Page 29 of Lover Forbidden (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #23)
Xcor took a draw on the can. “So to take our minds off it all, Layla and I binge-watched a show about veterinarians set in the Scottish Highlands at the turn of the twentieth century all day long.”
Yup, they hadn’t been able to sleep, either. “Not your usual gig.”
“Too right. I started watching just to be pleasant.”
“And you didn’t pass out from boredom?”
Rhage nodded as he crunched down on his Tootsie Pop. “For real.”
“Worse.” Xcor took another long drink. “I got sucked in. I ended up with crumpled Kleenex all over the bed. And I do not cry.”
Qhuinn had to laugh. “Softie for animals, huh.”
“I joined PETA at three in the afternoon, and by six, I was ready to adopt all the dogs in Caldwell that didn’t have a home. I am never watching television ever again.”
As Rhage’s phone rang, he turned away to answer. “Hey, Mary, you okay?”
In a lower voice, Qhuinn said, “How’s Layla doing?”
“Not good.” Xcor shook his head, his deformed upper lip flattening.
“She keeps playing that video of the billboard over and over. Verily, Lyric’s been so good to us, FaceTiming last night, coming home from her grandparents’ right after sunset—she and Layla spent a little together—but I don’t know.
Sometimes the reminder of how important someone is becomes just as traumatic as the near miss. ”
“Maybe I can talk to her?”
“Yes, please.” Xcor, with his Old Country manners, bowed. “Anything to ease my shellan .”
Tohr put his phone away and came forward. “Hey, thanks for coming—and being willing to sit guard. Syphon and Syn just left.”
“No problem.” Qhuinn nodded at the door to the patient room. “Any change in the male?”
“He’s breathing on his own, but not really conscious. Doc Jane’s in the lab with Ehlena, if anything acute happens.”
“Mind if I go in and see him?”
“Doc Jane says keep it at five minutes, no longer.” Tohr lifted up his phone. “And if you get anything out of him, I’ll come back from the field immediately. This is the most important thing on our docket to-night.”
“Roger that.”
With things settled, Tohrment and Xcor said their goodbyes and headed back down toward the dreaded hall of tiny little holes.
If Qhuinn remembered the schedule correctly, Tohr was on at the Audience House and Xcor was downtown in the field.
The two, as half-brothers, were never paired up, just like Blay and Qhuinn, and John Matthew and Xhex, as mated couples, were likewise kept apart.
The same was true for V and Payne as brother and sister, and Z and Phury.
No doubt Xcor had come here to release his two soldiers from their over-day duties guarding the captive.
Though the Band of Bastards had sworn their allegiance to Wrath long ago, they still had their own chain of command, and Tohr never questioned it, in spite of the fact that he was the King’s right-hand male, and technically called all the shots over all the fighters.
“I’ll stay out here.” Rhage leaned against the concrete wall as he tossed his stick in a wastepaper basket. “Let me know if you need anything.”
Qhuinn nodded and opened the door into the hospital room.
Slipping inside, the heart rate monitor seemed too loud, and so did the whirring sounds from all the machinery around the head of the bed.
The male they’d found in that hidden room at Whestmorel’s was full of tubing and the color of a corpse, his skin gray and stretched over the bones of what had probably once been an attractive face.
The bruising around his wrists, neck, and torso had settled into a series of dark purple blotches, and there were a couple of lines of neat stitches on his shoulder and under one arm.
With the covers set just below his diaphragm, it wasn’t possible to assess the lower body’s damage.
But he wasn’t a medical guy, anyway.
Going around the foot of the bed, Qhuinn sat in the chair that had been pulled up on the far side.
Of course he thought of his brother. How could he not.
Just like with Luchas, all they had was the aftermath of whatever had been done to this male and it was anybody’s guess whether the aristocrat was going to live.
Oh, who the fuck was he kidding. If you had to say that, the answer was—
The eye closest to Qhuinn opened a little, a crack appearing between the matted lashes. Then there was a little gasp and both hands tightened into claws.
Qhuinn jerked forward, but made sure he kept his voice soft and even. “You’re in the custody of Wrath, son of Wrath, sire of Wrath. What’s your name.”
When he didn’t get an answer, he wasn’t surprised. “You want to tell me your name? What’s your name.”
If they could get one, it would help the ID process.
V had already run a search on the species databases, just in case anybody had reported a brother, son, uncle, father missing.
So far, nothing. Then again, the male’s entire bloodline could be in on Whestmorel’s treason, with him the only holdout. Fucking aristocracy—
A rasp cut through the whirring of all the monitoring machinery.
“What did you say?” Qhuinn got up and leaned over the bed. “What’s your name.”
When there was no response, he decided he’d imagined whatever it’d been, and he glanced at the machines behind the bed. No alarms going off, so he assumed the big vitals were all doing okay—
“Geeeeorge,” the male wheezed.
And then everything went haywire, the monitors flashing, a loud beeping ringing out at scream level.
Qhuinn looked at the heart rate, the peaks and valleys going irregular before spacing out farther and farther apart…
… until they stopped altogether.