Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood #7)(177)

“Half brother,” Rehv cut in tightly.

“—however, this treason with the lesser I cannot allow. In truth, I am not unimpressed with your resourcefulness, given that I rescinded my bequest of the throne to you. But I am not swayed by my former adoration. You underestimated me, and for that disrespect, I shall render a punishment consistent with your wants and desires.”

The king nodded, and on a sudden instinct, Rehv wheeled around. Too late. A symphath with a raised sword was right behind him, the guy’s arm already in midswing—and although the blade wasn’t in the lead, that was only a marginal improvement as the hilt of the damn thing caught Rehv right on the top of the skull.

The impact was the second explosion of the night, and unlike the first, this time he was not standing after all the light and the noise faded.





FIFTY-NINE




Ehlena was still wide-awake at ten a.m. Stuck inside by daylight, she paced around her bedroom in a huddle with her arms around herself, and her socks doing little to keep her feet warm enough.

Then again, she was so cold on the inside, she could have been wearing a pair of George Foreman Grills and still been chilly. Shock seemed to have reset her core temperature, her inner dial pointing to Refrigerator instead of Normal.

Across the hallway, her father slept soundly, and every once in a while, she ducked into his room to check on him. Part of her wished he would wake up, because she wanted to ask him about Rehm and Montrag and bloodlines and…

Except it was better to leave him out of it. Getting him all riled up over what could well be nothing was the last thing either of them needed. Sure, she’d gone through the manuscript and found those names, but it had been a single mention among a lot of relatives. Besides, what her father recalled wasn’t material. It was what Saxton could prove.

God only knew what was going to come of it.

Ehlena stopped in the middle of her room, abruptly too tired to keep up the constant walking. Not a good plan, though. The instant she fell still, her mind shifted to Rehv, so she resumed circling on her cold feet. Boy, she wouldn’t wish anyone dead, but she was almost glad Montrag had passed and created a wild distraction with all the will stuff. Without it, she would be losing her mind right now, she was quite sure.

Rehv…

As she dragged her tired body around the end of her bed, her eyes went downward. Lying on the duvet, in nearly the same peaceful, quiet repose as her father, was the manuscript he’d written. She thought of all that he had put on the pages and knew exactly what he meant now. He’d been duped and double-crossed much in the way she had, led astray by appearances of honesty and trustworthiness because he himself wasn’t capable of behaving with the kind of base calculation and cruelty others were. Same for her. Could she ever rely on her ability to read people again?

Paranoia tumbled her mind and her gut. Where was the truth in Rehv’s lies? Had there been any? As images of him flickered before her eyes, she probed her memories, wondering where the divide was between fact and fiction. She needed to know more…. Trouble was, the only one who could fill in the picture was a guy she was never, ever going to get near again.

Contemplating a future full of relentless, unanswered questions, she brought shaking hands to her face and dragged her hair back. Holding the stuff hard, she pulled at it as if she could yank all the spinning, crazy thoughts out of her head.

Christ, what if Rehv’s deception was the equivalent of her father’s financial ruin? The thing that took her over the edge into madness?

And this was the second time a male had shown her up, wasn’t it. Her fiancé had done something similar—the only difference being that he had lied to everyone else except her.

You’d have thought she’d learned her lesson about trust thanks to her first trip through the park. But evidently not.

Ehlena stopped pacing, waiting for…hell, she didn’t know, her head to explode or something.

It didn’t. And no luck on the cognitive weeding with all her hair pulling, either. All that was getting her was a headache and a Vin Diesel ’do.

Turning away from the bed, she saw her laptop.

With a curse, she walked across the shallow space and sat down in front of the Dell. Dropping the death grip on her hair, she put her fingertip on the mouse pad and killed the screen saver.

Internet Explorer. Favorites: www.CaldwellCourierJournal.com.

What she needed was a dose of concrete reality. Rehv was the past, and the future was not about some slick lawyer with a bright idea. Right now, the only thing she could trust was her job search: If Saxton and his papers fell through, she and her father were out on the street in less than a month unless she found employment.

And there was nothing false or misleading about that.

As the CCJ’s Web site loaded, she told herself that she was not her father, and that Rehv was a male she had been involved with for all of, what…a matter of days? Yes, he had lied to her. But he was a flashy-dressing, supersexy player, and in retrospect, she shouldn’t have put any faith in him in the first place. Especially given what she already knew about males.

His bad, and her mistake. And although the realization that she’d been seduced into stupidity didn’t make her pick up her pom-poms and cheer, the idea that there was an internal logic, even if it sucked, helped her feel a little less crazy—

Ehlena frowned and leaned in close to the screen. On the splash page of the Web site was a picture of a bombed-out building. The headline read: Explosion Levels Local Club. In smaller font beneath there was: ZeroSum latest casualty in drug war?