Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last (72 page)

Purity and all that.

Blah, blah, blah.

Once she was hitched, however, she was free to come out to society, free to live her life—within

the s’Hisbe. The sad-sack motherfucker who married the bitch? He took her place inside the palace

walls, doing whatever the hell she wanted, when she wanted—assuming he wasn’t worshipping at her

mother’s feet at the moment.

Yeah, that was a party.

And they thought he should feel honored to strap that yoke on?

Really.

He’d turned his body into a garbage dump in the last decade, fucking all those humans—and what

was truly whacked? He wished that all those pesky Homo Sapiens diseases were the kind of thing he

could pick up. No-go on that one. He’d had as much unsafe sex as he could with the other species and he was still healthy as a horse.

Pity.

“Trez?” iAm straightened. “Trez? Talk to me. Where you at?”

Trez stared at his brother, memorizing that proud, intelligent face and those bottomless,

penetrating eyes.

“I’m right here,” he murmured. “See?”

He held out his hands and did a little circle in his bare feet, in his robe, in his spacey, fuzzy, post-migraine haze.

“What’s going on in that mind of yours?” iAm demanded.

“Nothing. I think it’s great what you did. I’ma go pack up and get ready. They sending a car or

something?”

iAm narrowed his stare, but he did answer. “Yeah. A butler named Fred? Or was it Foster?”

“I’ll be ready.”

Trez walked off, the dregs of that headache draining from him as he looked into the future…and

really worried about this one last tie of his.

But this move was a good thing. iAm was right: He had been fooling himself these last few years,

aware that the princess was aging, and time was passing, and his day of reckoning was fast

approaching.

There were things you could put off. This was not one of them.

Fucking hell, maybe he was going to have to disappear. Even if it killed him.

Besides, if his brother was with Rehv in the king’s household? iAm was going to have the kind of

support he was going to need if Trez up and got ghost.

And maybe, after the way shit was going?

The guy would be relieved to get rid of him.

SIXTY-NINE

Qhuinn’s whole life took another corkscrew about fifteen hours after he lost his virginity.

Later, he would decide that the comes-in-threes thing might be true. When the shit went

down, though, all he wanted to do was live through it….

Sometime during the hours of the day, he and Blay had woken up, split up, gone their

separate ways.

Qhuinn would have preferred that they return to the main house together, but he’d had to stop by

Luchas’s room, and Blay had been anxious to get back to his place and shower. And in a way, it

hadn’t been all that bad, because Qhuinn had had a chance to check on Layla as well.

When it came to his brother, and the Chosen, all was quiet on both fronts: The pair of them had

been asleep in their respective beds—Luchas’s color was better, and for the first time, when Qhuinn had walked into Layla’s bedroom? He had sensed the pregnancy: The hormone wave had hit him as

soon as he’d entered, and he’d stopped dead, it was so strong.

Which had been really good.

What he hadn’t been so happy about had been going by Blay’s door, and wanting to knock and

duck inside—and go back to sleep.

Instead, he’d ended up within his own four walls all by his lonesome.

In bed. In the dark. Drifting in and out of REM-landia for the two hours he had before First Meal

was served.

So when his door was thrown wide and a lineup of tall males in hooded black robes came filing

in, his past and his present collided, the two becoming interchangeable—such that the attack by the Honor Guard jumped up out of the graveyard of his memory and landed right in his room at the

mansion.

Unsure whether he was dreaming or any of this was real, his first thought was that he was glad

Blay wasn’t with him. The guy had already found him dead at the side of the road once. No one

needed a replay on that.

His second was that he was going to take out as many as he could before they finally finished the

job on him.

With a battle cry, Qhuinn exploded out of his bed, his naked body going on the attack with such

power, he actually plowed over the first two males. Spinning with his legs, he kicked and punched at anything that came at him, and there was a brief satisfaction as his targets cursed and jumped out of range—

Something locked around his chest from behind, and swung him around with such force, his feet

popped off the ground and flew in a crazy circle—

Hellllllllllo, wall.

The impact was a three-point bulletin to his fight-back bright idea, his face, torso, and hips

slamming into the plaster so hard, he no doubt left a cartoon-style 3-D rep of himself on the shit.

Instantly, he palmed the flat plane, prepared to shove his way off—

The grip that latched onto his nape and held him in place might as well have been steel. There

was literally no give in the flesh and bone, even as he strained, his body refusing to be dominated—

“Chill, asswipe. Just fucking
chill
before I’m forced to hurt you.”

The sound of Vishous’s voice made no fucking sense.

And then abruptly, from out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that a ring had formed around him, all those black robes surrounding him, just like that grip on his neck.

But they were not attacking.

“Just relax,” V said into his ear. “Breathe for me, come on, now—just breathe easy. No one’s

going to hurt you.”

The talking helped, that cool, calm voice reaching through the fight-or-flight response and turning down the volume on his panic’s roar.

In the aftermath, Qhuinn started to shake, his muscles processing the adrenaline. “Vishous?”

“Yup. It’s me, buddy. You need to keep breathing.”

“Who…else?”

“Rhage.”

“Butch.”

“Phury.”

“Zsadist.”

“Tohr.”

The voices all matched the names, those deep, serious, no-bullshit tones sinking into his brain,

helping to ground himself in a reality that didn’t involve the past.

And then the last one was the final rung of the ladder that got him out of that mental tailspin and back to what was real. “Wrath.”

Qhuinn went to jerk his head toward the king, but the impulse got him nowhere.

“I’m going to let you go, buddy, okay?” V said. “You gonna mind your manners?”

“Yeah.”

“On three. One. Two. Three—”

Vishous leaped back and landed in a hand-to-hand combat pose: arms up, fists ready, stance

stable. In spite of the fact that the Brother’s face was covered by the hood, Qhuinn could just picture the expression: No doubt that if Qhuinn made any move, he’d be reintroduced to the wall—and that

acquaintance had already been well and truly made, fuck him very much.

He felt about six inches flatter.

With a curse, Qhuinn turned around slowly, keeping his hands where the Brotherhood could see

them. “Are you kicking me out of the house?”

He had no clue what the hell he’d done, but with his history of pissing people off—on purpose

and by default? Could be anything.

“No, you idiot,” V said with a laugh.

Facing the lineup of hooded, solemn figures, he searched where the faces were, making contact,

reminding himself that these were the guys he had fought with side by side, that they’d always had his back, that they’d worked together.

So what the hell was going—

The third figure from the left lifted his arm, a long finger extending out and pointing to the dead center of Qhuinn’s chest.

Instantly, Qhuinn was back in the carcass of the Cessna, the in-flight drama over, Zsadist alive

and well, the goal reached…that male singling him out as he was now.

In the Old Language, Wrath said,
“You shall be asked a question. You shall be asked it only

once. Your answer shall stand the test of time, extending out from this moment unto your bloodline
forever more. Are you prepared to be asked.”

Qhuinn’s heart began to thunder. Eyes bouncing around, he couldn’t believe that this was…

Except…how was it possible? Based on his bloodlines and his defect, it wasn’t legal for

someone like him to—

From out of nowhere, the image of Saxton working in that library for all those nights hit him.

Holy…fuck.

So many questions: Why him? Why now? What about John Matthew, whose chest already,

magically, bore the marking of the Brotherhood?

As his mind raced, he knew he had to answer, but shit, he couldn’t—

With a sudden clarity, he thought of his daughter, picturing that image that he’d seen in the door to the Fade.

Qhuinn looked at each of the hoods again. How ironic, he thought. Nearly two years ago, an

Honor Guard of black robes had been sent to him to make sure he knew his family didn’t want him.

And now, here these males were, come to draw him into a different kind of fold—that was every bit

as strong as that of blood.

“Hell, yeah,” he said. “Ask me.”

Blay’s first clue that something big was up was the sound of footfalls going by his room: He was in front of his mirror, shaving, when he heard them come down the hall of statues, heavy, repetitive—a lot of them.

Had to be the Brotherhood.

Then, as he bent over the sink to rinse the residual shaving cream off his cheeks, something hard

dropped to the floor next door—or was thrown at a wall. In what sure as shit seemed like Qhuinn’s

room.

Cranking off the hot and cold mix, he snagged a towel and wrapped it around his hips as he

jogged out of his suite and headed down to—

Blay skidded to a halt. Qhuinn’s room was dark, but the light from the corridor shone in…on a

circle of black robes that surrounded the guy. As he was held face-first against the wall.

Blay’s only thought was that a second Honor Guard had come for the fighter—even though he

knew damn well that it was the Brotherhood under all those robes. Had to be, right?

Vishous’s voice solved that one, the male’s words slow and even.

Then Qhuinn was released. As he turned around, he was white as a sheet, shaking as he stood

naked in the center of that circle of hooded figures.

Wrath cut through the silence, the king’s deep baritone filling the darkness.
“You shall be asked a
question. You shall be asked it only once. Your answer shall stand for the test of time, extending
out from this moment unto your bloodline forever more. Are you prepared to be asked.”

Blay put his dagger hand up to his mouth as the thing fell open. This couldn’t be…could it? They

were inducting him into the Black Dagger Brotherhood?

Instantly, he put it all together—Saxton working for all those months; Qhuinn’s acts of heroism;

John getting informed that the guy was no longer his
ahstrux nohtrum
.

Wrath must have changed the Old Laws.

Holy fucking
shit
.

“Hell, yeah. Ask me.”

Blay had to smile as he ducked away and went back to his room. Leave it to Qhuinn to be blunt.

As he shut his door, he stayed against it, waiting. Moments later, those heavy footsteps came

again, filing past his room, going down the hall, disappearing…changing history forever.

In all the aeons of the Brotherhood, there had never been anyone inducted who wasn’t the son of a

Brother and a female of Chosen blood. Qhuinn was technically an aristocrat —even with him

forsaken by his family, and with his “defect,” his lineage was what it was. But he didn’t have the kind of DNA credentials—or the warrior name—that the others did.

And yet, assuming he lived through the ceremony, he would return to the mansion as a male among

equals, forsaken no more.

It was good that Luchas was alive to see this. That was going to matter.

Blay got dressed, and when he checked his phone, he saw the group text that had gone out from

Tohr, saying that no one was going out into the field tonight—and that they were getting a pair of new roommates: The Shadows were coming to stay at the mansion.

Cool. Given the disquiet with the aristocracy, and that attempt on Wrath’s life? Nothing better

than having those two killers under the roof. Coupled with Lassiter’s antics, that meant the king had a trio of guys with extra skills protecting him.

With any luck, Trez and iAm would be permanent fixtures.

Leaving his room, he jogged down the stairs and was not surprised to find the
doggen
running around, setting up a feast.

How long was it going to take, he wondered.