The Thief (Black Dagger Brotherhood #16)(7)

Turned out when he cared about the person, he wanted different things from them.

They hadn’t been back for…Jesus, a while. Then again, they hadn’t been together, sexually or otherwise, in…Jesus, a while.

As he went to the closest sliding door, his head hurt, but not from the concussion he’d gotten during the great warehouse battle. No, that brain damage had cleared itself up nicely, along with the bruising and other minor injuries he’d sustained as the Brotherhood and the Band of Bastards had fought the Lessening Society side by side.

Turned out those fuckers with the harelipped leader were handy.

They were also now roommates at the BDB mansion—

Am I really going to do this?

Pressing his thumbprint onto his new, discreetly mounted reader, he heard the metallic shift of the lock turning free and then he willed the door to slide open. Stepping inside, he left things wide, the winter gust barging in and ruffling the flames on all those wicks. No longer at peace, now the illumination trembled, sure as if his anxiety and unhappiness had become manifest and taken on properties outside of his heart and soul.

The walls crawled now. The shadows thrown by his table spasmed. There were things moving across the floor.

Shit, maybe that was just his conscience talking. But he had a remedy for that.

The kitchen was a stretch of never-used and never-gonna-be, nothing in the sink, the drawers, the cupboards. Which was not to say he wasn’t prepared to be a good host. Four Grey Goose bottles were lined up on the counter, each of them facing label-out like bills put to right in a wallet.

They were not for his guest to drink. They were for him so he could get through this.

As he regarded these labels, he focused on the flying birds, soaring high above their little snowy, two-dimensional mountain scenes.

For a male who spoke as many languages as he did, and knew more obscure facts about the world than a Jeopardy! champion, you’d figure he would be less surprised by this turn of events. Then again, he hadn’t expected to ever be mated. So how could he have foreseen this…resumption of his old life, his old ways…his former coping mechanism…rearing up to address an itch he could no longer stand and couldn’t seem to scratch any other way.

Liar. Cheat. Whore.

From out of nowhere, he saw himself up in the Sanctuary, walking through his mahmen’s private quarters, proceeding out to the resting place of the Chosen who had had the Arrest and passed unto the Fade. He recalled reading the Scribe Virgin’s departing missive, the symbols in the Old Language floating in the air as if they were mounted on an invisible flag, disappearing as soon as he had read them.

He had hated that sacred female for so long that it had become a habit, and now that she was gone, there was the strangest void in him. He couldn’t say he mourned her, however—really, the only time they had gotten along had been right after she had turned Jane into an immortal. And even after that gift, their relationship hadn’t stayed improved.

There was something missing from his life, nonetheless.

Two somethings missing, actually. Jane was also gone, and not just when she chose to be in ghost form, as opposed to corporeal.

It was hard to recall the last time he had felt truly connected to his shellan. When they had spent a day sleeping together, for example, or had truly talked, or had—

The image of the stone corridor of the Black Dagger Brotherhood’s Tomb came to his mind, and he remembered Jane coming to check Xcor’s vitals when the Bastard had been in their custody. Yes…it was then, when the pair of them had spoken about how neither of them wanted young. He’d felt such relief that they were both on the same page, that there was going to be no conflict on that subject. Now, it seemed ironic that they had bonded over a shared decision not to do what so many mated pairs built their entire lives around.

Young required a shared, common commitment, a joint connection, a partnership.

Yet he and Jane had dropped the prospect of all that entanglement like a hot potato and promptly resumed their separate, parallel, no-overlap existences: He was out in the field, fighting the war and engaging in the King’s business. While she treated a boatload of patients with astonishing competence and compassion.

And never the twain shall meet.

Freedom and autonomy were something he had valued in his mating and his mate—to the point where he had assumed those interrelated aspects were mission critical for him to find any future with any one person. But all of that non-constraint, which had seemed so important, had proven to be a double-edged sword.

The flip side of the independence coin was neglect, distance…disintegration.

No young to worry about, yay! had turned into Where are you? Where are we?

At least in his mind.

Somehow, with his mahmen “dying,” and the great massacre at that warehouse, and the addition of the Band of Bastards into the household…and almost every single brother he had suddenly having young…in the midst of that thick swill of change and confusion, he had lost the thread that had tied him to Jane, and on her side, she was too busy to notice.

Neither of them was bad or wrong.

Well, at least not until tonight. At least not until right now.

He had agonized about whether or not to check his old email account, to sift through what had turned out to be hundreds of missives and pleadings for his attention, to choose one and reach out.

And meet here.