reversal of station he and I have had over the course of our lives.” There was a pause. “Well. I look forward to his full recovery, as I’m sure do you. And to his continued service unto the race.”
“Luchas, please . . .” Blay offered his open palms. Like a lame-ass. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Worry not, old friend.” Those gray eyes clouded over. “My brother chose wisely when he picked you. In truth, Blaylock, you are a male of worth.”
This time, Luchas did not try to bow as he turned away. Relying on that cane, he shuffled down the clinical area, the robe hem swinging side to side as weight was transferred back and forth, a load borne with unreliability. When he got to the door to his patient room, he tilted his head to the side in its downward position and looked back at Blay. And then he lifted his bony, mangled hand in a wave before disappearing into his private space.
With a curse, Blay remembered the male from before the raids, from before Luchas had been captured and tortured by the Omega’s son, Lash, and the Lessening Society. He had been so fit and healthy and perfect, the pride and joy of his parents, of the glymera as a whole.
A firstborn son of impeccable pedigree with all his fingers and toes.
And now here he was.
Even as Blay fought the tide of memory, images bubbled up and refused to be denied. Over all the centuries that vampires had fought against the Omega and his army of the undead, there had been countless truly tragic events. The raids, however, had been nuclear in nature, lessers attacking the hidden mansions of the aristocracy, slaughtering not just families, but whole bloodlines. Qhuinn’s had been among them, and he likely would have been killed that night, too, if they hadn’t kicked him out for his heterochromia iridum.
His blue and green eyes, long the bane of his existence, at least according to his parents and their ilk, had saved him.
At Qhuinn’s request, Blay had gone to the house and identified the bodies, and Luchas’s had been among them. Blay had seen the remains with his own two eyes—and that was supposed to be where it all ended, the terminal point of the catastrophic losses for that family, the bodies buried on the property. Except, no. Someone from the Lessening Society had returned.
And Lash had brought Luchas back.
The story had never been completely told, and no one had been inclined to press Luchas for details, but a year later, the male had been found in an oil drum at an abandoned site of the enemy’s, reanimated and preserved in a swill of the Omega’s vile essence. Qhuinn had been the one who found his brother, and the only identifier had been the gold signet ring Luchas been given by their sire the night after his transition.
The torture he’d been put through had been extensive, fingers cut off, broken bones all over his body, bruises, contusions, cuts. And then there had been the psychological trauma of it all. The Brotherhood had brought him here to the training center, and since then, Luchas had lost his lower leg as part of the continuing attempt to keep him alive and functioning.
Considering where the male had started out in life, it wasn’t how any of it was supposed to go. If the world had made any sense, if things had gone the way of history’s predictions, Luchas would likely be mated by now, or at least locked into an arrangement with a female of comparable breeding. He would be attending meetings of the Council with his sire, and enjoying grand functions and festivals. He would be rubbing shoulders with vampires like himself, secure in the knowledge that he had more money than he would ever need and an unassailable position in society.
But fiction could pale in comparison to destiny.
In ways both good and bad.
For instance, who’d have ever thought Qhuinn would have been made an official member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood?
Or that the male would ever have decided to settle down. With the best friend who had loved him since they were young.
Luchas was right about one thing. The two brothers had traded places.
It was just such a shame that the former’s fall from grace had been so devastating.
Paper cut.
Huge, weird, inexplicable paper cut.
As Qhuinn came out of anesthesia, his first thought was that someone had taken a manila folder, a crisp, brand-spanking-new manila folder, and