Ruhn froze.
But fortunately, Saxton smoothed the awkwardness over by taking what she offered. "Ruhn? What is your number?"
Swallowing hard, he recited the digits and tried not to feel as though he were stupid.
"Here you are." Saxton stood up and gave the older female the card. "Call either one of us. Day or night. I will do my own independent title search on the property, although I do not expect to find anything of note out of place. And then I will reach out to Mr. Romanski as your solicitor and see what we can do about your difficulties."
Mistress Miniahna stood and clasped the card to her heart. "I am very grateful. In truth, I hate to be an imposition, but I am not...my granddaughter is probably right. I should not handle this alone."
"You said your granddaughter is not far?"
"About twenty miles away."
Saxton nodded. "There is a good chance that things will get a little more messy before they get better. I cannot tell you to vacate your property, but I would advise it."
"I really would prefer to stay."
"We understand. Please consider the option, however."
After they both bowed low, and the mistress bid them best of night, Saxton put his shoes back on and they left and got in the truck.
"So I found something," he said as he drove them out the lane to the county road.
"Tell me."
"Here." He took the cameras from his pocket. "I only saw two. Maybe there are more, though."
Saxton held both in his palms. "Where did you find these?"
"The trees. They're watching her."
As Saxton said something vile under his breath, Ruhn turned out of the driveway and hit the gas.
"I could not agree more," he muttered.
For the next twenty minutes or so, the King's solicitor made some phone calls, one of which was to Vishous, and then there were a number of others where the person on the other end wasn't immediately apparent.
After that, they were just riding along, heading back to the Brotherhood's compound.
"I'm going with you when you go to talk to the humans," Ruhn announced.
"Yes, I should be ready tomorrow night or the next. I have research to do."
"And I'm going to make routine trips out there to the property." He felt Saxton look over at him. "You might let her know--or choose not to tell her. Whatever you deem best. But I can dematerialize there now that I know where it is, and I'll be discreet. I don't want her there all by herself, however."
"We need to talk about what happens if you meet up with any of them. Particularly if it's before I finish my investigation into the property records."
"I won't hurt them. But I shall not be gentle when I remove their presence from the mistress's property."
Abruptly, a strange scent reached Ruhn's nose...a dark spice. And it was strange. Whatever it was got into his nose and somehow into his entire body. He'd never smelled anything so good, actually. It was--
Ruhn frowned as something in his body shifted, a rushing instinct thickening his blood...thickening somewhere else on him, too.
When he realized he was aroused, he recoiled in the driver's seat, his hands gripping the wheel hard, sweat blooming on his chest and running up into his face.
This was sexual attraction, he realized with shock.
Toward...a male.
"Ruhn?"
He jumped in his seat. "I'm sorry, what?"
"Are you all right? You just made a strange noise."
Aware that his heart had begun to beat with panic, he swallowed through a tight throat. "I am well. Very well."
"All right. Anyway, Vishous wants to look at the cameras, and I will bring them to him. And then I will..."
As the King's solicitor continued talking, Ruhn tried to follow the conversation, filling in the breaks of silence with what he hoped were appropriately supportive and affirming nods and mm-hmm's.
Behind his eyes, all in his skull, however, he was screaming.
The one defining thing in his life, back as far as he could remember, was that he did not belong. Not even with his loving parents as he had grown up, not with what happened during the bad years, not when he was searching for his lost sister...and not even as he joined the Brotherhood and lived in their beautiful mansion and accepted material things that he had not earned.
He was someone who had been ever apart, and for the longest time, he had assumed--or perhaps prayed--that all of that isolation would be relieved by him finding, finally, the place in the world where he belonged.
This shocking attraction? To a male? It seemed just one more unwelcome reminder that he was never going to fit in. After all, that kind of thing might be accepted in the glymera, but never in the civilian class.
"Ruhn?"
Closing his eyes briefly, he said, "Yes?"
"You don't look well."
"I am fine. Worry not, I am well enough to do my duty."
And he would complete it, regardless of this momentary...whatever it was--after which he was going to take his leave of the household. He would find a station somewhere in one of the big estates here in Caldwell so he could still see Bitty, and he would resume his handymale ways, fixing and doing manual upkeep.
Until he was claimed by the Fade.
An unspectacular life, perhaps. But not all were granted grand destinies, and who was he to think he was special enough to warrant that, anyway. What he was certain of? He had enough secrets he needed to keep.
A strange, misplaced attraction to Saxton was not going to be added to that list.
Peyton ended up not leaving the training center for the day, but then no one did. All of the trainees stayed--and he was careful to keep away from them. After his debriefing with Rhage, he left the office and considered joining the others for the food that he could smell in the break room. A non-specific rolling nausea and highly specific frontal-lobe headache cured him of that bad idea. And besides, the last thing anyone needed was Craeg snapping and going on the attack.
Although with the way Peyton was feeling, he was liable to leave himself undefended, accepting an old-school rythe of sorts.
At least Novo was still hanging on. Craeg had fed her and so had Boone, from what Peyton had been told. He had been surprised the Brothers hadn't been used, but then it seemed as though the clinical staff recognized that the trainees wanted to be the ones who helped their fallen soldier, even though the Brotherhood certainly had stronger blood.
God...he wished he could have given her a vein. And she had to be at least in and out of consciousness; otherwise she couldn't be feeding.
But again, no one asked him and he knew better than to volunteer.
Left to his own devices, he made his way down to where the classrooms were, and what was on the far side of door number three worked well enough: He took up res in the empty company of the tables and chairs and blackboard where Tohr had taught them about bomb making and detonation, and V had done a course on torture techniques.
Fuck algebra. They were actually going to use that stuff.
Well, the others were going to use it. Although Rhage had said nothing yet about kicking him out, he had to believe that was coming.
And therapy? With Mary?
Who were they even kidding? The last thing he wanted was to have to talk to Rhage's shellan about how he was feeling about what had happened. Hell, getting through the facts had been hard enough--and besides, it wasn't a great fucking mystery. Guilt, regret, shame.
Come on. Like, duh.
After he paced around for a while, he lay flat on the desk and stared up at the ceiling, his lower back pointing out that there was no mattress underneath him, his arm aching because he angled it up and used the thing as a pillow. As the day wore on, he would get up and pace again from time to time, trailing his fingertips on the slick tops of the tables they had all sat at while they had been in class.
He wanted to go back to the student part of things, when the learning had been theoretical. It had been a
grand adventure back then.
He wanted to go back to before his cousin had died. Because that had seemed like the first of the bad dominoes to fall.
He wanted to go back to that alley. But he had recriminated enough over what he wished he had done differently there.
When the door opened, he was lying down again and he didn't bother to look over from his desk-bed. He knew by the scent who it was.
"Hey, Rhage." Peyton rubbed his face. "You got good news for me? No? Well, at least I'm used to that--oh, wait, this is the part where you kick me out, right?"
"She's asking for you."
Peyton jumped to his feet before he was aware of moving. "What did you say?"
"You heard me." The Brother nodded out into the hall. "She's waiting."
Okay, this was a shocker. Unless Novo wanted to yell at him--and hey, if that was what motivated her to stay alive, he was good with being her punching bag.
Out in the corridor, he headed for the clinic area, and as he went along, he pulled up his combat pants and re-tucked his black muscle shirt.
But like she was going to give a shit how he was dressed?
At the door of her hospital room, he knocked--and when he heard a muffled response, he pushed his way inside.
Oh...shit.
Novo was lying prone in that bed with the high rails, her motionless body hooked up to beeping machines by miles of wires. Her skin was sallow, the yellow tint making him think about her liver--no, wait, was that the kidneys? He couldn't think. And her lids were down low, her mouth parted as if she were trying to breathe with the minimum amount of effort. Next to her, Ehlena was checking one of the monitors...and then the nurse put something in the IV line, using a syringe.
"Come closer," Novo croaked. "Not going to bite."
The nurse glanced over her shoulder and smiled. "I'm glad they found you. I'll leave you two to it--but Dr. Manello will be coming in very soon."
As the female left, Peyton went over to the side of the bed. Opening his mouth, he meant to say something appropriate. Nothing occurred to him.
Feeling like a fool, he went with: "Hey."
Yup, real original, profound stuff right there--God, why couldn't he have been the one to get stabbed?
Novo lifted her arm, or at least tried to--only her hand got up off the sheets. "Don't leave."
"Not until you tell me I have to."
"No...the program. Don't leave. I know that's...what you're thinking. I know...you're going to try to...leave."
For a moment, he considered pretending that hadn't been on his mind, oh, like, two minutes ago. But she looked so tired and worn out that he didn't want to waste her energy--even though he couldn't understand why she cared.
"We need...fighters," she said hoarsely. "You...good one."
"How can you even say that?" He pulled a chair over, sat down, and put his head in his hands. "How can you even..."
His voice drifted off as tears came into his eyes. He was so goddamn exhausted with being the fuckup, the asshole, the partyer, the rake...he was a poor excuse for a male of worth, and his father knew it just as everyone who had ever crossed his path did.
And now this incontrovertible evidence of his perennially poor judgment.
This. Here. Lying on this hospital bed. Just out of the operating room, where they had had to repair her heart.
Off in the distance, he heard that patient, the one who was losing his mind, scream like the male was also trapped in some kind of nightmare.
"Don't...leave..." she said. "Look...at me."
Scrubbing his face with his palm, he focused on her eyes...her beautiful, direct, intelligent eyes. And somehow, it was not a surprise that as weak as her body was, her stare was, as ever, alert and burning with purpose.
"I am so sorry," he whispered. "For what I did."
"It's...okay..."
"No, I was wrong." As his voice cut out, he forced strength into it. "I wanted to save Paradise, and she didn't need saving. She doesn't need it. She's as strong a fighter as any one of us. I don't know what I was thinking."
"You...love her." Novo's face tightened. "Not your fault. Emotions are...what they are. Trust me, I know this."
"I didn't want to hurt you."
"I know..."
As her eyes closed, Peyton panicked like she was dying in front of him, and he turned to those monitors with their graphs and their numbers and their blinking lights. None of them were showing any alarms. Were they working right?
But Novo didn't seem in any kind of distress. Her breathing stayed shallow, granted, but it was even, and her face didn't show any kind of pain.
She really was beautiful, he thought. So strong and unwavering, even in her weakened state.
"You can't leave the program," she mumbled. "Everything will fall apart. Brothers...will cancel us all--"
"I'm not in love with her," he blurted. "I'm not. I just didn't realize it until tonight."
Novo's eyes flipped back open. And then she shook her head a little on the thin pillow. "Doesn't...matter."
"You're right. It doesn't."
"Promise...me. No leaving..."
"We'll see--"
"My fault, too." As he frowned, she said, "I should have...stabbed lesser. Should have...finished job. I got distracted, too. Part...my fault."
"You're wrong about that--"
She put her hand out, like she wanted to stop the argument and lacked the energy to talk over him. "I made mistakes...too. First rule is finish the job. I failed. I got...hurt because...of me, too."
Peyton had to blink a couple of times before he could be sure he wouldn't leak. "Let me take the responsibility. The Brothers can do what they want with me."
"We will fight again...together in field..." She took a deep breath and winced. "Soon as I'm...out of bed..."
You are such a female of worth, he thought.
And the more he dwelled on that conviction, the more everything in the room receded, the monitors, the antiseptic smell, the too-bright lights, and the too-hard chair. And then the airbrushed effect extended out even further, wiping clean the existence of the training center, the mountain they were on...Caldwell, the Northeast...the fucking planet itself.
Novo became all he knew, from the specks in her teal-blue eyes to the way her braid curled around and lay on her shoulder to how she put her hand out as if she wanted him to take it.
Extending his own palm, he clasped what she offered him and felt her squeeze with surprising strength.
"We will fight together again," she vowed.
--
Novo fought the ten-thousand-pound drag of pain and drugs in her body and tried to force what will she had into Peyton. The training program had to continue. Without it, she had no purpose and no outlet for all the shit she refused to feel and deal with: If she didn't accept her part in what had happened in that alley, and if she didn't forgive Peyton, the class was going to be divided, the Brotherhood was going to lose confidence and patience with them, and then she was going to be stuck going to her sister's fucking half-human mating ceremony with no battle armor against everything she had lost.
Without this work, these fights, her nightly routine, there was nothing to ground her. Pull her through. Keep her going.
And her salvation from oblivion all started with Peyton.
Forgiveness by her, here and now toward him, was the kind of thing that would spread to everyone else and re-bind the group. The other trainees would have to follow her lead--and p.s., she hadn't made up the shit about her being part of the problem. She should never have let the enemy just lie there on her like it had. Those slayer bastards were like rattlesnakes, capable of biting you even after you cut them in half. Peyton had definitely set the bad result in motion, but she had provided the slope.
It was a mistake neither one of them was going to make again.
Assuming they got the chance.
With what was left of her strength, she tried to keep her eyes focused on Peyton's face, but she co
uld only get halfway to goal. Everything was fuzzy, as if there were panes of dusty glass between them.
What was clear? The scent of his tears.
And that was a shocker. Sure, she had needed open-heart surgery, but he was the perpetual joker, the playful resister who bobbed on top of everything. Not even a brush with death could make him get real...or at least, she wouldn't have thought it could--
I'm not in love with her.
That was totally not relevant, she told herself.
The door to the room swung open and Dr. Manello came in, his hospital scrubs traded for workout gear, a water bottle under his arm and a set of earbuds dangling from his hand.
"And we're awake." The human smiled. "Better than I thought you'd be."
"Fighter," she said in a voice that was more sandpaper than syllable.
God, she fucking hated to sound weak.
Dr. Manello came over and pounded knuckles with Peyton. Then he leaned against the base of the bed. "Yeah, as a soldier, you are absolutely in the right line of badass work. You flatlined twice on our table, which, to be honest, pissed me off. But you had your reasons. And there was one point when I was convinced I was going to lose you for good--you came back, though. Guess you decided you weren't done with your work here on earth--well, and that six-chambered heart of yours just kept working with us. Somehow, it hung on so I could do what I needed to to fix that hole."
"Maybe it was more because my surgeon"--she took a deep breath--"is talent? I mean, talented."
"Nah, I'm just a mechanic in scrubs instead of overalls."
He was lying, of course. Just as she had been coming out of anesthesia, she had heard Vishous say that there were only two surgeons that he knew of who could have saved her--Doc Jane and Dr. Manello. Especially because they hadn't had a bypass machine in the surgical unit.
Whatever the hell that meant.
"So here's the plan." Dr. Manello did that thing medical people do, scanning the monitors that were all around the bed like he was updating her chart in his head. "You're going to stay here for the next forty-eight hours. And don't frickin' bitch to me about how long that is or how amazing your species' regenerative powers are and how you can go home at nightfall." He put his palm up as she opened her mouth. "Nope, there will be no discussion. In another twelve hours, I want you walking yourself up and down the corridor. All the way to the exit and back every two or three hours--"
"Hoping...back to...work forty-eight hours."