His lips thinned. “Not many. I only know of one couple who failed their vows.”
“Who?”
“My brother and his wife.”
Her eyes widened. His brother’s failing had left its mark on him. “What happened? Did they do the ceremony?”
“They did. But they weren’t each other’s other half. It didn’t take.”
That filled her with questions. So many questions. She knew very little about his family, complex and unique as they were. She tucked her curiosity away for a future conversation—she didn’t want to distract him from his discussion of their ceremony. “Once you’ve prepared the site and we have our vows, what happens next?”
“We sit at the fire and exchange our vows.”
“I like that.” His face seemed tense—perhaps she’d missed something of the process.
“In the fire are the eight brands.”
Again she asked, “Why must there be brands? Times have changed. Surely the ceremony can change, too?”
He shook his head. “It’s an honor for me to mark our vows in my flesh forever. It’s my burden to bear, as is the weight of all of our union. It’s my job to give you joy, to protect you, to shelter you.”
Tears blurred Fiona’s eyes. She reached for Kelan’s forearms and dragged her hands down them. “I don’t want you to hurt.”
“I have waited all my life to bear the marks of my other half.”
“Kelan”—she choked on a breath—“why does it have to be this way?”
“It’s the way of my ancestors.”
“I’ve never heard of this among the Lakota.”
“It isn’t their tradition. It was begun by my grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather. I will carry the brands of my vows to you on my right arm, and your vows to me on my left. After our ceremony, you’ll bandage my forearms. When we return to Blade’s, I’ll wear leather cuffs to cover them. No one but you and I will see the scars. Our vows are for us to know and no one else.”
She nodded and rubbed her hands over his forearms.
He met her eyes. “The vows we give each other are sacred. The scars are the physical marks of those vows. It’s an honor to carry them. It means I’m worthy of my mate, and my mate is worthy of me.”
She frowned as she looked at him. “You’re so strong. Unafraid.”
“I am.” He gave a quiet chuckle that flashed his white teeth. “Otherwise, I could not be your other half.”
Chapter Eleven
Ty leaned back against the headboard, his arms folded behind his head. Eden was sleeping soundly next to him. They were safe and comfortable while Kelan and Fiona were in the control of a fiend. The team was taking shifts trying to find them. He should be taking advantage of his four-hour sleep rotation, but worry ate at his nerves.
He rolled out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans, then stepped out of their bedroom to pace the length of the hall and back, trying to figure out what was keeping him up.
Their work since leaving the Red Team had always seemed personal. From the fact that it brought them all back here to his childhood home, Kit’s hometown, and Rocco’s home state, to some coincidences he was beginning to think weren’t happenstance at all.
King seemed to have his tentacles everywhere. His operation was too far-reaching, too mature to have been built within a single lifetime. How far back did this thing go? Ty’s own grandfather had been involved in part of it. Was that even the beginning of King’s operation?
How old was King?
He wondered how deeply involved his mother’s family was. Who else on the team had tethers in that hidden world? Was it behind what drove the government to set up Max, securing his indoctrination? Rocco was outside the organization. He’d grown up the only child of a ranch cook. And Kit wasn’t involved; he’d grown up a town outcast as the son of an addict, but he was tied to this because of their friendship.
And then there was Greer, who was raised as an assassin by a grandfather mired in spec ops missions. What was it that his grandfather had been a part of? Kelan wasn’t involved, though he and his brothers all came from the private security world, as did his parents. Who were they providing security to? Angel was a salt of the earth type, son of Puerto Rican parents, raised in the Bronx. Ty couldn’t see a connection there. Nor could he with Selena.
The only two left to consider were Val and Owen. And what did any of them really know about Owen? It was no secret that he and Val were cousins, that Owen had lived most of his teen years with Val’s family. What happened to Owen’s family that caused the death of his parents? And why did Owen keep secrets from Val, his own cousin, when they were practically brothers? Owen knew the rogue Red Teamer they were after. They were in the first class of Red Teamers together.
And now they’d learned that Fiona and Lion were offspring of the man they hunted.
He leaned against the wall and slipped down to the floor. Propping his wrists on his knees, he stared at the door on the opposite side of the hall, realizing he’d come downstairs.
Someone came out of the den. Greer.
“Blade,” Greer said quietly. “Can’t sleep?”
Ty shook his head and got to his feet. He grabbed Greer’s arm and pulled him through the door to the basement, shutting it behind him. The big space was under construction. They were building out rooms and halls, a kitchenette, bathrooms. Whether the space would be used for team offices or for future classrooms for kids of the team hadn’t yet been decided. Construction had been stopped for the moment, given that half the team was off site. The bare wood frames, the smell of freshly sawed wood, and the maze of skeletal walls were comforting; it made the basement look new and foreign and nothing like the space he had been caged in as a kid.
“S’up, Blade?” Greer asked.
“Do you trust me?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“One that needs a straight answer.”
“Yes. I trust you. Now that we got that out of the way, can I be in the secret club?”