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Vero barreled toward the burning building and cleared the stairs before kicking open the front door and running inside. Jonathan and the other males herded the females outside to safety. “Go with them,” Vero ordered Lyrica.

She grasped a visibly shaking Genevieve to escort out.

Smoke had already filtered down the stairs to choke the air in the main gathering room. He ran to the right and took the stairs five at a time, skidding on the landing just as Paxton careened out of his room with Ho pe in his arms.

Vero reached him almost immediately. “Is she okay? How ba d is she hurt?”

Hope looked at him, her blue eyes blinking. “I’m fine. I might’ve gotten crushed by this guy when he jumped to cover me, but I’m good.”

Paxton stood in black boxers and nothing else. Smoke lifted from behind him, surrou nding his face.

Vero squinted through the murky air as the smell of burned flesh filled his senses. “Shit. You’re on fire.” He immediately pivoted around his brother and started slapping out flames with his bare hands.

Paxton didn’t so much as grunt.

Hope struggled in his arms, looking over his shoulder at Vero. “The explosion happened between our room a nd the twins’.”

Flames licked across the floor. Vero slapped a flame out on Pax’s lower back. “I’ve got it. You take her outside.” He couldn’t see through the smoke and his lungs rapidly began to protest. Embers and ash floated down to burn his head, but he pushed his way through the crackling air and kicked open the bedroom next to his brother’s.

“Collin, Liam!” he yelled, his eyes watering, his b ody shuddering.

He coughed several times, squinting through the thick, dark smoke. Fire licked up the entire wall by the windows. He knelt down, hoping to see better beneath the smoke, and spotted a foot. Grunt ing, he grabbed an ankle and pulled an unconscious body toward him. Fire burned over the male’s torso, so Vero wildly slapped out the flames with his hands before ducking his head and jerking the body over his shoulder. He didn’t know which twin he carried, but he turned, coughing, stumbling and limping in to the hallway.

Paxton immediately stood in front of him, burns down the side of his face. His black hair smoked, and his eyes blazed throug h the darkness.

“I got one,” Vero coughed. “Wait for me.”

“Take him outside,” Paxton ordered, his breath emerging raspy and rough. He coughed and then hurried beyond Vero toward th e burning room.

Damn it. Vero jogged toward the stairwell and descended, taking the stairs quickly and bursting outside where Hope and Lyrica waited. He looked wildly around.

“Liam!” Hope cried out, running behind Vero to check her cousin. How she managed to tell the twins apart, Vero wo uld never know.

The scientific medical building. That’s all they had. Cold air smashed into him, a balming relief to hi s burning skin.

Vero careened across the icy ground as soldiers and civilians began to pour out of the different barracks. He kicked open the door to the medical lab and ran inside, ducking his head to flip Liam over onto his back on one of the three medical tables. A sheet covered the dead human female on t he first table.

The twin didn’t move. Vero reached for the pulse in the male’s neck. It pounded strong and steady. He looked to see Hope and Lyrica behind him. Good. He much preferred they stay inside. “Tak e care of him.”

Hope immediately reached for her cousin’s wrist.

Lyrica grabbed Vero’s arm. Her pretty brown eyes glowed, full of concern. “Be careful. You can die by fire, ” she implored.

He was well aware that he could die by fire. He nodded gruffly. Nobody had ever told him to be careful before or even remotely expressed concern for his well-being. He shook off the sense of unease and ran back outside, where a powerfully rough snow had started to fall in heavy and painful sheets of near ice. Good.

He saw two of his soldiers, ones he trusted. “Guard the medical building. Don’t let anybody in unless it’s Paxton or me. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” the first male said, immediatel y taking point.

“Find somebody to guard the back also,” he ordered the other guy. While there was only one door to the place, the wide window looking toward the river could easi ly be breached.

“I’m on it,” the s oldier replied.

Then Vero ran back toward the lodge, which now had flames billowing out of the roof above Paxton’s room along with soot. He hur ried back inside, ducking his head against the painful smoke just as Paxton reached him, his leg on fire, the other twin ove r his shoulder.

“I’ve got him,” Vero said, fitting his shoulder to Paxton’s and pulling the vampire onto it. The guy weighed a ton. “Extinguish the fir e on your leg.”

“I am.”

Vero looked over his other shoulder. “Do we have everyone?”

Paxton coughed as he stumbled outside into the cool night air. “Yes, only two bedrooms and two bathrooms make up the west wing’s second level. We’d just gone to bed abou t an hour ago.”

Vero carried the unconscious vampire, who weighed a good three hundred pounds of solid muscle, over the ice and into the medical building. Once there, he gently flipped Collin over next to his twin on an examination bed. An angry-looking purple-and-red lump had formed on Collin’s forehead. The blast must have thrown him a cross his room.

Vero immediately sought Lyrica to calm himself. She stood next to Liam, looking fragile and defenseless in the wool coat. Something settled in his chest upon seeing her still sa fe. “You good?”

“Yeah.” She pulled a heavy blanket up over Liam’s c onvulsing body.

“They both took wounds to the head and have inhaled a lot of smoke,” Hope said briskly, making sure Collin was covered as well. “My guess is they’ll be out for an hour or so as their bodies repair themselves.” She gazed down Vero’s torso. “How badly a re you burned?”

He shook his he ad. “I’m fine.”

Lyrica frowned and grabbed his hand, flipping it over to show the skin burned away to the bone. “That is not fine,” she said in a hushed voice.

Hope winced, somehow looking regal in a white nightgown with the bottom burned away and spots of soot everywhere, including on her nose and above her right eye. Her hair stood up in a tangle of curls, and the prophesy markings up her neck seemed to darken. “I agree. Let me at least put a salve on that.”

“It’s fine.” Vero sent healing cells to the damaged tissues. That woul d take a while.

Lyrica stamped her foot. “At least p ut on a glove.”

He didn’t have a glove. “I will. I’ll grab one. On my way back in,” he lied. “You two stay here. I have guards at each possibl e entry point.”

With that, he hustled back outside and looked at the flames reaching into the sky. The ice and fire collided right above the roofline with an ear-shaking hiss as steam blew in e very direction.

Paxton stood between a group of soldiers, still in burned boxers and his feet bare as they all grabbed chunks of snow and pieces of ice off the ground to hurtle at the flames. Working rapidly, faster than any human eye could detect, they launched more ice and snow even as the skies mer cifully granted assistance with sleet. Soon the fire gave up the fight and sputtered out with an angry crackle. More steam rolled into the night.

Paxton looked down at his burned feet, then over at Ve ro. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Vero said. “How badly ar e you injured?”

Paxton leaned slightly to look at Vero’s back. “About the same as y ou, I suppose.”

The frigid night air helped, and the angry sleet stung as it hit his flesh, but then it provided a balming relief. Vero sent more healing cells to the deeper burns on his body. He stared at the damaged log facade. “I heard just o ne detonation.”

“Affirmative,” Paxton said. “I think the explosives were set in the small bathroom between our room and the t wins’ bedroom.”

“You all four got out,” Vero said slowly. “So either those weren’t meant to kill you, or…” He looked uneasily toward the s ilent building.

Paxton stiffened. “Or there are more explosives in there that did not detonate. We also need to check your bedroom in the east wing.”

“I’ll go.” Vero’s right foot felt numb, but no doubt the healing cells would do their job. Their enemies needed to kill Paxton before the Convexus—in exac tly seven days.

“No. I’ll go ,” Paxton said.

Vero shoved him not too gently to the side. “In case you forgot, you’re the king. We need you to stay alive.” Without waiting for an answer, he pivoted away, fury hotter than the explosion erupti ng through him.

Fury that Paxton didn’t know to keep himself safe, and fury that somebody had dared try to blow up his brother. He had felt little loyalty during his life, but he’d at least tried to be loyal to his family members and to his nation as a whole. This was different. This felt different. There was a depth to Vero’s fury that caused him to go stone-cold. He hadn’t known his brother for long, but they shared blood. That meant something, and he would find whoever had tried to kill not only the king of their nation, b ut his brother.

A wisp of sound behind him caught his attention as he walked inside the smoking lodge. He looked over his shoulder, unsurprised to see Paxton. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Paxton shook his head. “I’m not letting you go up there alone. Now come on, let’s get this done.”

Irritation climbing through him, Vero stomped up the damaged steps, unsurprised as one gave way beneath his uninjured foot. He hopped up and kept moving without missing a stride. His brother truly did not understand his duties as the leader. At the moment he should be protected, guarded, and safe. Instead, the idiot was following him, burned head to toe, wearing only t attered boxers.

His brothe r had big feet.

Vero had no clue where that thought came from, but he moved farther down the hallway, acidic black smoke attacking him from every angle. He reached the room formerly occupied by the twins and shoved inside, noting some of the smoke had dissipated out the burned-away wall. Dirty chunks of ice littered still-smoldering bedclothes as well as weapons leaning agains t the far wall.

He stalked past the nearest bed into what had been the twins’ bathroom. The room now stood as a burned-out shell of black charcoal and torn wood. He pointed toward where the sink had been. “They hid the explosive s under there.”

Paxton stood behind him, tall and sure, seemingly not noticing that his feet were burned to a crisp. It had to hurt to stand on them. He looked around. “There was nowhere in here for a sec ondary device.”

“Agreed.” Vero turned back to the bedroom and they quickly searched it, spending extra time in the closet and tossing the beds out of the way. He cocked his head. “That leaves one room on this wing.”

“I’m aware,” Paxton said grimly, pivoting toward the door and heading into the hallway before Vero could jump i n front of him.

Enough of this shit. “We really have to get you accustomed to acting like a king,” Vero snapped, shoving his brot her behind him.

“I am acting like a king,” Paxton said, knocking him on the arm.

Vero grit his teeth and kicked open the door of what had been Paxton’s large room. The bed had fallen and was a smoldering heap of mattress and blankets. He hurried toward the closet and rifled through it, looking for another device, while Paxton went into the adjoining bath an d did the same.

Paxton emerged, shaking his head, soot covering the right side of his body. “There’s nothing in there. Maybe they thought the one bomb would ta ke us all out.”

“I don’t think so,” Vero said, his gaze caught on the one dresser to the side of the closet. He stumbled over crispy black wood and shattered belongings as well as ice from the windows and immediately began pulling out and dumping out drawers. No explosives.

Paxton shrugged. “Let’s search your bedroom and then go check on the twins. I gues s this was it.”

“This wasn’t it.” Vero knew to his very soul there was some danger here. He could feel it. He could smell it. Grunting, he grabbed the heavy oak dresser, lifted it, and heaved it across the room. Looking down, he could see a bomb of sorts embedded in the floor. The left side of it glowed yellow and began t o flash to red.

Panic gripped him. Fuck. He turned, grabbed his brother around the shoulders, and threw them both out of the gaping hole in the wall. The explosion rocked the room the second he hit the air and propelled them both, along with a flash of fire, several yards up to the heavens.

Vero gripped hits brother tight, holding on, wanting to make sure they landed on him and not Paxton. As they rolled around, fire licking at them, smoke surrounding them, momentum smashed them both into the depot building. Darkness crashed through his head, and he didn’t feel the hard, icy ground when he finally landed, ful ly unconscious.

Again.