“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Qhuinn said roughly. “With my bare fucking hands. And then I’m going to eat your heart while it’s still warm—”

Xcor went to turn around and prepare a defense against his attacker—when something flashed in the firelight and froze him where he stood. At first, he couldn’t believe what caught his attention. It was so unexpected that even the prospect of certain death wasn’t enough to distract him.

Closing his eyes, he shook his head and then popped his lids wide as if perhaps that would give him a more accurate view.

On the opposite side of where the gate’s hinges were … there was a lock. And sure as the sun set in the west, there appeared to be a key sticking out of the mechanism.

As the shuffling sound of Qhuinn’s uneven gait grew louder, Xcor reached out a shaking hand and wrenched the heavy piece of old metal one way—and then the other—

The tumbler cranked over and suddenly what had been solid as a rock had a remarkable give to it. Xcor pulled the gate open and stumbled out.

Qhuinn tweaked immediately to the colossal security breach, the Brother cursing and sprinting forward whilst holding his side. But Xcor snatched the key, slammed the weight shut, and discovered, yes—yes!—the mechanism was a double-sided lock.

As the Brother came into range and pitched his heavy body against the iron bars, Xcor shoved the key home, wrenched it in the correct direction and—

Locked Qhuinn inside the cave.

Xcor shoved himself back as the Brother railed against the iron bars and steel mesh, a snarling, cursing horror that was the Grim Reaper bitterly denied and then some.

Landing on his naked ass, Xcor trembled so hard his teeth clapped together.

“—going to kill you!” Qhuinn screamed as his hands clawed at the mesh until they began to bleed. “I’m going to fucking kill you!”

Xcor looked over his shoulder. Fresh air was coming from that direction, and he knew he had no time. Qhuinn most certainly would call for backup as soon as he stopped wrestling with his iron opponent.

Hobbling to his feet, he listed so badly he had to catch himself on the cave wall. “I shall leave the key here.”

His weak and shaky voice cut through the tirade, briefly quieting his opponent.

“I want no part of you or the Brotherhood.” He bent down and put the key on the dirt. “I wish you no harm, no ill will. I covet no longer the throne, nor do I desire for war. I leave this key as a testament to my intentions—and I swear on the female I love with all my soul that I shall never enter upon your premises here or any other place again.”

He started off, dragging a foot behind himself. But then he paused and looked back.

Meeting Qhuinn’s wild, mismatched stare, Xcor spoke with clarity. “I love Layla. And I never once claimed her body—nor shall I. I will never seek her out nor set mine eyes upon her again. You want me to die? Well, I have. For every night she lives with you and your young, I am being murdered for I am not in her presence. So your goal is well-served and accomplished.”

With that, he set upon his departure, praying that somehow he might be able to dematerialize. As his vision began to flicker, however, he had little faith that that would be the case.

His strength was failing him now that the bonded male in him was no longer triggered by a rival. Indeed, there seemed little cause to try to run as he was just going to fall back into the very hands he had been in, but there was naught to be done about that. If he was lucky, they would catch him in the wilderness and shoot him like a wild boar.

But luck had rarely been on his side.

ELEVEN

Back at the Brotherhood mansion, down a good four doors from where the drama with the gun had rolled out, Tohr lay back on top of his bed, fully clothed. As he stared up at the canopy overhead, he tried to convince himself that he was relaxing—and it was an argument he lost. From his rock-hard thighs to his twitching fingers to the way his eyeballs bounced around, he was about as chill as an electrical current.

Closing his lids, all he could see was that forty swinging around and bullets flying inside the mansion.

The whole world seemed out of control—

“I’ve brought you some tea.”

Before he could stop himself, Tohr went for the gun strapped under his arm. But instantly, as he caught the scent of his female and recognized her voice, he lowered his hand and focused on Autumn. His beloved shellan was standing in front of him, his YETI mug in her hand, her eyes sad and serious.

“Come here,” he said, reaching out to take her hand. “You are what I need.”

Tugging her to a sit beside him, he thanked her for the tea and put the Earl Grey aside. Then with a shudder of relief, he eased her onto his chest, wrapped his arms around her, and held her to his heart.

“Bad night,” he said into her fragrant hair. “Very bad night.”

“Yes. I am so glad no one was hurt—and it is also Wellsie’s birthday. It’s a very, very bad night.”

Tohr set Autumn back a little so he could stare into her face. Following the murder of his pregnant mate by the enemy, he had been convinced he would never love again. How could he, after that tragedy? But this kind, patient, steady female before him had opened his heart and soul, giving him life where he was dead, light in his perpetual darkness, sustenance in his starvation.

“How are you like this?” he wondered, tracing her cheek with his fingertips.

“Like what?” She reached up and smoothed back the white stripe that had formed in the front of his hair right after Wellsie had died.

“You’ve never resented her or …” It was hard for him to acknowledge his continued attachment to his dead aloud to her. He never wanted to make her feel lesser. “Or my feelings for her.”

“Why would I? Cormia has never been frustrated by her male’s lack of a limb. Nor Beth by Wrath’s blindness. I love you as you are, not how you would have been if you had never loved another, never lost another, never been cheated out of a chance to be a father.”

“It could only be you,” he whispered, leaning in to press his lips to hers. “You are the only one I could ever be with.”

Her smile was as her heart, open, guileless, accepting. “How convenient, as I feel the same for you.”

Tohr deepened the kiss, but then broke the contact—and she understood why he stopped, just as she always understood him: He could not lie with her on this evening or this day. Not until midnight. Not until Wellsie’s birthday was over.

“I don’t know where I would be without you.” Tohr shook his head, thinking about the mood he’d been in as he’d gone to the cave to kill Xcor. “I mean …”

As Autumn smoothed the frown between his brows, he went further back in time, to when Lassiter had shown up in the middle of a forest with a bag full of McDonald’s and an insistence that Tohr return to his brothers. The fallen angel hadn’t listened to reason—the beginning of a trend, natch—and the pair of them had halt-and-lamed it back here to the mansion.

Tohr had been on the verge of death, having survived on deer blood and not much else for however long he had been out in the woods on his own. He’d had a plan back then: Over the course of those months, he’d tried to kill himself by attrition because he’d been unwilling to test the urban legend that people who committed suicide didn’t go to the Fade.

Starving himself had seemed, to his addled mind, a different death from putting a bullet in his head.

But that hadn’t been his destiny. Just as returning to this house with that fallen angel hadn’t been his salvation.

No, he owed that to this female here. She and she alone had turned him around, their love bringing him back from hell. With Autumn, his perspective on staying on the planet had done a total one eighty, and although he still had bad nights, like tonight … he also had good ones.

He refocused on his female. “Your love has transformed me.”

God, it was almost like Lassiter had known how it was all going to turn out, had been sure that then was the time for Tohr’s return and resurrection—

Tohr frowned, sensing a shift in his female. “Autumn? What’s wrong?”

“Sorry. I’m just wondering … what’s going to happen to Layla?”