A Warm Heart in Winter(51)

For example, it was interesting, in a passing, well-what-do-you-know sort of way, to realize that he was in the Pit. Evidently, he’d been set on the leather sofa like a throw pillow, and he was facing the Foosball table. As he considered the way the game was played, his brain coughed up a random memory from just twenty-four hours before: Him spinning the spindles against John Matthew, blithely unaware of what that fountain tarp was going to do, what was going to happen to Balthazar up by that shutter, how Zsadist was going to have to do CPR in the snow.

As with all of that, he certainly had never anticipated what was happening right now.

In his peripheral vision, he was aware of V typing on one of his keyboards and then staring at the bank of monitors. Right behind the brother, leaning in over his shoulder, was Blay.

This was a relief. Qhuinn couldn’t track anything, and there was nobody he trusted more than Blay. His mate would figure everything out and would translate whatever it was to him.

V pointed at the screen. And then glanced back at Blay.

Blay straightened, his eyes not leaving whatever image they were talking about. And that was when it became apparent there were other people in the room, too.

Right beside the pair of them was a lineup of males. Rhage, Butch, Tohr, Phury, Rehv.

Qhuinn appreciated them showing up for . . . whatever this was. But their presence was also a huge source of anxiety. Generally speaking, the more brothers and fighters who lingered, the more serious things were.

“He’s probably down in the training center,” Qhuinn mumbled to himself. To anybody who might be listening.

To fate, if fate was looking for suggestions about how to resolve Luchas’s disappearance—

In the end, no one really needed to tell him anything.

It was the way Blay looked over at him. And how V stayed focused on the monitors, but then turned his head as well.

Blay was the one who came across to the sofa, and he knelt down.

“You found him,” Qhuinn said quietly. “You found my brother?”

The sound of his mate clearing his throat was one of the saddest things Qhuinn had ever heard. And yet he refused to let the sorrow sink in.

“We think he went out,” Blay said.

“Like in a car? Can he drive?”

“No, as in . . . he left.”

“Who took him out?”

“Qhuinn . . . we think he left through the tunnel.”

As his brain translated the syllables, he came back online. “Wait, what? Why the hell would he do that? And when did he go?”

“According to the time stamp on the security feed, it was last night. During the storm.”

A buzzing noise lit off inside Qhuinn’s skull, and it knocked out his hearing for a moment. And then everything became sharp, too sharp. Cutting blade, crystal shard sharp.

“I don’t understand.” He got up. “This is wrong. I don’t know what you saw—”

V didn’t argue; he just pivoted one of the screens and pointed at it. The feed was pixelated, but after a pause and recalibration, the contours of the training center’s tunnel came into view. The angle of the camera lens was wide, encompassing a long stretch of the concrete wall and then the terminus of the subterranean passageway. The lineup of outerwear and weapons was to one side, the door out into the escape cave on the right.

Nothing was happening. The picture was just static—

The stooped figure entered from the left and moved along slowly. Its gait was uneven and a cane was cocked at an angle, a black robe draping whoever it was from head to toe.

But like the identity wasn’t obvious?

“Luchas,” Qhuinn mumbled.

His brother stopped in front of the heavy steel hatch. Then that head turned toward the parkas and the snow pants.

“What are you doing?” Qhuinn wiped his brow and fiddled with the sleeve of his sweater. Then he looked at V. “Does he know the code?”

That question was answered as Luchas put his ruined hand out and punched a series of buttons on the keypad. There was a pause, and after that he opened the heavy steel panel with a struggle, fumbling with his cane, catching his bad balance on the jamb.

“Put a coat on. What are you doing? Put a fucking coat on!” Qhuinn shouted at the monitor.

All at once, he remembered that wind. That terrible, howling wind. More than the snow or the cold, those gusts were going to make it impossible for Luchas to stay on his feet.

“What the fuck is he doing?” Qhuinn looked at Blay with panic. “I don’t get this.”

When his mate just stared back at him, those blue eyes held an answer that didn’t bear translating.

“No.” Qhuinn shook his head. “That’s not what happened.”



It was a parade.

Or . . . more like a funeral march.

As Blay followed Qhuinn down the training center’s tunnel, they were not alone. Everyone who had been in the Pit had joined them, but the Brotherhood was hanging back by a good forty or fifty feet. They seemed to sense what Blay knew for sure. Later, when whatever was happening had actually happened, Qhuinn would be grateful for his Brothers’ support—but at the moment, you couldn’t crowd him.

Blay himself was waiting to be asked to leave. And yet . . . not yet.

With every step he took, he thought of what he’d seen on V’s computer screen, Luchas walking where they were now, God only knew what on the male’s mind. But he must have known what he was doing. He hadn’t hesitated to open the portal, hadn’t looked back as he’d stepped through, had closed things up in his wake as if he never intended to return.