Lover Reborn (54 page)

“Waste not pretty words. Where is your fellow fighter?”

Throe took out his phone and texted Zypher. The response he received was immediate—and the time line for arrival ridiculously short. Unless,
of course, the soldier had already gotten Xcor into the vehicle and was prepared to start driving.

Such a male of worth he was.

As Throe put his cell back into his pocket, he focused on the Chosen once more. “He is coming this very moment. He must be transported by vehicle, as he is not well.”

“And then we’ll take him to the training center?”

No. Not hardly. Not ever. “You shall be enough for him. He is weakened from too little feeding more than he is injured.”

“Shall we wait here, then?”

“Aye. We wait here.” There was a long pause, and she began to fidget as if uncomfortable. “Forgive me, Chosen, if I continue to stare.”

“Oh, no need to apologize. I’m just awkward because it is rare that I hold someone’s rapt attention.”

Now he was the one recoiling. Then again, the Brothers no doubt treated any male in her presence as they had him.

“Well, permt me to persist,” he murmured gently. “For you are all I can see.”

Q
huinn emerged from the hidden door under the grand stairway at around six p.m. that evening. His head was still a little fuzzy, his footfalls more shuffle than step, his body aching all over. But, hey, he was upright, he was mobile, and he was alive.

Things could be worse.

Plus he had a purpose. When Doc Jane had come in to check on him just now, she’d told him that Wrath had called a meeting of the Brotherhood. Of course, she’d also informed him that he was off rotation and had to stay in bed in the clinic—but like he was going to miss the postgame wrap-up on what had gone down at Assail’s? Negs.

She’d done her best to persuade him otherwise, naturally, but in the end, she’d dialed up and told the king to expect one more.

As he came around the carved post of the banister, he could hear the Brothers talking on the second floor, those voices loud and deep, overriding one another. Clearly, Wrath hadn’t called shit to order yet—which meant there was time to grab a drink of the alcohol variety before going up.

Because, duh, that was precisely what you needed when you were rocky on your pins to begin with.

After some careful assessment, he decided that the distance to the library was shorter than that to the billiards room. Old-manning his way to the oak doors, he froze as soon as he got to the archway.

“Holy hell…”

There were at least fifty books of the Old Law crowding the floor, and that wasn’t the half of it. Over at the trestle table beneath the leaded-glass windows, more leather-bound volumes had been cracked open and were lying with their guts exposed like soldiers shot dead on a battlefield.

Two computers. A laptop. Legal pads.

A creak from up high lifted his eyes. Saxton was on the rolling teak ladder, reaching for a book on the top shelf by the ceiling molding.

“Good evening to you, cousin,” the guy said from his lofty perch.

Just the male he needed to see. “What’s doing with all this?”

“You’re looking rather well recovered.” The ladder creaked again as the male descended with his prize. “All and sundry have been worried.”

“Nah, I’m fine.” Qhuinn went over to liquor bottles lined up on the marble-topped bombé chest. “So what are you working on?”

Do not think of him with Blay. Do not think of him with Blay. Do not think of him—

“I didn’t know you were a sherry man.”

“Huh?” Qhuinn glanced down at what he’d poured himself. Fuck. In the midst of the self-lecture, he’d picked up the wrong bottle. “Oh, you know… I’m good with it.”

To prove the point, he tossed back the hooch—and nearly choked as the sweetness hit his throat.

He served himself another only so he didn’t look like the kind of idiot who wouldn’t know what he was dishing out into his own glass.

Okay, gag. The second was worse than the first.

From out of the corner of his eye, he watched Saxton settle in at the table, the brass lamp in front of him casting the most perfect glow over his face. Shiiiiiit, he looked like something out of a Ralph Lauren ad, with his buff-colored tweed jacket and his pointed pocket square and that button-down/sweater vest combo keeping his fucking liver cozy.

Meanwhile, Qhuinn was sporting hospital scrubs, bare feet. And sherry.

“So what’s the big project?” he asked again.

Saxton glanced over with a strange light in his eyes. “It’s a game changer, as you might say.”

“Ohhhh, supersecret king stuff.”

“Indeed.”

“Well, good luck with it. Looks like you’ve got enough to keep you busy for a while.”

“I’ll be at this for a month, maybe more.”

“What are you doing, rewriting the whole goddamn law?”

“Just a part of it.”

“Man, you make me love my job. I’d rather get shot at than do paperwork.” He poured himself a third cocksucking sherry and then tried not to look too much like a zombie as he headed for the door. “Have fun with it.”

“And you with your endeavors, dear cousin. I would be up there as well, but I have been given no time to accomplish too much.”

“You’ll get through it.”

“Indeed. I will.”

As Qhuinn nodded and then hit the stairs, he thought… Well, at least that exchange hadn’t been too bad. He hadn’t imagined anything X-rated. Or entertained visions of beating the motherfucker until he bled out all over his nice threads.

Progress. Yay.

Up on the second story, the double doors of the study were wide-open, and he paused when he got a gander at the size of the crowd. Holy crap… everyone was there. As in not just the Brothers and the fighters, but the
shellans
… and the staff?

There were literally forty people in the room, packed in like sardines around the pansy-ass furniture.

Then again, maybe it did make sense. After that goddamn sharpshooter attack, the king was back behind his desk, sitting on his throne, all but risen from the dead. Kind of warranted a celebration, he supposed.

Before stepping into the fray, he went to take another haul of the sherry, but one whiff of the shit in his nose and his goiter went no-go. Leaning to the side, he tossed the stuff out into a potted plant, left the glass on the hall table and—

The instant they saw him come through the door, everyone shut up. Sure as if there were a remote to the room and someone had muted the picture.

Qhuinn froze. Glanced down at himself in case he was flashing something indecent. Looked behind him in the event there was someone important coming up the stairs.

Then he looked around the room, wondering what he had missed—

In the great, yawning absence of sound and movement, Wrath braced himself against his queen’s arm and grunted as he rose to his feet. He had a bandage around his neck, and he looked a little pale, but he was alive… and wearing an expression so intense, Qhuinn felt like he was being physically enveloped.

And then the king put the hand that bore the black diamond ring of the race to his own chest, right in the middle, directly over his heart… and slowly, gingerly, with the help of his
shellan
, bent over at the waist.

To bow at Qhuinn.

As all the blood drained out of Qhuinn’s head, and he wondered what the fuck the most important vampire on the planet was doing, someone started clapping slowly.

Clap.
Clap. Clap!

Others joined in, until the entire assembly, from Phury and Cormia, to Z and Bella and baby Nalla, to Fritz and his staff… to Vishous and Payne and their mates, to Butch and Marissa and Rehv and Ehlena… were clapping for him with tears unshed in their eyes.

Qhuinn tucked his arms around himself as his mismatched stare bounced anywhere and everywhere.

Until it settled on Blaylock.

The redhead was over to the right-hand side, clapping like the rest of them, his blue eyes luminous with emotion.

Then again, he would know how much something like this meant to a fucked-up kid with a congenital defect whose family hadn’t wanted him around for the embarrassment and social disgrace.

He would know how hard the gratitude was to accept.

He would know how much Qhuinn just wanted to escape from the attention… even as he was touched beyond measure at this honor he did not deserve.

In the midst of all he couldn’t handle, he just looked at his old, dear friend.

As always, Blay was the anchor who kept him from being swept away.

As Xhex tooled up through the
mhis
on her bike, she found it hard to believe she was making the trip to the mansion under royal command: Wrath himself had extended the “invite”—and as much of an iconoclast as she was, she wasn’t about to shut down a direct order from the king.

Man, she was nauseous.

When she’d first gotten the voice mail, she’d assumed that John was dead, having been killed out on the field. A quick Hail Mary text to him had been replied to immediately, however. Short and sweet. Just
Will u come @ nightfall?

That was all she got back; even after she said yes, and had expected something further from him.

So yeah, she felt like throwing up because this was probably John putting an end to them officially. The vampire equivalent of divorce was rare, but the Old Laws did provide for an out legally. And naturally, for people at John’s social level—namely, that of the blooded son of a Black Dagger Brother—the king was the only one who could give them dispensation to split.

This had to be the end.

Shit, she actually was going to throw up.

Pulling around in front of the mansion, she didn’t park the Ducati at the tail end of the orderly row of muscle cars, SUVs, and station wagons. Nope—she left the bike right at the base of the stairs. If this was a royal divorce decree, she was going to help John put an end to their misery, and then she was…

Well, she was going to call Trez and tell him she couldn’t come to work. Then she was going to lock herself in her cabin and cry like a girl. For a week or two…

So stupid. This whole thing between them was so fucking stupid. But she couldn’t change him, and he couldn’t change her, so what the hell did they have left? It had been months since they’d had anything but distance and awkard silence between them. And the trend wasn’t reversing itself; the black hole was just getting deeper and darker.…

As she mounted the steps to the grand double doors, she was breaking in half, shattering sure as if her bones had turned brittle and were collapsing under the weight of her muscles. But she kept going, because that was what fighters did. They pushed on past the pain and took out their objective—and sure as shit she and John were killing something tonight, something that had been so precious and rare she was ashamed of them both for not finding a way to nurture it in the midst of the cold, hard world.

Inside the vestibule, she didn’t step up immediately to the camera’s eye. Never a prepper-upper kind of female, she nonetheless found herself brushing fingertips under her eyes and shuffling a palm over her short hair. A quick straightening of her leather jacket—and her spine—and she told herself to suck it up.

She had gotten through legions of things worse than this.

Through pride alone, she could marshal some self-control for the next ten or fifteen minutes.

She had the rest of her natural life to lose her goddamn composure in private.

With a curse, she hit the summons button and stepped back, forcing herself to look into the camera. As she waited, she straightened her jacket again. Stomped her boots. Double-checked that her guns were where they’d been holstered.

Played with her hair.

Okay, what the hell.

Leaning to the side, she gave that button another stab. The
doggen
here had high standards. You rang that bell, and it was answered within moments.

On the third try, she debated how many more times she was going to have to beg for—

The vestibule’s inner door was thrown wide and Fritz looked mortified. “My lady! I am so sorry—”

A loud cacophony drowned out whatever else the butler said, and she frowned as she looked past the old male. Up over the
doggen
’s white head, at the top of the grand staircase, there was a tremendous crowd milling around and drifting off, as if a party had just broken up.

Maybe someone had just told everybody they were getting mated.

Good luck with that, she thought.

“Big announcement?” she asked as she stepped through into the foyer and braced herself for someone else’s happy news.

“More a recognition.” The butler put his weight, such as it was, into shutting the door. “I shall allow the others to inform you.”

Ever the dutiful butler—discreet to his very marrow.

“I’m here to see—”

“The Brotherhood. Yes, I know.”

Xhex frowned. “It was Wrath, I thought.”

“Well, yes, of course the king as well. Please come up to the royal study.”

As she crossed the mosaic floor and started her ascent, she nodded at the folks coming down… the
shellans
, the staff she knew, the people she had lived with for a mere matter of weeks, but who had become, in a short time, a sort of family to her.

She was going to miss them almost as much as John.

“Madam?” the butler asked. “Are you all right?”

Xhex forced a smile and guessed she had probably let out some kind of curse. “Fine, just fine.”

When she got to Wrath’s study, there was so much approval in the air, she practically had to push the shit aside to walk into the room: The Brothers were all thick chested with pride… except for Qhuinn, who was blushing so deeply he’d turned himself into a Roman candle.

John, however, appeared reserved—not looking at her at all, but at some middle ground right in front of himself.

From behind the desk, Wrath focused on her. “And now on to business,” the king announced.

As the doors shut behind her, she had no fucking clue what was doing. John still refused to even glance at her… and, shit, the king had a wound on his neck—assuming he hadn’t decided that white gauze at the throat was some kind of fashion statement.