Prisoner of Night (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #16.5)(47)

“Duran, go—it’s what you came here to do. I’ll be okay.”

His eyes returned to Ahmare. Blood from that shoulder wound was dripping out the bottom of her windbreaker. What the fuck had his father stabbed her with? The hole in that light, waterproof fabric at her shoulder was too big for a dagger.

“I’ll be okay,” she repeated with sudden calm. Along the lines of that being the only outcome she could contemplate.

For as long as he could remember, he had always assumed his life would come down to one moment, one crucial, all-encompassing moment . . . where he plunged a knife into his father’s black heart. Or snapped the male’s neck. Or shot him in the face.

The method of killing didn’t matter, and in his fantasies, it was often different. But that point of no return, when death took his sire unto Dhunhd, that was always going to be Duran’s defining moment, what his life’s toil boiled down to, his seminal event.

It was a shock to realize he’d been wrong about all that.

His defining moment actually came down to whether he helped a female he’d known for barely twenty-four hours . . . or left her to fulfill the destiny he had declared was his own.

It turned out to be no contest.

Duran dropped down beside her. “You search that way, I’ll head over here. We’re not leaving until we find the beloved.”

She hesitated only a moment, but he couldn’t read her expression. He was too busy patting around on the pale linoleum, trying to find a pearl that was almost the exact color of the flooring, in a room where there was debris all around and blinking fluorescent lights overhead.

He didn’t think about his father. There would be time for that later.

Right now, he cared only about the pearl. Only what Ahmare needed to get her brother free.

Sweeping his vision from left to right, using his hands to feel around, he moved fast but with care, searching . . . searching . . . searching. When he came to a tossed wooden chair, he picked it up and put it behind himself. And then he arrived at a hole in the floor.

A place where something had been driven into the linoleum.

Ahmare’s blood marked the point of impact. And there was more of her blood all around, already drying, making him think of the deaths in the arena. But he had to reroute from that. He needed to pull right the fuck out of thinking how she had been hurt or his head was going to explode, the tension between his love for this female and his—

His love.

For this female.

Duran glanced over at her. Her dark head was bent, her fresh blood leaving a trail even as she pressed on, her determination so fierce, he was convinced that she could lift the whole mountain they were under to locate what she was after.

He loved her. Probably since the moment she had come into that dungeon.

Take out the “probably.”

The dark spices that had come out of him upon her arrival in the dungeon should have been his first clue. But whatever the increments had been, now was the realization—

With a shift in his torso, he put his hand down to catch a tilt in his weight.

A smooth nub registered under his palm.

“I got it!”



Ahmare flipped around as Duran shouted in triumph, and her wounded shoulder let out a holler—not that she cared. “Thank God!”

They met in the middle of the storage room, reaching for each other as he held the beloved between his forefinger and thumb. She kissed him without thinking, and he returned the contact without hesitation, their mouths meeting in a rush of relief.

As she pulled back, she frowned. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Duran just stood there, staring at her. Then he seemed to snap out of whatever place he had gone to in his head and pressed the pearl into her hand. “I’ll show you where to go. So I know you get out of here.”

The reality that they were parting hit her as he took her over to the door. She still didn’t have a solution for what was going to happen when she got back to Chalen’s alone. She supposed she’d thought Duran would come with her now, and they could take down the conqueror together. But he had scores to settle here.

As she put the pearl in the pocket of her windbreaker and zipped it in, she decided Chalen was going to have to be satisfied with the beloved. And as long as she had the damn thing, she had leverage. It would have to be enough.

Before she and Duran jumped out into the corridor, he gave her her guns back, and she was glad that his father hadn’t thought to strip off her ammo belt. She checked both clips and then nodded she was ready.

Duran stayed where he was for another long moment, his eyes roaming around her features. In a cold rush, she realized what he was doing.

“No,” she said. “This is not the last time. Do you hear me? This is not the last time we see each other. We’ll meet up . . . somehow. Somewhere. This is not it.”

He took her face in his hands, his thumbs stroking her cheeks. Then he pressed his lips to hers and lingered.

Everything was said in that kiss. Although no words were spoken, everything was expressed, the yearning and the sadness, the commitment that did not include a future, the wish on both sides that it had all been different.

Their beginning, their middle, and their end.

All of it.

“Please,” she whispered.

It was all the fight she could muster against an inevitability that nearly killed her. But there was no time to dwell on her emotions.