Jack went lax before the Brother finished, and Nyx caught her mate, grunting as his heavy weight had to be held up.
But she refused any help from anyone.
He was hers.
She was going to get him to the car on her own.
The next thing Jack was aware of . . . was softness. Softness under his body. Under his head. Along one side of him.
His lids flipped open, consciousness returning with a speed and clarity that told him exactly how far Nyx’s blood had gone to revive him. And his first thought was—
“I’m right here.”
Nyx leaned forward and put her face in his line of vision. She was incredibly beautiful to him, with her dark hair pulled back, and her cheeks flushed from emotion, and her eyes glowing with unshed tears.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hi.” She smiled tentatively. “We have a doctor coming.”
“I’m okay.”
“That bite wound is really nasty. We can’t risk infection.”
There was a pause as they both looked at each other, re-memorizing, re-affirming, re-establishing the connection that he had been sure was broken forever.
He reached up and stroked her cheek. The side of her throat. “You’re alive.”
“And so are you.”
Jack glanced around at the homey decor. “Is this your home?”
“It is. We’re in my bedroom.”
Voices percolated from somewhere close by, low and calm. He recognized some of them from the crypt. “Am I really out?”
“Yes, you’re really out. You’re free.”
Jack took a deep breath. He wanted to celebrate—he truly did. “I’m glad,” he said because he didn’t want her to feel anything but joy.
He, however, had left something behind. Someone. Who he had searched for and had not found, living or dead.
Abruptly, Nyx leaned back from her kneeling position by the bed. And as she started motioning with her hand, he shook his head.
“No,” Jack said. “I don’t need a doctor—”
As a slight figure stepped into view, Jack thought . . .
No, no. This was so unfair.
This was a nightmare clothed in the symbols of a dream, the kind of thing that stung the heart when you woke up and realized your female was not with you and your son was still dead—
“Father?”
Jack’s body began to shake and he sat up slowly, as if he might wake if he moved too fast. Shifting his feet to the rug one at a time, he paused.
When nothing changed . . . when Nyx still seemed to be beside him, and his son still seemed to be in front of him in the doorway, he stood up. If his injury hurt as his leg bore his weight, he didn’t feel it.
He took a step forward. And then another.
“Son?” he said hoarsely.
Feeling as though he were taking a chance with his own life, he opened up his arms.
“Father!”
His young raced forward and grabbed on. And as the warmth of the slight body registered, and the familiar scent flooded his nose, Jack cradled the one he had sought in an embrace that took his breath away, even as it warmed his heart.
After a moment of squeezing his eyes shut, he looked over the head of that which he had been convinced he had lost . . . to the love of his life.
Who he had never expected to find.
Nyx had to cover her mouth as she regarded the sight of Jack holding Peter to his big chest. The young was impossibly small against his father’s great strength, so it seemed right that the two of them were reunited at last.
The young needed his sire’s protection in this world.
Especially as they both got used to living in the up-above.
Glancing through the open doorway, she nodded at Posie and her grandfather, who were holding hands. When they ducked out of sight into the kitchen, she heard the back door open and close and guessed the Brothers were departing for now. They would return. On the car ride back home, Rhage, the blond one, had said they wanted as many details as possible about the prison and how it functioned and what kind of equipment it had.
There would be time for that later, though.
And a healer was coming any minute.
Nyx refocused on Jack and the pretrans. The two had pulled back a little and were studying each other, both clearly looking for injuries.
“Are you okay, father? Your leg is—”
“I’m going to be perfectly fine.” Jack patted the young’s shoulder. “But how are you here? How do you know my Nyx?”
“It was an accident, father.”
“What?”
Nyx spoke up. “Posie and I were driving home—”
“And I ran out into the road,” Peter chimed in.
“We hit him by mistake. It was a total accident.”
“But they saved me. Posie nursed me back to health.”
Yeah, on that note? Nyx was convinced that her sister had willed the pretrans to pull through: Posie had been utterly determined that he wasn’t going to die on her watch, and what do you know. Even the Grim Reaper had been afraid of the female’s cheerful brand of not-having-it.