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RAHIL

Mercer loved him, too.

Rahil swore he’d whispered it last night in the darkness—and yet the gap in Rahil’s heart that had been waiting, aching, for those four words had rejected them so long as Mercer didn’t know the truth. It wasn’t this truth, either, but somehow this was the truth that seemed to loom larger, more intrusive and leering. If they couldn’t work this out, what hope did they have anyway?

As he watched Mercer fight off the stony pinch of his usual solemn mask, his anxiety clearly bubbling beneath it, doubt nudged at the back of Rahil’s mind. What if this wasn’t the right choice? Pushing this topic now, telling Mercer about the circumstances around Leah’s death later—or not having told him last night, damn whatever joyful oblivion Mercer had asked for. What if this was the moment that sparked the end of their momentary relationship, and he was setting light to the fuse without even knowing it?

The fear brought with it a feeling he’d managed to push back, shove down, talk himself out of: he’d never had any hope for a thriving relationship, even if the other person in it was as kind and stable as Mercer. Even if Mercer accepted this and forgave him for his part in Leah’s death, Rahil would fuck something else up. He’d push Mercer off the deep end or fail to pull him back from it. He’d corrupt his relationship with his daughter or corrupt Lydia herself.

Someone would end up dead , his darkest thoughts whispered.

But he had a terrible, awful feeling someone would end up dead now too, if he didn’t stop this transaction from going through.

“We can’t give that man our unholy gold.” Rahil cringed as he said it, already regretting everything he’d ever done in his life and knowing that now that the words were out, he was trapped in them.

“What?” Mercer’s brow tightened, a pained look crossing his face. “But we’ve made it. It’s ready. He’s here. I thought you were on board with this?”

“I thought I was too.” Rahil couldn’t tell if that was a lie or not. He had originally decided this was a good idea, but maybe he’d been, at least in part, blinded by the idea of being in Mercer’s shed and feeling his touch, day in and day out as they worked on it. He shook his head. “But this particular scientist—I don’t trust him with it. I wouldn’t give him access to something that could be this devastating to vampires.”

“Because you slept with him?”

He didn’t think Mercer meant it as a low blow, but that was how it hit, between the ribs and into the gut. “No—yes. Because of the way he was when we were together.” Rahil found himself baring his fangs without meaning to, lips pulled back and jaw wide. “I know when someone’s fetishizing me. I know when they don’t have my welfare in mind—I see it all the time, in most of the men I sleep with.”

“That doesn’t mean he can’t do good science with it,” Mercer protested. “He’s not always the most pleasant person, but he has done charity work like this before.” He sighed, rubbing at the front of his face. It only seemed to make his brow more knotted. “Dr. Hilker helped Lydia when no one else could or would. He spent months of his free time producing something that would keep her from dying, and worked for years after that perfecting it until she could live a mostly normal life. He may be a bastard, but he’s a bastard who helps people.”

As though summoned by their hissed conversation, Lydia’s voice rang across the backyard. “Daddyo?”

Mercer groaned under his breath. He lifted his head in time for Anthony to call from within the shed, “Why, hello again, punk.”

“God, not you,” Lydia said, but there was laughter in her voice.

Anthony gave a dramatic sigh. “Alas, the evil scientist has come for you again.”

“You look tired.”

“I feel tired.” Anthony’s voice faded back into the shed. “Perhaps we’re fated to save everyone but ourselves…”

Rahil tried to step after them, dread tightening his eyes, but Mercer grabbed his arm. “He’s the only reason she’s alive . She’s safe with him.”

Rahil wasn’t sure he believed that, but Lydia wasn’t his to care for—and his track record of taking care of people he loved wasn’t great anyway. Their unholy gold was a different story, though. This had ramifications far beyond anyone in Rahil’s tiny bubble of affection. “It doesn’t matter how much you trust him with your own kid, I don’t trust what he’ll use that metal for in other kids. He could do anything with it.”

“It’s a single chunk of gold, Rahil. One piece. And you have no proof he’ll do anything with it but that which he’s already promised to, which is to help vampires.” He was sounding frustrated now, low and dark in a way Rahil had never seen before—at least not since their first meeting when he’d literally invaded Mercer’s home.

It made Rahil feel drawn taut, his every muscle ready for a fight. “So, we let him walk away with it, with nothing but his word that he has good intentions? Do you know who he works with? What else he’s done when he’s not offering you his charity? What he’s using that altruism to make up for?”

Mercer flinched somewhere between the first question and the last, but his jaw remained as stiff as his stance. “And if he is all that you suspect—what then? He holds my daughter’s life in his hands. Either I can trust him to take this unholy gold and do good with it, or I can trust him to let my own kid die if I refuse.”

Now it was Rahil’s turn to flinch. He could understand that, understand it in a way that he doubted Mercer was intending, in the deep, dark parts of his heart where the wounds of Jonah and Matthew’s deaths still felt as fresh as the days he’d lost them, whether it was months or years ago. But this did not feel so simple as that. Mercer was a good dad. There had to be other options. “Merc—”

“No,” Mercer cut him off, pressing past him, back toward the shed. “You agreed to help me create the gold for Dr. Hilker. This conversation is finished.”

Rahil could do nothing but stare after him. His heart pounded in his throat, his ears, his fingertips. He could go. He could take the unholy gold and run with it. But what if he was wrong? And worse yet, what if Mercer was right ? What if Lydia truly did suffer because Rahil made the wrong decision?

If this took her away from Mercer the way Rahil’s choices had already taken Leah…

He wavered—between one option and the other, between staying and leaving entirely, between life and death—and in the end, his heart took the first step for him.

Rahil sped after Mercer, arriving at the shed just in time to hear Lydia say, “Yo, Dad, why does the mold in your lockbox look kind of like Rahil’s fangs?”

And Rahil knew—he knew.

His blood chilled, a shudder like the start of a sun-poisoning running through him, followed by a crash of dread, a panic like the flight instead of the fight. He should have told Mercer earlier. Should have told him back when they’d tested the unholy gold on Natalie, when they’d sat beside the boardwalk, when they’d lain together in the darkness. When they weren’t already fighting. When this wasn’t doomed to crumble at the slightest shove.

Now there was one option, and it was, as ever, the one that hurt.