Craige shoved Dalton away from the table, and the delta reluctantly headed upstairs.
Dekker’s plate was untouched on the side table next to the chair he sat in. He hadn’t moved since they started eating, and still stared out the window now that most everyone was gone. Other than a wide field, some trees fading under the sunset, there wasn’t much to look at.
The tension creasing Dekker’s eyes suggested what held his focus had nothing to do with the scenery. Aggression, arousal, want, and self-loathing tainting the air revealing what Dekker watched, or at least played out in his head.
The scent of his emotions wasn’t a threat to Nox or Luca, but the Anubis would have reacted any other time.
Because of what Dekker was.
A dog with no leash. A dog with no master.
An abomination because he’d never died yet pumped a form of death through his veins.
The ichor was not only minuscule in quantity. It had been changed and was nothing like what dwelled in Nox.
And that’s what made Dekker dangerous.
It’s also what allowed the man to hold on to what he was, fight the creature inside him, retain some semblance of humanity. Even if he wasn’t human, he still held values.
Nox wanted to believe he was capable of the same thing, but in truth, he wasn’t. The only reason he’d ever held onto his conscience was because Koda shared his. The only reason Nox reclaimed it was because of Luca.
Without him, Nox would have only been the Anubis. Without the Anubis, he was a corpse.
With or without the Sarvari, Dekker could live, and he needed no one to remain the man he was.
At least that’s what Nox had thought, but now the energy around Dekker had shifted, rippling the air with particles, breaking and reforming, their movement erratic. A visual sign of a war building inside him.
So far, Dekker had won each battle.
“You don’t want it to happen, do you?” Nox sat on the sofa.
Dekker blinked long and slow, returning from wherever he’d gone. “I’m sorry, did you say something?”
“You don’t want to hunt him?”
Dekker’s confused expression only lasted for a couple of seconds. “No.”
“Why not?” Nox couldn’t be sure if he asked out of curiosity or morbidity?
“How can you ask me that?”
“Because I know what it’s like to be drawn to someone you think you don’t deserve.”
“I—”
“He will.” Craige walked over with a roasting pan and a fork. “As soon as he quits denying his rank and right as Grey’s first beta.”
Green filled Dekker’s eyes.
Craige stepped back. “I’m only telling the truth and you know it.”
“Giiit… owuut.” Red tinted the spit on his lips.
“It’s your duty, Dekker.”
Fabric on the recliner's arms burst into threads around Dekker’s fingers and stuffing bulged out. “I weeiill ot, teill oo ageeen.” He rolled his upper lip. Long fangs had replaced his eye teeth, his incisors sharpened.
“It’s either you or one of your brothers.”