

you, Cohen. We get it that you’re a twisted mess with the loss of Mia, but you’re being an

absolute cocksucker, especially to Annis.”

“It has to stop, Cohen,” Jovan said.

Cohen exhaled. Should he tell them that he was seeing a ghost of his dead mate whenever

he looked at Annis? And that it pissed him off to epic proportions that he wanted Annis with a

ferocity that both excited and frightened him. That he hated himself for feeling the way he did.

That he hated Mia for always showing up when he looked at Annis. That he hated Annis for

being so damn beautiful and possessing a true Warrior spirit. That his soul twisted and burned

with each day, his whole being in a war of lust, sorrow, and hate. Was he ready to slice himself

from throat to sternum and spill his guts on all of that?

And if he did, what would happen? They couldn’t exactly commit him to a human psych

ward, but they sure as shit could strap him to some pads down in the gym.

Or maybe they could help him get some relief from the raging war brewing within him.

He wouldn’t know until he spilled the beans and laid it all out on the table for his two

friends.

Studying Rayner, he remembered the day he had met him. They had partied together, and

Cohen had convinced Rayner to join the SR44 military. Cohen wondered if Rayner hated him for

it, or blamed him for what had become of their lives. Not that Rayner’s life was all that bad; he

was deeply in love with the fiery, loose cannon—Faith. Although she exasperated him at times,

she was perfect for him, and Cohen hoped that he lived long enough to see their legend come to

fruition of producing a son who would heal the Earth. But what if something better could have

been his on SR44?

The fact of the matter was that if Rayner hadn’t joined the military, if none of them had

been chosen for this special mission, they would all be dead.

Just like Mia.

Would he have been better off spending the time with Mia and dying with her? Or maybe

he would have died in battle when the Miladrids attacked. Who knew?

And that was the thing: every decision that was made switched the path of life. You could

be walking down the trail thinking you were straight on the course, that you were going in the

right direction, that you were where you were supposed to be. Then a decision was made, and a

new path formed, and you veered off onto it. A few years later, you looked back at the new path,

and sometimes you wondered exactly what the fuck you’d done. Fate was kind of a bitch like

that. She offered you so many choices, so many winding paths, that you could never fully predict

what your effect your decisions were going to have not only on your life, but on the lives of

those around you.

So what was going to happen if he just let loose and spewed the vitriol within him? How

was it going to affect him, and how was it going to affect his friends who actually wanted to hear

it?

Bringing his beer to his lips, he slammed it down in one long pull. And . . . off the cliff

we go. He sighed heavily and stared at a spot on the table in front of him.

“I made an oath to myself and to Mia that I would honor our mating vows in honor of her

death since I am such a shitbag and didn’t do it while she lived. I want Annis. Every time I look

at Annis I see Mia. And every time—”

“Whoa! Back up there a minute, man,” Rayner said. “What do you mean you made an

oath? And you want Annis? As in what?”

“This has the promise of being an interesting conversation,” Talin said, sitting up in his

seat.

Cohen looked Rayner in the eye. “I want Annis as an SR44 male wants a female.”

“Are you kidding me?” Jovan said, pushing his hair behind his ear. “You sure have a

funny way of showing it. Females like to be treated with respect, Cohen. She’s never going to

want to sleep with you if you keep looking at her like you wish she were dead. I mean—”

“I’m very aware on how to treat a female, Jovan. Thanks, though.”

“Go back to the oath thing,” Talin said.

“I made a
Tambaran
. I did it right after I found out Mia died.”

There was a beat of silence.

“You’re serious?” Jovan asked.

“Yes.”

“Cohen—”

“I had to. I didn’t honor our mating while on this godforsaken mission. I wanted to honor

it in her death. So I did a ceremony and made the oath.”

“Like the full oath?” Talin asked.

Cohen nodded.

“With the knife?” Rayner asked.

“Yes, with my SR44 knife and all.”

There was a long beat of silence, and Talin let out a low whistle.

“I bet that shit hurt,” Jovan said.

“You have no idea.”

“And now you see Mia?” Rayner asked.

“Yep. I look at Annis, and there’s Mia right next to her.”

“You’re seriously seeing Mia?” Talin asked. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“Yes, I see Mia.”

Talin shook his head. “I would give my right arm and both my nuts to see my
lovren,

Lana, again. Are you on drugs? Hallucinogens? If so, what kind? And will you share?”

“No, I’m not on drugs, Talin. I’m drunk a lot, but no drugs.”

“When did you start seeing Mia?” Rayner asked.

“A few months ago.”

“Well, I guess I understand a little bit better. You want Annis, and there’s Mia next to her

all the time reminding you of your
Tambaran
,” Jovan said.

“Pretty much. But there’s other stuff I can’t go into.”

“I think you need to,” Jovan said.

“Can’t, man. I’d be revealing shit that’s not mine to reveal.” He wasn’t about to tell

Rayner, Talin, and Jovan about the atrocities that Annis had been through and how strong she

was, or the fact that her strength pissed him off so badly simply because he didn’t have any. He

wasn’t going to share about his deep self-hatred of not honoring his Mia in life, and he certainly

wasn’t going to tell about his outright envy of Annis’s Warrior spirit.

There was silence for a moment, and Cohen could feel their stares.

Jovan placed his hand on Cohen’s shoulder. “Are you serious, man? You think you can

see Mia?”

Cohen nodded his head.

Jovan removed his hand and looked at Rayner. “He believes he’s seeing Mia.”

“Fascinating,” Talin said.

Of course Jovan would use his gift—being able to get a glimpse of others’ emotions

through touch to see if Cohen was being truthful. They both probably thought he was losing it,

and maybe he was. Maybe Mia wasn’t real. It wasn’t like anyone else ever mentioned seeing her.

“You also got a whole lot of nasty dancing around in there, my friend,” Jovan said,

reaching for his beer. “You need to get that shit cleaned out, Cohen. It’ll eat you alive.”

“You realize that if I can see Mia it means she’s not dead, but she’s not alive either,

right?” Rayner asked.

Cohen nodded.

They sat in silence for another minute. Cohen waited for a sarcastic comment from one of

them, maybe some ribbing or some sage advice about all he needed to do was get laid.