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“Enough, Admiral Varda.”

She let out a vicious laugh.“I’m the admiral now, am I?I wasn’t when you were broken and needed someone to hold you, was I?Then I was Nikki, and you were happy to take the comfort I offered.Happy to touch me in almost every way a man can touch a woman.”

Nikolett pushed off the wall, stalking past him to the door.But she stopped, shoulder to shoulder with him though they faced opposite directions.

“I’m good enough to fuck, to be your emotional support, but not good enough to love.”

Eric’s eyes closed, his heart breaking.“Nikki, no?—”

“Go to hell, Eric, since you’ve made sure we’ll both spend the rest of our lives there anyway.”

Eric’s phonebuzzed in his pocket, blessedly jerking him from the memory.

Standing up—which made both Regina and Tobias reach for him in alarm—Eric started walking back to Triskelion Castle.He finally looked at the screen, froze, then answered.

“I want you back in Dublin immediately,” he barked.He’d heard about the attack in New York just before he went on this run, and it had taken everything he had to be hands-off and wait for Colum to call him.

“Hallo, Eric,” Colum said, voice resigned.“And no, I won’t be doing that.I’m guessing you heard what happened?”

“Someone is after you.Fuck that manuscript and get back to the safety of the archive.”

“The archive that was almost broken into?”

“They wouldn’t have actually gotten in, and I upped the security.”

“No.”

“No what?”Eric growled, phone creaking as he held it too hard.

“No, I’m not coming back to Dublin to hide in the archive.”

That surprised Eric.Not Colum’s refusal.The contrary fucker loved to say no.It was Colum’s use of the word “hide.”It felt like a soft acknowledgement that he’d been hiding from the world, from life, since his sister’s murder.

“The Trinity Masters are putting security on us.”

Eric listened as Colum told him about their investigation.Colum’s enthusiasm was a relief, but the inflection in his voice when he talked about Xavier and Annie…

Fuck.

Colum, who was married to Nikolett and Sarah Ritter, had feelings for Xavier and Annie.

And again, fuck.

Colum, whom Eric had been desperately worried about for years because he isolated himself, may have finally found the people he could be happy with—and Eric had locked him into a loveless, lonely marriage.

For half a second, he tried to gaslight himself into believing that maybe Colum and Sarah would fall in love, and Sarah would give up being a knight and move to Dublin with him.

Do you want that for Colum, or because you can’t stand the idea of anyone, man or woman, touching Nikki?

Eric swallowed that, forcing himself to concentrate on Colum.They talked for several more minutes, and when they hung up, Eric hurried back to the castle, barely noticing his guards at his heels.

He’d done the only thing he could do when it came to Nikolett.Her alive and hating him was better than her with him and dead.

But Colum…

Colum had a chance to be happy.

But even if Eric hadn’t wanted to marry Nikolett to someone else to protect her from him, there was the issue of the new stipulation about the archivist.Colum had to be married to someone in Masters’ Admiralty leadership, and Nikolett was the only unmarried admiral.