Where Winter Finds You (Black Dagger Brotherhood #18)- J.R Ward Page 0,56

moment Therese had been hired. And he should have known better than to bring her on. Sure, the fact that she looked like Selena wasn’t her fault, but that didn’t mean he was obligated to employ her. He should have referred her to another job. With his network of contacts in the Caldwell foodie scene, he should have—

Who the hell was he kidding. Trez would still have been in bad shape.

Except the argument would have been over suicide, not some female.

And of course he wanted to see his damn brother happy. Was the male even serious about that shit? What he did not want was Trez fooling himself and using someone else—and iAm stood by that message, straight up. Still, he probably could have done a helluva lot better getting the point across and now he’d driven the male off. Like he hadn’t known that Trez had been outside for a good half an hour tonight? Waiting in a running car outside of the reach of the security cameras. In the cold.

For the server to get off.

No doubt so he could get her off.

And P.S., he actually didn’t think Therese was going to be the one hurt most when things went tits up. Trez was. The male wasn’t going to survive another crushing disappointment, but iAm hadn’t wanted to put that into words. For one, it was too painful. For another, he didn’t want to give the guy any ideas.

FFS, every frickin’ night iAm was braced for the phone call that Trez was dead. Like that instability needed a doomed romance with a doppelganger added to it? He knew exactly where his brother was in that head of his. In that heart of his. And if Trez decided to peace out, he would make sure that somebody else found the body—he would be determined to spare iAm that trauma. So as a result, anytime iAm’s cell went off, he felt like he was getting shot through the chest—and needless to say, this had given him a new hatred for telemarketers.

Groaning, he gave extending his arms over his head a try. In a way, this gut-churn over what his brother was doing, where he was, who he was with… was just a continuation of the way it had always been between the two of them. Trez had forever been on the run from his destiny of mating the queen of the s’Hisbe—and iAm had run after him. Someone had to protect the male. Guard his six. Make sure he didn’t completely self-destruct.

Plus, there had been the reality that Trez was all he’d had in this world. With their parents and the tribe left behind, what else had there been?

Except then, the deck of destiny had ended up getting shuffled and it turned out the priests had been wrong. iAm was the one to mate the queen—a fate he had been oh, so very happy to live up to as it turned out. And you’d think with that burden lifted, all would be chill. Nope. Instead of his brother being released from the burden of pain, Trez had been saddled with the heaviest agony there was.

Selena’s death had been so fucking unfair.

Maybe it was all in the stars, though. According to the tradition of the s’Hisbe, astrology determined everything, and it was clear that Trez had been born under an alignment of sorrowful portent. Back when Selena had showed up on the scene, iAm had been suspicious at first, but then, as time had passed, he’d been so sure things were finally going to change. That the sucky era was over. That the second phase, the better part, could now commence—

iAm’s instincts fired, the bonded male in him overriding even the fears for his blooded kin.

Rising to his feet, he was about to go around his desk when his female materialized in between the jambs of his office doorway.

For a moment, although he had seen her merely the night before, he had to drink in everything about his mate. maichen was tall and regal, her dark skin set off by a spectacular set of gold-threaded robing, her hair falling down her back in hundreds of braids strung with golden beads. Her eyes were kind and worried as they sought his own, and her hands went to her belly.

iAm’s heart pounded with terror. “What did they say. The priests.”

“She is very healthy.”

“She?” he breathed.

maichen’s smile was gentle and ancient as she came unto him, moving when he was unable to. “She. Our next