Crave the Darkness by Amanda Bonilla

think I had the willpower necessary to put one foot in front of the other.
    “No, you’re certainly not,” Xander chuckled. “Though you choose to act like one on occasion.”
    The panic drained out of me like an ebbing tide, and my stomach felt not just empty but raw. My throat wasn’t faring much better, burning from the acid, the only thing my depleted body had left to give. Utterly exhausted, it wasn’t just physical, but emotional and spiritual. I felt paper-thin and spent. I let my eyes drift shut as Xander carried me to the bed, but in my mind’s eye, Tyler’s face full of unspoken emotion loomed behind a vision of perfection. Would I ever be able to think of him again without having her face in my memory as well?
    Xander set me down with care, as far to the center of the bed as he could reach. He sat down beside me, his weight on the mattress somehow reassuring. I didn’t look at him, afraid he’d read in my eyes what I wasn’t willing to speak: that I might not ever be the same after tonight. He smoothed my hair away from my face, and I let him. A snarky comeback wasn’t what he deserved. He’d held my hair while I’d puked my guts out. That was enough to earn him a bye for the night.
    “I told you, you weren’t allowed to skip dinner again,” Xander’s voice broke through my thoughts.
    “Why do you care about Anya so much?” I didn’t want to talk about me and the train wreck I’d become. “What makes her so special?”
    Xander eased back onto the pillows and swung his legs up on the bed. “She’s younger than you,” he said. “By a few decades. Did you know that?”
    I didn’t know anything about her other than the fact that she had an atrocious leather fetish. Xander shifted, and rather than let my curiosity get the better of me, I turned my back to him and picked a spot on the wall, staring at the pattern on the fancy silk wallpaper until I lost focus altogether. Anything was better than closing my eyes.
    “If I’ve ever known a more infuriating woman than you, it’s Anya,” Xander continued, his voice lulling me. “Women like you aren’t meant for mundane lives, and Anya is no different. Raif caught her trying to break into my house and, curious, I had him bring her to me.”
    Anya, a criminal. Her loyalty to Xander was so uncompromising; I could never picture her trying to steal from him.
    “I suppose I should have let Raif turn her over to the area’s governing authority or at least, punish her himself. It probably would’ve only spurred her on, though. She had her reasons for breaking in, and at the time, she had no idea the house belonged to her king. They were homeless, hungry, desperate. She’d made Dimitri one of us by then, and I was curious. I’d never known anyone else capable of performing the feat.”
    Raif had told me Xander’s wife had once been human and he had changed her, but nothing more had ever been spoken of her. Probably why he’d been curious about Anya. I’m sure Xander, in his royal arrogance, thought only he could be strong enough to make another Shaede. My eyes grew heavy as Xander’s rich voice lulled me, and I blinked away the sleep. God, I was tired.
    “I know you find her . . . abrasive. And I realize that you’d rather not be here, watching her. I want you to know, however, that I care about her a great deal. You do me an honor by helping to protect her.”
    “Do you love her?” I don’t know why I asked. For some insane reason, I wanted to know.
    “She is like a sister to me,” Xander said. “Family. But just because I’d hate for you to be jealous, you should know that what I feel for her is nothing compared to what I feel for you.”
    “You don’t love me, you know.” My voice was weak, muffled by grief and exhaustion. “You just think you do.”
    His fingertips brushed my hair, feather light, and I shivered. “Shall I tell you how I love you?”
    “No,” I said, my throat constricting. “I’m not in the mood for