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I only had one more thing to do before Helen and I left earth and headed out with Arland and whatever came next. I needed to look after Helen's future and my own, but I was still the big sister here, and I had a little sister to look out for.
A little sister who would probably not thank me for interfering in her love life, but I was going to be leaving her with just her inn and a somewhat unstable, war-damaged werewolf who could kill just as easily as most people breathed. I knew she'd be physically safe, especially in her own inn where she was the supreme power, but it was more her heart and mind I worried about. All the resources of the inn couldn't protect those.
Sean was kind to Helen, teaching her how to play with Beast and get Beast to do all the tricks he'd taught the little dog. When Dina had offered the Hiru protection from the Draziri, he'd backed her up, making his own promise of safety to a dying race. When Dina's little inn had died, he had cared for her while she was near-comatose with a gentle devotion that was almost troubling.
But he could also be a snarling alpha predator who'd broken bones and then ripped screaming Draziri apart and put their heads on stakes. After the fight with the Draziri, once I'd calmed Arland down with eggnog and coffee and gotten the story of Nexus from him, Arland had told me that Sean's term as Turan Adin would have long-lasting effects and would have damaged him in ways that were nearly unrecoverable. What I'd occasionally seen in his eyes was worse than anything I'd ever seen on Karhari – a man pushed past the boundaries of mere survival, pushed past the lines of what kept someone whole and human and sane.
So I had to know, I had to be sure, before I left.
It wasn't hard to find Sean's house, it was down at the other end of the street with the SOLD sign in front of it. I would have liked to have been wearing my armor and sword for this confrontation, but Dina would have kittens if she ever found out I'd walked down a Texas subdivision street in broad daylight in full armor. Of course, she'd probably also have kittens if she found out I was going to talk to Sean at all.
I took a deep breath and walked up to the porch. He probably already knew I was here, but I knocked once anyway. The front door opened almost immediately, confirming that he'd known I was there.
“Maud,” he said, warily. “What can I do for you?”
He was wearing a plain gray t-shirt, jeans and work boots, which was, pretty much, what he'd been wearing every other time I'd seen him – well, other than when he was in his armored-up form. He was also wearing that same neutral, assessing look he kept on his face when anyone not named Dina was talking to him. It wasn't exactly cold, but it certainly wasn't welcoming, either.
Even before the scars, Sean wouldn't have been a beautiful man, like Arland, who had the kind of looks that made women sigh and melt over him, but his strong features were striking, handsome in an almost stern way, especially when combined with those light whiskey-amber eyes and that direct, intense stare that had the power to look inside of you.
“May I come in?”
He tilted his head and studied me for a moment, before stepping aside and swinging the door open. “By all means, please, come in, Maud.” Was that a hint of sarcasm?
I stepped into the small foyer and looked around at neat stacks of moving boxes, lined up in perfect rows with military precision, contents labeled.
“Moving day?” It was hard to get a sense of Sean in the house, with everything packed up and most of the furniture already removed. The main living area was large and open, with a lot of empty bookshelves, a fieldstone fireplace and a kitchen with dark gray granite counters and pale wood cabinets. The walls were not the sterile white or neutral gray I would have guessed, but a reserved use of color and a lot of natural wood. Either he'd hired a decorator or he actually had some taste himself.
He shrugged. “The new owners asked to take possession early. The personal stuff went with my parents, some of this is going into storage and a lot of it is being donated.” The less said about the uncomfortable relationship between Sean's parents and Arland, Caldenia, Wilmos and the rest of the werewolves the better. Once all the other werewolves had left, things had calmed down quite a bit at the inn.
“And you are going to live at the inn with Dina now, be an innkeeper.”
“That's Dina's plan.”
“Dina's plan? But not yours? Talk to me about Dina.” He didn't reply, I just got a solid “no” in the look he gave me. That did not surprise me. He was not going to talk about his feelings. I probably would have had better luck trying to batter it out of him with my sword. I tried another direction. “Do you really want to be an innkeeper?”
He folded his arms over his chest, his body language tight and closed off. “Does Dina know you are here?”
I snorted. “Of course not. Neither does Arland, or he'd be marching down here to separate us.”
At that his lips twisted into a small smirk. “Yeah, I got the impression that the Lord Marshall is a little annoyed with me.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Right now, he's conflicted. He wants to hug you to him and call you brother and he'd like to use that blood mace to smash your head in. Probably at the same time.”
Sean curled his lip. “Vampire drama,” he said.
“Compared to the lone wolf 'suck it all up and never discuss it'?”
His expression didn't change but his eyes flashed bright amber gold. I'd hit a nerve. “What are you looking for here, Maud?”
I put my hands on the closest stack of boxes and leaned over them, facing him. “I need to look after Helen. If we stay here, she can never go to school, never play with other human children. She doesn't look like a human, she doesn't move like a human and she doesn't have a human's instincts. She'd be trapped in the inn, unable to go out and pretend to be human. You should know what that is like.”
“My family always had a version of the 'humans must never know' speech. Never be too strong, too fast, never hear or smell or see things I shouldn't be able to. Never be the best at anything, never draw attention. I wasn't always... successful at that.” He scrubbed a hand across his face. “So, yeah, I get why Helen would have to be trapped in the inn if you stayed.”
“That's why I have to leave, to give Helen that chance and see if she fits in somewhere else. But Dina is so alone, and if we leave...”
“You want me to make you feel better about leaving her.” His face was completely expressionless, his voice cold.
“What I want to know is where you stand with her. I know what she wants, what do you want?” I asked sharply.
He studied me for a moment. “In her mind, people leave her. Your parents are gone. Klaus left her. You left her.” He paused and then continued in a low voice. “I left her. You're leaving again. She thinks maybe I'll leave again and she'll be alone.” His eyes fixed me with a flat, unblinking amber stare. In his eyes I saw what I'd seen before – cities burning, what I knew now was the plains of Nexus, blood and death and ruin. “I can't undo the past, but I won't leave her again.”
When Dina looked into that same stare, she saw something else entirely. “And if it doesn't work? If she wants you to go?”
He looked away. “If she wants me to leave, I'll go.”
“Where? Back to war? To being a mercenary?”
He shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“You were a mercenary on Nexus. Not just a mercenary but Turan Adin.” I paused, but he didn't reply. “How long were you there?”
“Eighteen months, Nexus-time,” he said shortly.
“How did you survive eighteen months on Nexus?”
“I got through it until Dina pulled me out of that contract.”
It wasn't an answer. I didn't have the whole story and I knew there was more than what Arland could tell me about what exactly had happened at the peace summit. “So is being an innkeeper something you think you owe Dina for that?”
“No.” His tone said he wasn't going to discuss that either. So far our discussions here had hit a lot of dead ends.
I looked around the room, at the life closed up in neat square cardboard boxes. “You are getting rid of all your things. Dina might be afraid of people leaving, but you're afraid of staying.”
I thought for a moment he wasn't going to answer, but then he sighed. “Yes. This is my last chance to stay on earth. I don't fit in here anymore, either. I'm not sure if I can be so limited again, the way I'd have to be outside the inn.” He leaned back against the kitchen counter, his hands cupping the edge, and watched me.
A little silence fell between us as I took in his words. He did understand why I needed to take Helen away to see if she could fit in with the society she was meant for. He'd stay here at the inn to fit in with Dina but if that didn't work out he'd be gone, back out into the greater galaxy somewhere.
Could Dina and Sean make this work? Dina wanted him and it was obvious that was mutual. That was a good start, but what about the future? They were likely to argue about things – her safety being the major one. They'd already had one argument that I knew about. “She said she would obey your orders about her safety.”
Sean snorted. “You know your sister better than that. She never used the word 'obey' - she'll listen to my orders about her safety right up until she decides someone needs her help and then she'll ignore everything I tell her and do what she thinks is necessary.”
He was not wrong about that. “And you're okay with that?”
“No. Not at all.” He shrugged. “But it's Dina.” He folded his arms over his chest again and looked down, his voice low. “With her huge fierce heart.”
That was probably the closest he was going to come to saying that he loved her. His description of her was accurate – she was ferocious and tenacious and sometimes reckless in the defense of people she loved. But in a lot of ways Dina was still very vulnerable and very lonely. I suspected that Dina and Sean were kindred spirits in that.
He looked up at me and continued. “When I was reading through the innkeeper history books, trying to find a way to help Dina when... after the little inn died, I saw the accounts about the previous uses of the psybooster. The biggest danger in using it was to her. Most of the innkeepers before her either died or went insane trying to use it. She knew that, but she had to do it anyway. She didn't push to end the war on Nexus just for me. She did it for everyone around her. For the Khanum and her sons, living and dead. For Arland and House Krahr and the rest of the Holy Anocracy. For the refugees on Nexus. Because everyone at the inn, every one of her guests, was in pain and she had to find a way to help us and she would do anything she could, despite the risk to her.”
“The way she bonded with the little inn, to save all of us and Gertrude Hunt.”
“And nothing – not me, not you - will ever stop her from doing dangerous shit like that if she thinks she has to. It's who she is. And I may not be able to stop her but I will do everything I can to make sure she comes through it as whole as possible.” His eyes were clear and focused, locked on me.
“You understand her very well.” I took a deep breath and stepped in to him, tapping his chest with one finger. “You'll keep her safe?”
He nodded. “I will. As much as she'll let me.” I didn't see anything in his eyes – no wolf, no cities burning, no Nexus - just serious truth and a promise. I knew he had already put his life on the line for her at least once and that he'd do it again without hesitation.
I let out a long breath. “That's really all I can ask. I think you are, at your core, a good man.” He raised an eyebrow at me and I folded my arms. “Not an easy one and on the difficult side to deal with.”
The corner of his lip twisted up in a small smirk. “I fit right in with the Demille women, then.”
I snorted at him. Had we come to some sort of understanding? The cell phone in my pocket buzzed. Either Arland or Dina. Or maybe even Helen. My money was on Arland. I needed to leave so that I could say, with perfect honesty, that I was just out walking when I returned the call. “We leave tonight, just after dinner.”
“Good luck then, Maud Demille. I hope Daesyn works out for you.”
“I hope everything here works out for you. For both of you.” He nodded at me and we both looked at each other for another moment. Without another word, I turned and walked out the door into the late Texas afternoon. Time to take my next step.