Lover Arisen (Black Dagger Brotherhood #20)(66)

“I don’t care. It feeds people or animals who are hungry. It gives unfortunates a place to sleep when they have none. And it keeps those who are desperately afraid safe.”

“True virtue doesn’t come with an asterisk.”

“And thieves can have morals—hey, is this our first fight?”

She blinked—and then seemed to be trying not to smile. “I’d call it more of an argument than a fight.” Then her brows twitched into a frown. “And you’re seriously just going to let me go? What about your buddies?”

“Don’t worry about them. They won’t come after you. And neither will I, Erika. You can trust me on that.”

She opened her mouth, but he went back into her brain one final time. Leaving her memories alone, he instead gave her a gift: He inserted the very clear cognition that it was in her best interests to never, ever come near him or this garage, and never, ever do any further investigating into any part of what she had seen, heard, or done tonight…

Due to the trance he had to put her in, all she could do was stare up at him, her eyes fuzzy, her mouth slightly parted, her body poised.

It would have been the perfect time to kiss her.

But he’d already taken too much without her permission.

And everything ended between them right now.

Everything.





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE




And still Sahvage stared down the long white corridor at Rahvyn.

Whilst the Brothers around him displayed a masculine pattern of grieving, strong faces drawn tightly, eyes watering, but no tears falling, he faced her and locked her stare with his own, the demand not a call to action but a shout.

Opening up a communication link between them, she said unto his mind, You hated what I did to you.

He shook his head from side to side. Whether it was a denial or he was saying that none of that mattered, she was not sure—and meanwhile, on the other side of the closed door behind him, that mahmen’s weeping was a stain upon the air, seeping out and infecting all within its sorrowful earshot with a weighted sadness.

How could she not respond to such grieving?

Rahvyn’s body moved first, before her brain consciously instructed her legs to push her feet into the floor and her arms to steady her balance upon the bare, clean wall as she rose. On the vertical, she had an absurd notion to smooth out her clothes, and thus she did so, trying to ignore the red stains from where she had cradled Nate on the concrete outside of that club.

She walked forward in a daze.

Focusing only on Sahvage, the hall disappeared in her peripheral vision, and so too did the fighters who surrounded him. All was gone except for her dearest first cousin, the remnant of her family, the living, breathing symbol of what she had once been.

Before she had emerged from violence in her full power.

As she stopped in front of him, he said in a low voice, “You have to save him.”

Whether it was her arrival upon their midst or the intense words spoken by her cousin, one by one, the Brothers looked at her. Turned to her. Narrowed their eyes upon her.

“Save him,” Sahvage repeated as that crying continued inside the room.

Rahvyn lowered her head. She would have avoided this revelation as to herself if she could have—and knew once again that she should have left the night after she and Sahvage had been reunited. Once she had reassured him she lived, her reason for being in this place and time had been served.

“There is no going back,” she said quietly. “You know that yourself.”

“I don’t give a shit and neither will they. Just bring him back. If Nate is lost, we lose two others tonight.”

When Rahvyn looked at the door, the Brothers asked no questions and put up no argument, as if they didn’t need to understand to agree with what Sahvage was saying. But she knew without being told that she would be accountable unto them if things went badly.

And mayhap that was the point. This tragedy felt as though it was her fault, and she wanted to make amends. What she had to offer was not without strife, however, and she was not certain what would be harder to live with: Doing nothing… or doing what she could—

Once again, her body made the decision before her mind formed the thought to move. Her feet started forward, step, step, step. And as she passed through the throng of males, she was a willow tree to their towering pines, yet their deference was in the way they wordlessly parted for her.

Rahvyn watched her hand reach out and open the door.

The scene on the other side was a tableau of suffering around a dead body, the living leaning down, Nate lying prone and motionless and spotlit on the steel table. All of the tubes and wires from the transportation were still attached to him, but the machines had been silenced, no beeping, no flashing lights or patterns appearing on their screens. On the floor beneath where he lay, there were tufts of bloodstained gauze and plastic wrappers and puddles of blood.

The healers had tried valiantly to save him, she thought as she took in further details.

Nate’s lower body was draped with blue sheeting. His chest was stained with something orange along with dried blood. His eyes were closed and his mouth open, and his hair… looked as it had when he’d been alive.

The male with the spectacles and the white coat was the first to look at her, and he cleared his throat in an officious manner. “I’m sorry, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”