The two guards flanking him wore cold expressions, but Jaxor paid them no mind.
The moment he’d landed outside, on the black sand, and requested to speak with his brother, they had secured him, as he knew they would. They had ensured he carried no weapons. They knew who he was—of course they did. One of the warriors he even recognized. They’d gone through training together.
He was exhausted, mentally and physically, and he could sense Erin’s distance like it was a tangible thing. He was frustrated because it had taken longer to reach the Golden City than expected and it was by sheer luck and perhaps the Fates’ blessing that he had made it at all, considering he’d run low on fuel just as he’d begun to cross the Black Desert. He’d skidded in on fumes and a moment later, he was in chains.
Jaxor could hardly comprehend that he was about to see his blood brother, that he would speak with him for the first time in over ten rotations. He didn’t know what to feel. All he felt was the pressing need to reach Erin before…before it was too late.
They made the short walk to the war room, where Vaxa’an often met with the council and his Ambassadors.
But when the doors opened and his brother looked up from the Coms, Vaxa’an was alone.
His brother stood from behind the circular table and they stared at one another for several long moments. Jaxor’s throat closed up and he had the strongest urge to look away, but he didn’t. He couldn’t.
“Leave us,” Vaxa’an finally ordered the warriors.
The warriors hesitated, obviously loathe to leave their Prime Leader alone with a known traitor, even if that traitor was his brother.
“Now,” Vaxa’an clipped and the guards inclined their heads and left, pulling the two heavy doors closed behind them. No doubt they would alert the council and perhaps the Ambassadors that Jaxor had returned to the Golden City, that he was in the Prime Leader’s custody.
Jaxor had forgotten how large the war room was. Cavernous, even. Coms lined the walls, but the ceiling was so high that Jaxor couldn’t even see where it ended. The light would not reach there. And in that massive space, he thought that his brother would seem small, but he did not. He had become the great leader that their sire had always known he would be.
Jaxor had the stray thought that they were strangers to one another now. They might as well be.
Vaxa’an’s swallow was audible in the thick silence as he rounded the circular table, an unforgiving slab of Luxirian steel.
“A part of me,” Vaxa’an said, “believed that I would never lay eyes on you again, brother.”
Jaxor’s chest heaved with unnamed emotion and a thousand thoughts flooded his mind as he studied Vaxa’an’s face. Standing before him in chains was not how he envisioned this reunion, but it was no less than he deserved.
Erin.
“I know I have no right to ask it,” Jaxor started, his voice low as he connected his gaze with his brother’s. Twin eyes. They had always had the exact same eyes. The shade of their mother’s. Many had commented on it when they’d been younger. “But I am in need of your help.”
Vaxa’an looked at him. Something flashed in his gaze. Anger. Fury.
“This is what you have finally returned home for?” his brother asked. “So I can be of use to you?”
“I have not returned home,” Jaxor said quietly. “I came here, though I know the consequences of returning, to seek your help.”
Vaxa’an’s hands shot out so quickly that Jaxor thought his brother would strike him. But instead, he placed his hands on the sides of his neck, touching his flesh for the first time, and Jaxor felt the agony in his brother. Blood was strong. It was why fated mates performed a blood bond, the fellixix. Siblings shared blood and so they already shared the bond. They’d been connected all their lives, since the moment Jaxor was born. He could feel his brother’s soul, felt it taken up by another—his human mate—just as certainly as Vaxa’an felt Jaxor’s soul consumed by another, by Erin.
Touch helped connect them and Vaxa’an’s nostrils flared with the realization that Jaxor, too, had a mate. Jaxor brought his chained wrists up, clasped his hands on his brother’s forearm, felt the heat of him and the pulsing of his heart.
“I need your help,” Jaxor pleaded. “She is in danger.”
“What have you done?” Vaxa’an asked him, his pupils wide.
“More than she