A Warm Heart in Winter(43)

“Where going, Daddy?”

“I’ll be right back.” He touched his daughter’s cheek and then smiled at his mate. “Just going to check that no one needs any help.”

“That’s a good thing to do,” Nalla said gravely. “Then you come back.”

“Yes, I’ll come right back.”

As he walked off toward the pantry, the lie stung, but he told himself he wasn’t going to be gone long. This was just . . . a compulsion he hadn’t felt for a very long time.

One that he knew he better act on or there would be no rest for him.

The steel door into the basement had recently been upgraded, and it was painted to look like the old wooden ones that filled the jambs in the kitchen and the pantry: But for the pattern of bolts around the various panels, you might be fooled into thinking it was made of ash like all of the others throughout the house.

As he went to enter the code, he was glad that the doggen were all too busy getting Last Meal on the table to pay much attention to him—which meant he only fielded four inquiries about whether he needed anything, and one nervous drive-by from Fritz, who was apparently checking that the four no-thank-you’s Z had given were in fact what he’d meant. As always, it was like wading through a morass of hospitality, and in the past, this obsequious obstacle course had driven him insane. Now, he understood it was just the way of the doggen and he was used to it.

The steel portal was like a barricade, and he put his shoulder into the effort of opening the damn thing, the well-greased hinges offering no protest at being called into service. The descent down the steps was a familiar one, and when he got to the lower level, he knew his way through the rabbit warren of spaces. V’s forging room was down here. So were the massive furnaces. And the storage areas.

The latter was what he was looking for.

Each family had their own unit, the lineup of closed doors unlocked because even though everyone in the mansion knew everybody else’s business, privacy was respected.

His was the one on the far end, and there were motion-activated lights along the ceiling that woke up as he went along the concrete hallway. The smell was damp air and the minerals in the groundwater that was right under the poured floor. The second he took notice of the musty scent, he felt bad, as if he’d betrayed Fritz in some way.

If that doggen knew there was any humidity down here? He would hit this hall with a fleet of dehumidifiers and enough hot water and suds to scrub down a naval carrier.

When he got to the door to his and Bella’s unit, he took a deep breath and didn’t waste time opening it up. No amount of hanging around was going to change what was in it.

Another light came on inside as he crossed the threshold.

Not much to see. Seasonal clothes for Bella, packed in plastic containers that had been vacuum sealed. Seasonal clothes for Nalla that were likewise put away, but probably wouldn’t be worn again because she was growing so fast. No seasonal anything for Z. He wore the same muscle shirt, leathers, and leather jacket no matter the weather.

The only time he mixed shit up was with his socks. Sometimes they were black. Sometimes they were white.

Call him a party animal.

There were a couple of boxes of study books that were Bella’s. Quilts that had been brought over from her farmhouse. A sofa and chair from there that were draped with drop cloths.

He thought of that property that Bella still owned, the one that was next to what had been Mary’s condo. It was so strange. But for the random proximity of those two pieces of real estate, so much would never have happened: Mary had met John Matthew through her work at the local suicide prevention hotline. Bella had known what John was, even though Mary, as a human, had not. Then the three of them had been brought in to the training center, where Mary had met Rhage, and Z and Bella had met, and John Matthew, an orphan in the human world, had found a set of loving parents in Wellsie and Tohr.

Now, years later, John Matthew was a brother and had found a mate in Xhex. Rhage and Mary were mated and had adopted Bitty. And Z and Bella were parents. Wellsie was gone, though, and that was a loss that would never go away. But Tohr had another love in Autumn, although not as a replacement for his beautiful first shellan. There were others who had entered the Brotherhood’s world as well, like the Band of Bastards, and the Chosen.

The Scribe Virgin, gone.

The Lassiter era, commenced.

Yet for all the changes, the past was still in the shadows.

Z went to the back of the storage unit, to a Hammermill box that had previously held ten reams of printer/copier paper. The lid was not taped down, the corrugated cardboard forming a sturdy enough seal—and it wasn’t like anybody was liable to poke around with it.

Bella knew what was inside.

As Z knelt down to the hard floor, both of his knees cracked, and so did his spine. His fingers trembled ever so slightly as he reached forward. The resistance to opening the box was slight and overwhelming at the same time.

Putting the lid aside, he peered in, the light from the ceiling flowing over his head and shoulders and creating an outline of him in shadow on the wall.

The sleeping pallet was folded up, its felt corpus thick and mottled due to the cheap collection of fibers that had been woven together to form its weight.

Given its size, it took up the whole of the interior, as if the box had been precisely made for the purpose of storing the thing.

Z took the blanket out. Holding what he had slept on for . . . God, years and years . . . he found himself remembering when he had put it away, first in the closet in his bedroom, and then in this box that he’d gotten from the office, and finally down here. He’d been determined to turn his life around. He’d lost the female he had bonded with—