Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood #7)(181)

He knew every shift and slide, all the scents, even the way she breathed.

With her, he remembered everything.

Leaning to the side, he picked the Jack up off the floor, as if by some miracle the alkie elves had refilled the f*cker. No such luck—

The scream that lit off next door was the kind someone made when they’d been stabbed deep and hard, and the tearing screech sobered him like he’d been splashed with an ice bath. John grabbed his gun, shot out of bed, and hit the floor running, throwing open the door and racing into the hall of statues. On both sides of his room, Qhuinn and Blay did the same, making the same rushed, ready-to-fight appearance he did.

Down at the end of the corridor, the Brotherhood was standing in the doorway of Zsadist and Bella’s quarters, their faces dark and sad.

“No!” Bella’s voice was loud as the scream had been. “No!”

“I’m so sorry,” Wrath said.

From the knot of Brothers, Tohr looked over at John. The male’s face was white and drawn, his stare hollow.

What happened? John signed.

Tohr’s hands moved slowly. Rehvenge is dead.

John took a lot of deep breaths. Rehvenge…dead?

“Jesus Christ,” Qhuinn muttered.

From the doorway of her bedroom, Bella’s sobs tumbled into the hall, and John wanted to go to her. He remembered what that pain was like. He’d been in those horrible, numbing shoes when Tohr had taken off, right after the Brotherhood had done exactly what they were doing now—reporting the worst news that anyone could hear.

He’d screamed the same as Bella had. Wept the same as she was now.

John glanced back to Tohr. The Brother’s eyes burned as if there were things he wanted to say, hugs he wanted to offer, regrets he wanted to make right.

For a split second, John almost went to the guy.

But then he turned away and stumbled into his room, shutting the door and locking it. As he sat down on the bed, he braced the weight of his shoulders against his hands and let his head hang down. Banging around in his brain was the chaos of the past, but at the center of his chest was a single, overriding word: No.

He couldn’t go there with Tohr again. He’d been through the wringer too many times. Besides, he wasn’t a child anymore, and Tohr never had been his father, so that whole daddy-save-me shit didn’t apply to the two of them.

The closest they were going to get was fighter-to-fighter.

Shoving the Tohr crap out of his head, he thought of Xhex.

She was hurting right now. Badly.

He hated that there was nothing he could do for her.

Except then he reminded himself that even if there were, she wouldn’t have wanted what he had to offer. She’d made that perfectly clear.





Xhex sat on the twin bed in her place on the Hudson River, head hanging low, the weight of her shoulders braced against her hands. Next to her, on the thin blanket, was the letter iAm had given her. After taking it out of its envelope, she’d read it once, refolded it along its pristine creases, and retreated into this small room.

Shifting her head to the side, she looked out through frosted windows to the sluggish, murky river. It was bitterly cold today, the temperature slowing the current of the water down and icing up the rocky shores.

Rehv was such a bastard.

When she’d sworn to him that she would take care of a female, she hadn’t thought that vow through well enough. In the letter, he called her on the pledge and identified the female as herself: She was not to come for him, nor endanger the life of the princess in any way. Furthermore, in the event she did anything like that on his behalf, he would not accept her help and would choose to stay in the colony no matter what actions she took in the name of saving him. Finally, he directed that should she go against his wishes and her word, iAm was to follow her to the colony, thus endangering the life of the Shadow.

Mother. Fucker.

It was the perfect endgame, worthy of a male like Rehv: She might be tempted to can her vow, and she might think there was a way to talk sense into her boss, but she already had the burden of Muhrder’s life around her neck, and now Rehvenge’s. Adding iAm’s to the list would kill her.

Plus Trez would go after his brother. Making it an even four.

Caged by the situation, she gripped the edge of the mattress so hard her forearms shook.

The knife got into her palm somehow; only later would she recall that she’d had to stand up and walk naked across the room to her leathers to get it out of its holster.

Back on the bed, she thought of the males she’d lost over the course of her life. She saw Murhder’s long dark hair and his deep-set eyes and the scruff he always had on his heavy jaw…heard his Old Country accent and recalled the way he’d always smelled of gunpowder and sex. Then she saw Rehvenge’s amethyst stare and his mohawk and his beautiful clothes…smelled his Must de Cartier cologne and relived his chic brutality.

Finally, she pictured John Matthew’s dark blue eyes and short-cropped military-style hair…felt him moving deep inside of her…heard his heavy breathing as his warrior body had given her what she’d wanted and hadn’t been able to handle.

They were all gone, even though at least two of them were still alive on the planet. But people didn’t have to be dead to be out of your life.

She looked down at the viciously sharp, shiny blade and angled the thing so that it caught the weak sunlight in a flash that momentarily blinded her. She was good with knives. They were her favorite weapon, actually.