“I knew it. You are poisoning him against me!” was Kane’s opening remark.

   “You do your own poisoning,” I said.

   “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked as he came farther into the room.

   One of the guards moved in front of him. Kane snarled at him, the echo of his beast trickling through it so the hairs on the back of my neck rose. “Are you so afraid of me that you have to use bodyguards?”

   “Last time you took a swing at me, I bloodied you and put a gun to your head, Kane. I think the guards are to protect you, not me.”

   The snarl turned into a growl that reverberated through the room. The guard said, “You start to shift and I’ll hurt you.”

   “Asher, are you going to let them talk to me this way?”

   “We have a plane to catch, Anita,” Nathaniel said, and this time he meant it because he went for the far drapes that led to the door up and out.

   I started to follow him and then looked back at Jean-Claude. “Let’s say good-bye some more on the way up the stairs.”

   “I think that is an excellent idea, ma petite.” Acknowledging it was his way of admitting that he didn’t trust himself alone with this new contrite Asher either.

   I held my hand out to him and he came to take it.

   Asher said, “Am I forgiven anything?”

   Nathaniel swept the drapes to one side to hold them for us. “You still have to apologize to Dev, remember?”

   “But you are taking Mephistopheles with you to Ireland, and you are leaving now.”

   “I guess you’ll have to apologize to him when we get back,” Nathaniel said.

   “Jean-Claude,” he said, and reached for the other man.

   I grabbed Jean-Claude’s hand and kept him moving with us. “We’re not saying no, Asher, but you need to talk to everyone in our lives who stayed and worked through their issues.”

   “The people who helped us mourn you when you left deserve to know that you want back in, before we decide anything,” Nathaniel said, and his voice was cold with anger. I wasn’t angry, just had this weird desire to kiss him good-bye. I looked at Jean-Claude as I practically dragged him through the drapes toward the door. It wasn’t my thought; it was his. Damn it, Asher had such a hold on him. What would happen if we left him alone with none of us here to balance it?

   Kane yelled, “Asher, what have you done?”

   “I told you that I would ask their forgiveness.”

   “I told you that you don’t need them, any of them. We only need each other.”

   “I wanted that to be true,” Asher said.

   Kane was trying to get past the guard who was blocking him. “What are you saying, Asher?”

   “I need more.”

   “More than me?”

   I’d heard this argument before and recently, except it had been Cardinale talking to Damian. What was with all the obsessive jealousy? It was like a theme.

   “We really do have to go. The plane’s waiting,” I said.

   Jean-Claude held back against my hand. It made me turn and look at him. I don’t know if I’d have had the courage to say what needed to be said, but Nathaniel did.

   “If you take Asher back without him apologizing to Dev first it would crush Dev, and he deserves better than that.”

   Jean-Claude looked at him, then stopped tugging against my hand. “I am sorry, ma petite, mon minou. I do not mean to be weak.”

   The three of us stepped closer together to hear each other over Kane’s yelling. “If we leave you alone like this, are you going to do something stupid with Asher?” I asked. The moment I said it, I knew it was harsh, but we really did need to leave. There wasn’t time to ease into it.

   He raised one graceful eyebrow at me.

   “We really do need to catch the ride to the airport and head for Ireland, Jean-Claude. I don’t have time to figure out how to talk to you about this. I’m sorry if that was blunt.”

   He shook himself, like a bird settling its feathers. I felt the energy change down his hand, which I was still holding as if I were afraid he’d run to Asher like in some old romantic movie. He was calmer, and it was real, not just him hiding his feelings.

   “I am not planning to be stupid, ma petite. I’ve tried to avoid that for centuries.”

   “We all try to avoid it,” Nathaniel said, “but we all have people and issues that make us stupid. We need to know that you won’t let Asher upset our poly group.”

   I put my arm around Jean-Claude’s waist and gazed up at him. “I didn’t think until just minutes ago that I’m taking all of your lovers with me. Even your regular blood donors are coming with us. I’d realized it was sort of a shitty thing to do even without Asher coming up like this. I’m sorry I didn’t think about what it might mean for you sooner.”

   “I called Jason. He’s coming in to visit for a couple of days,” Nathaniel said.

   We both looked at him. Jason was my wolf to call, though we’d both been so worried that we’d be tied too closely together that a certain distance had gone into our bonding. He’d been another emergency tie for me. He was Nathaniel’s best friend and one of my best friends. Until he’d gone to New York with his girlfriend J.J., who was a ballet dancer there, he’d been the manager at Guilty Pleasures and one of the headline dancers. Technically he hadn’t moved permanently, but he was about to do a dance tryout for the dance troupe she was a part of, if they could get around him being a werewolf and not just human. If he got the job he’d be the first paranormal American to dance with an all-human troupe. We all missed Jason, but J.J. was the love of his life and we wanted him to have a chance at that, and her job couldn’t move here. “You’d already realized we were leaving Jean-Claude on his own, hadn’t you?”

   “Yes, but when I realized that Micah was going to be gone longer than he’d thought, that’s when I realized it might be a problem.”

   “Do you think I am incapable of being on my own for a few days?” Jean-Claude asked.

   Nathaniel smiled at him. “Your power is based on lust and love, Jean-Claude.”

   “I have been alone before, Nathaniel. I am not a child.” He almost never called him by his real name anymore; not a good sign.

   “I’ve been addicted to sex. I will always be a recovering sex addict, Jean-Claude. I’m not saying you’re addicted to sex, or romance, or relationships, but if sex were actually what I ate and the only other food I could have was something as intimate as taking blood, I know I couldn’t be anything but addicted to all of it. If I projected that onto you and it’s not true, then I’m sorry. Jason will be here tomorrow so you’ll at least have a blood donor and someone to sleep in the bed with you.”