Page 14 of Lover Forbidden (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #23)

The Black Dagger Brotherhood’s training center was located deep underground, about an eighth of a mile behind the First Family’s mansion.

Though the big house had been abandoned, the training facility was very much in use, and as Qhuinn ripped open the steel door in from the parking area, he couldn’t decide whether he needed the medical clinic, the weight room, or the target range.

What a fucking night.

Striding down the concrete corridor, he unzipped his leather jacket so the warm air could get at his cold body. The classrooms were all empty, and just as well. Considering who they’d brought into the clinic, it was better for the place to be NPO.

Necessary Personnel Only.

And of course, then there was his mood. He really shouldn’t be around anybody who wasn’t in the thick of this fucking mess.

All parts of it: The shit that had almost happened to Lyric, the shit that might have happened to L.W., and the shit that had definitely happened to that male they’d found in the hidden room at Whestmorel’s.

After spending the last three hours threading the avenues of downtown, looking for the heir to the throne’s body, he’d pulled off the hunt to come assess how this other unstable situation was going.

When he was done? He was going to head to Blay’s parents’ house and check on everybody there, including his daughter.

Lyric went there at the end of every night.

At least she was physically okay.

Arriving at the clinic section of things, he could hear voices on the other side of the only closed door among all the rooms. Doc Jane and Tohr were in there, rapid-firing some kind of conversation, and as he inhaled through his nose, he could scent the dying male.

Word had it, the patient was still alive, but that update had been hours ago.

As he leaned back against the concrete wall and waited for one of the pair of them to come out, he crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at the floor.

His shitkickers had left a line of damp footprints that went all the way back to the parking garage’s reinforced door.

Thanks to the heat that was being blown in from the ceiling vents, soon enough there would be no evidence of his path.

A reminder, not that he needed it, of how the whole mortal thing worked—

God, he hated coming to this place. The fact that his brother, Luchas, had been a patient here… and then chose to walk out the emergency exit into a snowstorm—

The door to the patient room opened and Tohr stepped through, a coffee mug in his hand, a grim expression on his face. As the brother’s navy blue eyes lifted, they registered surprise.

“Oh, hey, Q. What’s doing?”

Qhuinn lifted his dagger hand in a hi-how’re-ya. “Just wanted to come and see how things were going with that male.”

“Not great. But Doc Jane is doing everything she can.”

“Heard he coded twice in the mobile unit coming in.”

“Three times, actually.” Tohr ran his fingers over his high-and-tight. As the front resettled badly, the white streak formed a question mark. “Who’s counting at this point.”

There was a pause. “That coffee smells good.”

“Dunkin’.” Tohr took a sip. “You can’t go wrong with the OG. Especially on a night like tonight.”

“It’s been a bitch. I’m assuming nobody’s found L.W.?”

Stupid fucking question. There would have been immediate communication—

“Not yet.” Tohr tilted his head. “Did you need something?”

“I should have stayed out there. I just…”

“You’re dealing with enough right now. I told you two weeks ago that you shouldn’t be on schedule.”

To avoid the brother’s frank stare, Qhuinn looked down to the glass door into the training center’s office.

He was staring in that direction, rather aimlessly, when a pattern of cracks on the concrete walling registered.

It took a moment for the origin of them to sink in, and as he realized what they were, he cursed under his breath.

Oh, Christ. Did death have to stalk him like this tonight?

Just as the thought came to him, Tohr’s broad shoulders passed through his visual field—and as the brother walked over to the spidery fissures, Qhuinn straightened with a jerk.

“I wasn’t looking at…” He let the lie drift.

“How’s Rocke doing,” the brother said bleakly as he ran trembling fingertips along the pattern of veins.

You would know , Qhuinn thought sadly.

“He’s, ah, he’s focused on his shellan . What she needs, night by night… hour by hour. In a weird way, I don’t think he really knows what’s happening at this point. I can’t decide whether that is good or cruel.”

Tohr glanced back. “Is the elder Lyric comfortable?”

“Doc Jane has been great. Her pain’s under control, and she’s pretty lucid. For now, at least. I don’t know how much more time we have.”

“How’s Blay?”

“Braver than anybody else in the situation.” Qhuinn had to clear his throat to finish with: “Which is not a surprise.”

“You need to stop trying to be in two places at once. You should be home with all of them. I know that’s where your heart is.”

“With the King’s son gone, how could I not be downtown?”

As a tense silence bloomed between them, Tohr looked back at the corridor wall and Qhuinn studied the brother’s profile.

After his brother’s shellan had been murdered by the Lessening Society, Tohr had disappeared for a time.

When he’d come back, that lock of hair in the front had gone white and his dark blue eyes had been cold as graves.

Word had it that if you committed suicide, you couldn’t get into the Fade and be reunited with those you loved, and it’d been clear that that cautionary legend was the only reason he’d still been alive.

His pregnant mate, the love of his life, shot in the face.

It was too horrific to comprehend. Just like a brother who walked out into the cold night to die alone, like a daughter nearly crushed in the street… like a son gone AWOL in the field of combat.

“So you know about these, huh.” As Tohr spoke abruptly, his stare shifted back over again. “The cracks in the concrete. How they were made.”

“I…”

“It’s okay.” The brother reached out once more, and this time, there was no shaking to his hand. “What you’ve heard is true. This is where they came to find me, after my Wellsie and our young inside her were… killed. I knew, when I saw my brothers all at once—I knew .”

“I can’t imagine what that was like.”

“Yeah, you can,” Tohr countered. “You’ve been there—in your own way.”

The ghost of Luchas seemed to drift between them, and for a second, Qhuinn could see his dead brother with painful clarity, his withered body, his butchered hands. They’d nursed him back to some level of health after they’d found him in that drum. But it hadn’t been all the way, not by a long shot.

Then again, even if his body had been whole, the mind and the soul had been destroyed.

He thought about L.W. and prayed— prayed —the hotheaded sonofabitch was somewhere safe.

Tohr took another draw from the mug’s lip. “I’m glad your Lyric was okay tonight. In the middle of that street.”

“So am I.” He closed his eyes. “It feels like death is everywhere right now.”

When he popped his lids back open, Tohr was in front of him.

“That’s always the truth of things, though.

We just can’t think about the reality all the time or we’d be paralyzed by how thin the divide between us and tragedy truly is.

In a split second, everything can change…

and in the end, everyone dies at some point. ”

Qhuinn swallowed hard, knowing that his daughter had been saved by a fluke, and yet Tohr’s first shellan had been killed by one, too: Wrong places, wrong time.

Wellsie hadn’t been a target; she’d just crossed paths with a lesser who’d had a gun.

Meanwhile, Lyric had just crossed the street, at a particular moment, in a strong wind, when there had happened to be a billboard angled in just the right way.

Except tonight, his daughter had been spared by a quick-thinking stranger, while Tohr’s—

“Don’t do that to yourself.”

Qhuinn shook back to attention. “I-I’m sorry?”

The brother put his hand on Qhuinn’s shoulder.

“It’s a good thing your daughter was spared.

You don’t need to punish yourself just because luck was with your family tonight.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. No matter what happened in my own past—and I’m sure Wrath feels the same about the present. ”

Fuck, Qhuinn didn’t want to even imagine L.W. being dead.

“I’m sorry,” he croaked. “For the loss of your shellan and son, all those years ago. I don’t think I’ve ever said that to you before.”

Tohr’s head turned back to the cracks in the cement. “You don’t have to. We’re brothers, remember. And you’ve had more than your own fair share of tragedy. Some things don’t have to be spoken between survivors like us.”

All Qhuinn could do was nod. He didn’t trust his voice.

“On that note, your hellren needs you right now.” Tohr took a deep breath. “And when you see your father-in-law, tell Rocke that I’m here for him. Now and… afterward—”

“You asked me if I needed something.”

“Yes?”

Qhuinn rubbed his face. “I think I came here to find you and ask you for forgiveness. How fucked-up and unfair is that? I’m just grateful my daughter is okay and that feels wrong.”

The brother slowly nodded his head. “Survivor’s guilt is a pernicious kind of grief. I walk that path myself still. Time makes it better, but it never completely goes away.”

Qhuinn thought of the footprints he’d tracked down the hall, slowly disappearing.

Tohr’s voice got insistent. “It’s not your fault that your daughter is alive, and my mate and my young are not. And no matter what happens with L.W., the two outcomes are not tied to each other just because they happened on the same night.”

“I know that.”

“But you don’t believe it. It’s not tit for tat, Lyric for L.W. You don’t need to rack your brain over whether you should have traded her life for the heir to the throne’s. Hell, we don’t even know if he’s dead.”

Blinking to clear his vision, Qhuinn nodded again.

And then Tohr brought him in for a tight embrace. “Let this particular burden go. You carry enough, already.”

The brother released his hold and stepped back with an incline of the head, as if they’d come to an agreement. “You are forgiven, Q. And I’m going to get more coffee. Now go home to your family.”

At that, Tohr started heading to the break room. His strides, long and true, seemed a visceral reminder that he’d managed to keep going from his tragedy, and if anybody deserved another shot at love, it was the fighter.

His Autumn had healed him in ways all the time in the world couldn’t have touched.

Qhuinn waited until the door in the distance eased shut.

Then he took a last look at those cracks.

God, he hoped they found L.W. before dawn.