Page 52 of Lover Forbidden (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #23)

The following evening, when Dev arrived at the Caldwell Convention Center, he was running on no sleep, but was as hyperaware as someone behind the wheel of an Audi on auto-launch.

Standing outside the front of the glass and steel building that spanned two whole city blocks, he stared at the computerized banner that arched across the entrances before him.

The title and tagline were followed by the dates and times of each of the three days of sessions.

And then off to the right, taking up an entire quarter of the expanse, was the picture of a dark-haired woman who was beautiful as a model, but who had grave eyes that suggested an old soul with weighty knowledge to share.

Staring at the image, he felt an elemental response, deep in his bones, and goddamn it, he wanted to know why— why —this was all happening now—

An image of Lyric came to mind, and he thought about the social media bullshit she’d quit because she hadn’t wanted to be just a facade. She’d wanted… reality. Not some created illusion sold to other people as something it wasn’t.

Dev reached up and touched his own face, feeling the smooth cheek and jaw he’d shaved just a half hour ago.

Masks, whether worn casually, with intention, or as a defense, were a lie that was lived. And if you did it for too long? You forgot who the fuck you were.

Even if that had been your point, all along—

Dev was knocked into by someone bumping his left arm.

“Oh! Sorry!” A bubbly young woman dressed entirely in purple smiled at him. “My fault!”

As she kept going, she was one of what had to be hundreds of just-like-her: All around him, women were streaming into the banks of glass doors, in groups, by themselves, in pairs. A lot of them were in various shades of purple, and some had even dyed their hair along the grape spectrum.

Falling into the flow—as one helluva this-thing-is-not-like-the-others—he eventually found himself in an open-air lobby that was so large, it had horizons, the brightly lit concession stands on either end like rising suns.

Escalators went up and down to a second story, and there were bathrooms every ten yards, it seemed.

Filling the space were long lines before all kinds of tables, purple branded tote bags being given to women who were presenting IDs and tickets on their electronic wallets.

The din of female voices was like being in an echo chamber of birds.

With his head already starting to pound, he hit the nearest escalator and rode up to the second level along with a lineup of buzzing, chattering, fizzy women.

Getting off along with them, he hung back as the stream of attendees zeroed in on sets of double doors that opened into a ballroom-sized event space congested with hundreds of ten-top circular tables.

Standing like sentries to a temple, staffers in purple logo’d shirts checked phones for etickets, and then ushered people in.

The brunette woman’s face and the R2E logo were everywhere, all around, on banners than hung from the steel rafters, and step and repeats for photo ops, and signage on every flat surface and all the load-bearing concrete pylons in between.

Heading over to the entries to the event, Dev stared across the sea of tables to the stage down at the far end. Purple walls, purple draping, and screens reflecting all that purple, which would soon magnify the speaker’s face.

Like anybody might have forgotten the damn thing.

“I do not want to be here,” he muttered.

A woman popped in front of him and grabbed his forearm with the zeal of an acolyte. “Oh, the tenets apply to all of us, men included. You’re more than welcome!”

Then she wrapped a purple boa around his neck and kept right on going.

Had he really thought he could avoid this forever, Dev thought as he ditched the feathers.

No, he’d just been hoping he could. But ever since that billboard had caught that freakish wind, this collision course he’d been determined to dodge had been locked and loaded. And if not for Lyric?

He wouldn’t fucking be here at all.

It was only by keeping the memory of her front and center in his mind that he was able to continue. But he didn’t go into the ballroom. He skirted the event space altogether, and went around the corner.

There were a couple of cops—live ones, not the robots—blocking the head of a corridor that paralleled the lateral wall of the ballroom to a fire door with a red glowing EXIT sign over it.

Halfway down, a group of people, not in purple but in professional suits and slacks, were clustered around a doorway that was attended by another pair of cops.

The steel panel under that red sign opened.

And there she was.

The face of Resolve2Evolve, the focus of all the attention… the reason everybody had come to this convention center, was in the house.

Except it was all a lie. That was no woman.

That wasn’t even a human.

It was a demon who had convinced all these women that she was not only one of them, but a messenger of their emotional and mental health—and as she stepped out under the galaxy of the ceiling lights far, far above her, he had to admit she glowed.

She was even more beautiful than in the pictures, downright resplendent in the flesh, that long dark hair curling naturally and bouncing with shine, that visage full of health and possessing one-in-a-million perfect features, that body wrapped in a purple dress that accentuated the hips, waist, and bust that needed no help whatsoever.

He could practically smell the Poison by Dior from here.

Valentina Disserte—the name she was going by now, no longer the Devina she’d once been—was talking to the people who were coming in behind her, and as she strode forward in high heels, the marching band of advisers who accompanied her were clearly going to merge with the ones who were already in place and waiting.

Meanwhile, her red lips smiled easily as she spoke, and her eyes slanted this way and that, managing to be both authoritative and flirtatious.

Motioning with her hands, her red-tipped fingers splayed and closed, to emphasize whatever points she was making.

No jewelry. No watch. No phone, no handbag, no car keys.

He had to guess that the people around her were her living, breathing purse—

All at once, she stopped, and as she halted, she put her palm up to silence her entourage. In the beats that followed, everything around her went absolutely statue, sure as if she were the breath and the heartbeat of an organism.

That perfectly beautiful face turned and those dark, flashing eyes looked down the hall.

Toward him.

Ah, but he kept himself hidden from the demon, as he had been doing for how long now? And as she searched for him, he thought of Lyric.

He did not want to be here. But he was not leaving.

“Hello, Mother,” he said softly.

When Lyric materialized in the shadows next to the Caldwell Convention Center’s loading dock, she felt scattered.

Everyone had assured her Allhan was way out of the woods, but she just couldn’t seem to shake off the stages of his transition, the violence of it, the pain.

He did seem stable, though, and when she’d finally said goodbye to him after they’d moved him down to a bedroom suite, she’d told herself his destiny was in someone else’s hands now.

Other than her own.

But she had done something important. Something that had changed the lives of everybody around her.

If Allhan had died, Vishous and Jane would have never been the same, and if they had been taken by that tragedy, the entire Brotherhood, and all the fighters, and all the mates, would have likewise suffered.

One life, but so many ripples, the connections transferred from person to person, invisible strings that were stronger than any rope.

And she had saved them all.

As a renewed flush of feeling went through her, the warmth wasn’t arrogance. She wasn’t proud of herself, or mistaken that she was in some way Lassiter’s existential mini-me. But she was grateful, especially to that angel.

He had indeed given her an opportunity to prove what he’d said about her.

“And now, I am here,” she said into the cold night.

Exhaling, her breath drifted off over her shoulder as she smoothed her hair.

She’d taken a super-hot shower at home, and changed into black satin pencil slacks and a borrowed black leather top that had a deep V for a neckline and straight shoulderless sleeves.

As she started for the door she was supposed to enter, she was able to walk under a shallow roof, sparing her thigh-high boots the icy assault that had killed her Louboutins.

Then she waited.

As the frigid air seeped into her, she fiddled with the low neckline of the top.

And then pulled the right sleeve down farther.

The bite wound on her wrist had healed a lot, but there was still a red orbit around the faded twin punctures.

To make sure no one noticed, she’d covered everything up with the foundation she used on her face—

A car entered the rear lot, the headlights swinging around. The way it parked grille in, three feet from the entry—despite the fact that there was no designated space there—instantly told her it was Marcia, even if she hadn’t recognized the Audi.

The woman got out with her two cell phones going, yet another variation on her black-suited uniform making an appearance.

But the soon-to-be ex-manager was not the priority.

Lyric took out her cell phone to check the screen. Then she glanced around. Rechecked the screen—

“Well. Look at you.”

Lyric jerked her head up. Marcia had ended the calls and was standing right in front of her.

“Are you sure you want out of this business?” The woman motioned with the phones, up and down. “Because this is another level.”

Lyric looked over Marcia’s head into the parking lot. Which was stupid. Like a human could just materialize out of thin air? Dev would come in a car or on foot. And she’d confirmed there was, in fact, only one loading dock.