Anita Blake 19 - Bullet by Laurell K. Hamilton Page B

lust. Anger, though, I understood that. That had been my emotion of choice for years. Last summer I figured out how to call my rage back home from Richard. It was the one thing we’d shared with each other that one of us knew how to feed on. The other hungers were literally hungers for flesh, blood, and sex. You can feed a hunger, but you can’t feed
on
a hunger.
    I took my hand back and Richard let me. I settled back on my side of Asher. The vampire continued to hold my hand while we watched Richard.
    “I hadn’t understood how much the rage kept me from forgiving anyone, or working my issues, until Anita fed off it and took it back. The anger was almost like another beast inside me, but full moon didn’t bring any relief. It’s a horrible way to live, Anita.”
    I shrugged. “You get used to it.”
    He shook his head, sending his hair sliding across his shoulders. “I didn’t. It was killing me. I had my own problems with self-loathing, but the anger made it all worse.”
    “I’m sorry about that,” I said. I almost didn’t want to say anything else, but I knew now that every time we left things unsaid between us, it came back and bit us down the road. “The anger is gone, Richard, I get that,” I said, “but the self-loathing was all you. You hated being a werewolf. You broke up with me because I was more at home with the monsters than you were.”
    “My turn to apologize again,” Richard said. His arms loosened and he sat back against the pillows. “I can’t stop being a werewolf. It’s like trying to stop being human. It is what I am. I could give up being Ulfric, but I’d still have to belong to the pack, and being king is better than being a follower. I learned that the hard way. I am Jean-Claude’s animal to call, and the third leg of the triumvirate of power that allows him to run the city and have enough power to keep everyone safe.” He looked at Jean-Claude now. “You are a good Master of the City, Jean-Claude. I didn’t realize that the Master of the City is like the boss of a business. If the boss is a crazy bitch, then she hires more crazy people, and she keeps everybody else crazy. Nikolaos was that kind of Master of the City. Anita killed her to save all of us, but it was you that took control of the city and made everything work better than it had ever worked. You had managed all the vampire businesses in town for years. You’d been the financial leader all along.”
    “Thank you,
mon ami
.”
    “No, all of the wereanimal leaders think things are a thousand times better with you in charge.”
    Jean-Claude bowed just from the neck. “I have done my best.”
    “You have, you really have, and so has Anita. The only one that hasn’t helped secure our base of power is me. I’ve spent the last few years alternating tightening my grip on the wolves like a tyrant, and letting go of so much control I was practically forcing some of my dominant wolves to challenge me for leadership. I’ve apologized to Sylvie for that. She’s my second-in-command, and she’s earned it putting up with me.”
    I hadn’t seen him in nearly four months, and now he was sitting there saying things I’d given up on hearing. It was all too good to be true. I must have tensed, because Asher began to stroke the back of my hand with his other hand as he held me.
    “I have longed for you to understand some of this, Richard,” Jean-Claude said, “but I admit I had given up.”
    “Some of the other wereanimal leaders had an intervention, I guess you could call it. They told me that I was endangering them all. That by crippling the best Master of the City they’d ever had, I was hurting everyone. I reminded Rafael that his biggest taboo for all his wererats had been that they didn’t feed Nikolaos, so how could he let his rats be food for you.”
    Richard looked down, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “Rafael said, ‘Nikolaos demanded I give her my people. Jean-Claude never asked, I offered, because every