long pause-the kind that made him brace himself.
«Anyway, a new social worker has come in to counsel the females and their young.» She cleared
her throat. Wiped her mouth with a paper towel. «She's really great. Warm, funny. I was kind of
thinking that maybe-«
Oh, God. «Thanks, but no.»
«She's really nice.»
«No, thanks.» With his skin shriveling up tight around his body, he started eating at a dead run.
«Phury… I know it's not my business, but why the celibacy?»
Shit. Faster with the sandwich. «May we change the subject?»
«It's because of Z, right? Why you've never been with a female. It's your sacrifice to him and his
past.»
«Bella… please-«
«You're over two hundred years old, and it's time you started to think about yourself. Z's never
going to be completely normal, and no one knows that better than you and me. But he's more
stable now. And he's going to get even healthier over time.»
True, provided Bella survived this pregnancy of hers.
Until she came out of the delivery healthy, his twin wasn't out of the woods yet. And by
extension, neither was Phury.
«Please let me introduce you-«
«No.» Phury stood up and chewed like a cow. Table manners were very important, but this
conversation had to end before his head exploded.
«Phury-«
«I don't want a female in my life.»
«You would make a wonderful hellren, Phury.»
He wiped his mouth on a dish towel and said in the Old Language, «Thank you for this meal
made by thine hands. Blessed evening, Bella, beloved mated of mine twin, Zsadist.»
Feeling cheap that he didn't help clean up, but figuring it was better than him having an
aneurism, he pushed through the butler's door into the dining room. Halfway down the thirty-
foot-long table, he ran out of gas, pulled free a random chair, and dropped into the thing.
Man, his heart was pounding.
When he looked up, Vishous was standing on the other side of the table, staring down at him.
«Christ!»
«Little tense there, my brother?» At six-feet-six, and descended of the great warrior known only
as the Bloodletter, V was a massive male. With his blue-rimmed ice white irises, his jet-black
hair, and his angular, cunning face, he might have been considered beautiful. But the goatee and
the warning tattoos at his temple made him look evil.
«Not tense. Not at all.» Phury splayed his hands out on the glossy table, thinking about the blunt
he was going to light up the instant he got to his room. «Actually, I was going to come find you.»
«Oh, yeah?»
«Wrath didn't like the vibe at this morning's meeting.» Which was an understatement. V and the
king had ended up chin-to-chin on a couple of things, and that wasn't the only argument that
flew. «He's taken us all off rotation tonight. Said we need some R & R.»
V arched his brows, looking smarter than a matched set of Einsteins. The genius air wasn't just
an appearance thing. The guy spoke sixteen languages, developed computer games for kicks and
giggles, and could recite the twenty volumes of the Chronicles by rote. The brother made
Stephen Hawking seem like a candidate for vo-tech.
«All of us?» V said.
«Yeah, I was going to hit ZeroSum. Wanna come?»
«Just scheduled some private biz.»
Ah, yes. V's unconventional sex life. Man, he and Vishous were on such opposite ends of the
sexual spectrum: Him knowing nothing, Vishous having explored everything, and most of it on
the extremes… the untrodden path and the Autobahn. And that wasn't the only difference
between them. Come to think of it, the two of them had absolutely nothing in common.
«Phury?»
He shook himself to attention. «Sorry, what?»
«I said, I dreamed of you once. Many years ago.»
Oh, God. Why hadn't he just gone straight to his room? He could be lighting up right now. «How
so?»
V stroked his goatee. «I saw you standing at a crossroads in a field of white. It was a stormy
day… yeah, lots of storms. But when you took a cloud from the sky and wrapped it around the
well, the rain stopped falling.»
«Sounds poetic.» And what a relief. Most of V's visions were scary as hell. «But meaningless.»
«None of what I see is meaningless, and you know it.»
«Allegorical then. How can anyone wrap up a well?» Phury frowned. «And why tell me now?»
V's black brows came down over his mirrorlike eyes. «I… God, I have no idea. I just had to say
it.» With a nasty curse, he headed for the kitchen. «Is Bella still in there?»
«How did you know she was-«
«You always look ruined after you see her.»
Chapter Two
Half an hour and a turkey sandwich later, V materialized to the terrace of his private downtown
penthouse. The night was a bitch,
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