A Warm Heart in Winter(54)

“Transport,” he said roughly. “We need to bring Luchas back home.”

“What . . . wait, is he alive?”

Blay looked over at Qhuinn. With incredible tenderness, he had taken his brother’s frozen hand into his own, the ice-cold, mangled digits lying against a warm and vital palm.

“No. He’s not.”

There was a pause. Then V’s voice resumed its normal clipped tones. “I’m coming right now. You’re only a hundred yards out.”

Almost immediately, there was a flare of headlights in the darkness and the sound of a vehicle approaching. And that wasn’t all. Ghostly figures materialized around the periphery, the Brothers and the other fighters standing among the trees, silent sentries in the subzero darkness.

As V got closer, the headlights were canned, and then the Tahoe halted about twenty feet away.

The Brother got out and just stared for a moment, as if he were catching up on the inexplicable math—and the incomprehensible tragedy.

Qhuinn looked up. “My brother has died.”

V nodded grimly. “Yes, he has, son. I am very sorry.”

“He went out into the storm last night.”

There was a sad pause. “I have a vehicle here, Qhuinn. Would you like to carry him into the back?”

“I would.”

The words were stilted. Formal.

“Okay.”

After which, no one moved. No one spoke. Then again, there was no hurry, and it was all up to Qhuinn. Yet he seemed frozen.

Blay put his hand on his mate’s shoulder. “Let’s gather him up, shall we?”

“Okay.”

Qhuinn leaned back down, stretching his arms toward the upper torso and down to the thighs. But when he went to push his hands under the remains, he clearly met resistance, the ice and snow fighting the removal of that which it had claimed.

“We can help,” Blay said as he motioned to Vishous. “We’ll just—”

“No.” Qhuinn put his palms out. “No.”

But instead of struggling further to pick up his brother, the male sat back on his heels and stared at the folds of the black robe.

“This is where he chose to die. He chose this.”

The words were not a condemnation. They were a lonely statement of fact. And maybe a first attempt to try on the reality of what had happened.

Qhuinn looked up, his blue and green eyes searching for, and finding, Blay’s stare. “I’m just trying to figure out how to honor a choice that has broken my heart.”

As the cold wind wandered through the panorama of grief, Blay felt more powerless than he had in his entire life.

“Whatever you want to do,” he said softly, “we support you.”





Qhuinn was lost, but he wasn’t ungrounded in the fact that his brother’s remains were frozen to the snow. If he wanted to move Luchas, he was going to have to get rough with that body that had been so badly broken. He was going to have to shove and push, yank and pull—and for reasons that he wasn’t clear on, he feared the sound of dead limbs disengaging from the ice.

Then again, was the why of that really such a fucking mystery?

Forcing his brain to work, he tried on the implications of the whole move thing. Like, where would he take Luchas? “Anywhere but here” was fine, except for the total insufficiency of that plan. Sure, he could transport his brother out of this forest, and into the warmth and shelter of the training center, but then what?

It wasn’t like Manny and Doc Jane were going to work some medical magic and revive things. And dead bodies did not rest well at room temperature. As ghoulish as it was, he couldn’t ignore what would happen as the remains warmed up.

He thought back to Selena’s passing, to when Trez had lit that funeral pyre and the flames had consumed his love. Qhuinn had been in the wings for all that. He had never thought he would so soon be on the main stage.

Yet here he was.

As he sat where he was in snow, he was aware of the cold clawing past the parka Blay had put on him, and he had the sense his lack of decision-making was a delay tactic that made no damned sense. It wasn’t like he was waiting to wake up from a nightmare . . . or for reality to give him another fact pattern.

One that didn’t involve his brother deciding to go out in that storm.

In a quick series of hypotheticals, he imagined Luchas stepping free of the cave. Walking forward. Struggling against the wind, the temperature. He pictured his brother breathing in snowflakes and blinking his eyes against the gusts . . . fighting for his balance, leaning on that cane.

Given how quickly V had arrived with the SUV, it was obvious that Luchas hadn’t gotten far. But that wasn’t much of a news flash. Luchas had struggled with just walking on level floors.

Staring down at the body, Qhuinn became obsessed with details he would never know. Had Luchas fallen a couple of times and gotten himself back up? Or had he just collapsed here? What had he thought of as he had stared out across the snowy ground? Had there been pain? There must have been. Freezing to death was painful . . . right?

Or had he been so consumed with ending his suffering that the process of dying had been an afterthought?

Qhuinn would never know. The only thing he was sure of was that Luchas had chosen this. After so much agony, after Lash’s torture, after the months and years since the raids . . . the male had decided to close the door on hope. On love. On the future.