Bound Together (Sea Haven/Sisters of the Heart 6)

Blythe took a deep breath when everything inside her felt frozen. Very slowly she set the denim jacket on the bed beside her as if she'd been caught doing something wrong. "What's going on?" Before anything else, she had to know Viktor was alive and well.

"I'd never let anything happen to him," Reaper assured her. "Savage and the others are watching over him, but I wanted to talk to you. We both did."

"I see," Blythe said, but she didn't at all. Now she felt at a distinct disadvantage. The woman in the corner was younger than she was, and really beautiful. She wore makeup while Blythe had carefully washed what little makeup she wore right off.

"We're not here to threaten you in any way," Reaper said.

He had the deadest eyes of any man she'd ever seen. She just managed to keep from shivering looking at him. He was cold, through and through. Yet he was intensely loyal to Viktor, and she could like him for that.

She nodded her head and held on to calm. She had always remained calm in the face of her mother's shrieking temper tantrums. She could apply those childhood lessons here very well. Her fingers crept down and across the sheets to the edge of the jacket. A talisman. Reaper saw, but she didn't care what she was revealing to him. "Do you want something to eat? Drink? I'm sure I could manage to find you both something." She kept her tone friendly, but not too friendly. She didn't want them to see through her facade.

"I'm going to turn on the light," Reaper warned. "I want to show you something."

She wrapped her arms around her middle. Viktor had been the most immodest man she'd ever met. Nudity meant nothing at all to him. He'd been the one to get her to sleep without clothes. He liked to make love to her in their backyard. Once on their front porch in the dead of night. He didn't seem to see anything wrong with touching her no matter where they were, and he liked her to do the same. Once, she'd been very brave and she'd dropped to her knees after skinny-dipping with him in the river and she'd sucked him off, the forbidden of being outdoors in the open adding to the excitement.

Reaper slowly removed his jacket and then pulled up his tee with one hand. She just kept from gasping when she saw his body. Viktor had scars, but nothing like what Reaper's body held. They were everywhere. Burn marks, old knife wounds, bullet scars, at least one kind of whip, other scars she couldn't identify but thought they had been made by worse things she had no idea of.

He turned his back to her. "Alena. Come here. I want you to show her while I explain."

Alena gracefully slid from the chair like a slinky cat, moving with the same fluid ripple of muscle the men surrounding her did. "I'm Alena." She introduced herself as she stepped to the other side of Blythe. "I've wanted to meet you for a very long time."

Blythe forced a small smile. Alena didn't sound like the "other woman." Wouldn't she be there to cut her into little pieces if Viktor was her man? She was more confused than ever. Part of her knew she'd held on to the belief that Alena was Viktor's woman in order to keep him at arm's length. Once again, because she was a little afraid of what they planned, she let her hand slide over Viktor's jacket.

"I want you to take a good look at this tattoo." Reaper's voice was as dead as his eyes. Low. So low it was almost a thread of sound, yet at the same time, it was commanding and cold. There would be no disobeying that voice, not without knowing the consequences would be death.

Blythe willingly obliged him. She stared at the rather gruesome tattoo that took up a good deal of his back.

"It's important for you to know just who and what Viktor really is. Why we ride with him. Why we protect him. You see the tree trunk. That's Viktor. He was thirteen when I came to the school. I was four and my brother was three when we were taken from our parents. There were two hundred eighty-seven students that over the years were brought to that school. Eighteen of us survived. You see the limbs of the trees? There are seventeen of them."

Alena touched each of the branches on Reaper's back.

"Viktor saved all seventeen of us. He didn't just save our lives. He saved our humanity. Or at least he managed to save most of our humanity."

Blythe's gaze jumped to Reaper's face as he looked back at her over his shoulder. She knew he was telling her he had no humanity left in him, and she believed him. Whatever this man had been through had been worse than hell.

"The crows in the trees represent the children we couldn't save. They carry the skulls of the ones we killed to avenge them."

Alena touched the crows almost reverently and then stepped away as Reaper reached for his shirt and yanked it back over his head.

"The skulls on the ground? In the roots?"

"Each of us has a different number. We're assassins. That's what they trained us for and that's what they had us do for the government. Others we killed to survive. Each of us carries the weight of that on our skin."

She raised her eyes to his. There had been piles of skulls in that root system, so many she wasn't certain she could count them all. This was the scariest man she'd ever run across. "You're telling me this because . . ."

"I can't tell you why Viktor fought to save us, only that he did. He's a good man. They don't come better. He still fights for us. In all the time I've ever known him, the only things he's asked for were to help him keep his birth brothers safe and to watch over you. You're everything to him."

Blythe made an involuntary movement away from him as he turned back around, rejecting what he was telling her. She shook her head, carefully threading her fingers together, Viktor's jacket between them to give her courage. She didn't feel any threat from either of the two; in fact she couldn't feel Reaper's emotions at all. Only Alena's.

"Ink, one of our brothers, began that sketch when we were teenagers. Eventually he perfected it and we took it as our symbol. We call ourselves Torpedo Ink."

Blythe knew that in Russia, sometimes a hit man or assassin was referred to as a torpedo. The Ink could be a play on the word incorporated. Whatever the reason for their name, no one should take it at face value, least of all her. These were the men and women Viktor expected her to take in along with some unknown teenaged girl. She crushed his jacket in her fist.

"Why a motorcycle club? Won't that get you unwanted attention? All of you have had to be so careful not to draw attention to yourselves."

"We ride because it makes us feel free when we've never been free. Viktor gave us that as well. It was difficult to remove our colors and ride with the Swords, but we'd follow him anywhere."

Alena nodded solemnly. "I'd be dead if it wasn't for Viktor. He figured out a way to keep us alive in that horrible place. We made it through because of him. I know it looked bad, me being on the bike, but the Swords would never have believed him staying away from other women if he didn't have an 'old lady.' It protected both of us to pretend. I swear to you, he's a big brother to me, nothing else."

Blythe didn't know what to say, so she remained silent. She had mixed feelings about them coming to her in the middle of the night on Viktor's behalf, mostly because it made her like them, and she didn't want to feel anything at all for them--especially Reaper. She worried that he was incapable of feeling true emotion, but clearly, he felt something for Viktor.

She cleared her throat. "So you had actually formed a club before Viktor rode with the Swords."

Reaper nodded. "We found riding motorcycles and the structure of a family, knowing we had one another's backs at all times, no matter what assignment we took, kept us sane. Well"--he glanced at Alena--"some of us sane."

"You're sane, Reaper," she reprimanded softly. "And we were a brotherhood, a family, long before the club."

Reaper shrugged and turned all his attention back to Blythe. "After Viktor met you, he was different. I thought we'd lose him before that. All of us watched him so carefully."

That brought her head up. "What do you mean, lose him?"

"The deaths of all those other children weighed on him so heavily. He blamed himself for not being able to prevent them," he explained. "Hell, he was ten

when he got there. Some of the kids were older than he was. Still, that didn't matter. His sense of responsibility was already so developed that he took on that burden. Sometimes, he just couldn't live with it."

For a moment she couldn't breathe. Just the thought of Viktor killing himself was too much after reliving the death of her daughter with him. Involuntarily she brought the jacket to her face and held it there for a moment, uncaring what either of them thought.

She remembered more than one night waking up to Viktor sitting on the edge of the bed, head in hands, sweat beading his body, his breath coming in ragged pants as if he'd run a marathon. He wouldn't talk to her, so she talked to him in the only way she could; she made love to him, fiercely protective, wholly surrendering to him, giving him everything he demanded and needed. He held her so tightly afterward she thought every bone in her body might break, but she never protested. Eventually he fell asleep, and she would watch over him as if she could prevent whatever terrible nightmares might creep into their world. The idea that Viktor might ever contemplate ending his life was terrifying to her.

"Once he met you, his entire world seemed to change. He was happy. He actually laughed. He was just different. When he had to leave you, he was devastated. He planned to get back to you immediately, but Absinthe was shot all to hell and in the middle of a very bad situation. Viktor was the closest, so he went to try to save him. They had to hole up for a few weeks, and then Sorbacov gave him an assignment."

She realized that Reaper was uncomfortable not only telling her so much, but actually talking. He was stepping out of his usual role to advocate for a man he clearly loved. That made her want to listen when before she'd been reluctant to know anything more about Viktor or his life without her.

"You didn't ever turn down Sorbacov or you found several hit men at your door. More, Sorbacov threatened his brothers. He sent you messages, Blythe. I saw them. He tried to get his birth brothers to check up on you. Eventually we did, but you were here at that time and seemed fine and happy. No one knew why you wouldn't reply back. He could only assume it was because you were angry with him and justifiably so. He thought if he could get here to talk to you he could explain everything."

She knew what he was telling her was the truth. She ached inside for both of them--Viktor and her. "There are things that happened while he was gone," she said softly, trying to explain without telling them. She couldn't go there again, not at night, not when she was alone and Viktor was so close. "Sometimes things happen that make it impossible to go back." She prayed he wouldn't ask because she had the feeling one didn't tell Reaper no when he asked a question. Maybe he already knew. He'd been on the roof when Viktor and she had been talking.

Alena sat on the bed beside her. "You don't have to go back, Blythe," she said gently. "Only forward. Viktor taught us that. Whatever happened to you, and I know it was bad because Viktor was a mess tonight, you have to keep going forward. Hopefully with him. Just give him a chance to talk to you. To really talk to you and you hear what he's saying to you. I know no one will ever love you more or better."

She found herself nodding when everything in her screamed for self-preservation. She moistened suddenly dry lips before she could actually find her voice. "Viktor isn't the kind of man to give up when he wants something."

"That's true," Alena said, "but he likes that you have a good life here, and he doesn't want to mess that up for you. He comes with baggage--with us." She looked at Reaper and then down at her hands.

It was the first time that Alena seemed uncertain, and at first Blythe thought it might be affected, as if she was playing a role to get sympathy. Alena had been trained to appear as anything she wanted to be just as Viktor and Reaper had. The one thing a person couldn't do was fake emotion around her. Blythe felt that uncertainty.

"What are your plans?" she asked gently, because it was in her nature to soothe others in distress.

"We're looking at land in the Caspar area. There's a lot of land and houses for sale there, and we'd need to be able to purchase land that is zoned for businesses as well. We've never actually had a home base. We thought Ink could have a tattoo shop. I'd like a restaurant. I love to cook and for lots of people. Something small, but nice. Keys, Master, Player and Maestro would like to have a small club so they could play regularly, and there's a roadhouse for sale. That would be awesome to have." Enthusiasm poured into her voice. "Transporter and Mechanic would love their own garage where they could build custom cars and bikes and just tinker all day."

Blythe looked up at Reaper's blank features. He could have been carved from stone. The lines in his face cut deep. There weren't going to be any plans for a shop for him. She couldn't imagine how he could possibly integrate back into society. For that matter, she doubted if any of them could.

The Prakenskii brothers hadn't, not really. Stefan did help Judith with the art gallery, and Lev went out with Rikki on the boat to dive for sea urchins. Maxim headed up security for Airiana, who worked for the defense department. Gavriil stayed close to Lexi on the farm, far away from people. Casimir had just returned with Lissa, and Blythe had no idea what his plans were.

"Don't say no to him because of us," Reaper said. It was the first time his voice was a little gruff. It had dropped an octave, causing Blythe to search his face. There was no expression, but something worked behind those cold, cold eyes.

"I wouldn't do that," Blythe said. "Really, my problems with Viktor have nothing to do with any of you."

Just being in the same room with Reaper tore her heart out. She could see why Viktor kept close watch over him. It was heartbreaking to see and feel him. And Alena . . . The woman was young and clearly lethal. Blythe had that built-in radar, her compass when it came to reading people. As a child she had known there was something "off" about her mother. Alena looked like the sweetest innocent, but she felt . . . dangerous.

"But still, you want to give him a chance, don't you?"

Those soft words brushed at the walls of her mind and Blythe instantly recoiled. Simultaneously, Reaper let out a low growl. "Alena. We agreed. No manipulation. Not on Blythe. She's one of us. She's Viktor's chosen woman. His wife, and that's sacred."

At the reprimand, Alena's eyes swam with tears and her barriers came tumbling down. The force of her fears hit Blythe so hard she reeled under the impact. Alena was terrified. What would Reaper do to her?

"I'm sorry, I'm really, really sorry, Blythe. I did promise Reaper before we came here, but I'm so afraid of losing Viktor."

The relief was tremendous. Alena wasn't afraid of Reaper's retaliation; she was afraid for Viktor. There was no faking that overwhelming fear. With relief came trepidation. If his "family" was so afraid of losing him, it had to be real. Now that she'd seen him, now that she knew something or someone else had prevented him from getting to her, she knew she couldn't live with knowing he wasn't somewhere in the world.

"I'll talk to him, but I can't promise anything. When he shot Ray, dropped the gun and then grabbed me, whispering he'd be back in a couple of days to explain, I barely registered it. Later, when the police confirmed who Ray really was, it was all I could think about. I thought maybe he was a boy Ray had harmed, or his brother had been and it was a revenge thing. I didn't know much about the Prakenskiis until Lev arrived. My cousin Joley is married to Ilya Prakenskii, the youngest brother, but I don't exactly move in their circles so I've never actually talked to Ilya about his brothers."

"Ilya seemed protective of you."

Her gaze once again jumped to Reaper's face. There was no expression and his eyes were back to being dead, but he'd been there in the house somewhere, watching over Viktor. Even the Prakenskiis hadn't known or they wouldn't have allowed it. Not even Gavriil, and he was much like Viktor. Even while it had made her a little uncomfortable that Reaper could be in her house unseen, she was grateful that he was the one dedicated to protecting Viktor.

"All the Prakenskiis have an extremely protective instinct. Joley is my cousin.

That makes me family. They also have a huge sense of family."

"We do too," Alena said.

"We'd better go," Reaper said. "Viktor would beat the shit out of me if he knew I was here. And I have to tell him. I still have that to do."

"Alena, just one thing," Blythe said. "So we understand each other. Manipulation doesn't work on me. I feel the energy and emotion when you're using it and it's easy enough to avoid."

Alena's smile was slow in coming, but when it did, it was full and real. "Good to know." She stood up. "Thanks for listening to us."

"Anytime, but, Reaper, please don't make a habit of midnight visits. I often sleep without clothes."

"Wouldn't bother me."

She sighed. She had the feeling he was telling her the strict truth.

11

VIKTOR studied the surrounding land from where he sat on his bike. The ocean was straight in front of him and today it was acting up as if a storm was brewing. He liked the Northern California coast. The ocean could be wild and quite violent at times and at others, as clear as glass. The various moods suited him.

He lifted his face to catch the wind coming in off the sea. There was quite a bit of land for sale in the small village of Caspar. At one time the town must have thrived, but over the years, the lack of jobs had reduced it to more of a ghost town. He liked the idea of purchasing most of what had been the town along with several houses. They could do a lot with the place. He'd like to make certain each of them had the shop or restaurant that they had long ago dreamt of. It wasn't too late for any of them . . . he hoped. The two he worried the most about, Reaper and Savage, he had no idea what they'd do.

The roar of four Harleys told him the two brothers were on their way back to him with two others. Judging from the sound, Ice and Storm, Alena's birth brothers, were with them. They'd been scouting around for some time. The others were still in the camps they'd set up in a campground with the interesting name of Jughandle. It wasn't a place for the Swords, too many civilians, but it gave Torpedo Ink access to both Sea Haven and Fort Bragg.