Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 132437 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 441(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132437 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 441(@300wpm)
Clusterfuck all the way around.
So yeah, it checked out that emetic urgency was what brought him around. But he wasn’t going to let his epiglottis get him down. He breathed in through his nose and out his mouth, in through his nose… out of his mouth…
Jane gently sat beside him, the mattress barely tilting. “Next time you rear-end something, let’s try and pick a vehicle that doesn’t have a house-sized appendage hanging off its back bumper. Who knew salt boxes were such a thing.”
Oh, okay. See, that was helpful. He was having trouble remembering anything other than the CliffsNotes version of events, and courtesy of “salt box” he was now recollecting with good, specific detail being behind the wheel of the SUV with Tohr in shotgun. Rhage and Butch had been in the back-back. And Wrath had been in the middle-left captain’s chair like a grenade about to go off.
Talk about rank. The last purebred vampire on the planet had been in a rare mood this evening, and the entire Brotherhood knew why. The guy’s issues with his Queen were of his own making, though, and frankly, they were all hoping the female finally got through to him.
No more field trips. Yes, him going to that traitor Whestmorel’s had meant they found the aristocrat who had been left behind for dead in that hidden room. But was the stress worth it? Considering that the last time the King had gone anywhere other than the Audience House had ushered in thirty years of everybody thinking that Wrath had been blown apart by the Lessening Society?
The answer was no.
Make that fuck no.
“Tohr… still okay?” V said roughly. What he really wanted to know was if the brother was still alive, but he couldn’t get that out.
Not unless he wanted to stay on the vomi-train.
“Yup. He’s getting settled in his own bed next door.”
“Autumn with him?” Damn, it was hard to talk with the rib thing. “Case he needs… anything.”
“Absolutely. She’s not leaving his side.”
Of course she was. Tohr’s shellan was a female of worth. Stupid fucking question.
“Should you be with him, too?”
“I’m staying with you. Anything goes wrong, I just walk right over.”
Weird space to be in, true? He was feeling selfish for wanting to keep Jane with him. On the other hand, she was his mate, so where else should she be, barring some emergency situation.
“No, you can’t have a cigarette.” As he glared at his shellan, she shook her head. “And you can stop right now trying to get me to go over there so you can sneak one.”
“I’m worried about Tohr.”
“I know you are. And you will also not be smoking right now.”
She was probably right—not in terms of his overall health and recovery, as unlike with humans, tobacco didn’t do shit to vampires. The real issue was that he doubted he could hold a hand-rolled, even between his teeth, and lighting himself on fire was not the chaser anybody needed tonight.
Jane leaned down and brushed his hair back. As her fingertips lingered on his temple and traced the tattoos there, he knew what she wanted to ask. Also knew she would never put voice to it all.
Because she was scared of his answer.
“No,” he said. “No dreams about any of this from tonight.”
Her eyes closed and she exhaled in a relief he shared. Those warnings in the Old Language that had been inked into his face centuries ago were a STOP sign only to others. They didn’t do shit to keep the visions about the death away from him.
“Good,” his mate murmured.
“Yeah.”
Except they would come to him again at some point. They always did. Sooner or later, he would get more of them, the channel opening and dumping nightmarish images into his mind about the ones he loved.
And people wondered why he didn’t bother getting attached unless he couldn’t avoid it.
“I’m really glad you’re okay,” Jane whispered.
“I made it.” He reached out for her, and stopped before his gloved hand made contact. “So did Tohr. That’s all that matters.”
Bullshit it was. But sometimes you said things because the truth was like throwing a drowning person a rock.
“At least we’re done with tonight and Allhan’s okay,” she said.
Vishous shook his head even though it made his skull pound. He was not going into the Allhan thing right now. How the pair of them had ended up with that kid he had no idea. They’d agreed years ago they were never having young, and everything had been wine-and-roses, fine-and-dandy for so long. Yet now here they were, somehow ending up with a male whose eating habits, sleep schedule, and very respiration were of paralytic concern.
This was exactly what he’d never been looking for. Allhan was inexorable, though, appearing on the front stoop at Safe Place as an orphan abandoned, his parents having fucked him off, no money or clothes to his name—all of which would have been unfortunate, but not unusual and none of V’s fucking problem. Except then the kid had proven to have a knack for computing, and that knack had been the gateway to a truly brilliant mind for programming and data analysis.