Page 71 of Lover Forbidden (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #23)

The following evening arrived with flurries, but oddly warmer temperatures. Not that anyone in the training center knew about either.

“It was a miracle.”

As Blay spoke up, Qhuinn looked over at his hellren .

His most favorite redhead on the planet was sitting beside him in the break room, the pair of them holding hands while they’d stared up at a muted TV screen and tracked absolutely nothing about the marathon of the old school The Resident episodes.

“It was.” He lifted Blay’s wrist to his mouth and pressed a kiss to the veins there. “Doc Jane said she’d never seen anything like it. Guess that shot of epinephrine really worked.”

“You know something, I’m not sure… if I can take much more.” Blay laughed on a short exhale. “Even if it’s good news, my heart needs a break from shocks.”

Nodding his head, Qhuinn kept the rest of his thoughts to himself.

There were a lot of questions to be answered, main among them what his daughter and son had been doing in the apartment—although clearly it was owned by that human Lyric had apparently been dating.

When he’d pressed Rhamp for details, he’d gotten stonewalled, and he was very certain his son knew all kinds of things he wasn’t talking about.

But whatever. At this point, though, it was still one night at a time.

Lyric had somehow survived her gunshot wound, everybody was here safely, and there was only one urn of ashes to be picked up and brought home from the crematorium.

All things considered, Blay had it right. A miracle had been granted, and at least for now, they needed to just be grateful.

He glanced at the clock. “Let’s go check on her?”

When Blay nodded, they got up. There were all kinds of brothers sitting around, and everybody glanced over like they were looking to be given a job: Rhage was eating ice cream, of course, while Z strummed on a guitar.

Vishous had two laptops open in front of him, while Tohr and Xcor were at his side like the pair were comparing notes with the guy.

Meanwhile, Phury, Xhex, John Matthew, and Butch were playing gin rummy, while Payne and Wrath were down the hall, sparring in the gym.

And on the far side of the room, Lassiter was stretched out on two stuffed chairs, the TV remote in his hand.

The angel had been the one to pick the show for the binge watch—so really, the distraction could have been much, much worse.

Out in the corridor, Quinn looked down the way to the room Lyric was resting in. L.W., Shuli, and Rhamp had been outside her door all night and into the day, and he had no complaints about their loyalty. At the moment, though, one of the Three Musketeers was missing.

“Hey, boys,” he said as he approached. “Where’s Rhamp?”

“In there with her.” Shuli rubbed his eyes like they were burning from lack of sleep and an existential exhaustion. “We’re getting ready to leave. He wanted to say goodbye—see you later, I mean.”

“Where you going?”

“Oh, you know. Just out. She’s stable, so we’re gonna go food up and have showers back at my place.”

“No field work,” Qhuinn warned. “Everybody’s off rotation. The King’s orders.”

Even L.W. nodded at that, which was a relief. Talk about your wild cards. The heir to the throne had been making everybody nervous for years, and now was not the time for any reminders of that dynamic.

Qhuinn cracked the door. Lyric was sitting up in the hospital bed, and Rhamp was in the chair next to her. The two looked impossibly old, no trace at all of the young they’d once been showing. He was proud of the fact that they were adults, but sad to see the maturity, too.

Their innocence was totally gone now, the final vestiges of it seeming to have been burned away in the last twenty-four hours.

“Let’s give them a moment,” he murmured as he let the door re-close without entering.

Lying on a hospital bed she could barely remember being brought to, Lyric searched her brother’s face and tried to understand what Rhamp was saying to her.

“What do you mean… he was there.”

Sitting next to her on the clinic’s chair, her twin shook his head. “I don’t know what else to tell you. At the moment your whole body bounced back to life… I saw that guy standing over you at your feet, with his palm outstretched. I don’t fucking know.”

With a sense of heartbreak, she thought of being up at the door to the Fade. And what she and her grandmahmen had talked about. “Well, it doesn’t matter if he was there or not.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“No.”

“I think he was the one who brought you back, Lyric.” Her brother put both of his hands forward. “I don’t know what went down between you two, and it’s none of my business, but I wanted you to be aware of what I saw.”

“You know who he is, right? He told you, I heard him.”

At least… she was pretty sure she had? Things remained blurry.

Rhamp shrugged. “There were a lot of things said last night. And you know, given everything that’s happening right now, I think it’s best that we should just let it all go. I mean, if you’re serious about never seeing him again—”

“I am.”

“Then talking about it is just going to kick up a lot of drama that no one needs. Besides, like I’d be in a big hurry to tell everyone I’d just dated the Omega’s grandson?”

“I wish you wouldn’t put it like that,” she muttered. “Although it is the truth.”

“So we don’t say anything. He was just a human as far as they know. By the time they got there, he was nowhere to be seen. Let’s just keep it clean.”

Lyric found herself nodding. At this point, she only wanted to put the whole thing behind her anyway.

Her grief and sadness were so profound, almost as profound as her sense of betrayal, and she also found it difficult that she’d never guessed any of it.

It was only now, as she relived certain exchanges on things, that she saw the clues that had been there all along.

Forgettable by design, wasn’t that what he’d said in the beginning? Forgettable on purpose was more like it.

Brushing under her eyes, she listened to the steady beat of the monitor behind her, proof positive—her being conscious aside—that she was, in fact, alive and kicking.

“So I went to the Fade,” she blurted. As her brother’s head ripped up, she nodded. “I saw the door… the knob… the whole thing. And Granmahmen .”

“She was there?”

Lyric nodded again. “And she smiled a lot. She wants us to know she’s waiting for us, but to take our time down here.”

She could still picture it all, hear that voice, see the buffering clouds all around. “It’s beautiful up there. Better than mortal life, for sure.”

Rhamp cleared his throat. “I, ah, I don’t know what I would have done… if you hadn’t come back.”

Reaching out, she squeezed his hand. “Well, the good thing is, we don’t need to think about that, do we.”

“No, we don’t,” he echoed.

With a brisk nod, he released a breath, as if she’d given him permission to put the whole nightmare aside, stuff it down deep, and never dwell on those moments again.

The radical compartamentalization wasn’t quite what she’d been going for, but if that was the way he handled it, what else could she do?

Other than make sure she stayed alive.

“How did you three know I was there?” she asked.

“We tracked two lessers to the address.”

“Ah. Yes. Guess they’d been called in for backup by the one who knocked on Dev’s door.”

With a sudden shiver, she wondered about the slayers they’d seen all around that property. Had Dev been recruiting them, working with the—

“I’m sorry,” she said roughly.

“What for?”

“Everything.”

She thought about him calling her a Barbie, and that had been an insult.

But she also recognized that she was a long, long way from making any decision about going out in the field.

Yes, she would do the training, yes, she would work hard, but transformations in life were about so much more than getting spoon-fed some insta-wisdom from a woman strutting around on a purple stage and telling you what you wanted to hear.

Or at least, what you thought you wanted to hear.

Real change required work, not just inspiration, and true growth was more than some fantasy about being a hero.

And yet… as she thought about what she’d done for Allhan, and then remembered helping Rhamp at their granmahmen ’s bedside—and as she recalled especially the moment she’d jumped in front of a bullet to save L.W.

, she decided the fallen angel and her dearly departed namesake were right.

She was capable of things that mattered, and others knew, too.

L.W. had certainly thanked her for saving his life, and so had the great Blind King himself.

“So we’re going to keep going,” she said, mostly to herself. “Because that’s what the living do and the dead cannot. We… move forward.”

No matter how much it could hurt sometimes.

“Anyway”—she sniffled some composure back into her face—“where are you off to? They’re making me stay here for monitoring, but honestly, I feel fine.”

“I’m just going to train—but you should absolutely hang here.” Rhamp got to his feet. “Call me if you need me.”

“Always. And you do the same, okay?”

He bent down and kissed her cheek. “You got it, sister mine.”

As her brother headed to the door, she closed her eyes, thinking she might sleep a little. There was nothing else to do.

“Lyric?” When she popped her lids and looked over, Rhamp was hesitating by the exit. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re wrong. I think it does matter that guy was there.”

Drawing her brows together, she tried not to be angry with her twin. “Why are you defending him?”

“?’Cuz I believe he saved my sister’s life.” Rhamp opened the exit and stepped out. “I owe him.”