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were almost gone, and he'd sounded keen on being the one to finish them. Sure, he was dead
now…but were there other Strigoi out there with the same idea?
I shook my head. I couldn't worry about that. Not today. I still needed to recover from
everything else. Soon, though. Soon I'd have to deal with this.
I didn't even know if our practice was still on but went to the locker room anyway. After
changing into practice clothes, I headed down into the gym and found Dimitri in a supply room,
reading one of the Western novels he loved. He looked up at my entrance. I'd seen little of him
in these last few days and had figured he was busy with Tasha.
"I thought you might come by," he said, putting a bookmark between the pages.
"It's time for practice."
He shook his head. "No. No practice today. You still need to recover."
"I've got a clean bill of health. I'm good to go." I pushed as much patented Rose Hathaway
bravado into my words as I could.
Dimitri wasn't falling for any of it. He gestured to the chair beside him. "Sit down, Rose."
I hesitated only a moment before complying. He moved his own chair close to mine so that we
sat directly across from each other. My heart fluttered as I looked into those gorgeous dark
eyes.
"No one gets over their first kill…kills…easily. Even with Strigoi…well, it's still technically
taking a life. That's hard to come to terms with. And after everything else you went through …"
He sighed, then reached out and caught my hand in his. His fingers were exactly like I
remembered, long and powerful, calloused with years of training. "When I saw your
face…when we found you in that house…you can't imagine how I felt."
I swallowed. "How … how did you feel?"
"Devastated … grief-stricken. You were alive, but the way you looked … I didn't think you'd
ever recover. And it tore me apart to think of that happening to you so young." He squeezed my