Prisoner of Night (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #16.5)(55)

“Anyone goes for a weapon, and I blow him apart. Then I’ll pick you off like bottles on a fence line.”

“Nexi,” Ahmare said, “back the truck out and have it ready to go.”

“You got it.”

There was the slam of a sturdy door and the rev of a powerful engine. And then screeching and bumping as the Shadow exited the truck through the hole it had made, a shower of rocks falling as it reversed out.

Ahmare looked at the young guard, and then the others. “I want them to know that I give Chalen over to them—”

“They won’t listen!” the conqueror yelled in a high, panicked voice. “I and I alone command that worthless bunch—”

“—in return for them allowing us all to leave, you included.”

“Attack! Attack them!” Chalen pushed up off the floor, his horrible face flushed and sweating as he commanded his squad. “Kill them—”

“I want them to know,” Ahmare continued, “that it is time they control this land, this castle. Tell them to use the gift wisely and remember what it was like to be subjugated to another.”

Chalen was screaming now, his voice going hoarse, spit leaving his lips as he hollered and railed.

“Tell them this is the divide. What went before is no more. The future is theirs to command, but I will be going to Wrath and the Brotherhood. Everything needs to be lawful from now on. The laws of the King must be obeyed or the Brotherhood will mete out a punishment that will leave none alive thereafter.”

The guards fired up with hand signals, and in response, young redhead communicated with them.

She knew exactly when the message was properly received.

All of them stilled, and every single set of eyes went to Chalen.

The anger in those stares was rooted in a vengeance so deep and abiding that she knew she didn’t want to see what came next.

“Come on,” she said to Duran. “Let’s leave them to their business.”

The pair of them began backing up to the hole, and she glanced at the red-haired guard. “You’re welcome to come with us—”

The young guard didn’t hesitate. He walked out with them, out of the castle’s lower level, into the night air . . . leaving the screams of Chalen behind.

Freedom awaited in the form of a Dodge Ram with a beautiful Shadow at the wheel and her brother alive at shotgun.

Ahmare spared her male one lingering kiss as they jumped in the truck bed. “You came back.”

To her. For her.

For them.

“I decided to live in the future, not the past.” Duran kissed her again and pulled the young guard up to join them. “Divides and all that.”

He banged a fist into the hood of the cab, and Nexi hit the gas. As they lurched forward and had to hang on to the gunnels, she couldn’t believe he’d left his mahmen behind.

“Those remains weren’t her,” he said over the din. “But my love for you? It is all of me.”





35




IT WAS JUST BEFORE dawn when they finally stopped, and Ahmare had no idea what state they were in. They’d gone back to Nexi’s cabin for Ahmare’s SUV, and there, the Shadow had packed up some of her things and all of her weapons and ammo. When the female had hesitated in the doorway, they had waited as she took what seemed like her last look around.

And then all five of them were on their way with one last stop.

Duran returned the old truck to the yard he’d “borrowed” it from. They left the beloved in the front seat in a bright red bowl as payment for the damage to the front bumper and grill. Hopefully, the owner would sell the pearl for a big windfall.

Or maybe give it to his wife if he had one.

They went north in her SUV from there, and somewhere deep in the mountains, the Shadow had told them to take a series of turns that led them farther and farther away from the highway. Ahmare had followed directions. And now . . .

This.

As she stepped out onto the porch of a cedar house, her breath caught at that enormous view. From her vantage point overlooking the rising hills and the sleeping valleys, the very distant lights of human homes were like stars fallen from the sky.

She felt as though she had entered another world. Or awoken from a dream.

Had all of it really happened?

As she reached up to her shoulder, she winced at the shot of pain—

“Here, I made you this.”

Pivoting to Duran, she stared at the plate in his hand. On it was a sandwich. Had they emptied Nexi’s refrigerator when they’d been at the Shadow’s cabin? Guess they had.

He’d also brought her milk. As if she were a young heading off to school for the night.

The tears that pricked her eyes were not unexpected. And as soon as they came, he put her food down on a wooden table and came across, wrapping her up carefully on account of her shoulder wound. Her head fit perfectly on the hard pad of his pec, and behind it, beating steadily, was the heart she needed to hear.

“I thought I’d lost you,” she said.

His big hand stroked up and down her good side. “I did, too.”

She looked to his face. “What happened?”

Duran tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “I did go back for my mahmen’s remains. But I realized, she’s gone. She hasn’t been here for . . . since I saw her die. What was I saving at the expense of your and my future together?”