Lover Enshrined (Black Dagger Brotherhood 6)

As night fell some sixteen hours later, Lash stood at the foot of a rolling lawn that led up to a sprawling Tudor house... and turned the ring the Omega had given him round and round.

He had grown up here, he thought. Been raised and fed and tucked into bed here as a young. When he was older, he'd stayed up to watch movies and read books with dirty shit in them, and surfed the Net and eaten junk food here.

He'd gone through his transition and had sex for the first time up in his room on the third floor.

"Y'all want some help?"

He turned and looked at the lesser who was behind the wheel of the Ford Focus. It was the little slayer, the one he'd drunk from. The guy had pale hair like Bo from The Dukes of Hazzard, all curling up around the cowboy hat he wore. His eyes were a faded cornflower blue, suggesting that before he'd been inducted he'd been a real middle-America white boy.

The guy had survived the feeding, thanks to some true depravity on the Omega's part, and Lash had to admit he was glad. He needed help understanding where he was at, and he wasn't threatened by Mr. D.

"Hello?" the lesser said. "Y'all okay there?"

"You stay in the car." It felt good to say that and know there wasn't going to be any discussion. "I won't be long."

"Yes, suh."

Lash looked back up at the Tudor palace. Lights glowed yellow in windows made of diamond-paned glass, and the house was spotlit from the ground like a beauty queen on a stage. Inside, people moved around, and he knew who they were by the shapes of their bodies and where they were.

On the left, in the sitting room, were the two who had raised him as their own. The one with the broad shoulders was his father, and the male was pacing, hand going up and down to his face as if he were drinking something. His mother was on the couch, all bobble-head proportioned with her elaborate chignon and her slender neck. She kept touching her hair, as if trying to make sure everything was in place even though it was no doubt sprayed stiff as a boxwood shrub.

To the right, in the kitchen wing, several doggen scurried around, moving from stove to cabinet to refrigerator to counter to stove.

Lash could practically smell the dinner, and his eyes watered.

By now, his parents must know about what had happened in the locker room and then at the clinic. They must have been told. They'd been out at the glymera's ball last evening, but they'd been home all day, and both appeared to be unsettled.

He glanced at the third floor and the seven windows that marked his room.

"You going in?" the slayer asked, making him feel like a pu**y.

"Shut the f**k up before I cut your tongue out."

Lash unsheathed the hunting knife that hung from his belt and walked forward over the cropped grass. The lawn was soft under the new combat boots he had on.

He'd had to have the little lesser get him some clothes, but he didn't like what he was wearing. It was all from Target. Cheap.

As he came up to the mansion's front door, he put his hand to the security pad... but paused before he entered the code.

His dog had died a year ago. Of old age.

The thing had been a pedigreed rottweiler, and his parents had gotten it for him when he was eleven. They hadn't approved of the breed, but Lash had been adamant, so they'd adopted one that was about a year old. First night in the house, Lash had tried to pierce the thing's ear with a safety pin. King had bitten him so hard, the dog's fangs had punctured his arm and come out the other side.

They'd been inseparable after that. And when that mean old dog had kicked it, Lash had cried like a little bitch.

He reached out and entered the pass code, then put his left hand on the door latch. The light over the door flashed on his knife's blade.

He wished the dog were still alive. He would have liked to have one thing from his old life to carry forward into his new one.

He stepped into his house and headed for the sitting room.

When John Matthew came up to the doors of Wrath's study, he was about as relaxed as a golfer in a thunderstorm, and the sight of the king made the anxiety worse. The male was sitting behind his delicate desk, frown on his face, fingers drumming, stare locked on the phone like bad news had just come in. Again.

John tucked what was in his hand under his arm and knocked quietly on the jamb. Wrath didn't look up. "What's doing, son."

John waited for the king to glance across the way, and when he did, John signed with care. Qhuinn got kicked out of his family.

"Yeah, and I heard the beat-down was from an honor guard courtesy of them." Wrath leaned back in his chair, the slender bones of the thing squeaking. "That father of his... typical glymera."

The tone suggested that was a compliment along the lines of asswipe.

He can't stay at Blay's forever, and he has nowhere to go.

The king shook his head. "Okay, I know where you're going with this, and it's a no. Even if this were a normal household, and it's not, Qhuinn killed a trainee, and I don't give a shit what you think Lash might have done to deserve it. I know you talked to Rhage and told him what happened, but not only is your boy out of the program, he's going to be up on charges." Wrath leaned to the side and looked around John. "You get Phury out of bed yet?"

John looked over his shoulder. Vishous was standing in the doorway.

The Brother nodded. "He's getting dressed. So is Z. You sure you don't want me to handle this?"

"The two of them were Lash's teachers, and Z was a witness to the aftermath of what went down at the clinic. Lash's parents want to talk to them and only them, and I promised that they'd be over to that house ASAP."

"Okay. Keep me posted."

The Brother took off, and Wrath put his elbows on the desk. "Look, John, I know Qhuinn's a buddy of yours, and I do feel bad about a lot of his circumstances. I wish I were in a position to help him, but I'm not."

John pushed, hoping he wouldn't have to go to his last resort. What about Safe Place?

"The females there aren't comfortable around males for good reason. Especially ones with violent histories."

But he's my friend. I can't just sit back knowing he's got no place to go, no job, no money -

"None of that is going to matter, John." The words jail time hovered in the air."You said it yourself. He took deadly force into what was your basic argument between two hotheaded guys. The right response was peeling you and Lash apart. It was not popping a knife and slicing his first cousin's throat open. Did Lash come at you with a deadly weapon? No. Could you honestly say that the kid was going to kill you? No. It was an inappropriate use of force, and Lash's parents are arguing assault with a deadly with intent to kill, and proximal murder under the old law."

Proximal murder?

"The medical staff swear Lash had been resuscitated when that raid took place. His parents are assuming he doesn't survive his capture by the lessers and are going with but-for causation. But for Qhuinn's actions, Lash wouldn't have been at the clinic and he wouldn't have been abducted. Therefore, it's proximal murder."

But Lash worked there. So he could have been in the clinic at any rate that night.

"Except he wouldn't have been in one of the beds as a patient, would he?" Wrath's blunt fingers drummed on the delicate desk. "This shit is heavy-duty, John. Lash was the only son of his parents, both of whom are from founding families. It's not going to go well for Qhuinn. That honor guard is the least of his problems at this point."

In the silence that followed, John's lungs got tight. He'd known all along that they were going to reach this impasse, that what he'd told Rhage wouldn't go far enough to save his friend. And sure, he'd have done anything to avoid this, but he'd come prepared.

John went back to the double doors and closed them, then approached the desk. His hand shook as he took the file he had under his arm and placed his trump card on the king's blotter.

"What's this?"

With John's stomach using his pelvic cradle as a bouncy castle, he slowly pushed his medical record toward the king.

Me. What you need to see is the first page.

Wrath frowned and picked up the magnifying glass he had to use to be able to read. Opening the folder, he bent down over the report that detailed the therapy session John had had at Havers's. It was clear when the king got to the salient part, because the male's heavy shoulders tightened under his black T-shirt.

Oh, God... , John thought, he was so going to throw up.

After a moment, the king closed the file and put the magnifying glass back down on the blotter. In silence, he took care to arrange the two things so they were side by side and positioned perfectly, the ivory handle of the magnifier in line with the bottom of the file.