Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood 9)

“Nah. Give it a shot.”

This meant V needed to talk but, in characteristic fashion, was wrapped too tight to squeeze it out: The male had always put the shut it in relating, but at least he was better than he’d been. Before? He wouldn’t have even cracked this door at all.

“She asked you to take care of her if this doesn’t work, didn’t she,” Butch said, voicing what he feared most. “And not in terms of palliative nursing.”

V’s response was an exhale that lasted abooooooout fifteen minutes past infinity.

“What are you going to do,” Butch said, even though he knew the answer.

“I won’t hesitate.” The even though it will kill me went unspoken.

Fucking life. Sometimes the situations it put people in were just too cruel.

Butch closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the wall. Family was everything to vampires. Your mate, the brothers you fought with, your blood . . . that was your whole world.

And along that theory, as V suffered so did he. And Jane. And the rest of the Brotherhood.

“Hopefully, it won’t come to that.” Butch glanced at the closed door. “Doc Jane is going to find the guy. She’s a bulldog—”

“You know what dawned on me about ten minutes ago?”

“What.”

“Even if it hadn’t been daylight, she would have wanted to go alone to find the guy.”

As the male’s bonding scent wafted over, Butch thought, Well, duh. Jane and the surgeon had been tight for years, so if there was persuading to do, she’d have better luck on her own—assuming she could get past the whole back-from-the-dead thing. Plus V was a vampire. Hello. Like anyone needed another layer added to this mess?

And on that note, all things considered, it would be great if the surgeon were five feet tall, walleyed, and had bear hair on his back. Fugly was their only friend if V’s bonded male side was being triggered.

“No offense,” Butch murmured, “but can you blame her?”

“It’s my twin.” The guy raked a hand through his black hair. “Goddamn it, Butch . . . my sister.”

Butch knew more than a little something about how losing one felt, so ye

ah, he could feel the male on that front. And man, he was so not leaving the brother’s side: He and Jane were the only ones who had a prayer of derailing Vishous when he got like this. And Jane was going to have her hands full with that surgeon and her patient—

The sound of V’s cell phone going off made them both jump, but the Brother recovered fast and there wasn’t a second ring before he got it up to his ear.

“Yeah? You did? Thank . . . fuck . . . yeah. Yeah. I’ll meet you in the parking garage here. Okay.” There was a slight pause and V glanced over like he wished he were alone.

Desperate to make like thin air, Butch looked down at his Dior Homme loafers. The brother was never really into the PDA or talking personal stuff to Jane if there was an audience. But given that Butch was a half-breed, he couldn’t dematerialize and where the hell could he run to?

After V muttered a quick “bye,” he inhaled deep on his cig and muttered on the exhale, “You can stop pretending not to be next to me.”

“What a relief. I suck at it.”

“Not your fault you take up space.”

“So she got him?” As Vishous nodded, Butch got dead serious. “Promise me something.”

“What.”

“You won’t kill that surgeon.” Butch knew exactly what it was like to trip on the outside world and fall into this vampire rabbit hole. In his case, it had worked out, but when it came to Manello? “This is not the guy’s fault and not his problem.”

V flicked his butt into the bin and glanced over, his diamond eyes cold as an arctic night. “We’ll see how it goes, cop.”

With that, he pivoted and punched through into where his sister was.