Lover Reborn

great he had literally exploded himself to God only knew where, shaking the subterranean foundation until it cracked.

John still didn’t know where he’d gone. But Lassiter had brought him back in bad shape.

He remained in bad shape.

Selfish though it was, John didn’t want that for himself. Tohr was half the male he had once been—and not just because he’d lost weight—and though no one would have shown pity to the guy’s face, each and every one of the fighters felt it behind closed doors.

Hard to know how much longer the Brother was going to last out there with the enemy. He was refusing to feed, so he was weakening, yet every night he went into the field, his need for revenge getting sharper and more consuming.

He was going to get himself killed. End of.

It was like triangulating the impact of a car into an oak tree: a simple matter of geometry. You just drew out the angles and trajectories and boom! There was Tohr, dead on the pavement.

Although, shit, he’d probably take his last breath with a smile, knowing he was finally going to be with his shellan.

Maybe that was why John was as stressed about the Xhex thing as he was. He was close to other people in the house, to his half sister, Beth, to Qhuinn and Blay, to the other Brothers. But Tohr and Xhex were his go-to people—and the idea of losing them both?

Fuuuuuck.

Thinking about Xhex in the field, he knew that if she was out there in those alleys, fighting the enemy, she was going to get hurt again. They all did from time to time. Most of the injuries were near misses, but you never knew when that line was going to be crossed, when a simple hand-to-hand engagement would get away from you and you’d find yourself surrounded.

It wasn’t that he doubted her or her capabilities—in spite of that potshot that had come out of his mouth tonight. It was the odds he didn’t like. Soon enough, if you rolled the dice over and over again, you were going to come up snake eyes. And in the larger scheme of things, her life was more important than one more fighter out in the field.

He should have thought about this a little more before going all, Yeah, sure, I’m tight with you fighting.…

“What are you thinking about?” she asked in the darkness.

As if what was banging through his brain had woken her up.

Rearranging himself, he put his head next to hers and shook it back and forth. But he was lying. And she probably knew it.

NINE

The following evening, Qhuinn stood in the far corner of Wrath’s study, wedged into the juncture of two pale blue walls. The room was huge, a good forty feet long and forty feet across, and it had a ceiling lofty enough to give you a nosebleed. But space was getting tight.

Then again, there were a dozen or so big people packed in around the prissy French furniture.

Qhuinn knew from the French shit. His dead-and-gone mother had liked the style, and back before he’d been disavowed from his family, he’d been yammered at ad nauseam about not sitting on her Louis-the-somethingth crap.

At least that was one area where he hadn’t been discriminated against in his own house—she’d wanted only her and his sister to park it in those delicate seats. He and his brother had not been permitted. Ever. And his father had been tolerated with a grimace, likely only because he’d paid for the stuff a couple hundred years before.

Whatever.

At least Wrath’s command central made sense. The king’s chair was as big as a car and probably weighed as much as one, its rugged yet elegant carvings marking it as the throne of the race. And the huge desk in front of him wasn’t exactly fit for a girl, either.

Tonight, and as usual, Wrath looked like the killer he was: silent, intense, deadly. Your basic anti–Avon lady. Beside him, Beth, his queen and shellan, was composed and serious. And on the other side, George, his Seeing Eye dog, was looking… well, kinda postcard-y. But then golden retrievers were like that: picturesque, pretty, and pettable.

More Donny Osmond than dark overlord.

Then again, Wrath more than made up for that one.

Abruptly, Qhuinn dropped his mismatched eyes to the Aubusson rug. He did not need to see who was standing on the far side of the queen.

Ah, hell.

His peripheral vision was working far too well tonight.

His slut of a cousin, his cocksucking, suit-wearing, Montblanc-up-the-ass cousin Saxton the Magnificent, was standing next to the queen, looking like a combination of Cary Grant and some model in a goddamn cologne ad.

Not that Qhuinn was bitter.

Because the guy was sharing Blay’s bed.

Nah.

Nope. Not at all.

The cocksucker—

With a wince, he thought maybe he should switch that insult to something a little farther away from what the two of them…

God, he couldn’t even go there. Not if he wanted to breathe.

Blay was also in the room, but the guy was staying away from his lover. He always did. Whether it was in these meetings, or outside of them, they were never closer than three feet apart.

Which was the only saving grace to living in the same house as the pair of them. Nobody ever saw them lip- locked or even holding hands.

Although… it wasn’t as if Qhuinn didn’t lie awake during the day anyway, torturing himself with all kinds of Kama Sutra shit—

The door of the study opened and Tohrment came dragging in. Man, he looked as if he’d been rolled out of a moving car on the highway, his eyes like piss holes in the snow, his body moving stiffly as he went over to stand next to John and Xhex.

At the arrival, Wrath’s voice cut through the convo, shutting everyone up. “Now that we’re all here, I’m going to can the bullshit and turn this over to Rehvenge. I got nothing good to say about any of this, so he’ll be more efficient at briefing you.”

As the Brothers got to muttering, the massive, Mohawked motherfucker plugged his cane into the floor and got to his feet. As usual, the half-breed was dressed in a black pin-striped suit—God, Qhuinn was starting to despise anything that had lapels—and a mink duster to keep him warm. With his symphath tendencies kept in control, thanks to regular hits of dopamine, his eyes were violet, and mostly un-evil.

Mostly. He really wasn’t someone you wanted as an enemy, and not just because, like Wrath, he was the leader of his people: His day job was being king of the symphath colony up north. Nights he spent here with his shellan, Ehlena, living la vida vampire. And never the twain shall meet.

It went without saying that he was a highly valuable asset to the Brotherhood.

“A number of days ago, a letter was sent out to every head of the remaining bloodlines.” He reached into the mink and took out a folded sheet of what looked to be old-fashioned parchment. “Snail mail. Handwritten. In the Old Language. Mine took a while to reach me because it went to the Great Camp up north first. No, I have no idea how they got the address, and yes, I have confirmed that everybody got one.”