Andrei didn't speak the entire drive home to his house. Loretta watched him from the corner of her eye, wondering what was going on in his head. She tried to feel his emotions through their bond but got nothing. He was either able to block her completely or he just wasn't feeling any emotions at all. She didn't know which one unsettled her the most.
He pulled up outside his house and was out of the car and around to her side before she could step out. His eyes roamed her face quickly before he slipped an arm around her waist and picked her up in his arms.
"I can walk, Andrei," she said quietly, not surprised when he ignored her completely and headed into the house. She wanted to be annoyed with him for treating her like something fragile but she was uncertain of his emotional state so she let him have his way. He appeared to need to be taking care of her.
He took her upstairs walking straight into the bathroom. "Take it off, Loretta," he said in a low voice, lowering her to the floor gently before turning to start the bath running.
The sight of her in the dead vampire's shirt was killing him. It had been necessary at the time because his clothes weren't any better so it had been pointless putting his shirt on her. But they were home now and he wanted the offending garment off her body.
He turned to see she had complied immediately and he swallowed hard against the rage that was swiftly building up inside him. Her body was marked just about everywhere. It reminded him of the night he had first met her only this time the bruises where so faded, as if they were days, instead of hours old.
He reached out and slowly traced each mark with his fingers, his touch so gentle he was barely grazing her skin. He counted them, memorised every moment of his failure.
"Andrei," she whispered softly, feeling his sorrow through their bond, which he appeared to have stopped blocking now they were safely home. "Don't do this to yourself. This isn't your fault."
His eyes met hers and there was denial in them but he didn't speak. Instead he ripped at his wrist and wrapped an arm around her, cradling her gently as he pressed it to her mouth.
Loretta suckled at his wrist, not because she really needed it to heal but because he needed the marks to be gone. Her changed DNA had healed her almost completely as it was. She knew the marks would be gone in the morning but he needed them to be gone now, so she did it for him. She could feel the tension in his big body, knew he was struggling badly with everything that had happened. They needed to talk about it but she was afraid to push him because he was so on edge she didn't think he could handle it at the moment.
Andrei held her close, brushing his lips against her hair as she healed that last little bit with the help of his blood. The marks faded completely but they were burned indelibly into his mind. He would never forget them, ever. He had promised his wolf that no one would ever hurt her again as Sandro had. He had failed her. He didn't deserve the peace of having those memories erased. He deserved to see them every day as a constant reminder of his failure.
When she had healed completely, he released her and silently finished preparing her bath, pouring in her favourite bubbly stuff that she loved so much and then picking her up and lowering her into the tub. "Relax," he whispered. "When you're finished get into bed. I'll be back soon."
"Where are you going?" she asked a hint of worry in her voice. She had no idea what he was thinking and it was concerning her a lot because he wouldn't open up to her.
"I'll shower in one of the other bathrooms," he said with a slight grimace, looking down at his bloody clothes. They weren't too bad considering the amount of killing he had done tonight but he felt defiled just having Roberto's blood on him. He picked up the shirt from the floor and left the bathroom.
Once alone, the rage he had been barely containing swept through him and he tore the shirt apart with a low, vicious growl. His talons came out as he shredded the garment furiously. His wolf had worn a shirt of someone who had hurt her. It was an outrage that she'd been put in the position of having to do so.
He satisfied his rage, tossing the fragments of the garment in the nearest bin he could find. Then he showered quickly, throwing away his own clothes too. Loretta was still in the bath when he returned to their bedroom. He dressed quickly and headed downstairs.
He knew she wouldn't have been fed when she was being held by Daniel. He was no cook but he set about fixing her something from the refrigerator. He found he couldn't stop moving. If he stopped then he would have to deal with everything that had happened and right now he couldn't do it. So he kept moving, kept himself busy taking care of his wolf. It was the only way to keep the rage at bay.
Loretta closed her eyes and rested in the bath. She could feel the turmoil racing through her mate and her heart broke for him. He was struggling so hard to deal with all the conflicting emotions running through him. She could feel his love for her pulsing through everything but the feelings of self loathing, remorse, guilt and fury were so strong that she didn't know how he was coping with them all.
She knew her own emotions must feel just as erratic to him too and probably wasn't helping him any. She had to come to terms with being kidnapped, beaten, watching her friend almost die, and believing she'd killed her own child. All that weighed down on her soul and she wanted to surrender to the awfulness of it all but she couldn't. If she did so, she had no idea how Andrei would react to it.
He had forgiven her for shifting. He had told her so at the chambers but she hadn't forgiven herself for doing so. How could she? She hadn't known that her child would survive the shift. She had been thinking like a Were at the time, completely forgetting that her baby would have some of Andrei's vampire genetics and could possibly survive the shift.
Rightly or wrongly she had made the decision to shift to protect their secret, to protect Andrei and her pack. It was something she was going to have to live with for the rest of her life. She could deal with the kidnapping and the beatings. It hadn't been any worse than what Sandro had done to her and she had survived that. She was tough as old boots, just as she'd told Caleb. But shifting when she knew she was pregnant? That was unforgivable.
She bit back a muffled sob, her hands resting on her stomach under the water. "I'm so sorry," she whispered forlornly. "It wasn't that I didn't want you, little one. Don't ever think that I didn't want you."
