“You need to start flapping your gums, Saxton. I will guarantee you that you won’t be fired if you tell me how it is straight up. Try editing the truth or softballing it? And you’re out on your ass, I don’t care who you’re sleeping with.”
There was another throat clearing. And then that cultured voice came at him from head-on across the desk. “Yes, you can do as you wish. I have concerns about the timing, however.”
“Why? ’Cuz it’s going to take you two years to make the amendments?”
“You’re making a fundamental change to a section of society that protects the species—and it could further destabilize your rule. I am not unaware of the pressures you’re under, and it would be remiss of me not to point out the obvious. If you alter the prescription of who may enter the Black Dagger Brotherhood, it could well give even further opening for dissent—this is unlike anything you’ve attempted during your reign, and it’s coming in an era of extreme social upset.”
Wrath inhaled long and slow through his nose—and caught a whole lot of no bad juju: there was no evidence to suggest the guy was being duplicitous or not wanting to do the work.
And he had a point.
“I appreciate the insight,” Wrath said. “But I’m not going to bow to the past. I refuse to. And if I had doubts about the male in question, I wouldn’t be doing this.”
“How do the other Brothers feel?”
“That’s none of your business.” In fact, he hadn’t broached this idea with them yet. After all, why bother if there was no possibility of moving forward. Tohr and Beth were the only ones who knew exactly how far he was prepared to take this. “How long will it take you to make it legal?”
“I can have everything drawn up by dawn tomorrow—nightfall at the latest.”
“Do it.” Wrath made a fist and banged it onto the arm of the throne. “Do it now.”
“As you wish, my lord.”
There was a rustle of fine clothing, as if the male were bowing, and then more padding feet before one half of the double doors opened and shut.
Wrath stared off into the nothingness he was provided by his blind eyes.
Dangerous times was right. And frankly, the smart thing to do was add more Brothers, not think of reasons not to—although the counter-argument to that was, if those three boys were willing to fight alongside them without being inducted, why bother?
But fuck that. It was old-school to want to honor someone who had put his life on the line so your own could continue.
The real issue, even apart from the laws, however…was, What would the others think?
That was more likely to put the kibosh on this than any legal snafu.
As night fell hours later, Qhuinn lay naked in tangled sheets, neither his body nor his mind at rest, even as he slept.
In his dream, he was back at the side of the road, walking off from his family’s house. He had a duffel over one shoulder, a proclamation of disinheritance shoved into his waistband, and a wallet that was eleven dollars away from being empty.
Everything was crystal clear—nothing denatured due to memory’s faulty playback: from the humid summer night to the sound of his New Rocks on the pebbles at the shoulder…to the fact that he was aware he had nothing in his future.
He had nowhere to go. No home to return to.
No prospects. Not even a past anymore.
When the car pulled in behind him, he knew it was John and Blay—
Except, no. It was not his friends. It was death in the form of four males in black robes who streamed out of four doors and swarmed around him.
An Honor Guard. Sent by his father to beat him for dishonoring the family’s name.
How ironic. One would assume that knifing a sociopath who’d been trying to rape your buddy would be considered a good thing. But not when the assailant was your perfect first cousin.
In slow motion, Qhuinn sank down into his fighting stance, prepared to meet the attack. There were no eyes to look directly into, no faces to note—and there was a reason for that: The fact that the robes obscured their identities was supposed to make the person who’d transgressed feel as though all of society was disapproving of the actions he had taken.
Circling, circling, closing in…eventually they were going to take him down, but he was going to hurt them in the process.
And he did.
But he was also right: After what seemed like hours of defense, he ended up on his back, and that was when the beating really happened. Lying on the asphalt, he covered his head and his nut sac as best he could, the blows raining down on him, black robes flying like the wings of crows as he was struck again and again.
After a little while, he felt no pain.
He was going to die here at the side of the road—
“Stop! We’re not supposed to kill him!”
His brother’s voice cut through it all, sinking in in a way that the pummeling no longer did—
Qhuinn woke up with a shout, throwing his arms over his face, his thighs thrusting up to protect that groin of his—
No fists or clubs were coming at him.
And he was not at the side of the road.
Willing on some lights, he looked around the bedroom that he’d been staying in since he’d been kicked out of his family’s home. It didn’t suit him in the slightest, the silk wallpaper and the antiques something his mother would have picked out—and yet at the moment, the sight of all that old crap someone else had chosen, bought, hung, and kept after made him calm down.
Even as the memory lingered.
God, the sound of his brother’s voice.
His own brother had been part of the Honor Guard that had been sent for him. Then again, that sent a more powerful message to the glymera about how seriously the family was taking things—and it wasn’t as if the guy hadn’t been trained. He’d been taught the martial arts, although naturally he’d never been allowed to fight. Hell, he’d barely been permitted to spar.
Too valuable to the bloodline. If he got hurt? The one who was going to walk in Daddio’s footsteps and eventually become a leahdyre of the Council could be compromised.
Small risk of a catastrophic injury to the family.
Qhuinn, on the other hand? Before he’d been disavowed, he’d been put into the training program, maybe in hopes that he’d sustain a mortal injury in the field and have the good grace to die honorably for everyone.
Stop! We’re not supposed to kill him!
That had been the last time he’d heard his brother’s voice. Shortly after Qhuinn had been thrown out of the house, the Lessening Society had gone on a raid and slaughtered them all, Father, Mother, sister—and Luchas.
All gone. And even though a part of him had hated them for all they’d done to him, he wouldn’t wish that kind of death on anyone.
Qhuinn rubbed his face.
Shower time. That was all he knew.
Getting up on his feet, he stretched until his back cracked, and checked his phone. A group text to everyone announced there was a meeting in Wrath’s study—and a quick glance at the clock told him he was out of time.
Which was not a bad thing. As he flipped into high gear and hustled into the bath, it was a relief to focus on real stuff instead of the bullshit past.
Nothing he could do about the latter except curse it. And shit knew he’d done enough of that for twelve lifetimes.
Wakey-wakey, he thought.
Time to go to work.
THIRTEEN
Around the same time Qhuinn was cleaning himself up at the main house, Blay came awake in the chair in that little underground office. The headache that served as his alarm clock was not from the port—it was from the fact that he’d skipped Last Meal. But man, he wished the booze had been behind the pounding in his skull. He could have used the out that he’d been a total, sloppy, lost-his-mind mess when he’d come down here.
Cursing, he withdrew his legs from the desktop and sat up. His body was stiff as a board, aches blooming in all kinds of places as he willed on the overhead light.
Crap. He was still naked.
But come on, like the modesty elves would have snuck in and clothed him in his sleep? Just so he wasn’t reminded of what he’d done?