Lover Reborn

trusted.”

Across the table, John looked like someone had goosed him in the ass, especially as Layla blushed.

“Come on.” Qhuinn took a pull off the black and tan. “It’s obvious this is about a male, and John won’t say a thing.”

John looked over at her and signed; then flashed Qhuinn the bird.

“He says, duh, he’s a mute,” Qhuinn translated. “And if you don’t know what that final gesture was, I’m not going to be the one to tell you.”

Layla laughed and picked up her fork, cracking the hard top of the crème brûlée. “Well, I’ve been waiting to see him again, actually.”

“So that’s why you’re hanging around?”

“Is it bad of me?”

“God, no. You’re always welcome, you know that. Except who’s the lucky guy?”

Or dead one, depending…

Layla drew in a deep, bracing breath, and took two mouthfuls of her first dessert—like the thing was a V&T. “Promise you shan’t tell a soul?”

“Cross heart, hope to die, all that shit.”

“He’s… one of your soldiers.”

Qhuinn lowered his glass to the table. “I’m sorry?”

She lifted her cup and sipped from the rim. “Remember when that fighter came into the training center back in the autumn—he’d been with you against the lessers? He was injured badly and you were taking care of him?”

As John sat up straight in alarm, Qhuinn swallowed his own case of the fucking-hells and smiled smoothly. “Oh, yeah. We remember him.”

Throe. Second lieutenant of the Band of Bastards.

Holy shit, if she thought she was into him, they had a huge problem.

“Annnnnd,” he prompted, forcing his voice to stay level. Good thing he’d put the Guinness down—he was stressing enough to crush the glass.

Then again, he supposed shit could be worse. Throe wasn’t going to be able to get anywhere near her—

“He called me to him.”

Layla started to pick at her moon pie, and good goddamn thing: He and John had both bared their fangs.

Humans, he reminded himself. They were out in public with humans.… Now was not the time for the canine display. But fuck…

“How?” he hissed—only to dial back. “I mean, you don’t have a cell phone. How’d he reach you?”

“He summoned me.” As she waved her hand like that was no big deal, he told his inner caveman to pipe down, sonny. There would be time to sort the hows out later. “I went and there was another soldier—injured badly. Oh, God, he was beaten so badly.”

Tendrils of pure panic feathered across the back of his neck and pegged him in the chest, jacking his heart rate up. No… oh, shit… no—

“I don’t understand why males are so pigheaded. I told them to bring him into the clinic, but they said he just needed to feed. He was having trouble breathing, and…” Layla fixated on the moon pie as if it were a screen, as if she were remembering every single thing that had happened. “I fed him. I wanted to care for him further, but the other soldier seemed in a hurry to take him away. He was… powerful, so powerful, even though he was hurt. And as he looked at me—I felt as though he was touching me. It was like nothing I’ve ever known before.”

Qhuinn shot a stare over to John without moving his head. “What did he look like?”

Maybe it had been one of the others. Maybe it hadn’t been—

“It was hard to tell. His face had been wounded so badly—those lessers are vicious.” She reached up to her mouth. “His eyes were blue and his hair dark… his upper lip was twisted—”

As she kept talking, Qhuinn’s hearing took a little TO.

Reaching over, he put his hand on her arm, stopping her. “Baby girl, hold up. That first soldier called you out to where?”

“It was a meadow. A field in the farmland.”

As the final pint of blood drained out of his head, John started to mouth various curse words, and damn right with all that. The idea that Layla had been out in the night, alone and undefended, with not just Throe, but the heart of the beast?

Plus… holy hell, she had fed the enemy.

“What’s wrong?” he heard her ask. “Qhuinn…? John…? Whatever is the matter?”

FIFTY-SEVEN

Across town, in the meatpacking district, Tohr outted both his black daggers in preparation to strike. Z and Phury were a mere block over from him, but there was no reason to call them—and not because he was rocking the whole death-wish shit again.

These two lessers up ahead were suffering from a fantastic case of the meanders; they were just ambling along like they had nothing better to do than wear down the soles of their boots.

The Society was overrecruiting, he thought, mining too deep into the pool of miscreant antisocials. And then once they were inducted, the SOBs weren’t getting enough training or support—

Against his side, his phone vibrated as a text came through, but he ignored it as he broke into a jog. The snow cover helped muffle the sound of his shitkickers, and thanks to the cold air blowing into him, he had no scent to give himself away—not that these fools would have noticed either.

At the last moment, however, something tipped them off and they pivoted around.

He couldn’t have asked for a better response.

He nailed them both right in the neck, ripping through their carotids, opening second mouths below their chins. As their hands shot up, he tore through the space between them and wheeled about, ready to escort them onto the ground if necessary—

Oh, but no. The pussies were already falling to their knees.

Whistling through his teeth, he signaled to the others as he outted his phone to call Butch for cleanup—

He froze. The text that had come in was from Doc Jane: I need you to come home right now.

“Autumn…?” As his brothers came skidding around the corner, he looked up. “I gotta bounce.”

Phury frowned. “What’s happened?”

“I don’t know.”

He dematerialized on the spot, ghosting to the north. Had she hurt herself? Maybe down in the clinic working? Or… fucking hell. What if she’d been out in town with Xhex and someone had aggressed on her?

As he re-formed on the steps in front of the mansion, he all but broke down the doors of the vestibule. Good thing Fritz cut the need for a carpenter by answering the inner one quick.

Tohr blew by the butler at a dead run. He was damn sure the guy was talking at him, but there was no tracking that or any other conversation. Hitting the hidden door under the stairs, he fell into a pounding gallop as he shot through the underground tunnel.

His first clue as to what was wrong came as he burst out of the supply closet and into the office.

His body flipped out, the signals from his brain cut off by interference and a change of focus that made no sense: An erection, thick and long, punched at his leathers, his head swimming with a sudden, crushing need to get to Autumn and—

“Oh, fuck… no…” The ragged sound of his voice was cut off as a scream pealed out of some room down the corridor. High-pitched and horrid, it was that of a female in incredible pain.

His body responded instantly, trembling as an overriding need struck him. He had to get to Autumn—unless