"Go clean your hands," Dawn said, jerking his chin toward the bathroom. "You look like a horror movie reject, and if she wakes up and sees you like this, she'll worry. And then you'll feel guilty. And then you'll brood harder, which I didn't think was physically possible, but you continue to surprise me."
Dimitri glanced down at his hands. At the dried blood caked into every line and crease.
Dawn was right. If Felicity saw this, those soft fox ears would pin back, and her tail would tuck, and that crease between her brows would appear. The one that meant she was absorbing someone else's pain into herself.
He wouldn't allow that. Not from him, never from him.
He moved toward the bathroom without another word.
Behind him, Thane's murmur carried: "He's completely gone, isn't he?"
Dawn's response was barely a whisper, dry as bone: "Brother, he was gone the second she smiled at him. We're just watching the wreckage now."
——
