Lover Mine

her hellren entered the bedchamber, and for a moment, Darius worried that he had made a mistake.

But the young must have let out a sound, because the female’s head suddenly snapped around.

As she beheld the bundle that was presented to her, her mouth fell open, confusion and then awe filtering through her lovely features. Abruptly, she cast the coverlet from her arms and reached for the babe. Her hands were shaking so badly, her hellren had to place the young against her heart... but she held her newborn daughter in place all by herself.

’Twas the wind which made Darius’s eyes water. Verily, ’twas but the wind.

As he brushed over his face with his palm, he told himself that all was well and how it should be... even if he felt a mourning within his breast.

Behind him, his charger let out a roar and reared up against the hold on his reins, his massive hooves pounding against the earth. At the sound, the female in the bedchamber looked up with alarm and cradled her precious gift closely, as if she needed to protect the babe.

Darius wheeled away and blindly jogged over to his steed. With a leap, he was up on the back of the great beast, taking control of the animal, harnessing the power and rage that had been bred into its every muscle and bone.

“We shall go unto Devon,” Darius said, needing a purpose more than he needed breath or heartbeat. “There are reports of lessers.”

“Aye.” Tohrment looked back at the house. “But are you... of a proper spirit to fight now?”

“ The war waits for no male to be of sound mind.” Indeed, at times ’twas better to be in lunacy.

Tohrment nodded. “Onward to Devon, then.”

Darius gave his stallion all the head it wanted and the warhorse burst forth from its enforced halt, galloping off into the woods, tearing o’er the ground. The wind in Darius’s face cast his tears away, but did naught to cure the ache in his chest.

He wondered as he rode off back to the war whether he would see the babe again—but he knew the answer. There was no way their paths would cross. How could they? In what manner of life’s twists and turns could they find themselves united once more?

Verily, it defied destiny, did it not.

Oh, the wee one. Ill begotten. Ne’er to be forgotten.

E’er to have a piece of his heart.

SEVENTY-THREE

Later Xhex would reflect that good things, like bad, came in threes.

She’d just never had that particular experience before... not with the three thing, but with the “good” part.

Thanks to John Matthew’s blood and Doc Jane’s handiwork, she was up and around the night after the rollout with Lash, and she knew she was back to her normal self because she’d put her cilices on again. And trimmed her hair. And been to her house on the Hudson River to get clothes and weapons.

And spent about... four hours making love with John.

She’d also met with Wrath and it looked like she had a new job: The great Blind King had invited her to come fight with the Brotherhood. In the wake of her initial shock, he’d maintained that her skills were much needed and welcome in the war—and gee, yeah, kill some lessers?

Great. Idea. She was so on board with that.

And speaking of on board, she’d moved into John’s room properly. In his closet, her leathers and her muscle shirts were hanging next to his, and their shitkickers were lined up together, and all her knives and her guns and her little toys were now locked up in his fireproof cabinet.

Their ammo was even stacked together.

Too frickin’ romantic.

So, yup, business as usual.

Except... well, except for the fact that she’d been reduced to sitting on this big bed, rubbing her sweaty palms on her leathers for, like, the last half hour. John was having a workout down in the training center before their ceremony and she was glad he was busy elsewhere.

She didn’t want him to see her nervous like this.

Because it turned out, in addition to a phobia about medical crap, there was another little glitch in her hardwiring: The idea of standing up in front of a ton of people and being the focus of attention during their mating made her want to vomit. Guess it shouldn’t have been a total surprise, though. After all, in her job as an assassin, the whole point was to remain unseen. And she’d long been an introvert by both circumstance and character.

Pushing herself back to the pillows, she leaned against the headboard, crossed her feet at the ankles, and grabbed the remote. The little black Sony number discharged its duties with admirable flair, the thing firing up the flat-screen and switching the channels until they flicked by quick as the beat of her heart.

It wasn’t just the fact that there were going to be so many witnesses to her and John’s ceremony. It was because getting hitched made her think of the way things should have been if she’d had a normal life. On nights like this, most females were getting dressed in gowns made just for the occasion and being strewn with family jewels. They were looking forward to being presented to their intended by their proud fathers, and their mothers were supposed to be sniffling now as well as when the vows were exchanged.

Xhex, on the other hand, was walking down the aisle by herself. Wearing leathers and a muscle shirt, because that was all she’d ever owned for clothes.

As the TV stations flipped before her eyes, the distance between herself and “normal” seemed as great a divide as that of history itself: There would be no recasting of the past, no editing the peaks and valleys of her story. Everything from her mixed blood, to the kindly mated couple who had raised a nightmare, to everything that had happened to her since she’d left that cottage... all of it was written in the cold stone of the past.

Never to be changed.

At least she knew that the wonderful male and female who had tried to raise her as their own had finally had a babe of their bloodline, a son who had grown up strong and mated well and given them a next generation.

All that had made the leaving of them so much easier.

But everything else in her life, save for John, had not had a happy resolution. God, maybe that was the cause of her nerves as well. This mating stuff with John was such a revelation, almost too good to be true—

She frowned and jacked upright. Then rubbed her eyes.

She couldn’t be seeing what was on the screen correctly.

It wasn’t possible... was it?

Scrambling for the right button on the remote, she turned up the volume. “... Rathboone’s ghost haunting the halls of his Civil War mansion. What secrets await our Paranormal Investigators team as they seek to uncover...”

The narrator’s voice faded from hearing as the camera drew closer and closer upon a portrait of a male with dark hair and eyes that were haunted.

Murhder.

She’d know that face anywhere.

Leaping up, she rushed at the TV—but like that was going to help?

The camera panned back to show a beautiful parlor and then shots of the grounds of a white plantation house. They were talking about some kind of live special... during which they were going to try to flush out the ghost of a Civil War abolitionist who so many maintained still roamed the halls and the grounds of where he’d once lived.

Tuning in to the commentary again, she desperately tried to catch where the mansion was located. Maybe