The change in his face was so total, he became a stranger even as his features remained the same: Violence, dark and powerful and evil, transformed him. And then he picked her back up and moved quickly. Going over to the hearth, he set her in the corner, facing away from the door.
“Do not move from this position. Do not look.” When she didn’t reply, he said, “Nadya. You don’t look. Swear to me.”
It went without saying that there was no reason for any vow because they were both going to be killed—or worse, taken alive.
Inclining her head, she said, “I swear.”
He touched her shoulder for a moment, the gentle contact at odds with his expression. And then he was gone, striding out of the open door.
She knew the instant the guards saw him. They started yelling and shooting. As Nadya began to tremble, she turned into herself even more, tucking her knees up to her chest as best she could, holding on to herself… trying to disappear—
The scream was that of a male, loud and deep.
Nadya squeezed her eyes shut under the hood. Kane’s death had finally come, and unlike before, now it was because of her, instead of in spite of her best efforts.
The shaking was so violent, she felt as though she were being torn apart, but it wasn’t fear. In the corner of the abandoned hunting cabin, in the dust and the aged disintegration of the place, she wept for everything that she had hoped for in her heart during all those hours of nursing Kane. She wept for all that he had suffered.
But mostly she wept because he’d almost made it out alive.
And whole.
The cruelty of some destinies was infinite.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Death stalked life, sure as if it were a fleet-footed predator.
Yeah, no shit, V thought. But come on. The whole maternal/fetal death thing for vampires was downright rude.
Stepping out of the subterranean tunnel and through the back of the training center’s supply closet, he had to turn sideways and squeeze his way along. A new delivery of printer paper had arrived and the stack of six Hammermill boxes was exactly not the kind of obstacle course he was looking to work out on. On the far side, he entered the office proper, and paused by the desk to light up a hand-rolled. Then he pushed open the glass door.
The facility’s main thoroughfare was a concrete corridor that ran from the escape hatch at one end to the parking area and the road out at the other. Branching off its broad pedestrian highway were all kinds of state-of-the-art, from the gym, locker, and weight-lifting rooms, to the shooting range, swimming pool, and classrooms.
And then there was his wedding gift to hisshellan.
When he and his Jane had come out of the throat punches Fate had thrown at them, he had gained a kick-ass partner—and delivered to hisbrothers exactly the sort of on-site, dedicated doctor that they had long needed.
After all, Havers, the species’ healer, while clinically sound, was a fucking numpty who had a list as long as his arm of bad ideas. Like trying to kill the King and tossing his own sister out on her ass just before dawn for dating a human. And then there was the bow tie bullshit, and those tortoiseshell glasses. Who did he think he was, Clark Kent with a stethoscope?
Sure as shit he was able to leap to tall conclusions about a person’s worth faster than a speeding aristocrat.
So yes, the Brotherhood had needed a fine doctor. And V’s fine surgeon had needed a place to treat her patients with the best technology, and the right complement of rooms, and everything his Jane would ever need to do her job to the very best of her considerable ability.
V stopped, exhaled over his shoulder, and looked down a lineup of closed doors. There were a couple of exam rooms, an OR that was packed tighter than a toy box with equipment, and a number of recovery berths. And they had a staff now to go with it all. After he and Jane had designed and built out the spaces, she’d been joined by Manny Manello, M.D., her old boss out in the human world and V’s now brother-in-law, as well as Ehlena, Rehv’s mate, who was a nurse.
The brothers were lucky to have all of them.
Checking his watch, he was surprised the appointment had gone on as long as it had. But he had no experience with possibly-gestating-female-vampires, and that was something, thank God, he was going to stay in the dark about. Doc Jane, in her ghostly form, couldn’t have young, and besides, she was more interested in her work than rearing any kind of next generation.
Focusing on the first of the examination rooms, he couldn’t speculate about what was going on inside. He didn’t have to. The Jackal had been brought in about thirty minutes ago with his female to see if she was pregnant, and talk about no FOMO. V didn’t envy the guy inthe slightest. You have this female you really care about, who’s the center of your world—and then the creator of the species throws a shit pie at you: Hey, you can service your female during her needing, and be the only thing that eases the suffering cravings, but the booby prize is you might knock her up and kill her.
Thanks, Mom, he thought as he ashed into the palm of his leather-gloved hand.
No wonder most couples, most of the time, just treated the fertile time with drugs nowadays—
The door opened and the Jackal came out. The guy was tall and trim, in the way aristocrats tended to be, all that fine breeding creating a bodyhabitusthat was attractive without being too muscled. And you could tell the guy and Rhage were related. The ocean blue eyes and the bone structure were the same—although the Jackal wasn’t permanently cheerful like Hollywood was.
Then again, few things outside the Times Square ball onNew Year’s Rockin’ Evewere.