had done to him. Not after what he had done after that.
Rehvenge, now king of the symphaths, had been the one who arranged for Murhder’s release from the colony. She’d still been in captivity at BioMed at that point, but she escaped not long after he’d been freed. Sometime later, she’d heard about him going to another BioMed facility and doing brutal things. At first, she’d wondered how he’d found them. And why he’d gone after them at all.
But then she remembered. When she’d returned to burn down where she’d been tortured, she had sensed she was being watched.
It had been Murhder. Somehow, he’d found her, yet he hadn’t interfered.
The idea he had kept going after that company, even after she had stopped, seemed a noble, although ultimately fruitless, pursuit—but then he had been permanently changed by her kin. He was not the same male, and when it came to the Brotherhood, all they knew was that he had lost his mind. He’d apparently never told them that he’d been held against his will and tortured in the symphath colony.
She’d never understood why he hadn’t revealed the truth to them, even if it had meant exposing her half-breed status—something that back then hadn’t been common knowledge. But maybe the Brothers would have understood. No one could get under a person’s skin like a symphath. No wonder Murhder had ended up insane.
And it was all her fault.
“Enough,” she muttered to herself. “Stop it.”
Coming back to the present, she opened the door to Trez’s office, and got hit with a whole lot of no-one-home. The desk was empty, the computers shut down, the black leather couches without occupants. No lights on, either. The only illumination came from sporadic bursts of filtered purple lasers, the dance floor’s beams blunted by the tint of Trez’s wall of glass.
No, there was another source of light.
Turning away from the observatory, she tracked the glow over to the corner. “John?”
The bathroom door was shut, and as she came up to it, she hesitated—and didn’t like the reticence. She never knocked to announce herself to him.
“John?”
No running water. No toilet flushing.
She knocked. “John?”
He opened the door while pulling a long-sleeved shirt into place on his shoulders. Sorry, I need a quick shower. Do you think Trez will care if I borrow this button-down?
“No, of course not,” she said. “So how did it go outside. Did you take care of the civilian? I sent his cousin to Havers after the male fainted on me.”
As his hands moved through sign language positions that she knew well, she didn’t track the words he was making.
The button-down wasn’t buttoned down yet, and the muscle shirt below it was so tight that the real estate of his torso was on display even though his upper body was covered: In the light that flooded down from the ceiling fixtures, his pecs and his abdominals looked like they had been deep-carved by a master hand, and the prominent wings of his hip bones rose up out of the waistband of his leathers.
Smooth skin. Powerful strength. And she knew every inch of him by touch and taste.
John seemed new to her tonight, however, and that was another thing—like the way she’d hesitated in front of the closed door—that made her uneasy. She could not ignore the fact that she was assessing the torso of her mate as if seeing it for the first time.
Something about Murhder had reset her.
What’s wrong? John signed.
That got through to her. Or maybe it was the worry in his face, his eyes narrowing.
She wanted to tell him nothing. That it was nothing, nope, she was fine, all good, hunky-fucking-dory. But she didn’t think he’d be fooled by that cascade of denial.
Instead, Xhex stepped into him. Placed her palms inside the two of halves of that shirt. Stroked her way around his torso to the small of his back.
Instantly, his bonding scent flared, and she was aware of a pang in the center of her chest. If she’d asked him what was wrong? His “nothing” would have been honest, and the dark spices surging into the bathroom proved it.
Her lips found the column of his throat. And as she brushed the skin over his jugular, he clapped his hands on her hips and squeezed. Hard. Like he wanted her badly—and she loved that about him. Her mate was always ready-to-go-now, and in this, they were compatible.
One of many ways they worked, she reminded herself.
Her tongue licked across his collarbone and then she