The Beloved, page 38
Yet there was a peace, too. Whereas he hadn’t chosen how this fucked-up path had started because of a lie that had been fed to him… he was getting to choose when it all ended.
“Thank you,” he breathed.
“You’re doing the right thing.”
The next thing Evan felt was a piercing pain in his chest—
And then he was consumed by heat and light.
CHAPTER FIFTY
It tasted like Yoo-hoo.
That was what Zsadist thought when a blast of light woke his sorry ass up and his eyes popped open. He didn’t need any reorientation, he knew exactly where the fuck he was.
And who he was with.
As a billow of smoke curled up in front of Nate, and the stink of lesser both flared and dissipated, Z had the blurry visual of his daughter leaping into the male’s arms, the two embracing at the foot of a short stack stairway. When they finally parted a little, he watched them exchange words, and even though he was groggy, he could dub them in.
After all, he and his Bella had said similar things at various times in their lives, when near misses had saved two people from catastrophe… the reunion all the sweeter for the almost-didn’t-happen.
Funny, he thought as he continued to suck on the straw that was in his mouth, how he went back to a specific moment in his own life as Nalla and Nate turned to him and warily approached the bed.
I am the luckiest male.
Those were the words that had gone through his mind when Bella had come back to him even though he hadn’t deserved any kind of second chance, and told him she was pregnant with their beloved daughter… and he had been able to write three words in bad penmanship to show her that he had changed.
“Father?” his Nalla said in a voice that cracked.
“I’m okay.” It was hard to talk around the straw, but as his brain came back online, he realized what the not-Yoo-hoo was about and why he had to keep drinking the synthetic blood. “You… okay?”
“Yes,” she whispered as she held on to the hand of the male who stood beside her, tall and strong—and covered in the blood of the enemy.
“I have something I have to say to you, sir,” Nate intoned gravely. “I don’t know if now’s the time, though.”
Was this fucker was going to ask for her hand in mating right here? Z wondered. Over what might have been his deathbed if… well, if the male hadn’t acted so quickly with the first aid.
Or if Nate hadn’t jumped in between Zsadist and a stabbing that would have killed him instantly out on the lawn.
Talk about taking one for the team.
“Shut up,” Z said harshly. “I don’t want to hear it.”
The way his daughter’s face fell told him everything. And yet he had to ask, “Do you love him, Nalla?”
“Yes, Father. I do.” She looked up at Nate. “I love him with everything I am.”
“And you?” He mostly kept the warning out of his voice as he addressed Nate. “Do you love her.”
Even though he knew the male did. There was no forgetting the expression on Nate’s face as he’d come out of that cabin, a bonded fighter, ready to defend the female who was his whole world.
Nate nodded and looked down. “I love her.” Then the male glanced back to the bed. “But that’s not what I have to tell you.”
Zsadist frowned as the guy brought out his cell phone. After he futzed around with things for a moment, he put the screen out.
“That’s a picture of me,” Z mumbled.
Nate nodded. “One of the black market kingpins downtown thinks he’s hired me to kill you. I wanted you to know this right now, so in case you’re out in the field, you’re extra careful. I’m going to take care of it, though, don’t worry. Uncle’s not going to live another twenty-four hours.”
The shooting in the parking lot, Z thought. Behind that club Bathe.
It hadn’t been him with the trigger pulling at those organized crime types, but someone had decided it was.
As Nalla gasped, Zsadist stared into the eyes of the other male. “Much appreciated.”
“Consider it the first of a lifelong series of apologies.” Nate nodded at Nalla. “Everything is different to me now.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“You can bet your life on it.”
Fuck that, Z thought. It looked like he was betting his daughter’s life on it.
Then he focused on his Nalla.
Clearing his throat, Z felt like he was jumping off into an abyss. But he knew, if he was going to keep his daughter in his life… he was going to have to set her free.
And you know, he didn’t think she was blowing up her life over a bad male, after all.
“You two have my blessing,” he said with authority. “For whatever future you choose to make together.”
Nalla let out a strangled sound, and then, just like she had when she was little, when he’d come home at the end of the night and he’d been the only one she wanted to see…
She was careful about getting on the bed next to him. Because reasons.
But as much as she could, she launched herself at him.
“I love you… father mine,” she choked out through her tears. “Forever.”
“I love you, too,” he vowed. “Always.”
And as he held the smart, beautiful, headstrong, amazing thing that he and his one true love had made together, Zsadist looked over her shoulder.
Nate was right there, all flushed and possibly having to blink quick. Not that the male was going to show it.
As he sensed the attention on him, Nate straightened like a soldier addressing a corporal. “Oh, here, I better give this back to you. Again.”
Nate leaned forward, and placed the black dagger he’d clearly used on the lesser who had just poofed! the fuck out on the bed. Right where Z could reach it with the grip that was still working.
When he went to step back, Z spoke sharply. “You better take care of her. She’s my girl.”
The fighter hitched a breath. “Yes, sir. I promise.”
“Because I’ll fucking kill you. Somehow, I will f—”
“Dad,” Nalla cut in. “Really.”
“What?” Z rolled his eyes. “Fine. Just don’t fuck this up, Nate. You got one chance with me.”
Nate put both of his palms high, like he was at a stickup. “I swear. I won’t waste the opportunity. And thank you.”
“Okay then.” Z left the weapon where it was and extended his dagger hand. “Welcome to my family, Nate.”
There was a pause that seemed to last forever.
“I will love her and cherish her, always,” Nate whispered. In a way that was a vow that was going to last the guy’s entire, immortal life.
When the two of them clasped palms… they held on longer than you would if you were just being polite. Then again, they were going to be spending a lot of time together.
In the future.
EPILOGUE
Three nights later…
As Nate arrived at the Audience House, he re-formed around back. The evening was crystal clear, and out here in the sticks, the stars were brilliant overhead, twinkling in their spin around the earth. Standing with his shitkickers in the snow, feeling the brisk air on his face, looking forward to what was coming after this, the heavens didn’t look cold and distant. They seemed full of possibilities, a whirl of infinite beauty.
After a moment, the fireflies he’d been expecting swirled in beside him, the sparks coalescing into a shimmer before going solid. Rahvyn was smiling as she faced him, her silver hair caught by the wind to come alive around her ethereal face.
“Hi,” she said.
What a simple greeting, Nate thought. And yet in the word, there was so much. Acceptance. Forgiveness. The love that came with community.
“Hi.” It was easy to smile back at her, and he cleared his throat. “Thanks for coming out here.”
“Thank you for calling me.”
Glancing off to the side, he measured the barn that was no barn at all, but a high-tech monitoring facility to rival anything any government had ever built and staffed. Even though he hadn’t done the math on all the monitoring on the premises, he was glad he was doing this with an audience.
Accountability for one’s actions was good.
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry to you,” he said. “For the way I’ve been all these years. I’m not going to explain the whys. They don’t matter.”
“Nate, you do not have—”
He put his hand up and stopped her. “You told me to make peace with everyone. I’m going to do that, but I want to stay. Here, in Caldwell. With my mate.”
That radiant smile returned and it was like getting hit with a bolt of sunlight. “I am so happy for you both.”
“Thanks. And lucky for me, I’ve got all the time in the world. I have a lot to make up for.” He closed his eyes. “When I think about what I did to my parents. The Brotherhood. Shuli—”
“You are going to find that forgiveness is another word for love, Nate.”
He lifted his lids. “I’m going to prove myself. To everyone.”
“I know you are. And I am glad you are not leaving us.”
As he looked at the female now, he could recognize her beauty and appreciate it, but there was no confusion for him about who his true love was. Even when he remembered standing on the edge of that meadow, Lassiter’s carpet of blooms an acre-sized bouquet he couldn’t compete with, he knew that Nalla was who he’d really been waiting for.
“I have no right to ask you for anything,” he said roughly. “But when my Nalla—”
“Yes, I will come to you when it is her time. And you will be reunited in the Fade. Lassiter and I will make sure of it.”
He released the breath he’d been holding for nights now. “Thank you. The idea of living without her is…”
“I know. You do not have to say it.”
“And thank you for bringing me back that night, thirty years ago. Life is a gift. I just forgot that for a very long time.”
“You had your reasons. And you are very welcome.”
The hug they shared was that of family, and when they stepped back, he looked to the cottage’s rear door.
“Making the peace,” he murmured. “It’s my new side hustle.”
“You do it well. I know I feel much better.”
Nate thought of his parents, whose home he’d just left after he and Nalla had enjoyed a great First Meal with them. Murhder and Sarah were even better than blood to him because they’d chosen him as their son, had picked him up out of an untenable situation and stuck with him, ever since. Again, when he thought about the things he’d said and done? Shame spoiled his stomach.
But he was going to keep proving that he had changed.
And God, they loved Nalla so much. They’d accepted her instantly, and the feeling he’d had, as he’d pulled out his mate’s chair at the table, while his father had done the same for his mother, had made him feel a full-circle kind of satisfaction.
He’d been lost. Now he really was found and claimed.
“You’re right,” he said hoarsely. “About the forgiveness thing and what it means.”
Why they still loved him, he couldn’t understand. But as his father had told him, and his mother had underscored, he was a part of them, of the love they had for each other, of their home. Of their past, present… and future. When he’d pressed them on it all, on how they could possibly look past his shutting them out, they had just smiled and promised, if he had young of his own, he would understand.
Man, he hoped that would happen for him and Nalla sometime, in some way. He really wanted to adopt at least one young.
He turned to the cottage. “Time to face the music with Wrath and the Brotherhood. I’m meeting Shuli after this. And then I think I’ve crossed off everyone on my list.”
As if she could sense his tension, Rahvyn reached out and gave his hand a squeeze. “You are on a roll. Keep it going.”
“My father said he’d help me.”
“Good.”
With a wave, he took his leave of her, tromping through the snow to the glow by the back door. In his head, he tried to recite the speech he’d written out over day, once more going through the words that he’d worn out from practice. You’d think the number of times he’d reviewed the thing would have made it better. Instead, the sentences were a mash, an over-tossed salad that had been profound on its first iteration, but was now just a sappy hack job.
Ah, hell, maybe it had always been that, but the emotions he had been feeling had turned the prosaic into prose, and then he guessed the treadmill of repetition had given him the clarity that those fighters and the great Blind King were going to have the second he opened his pie hole.
Whatever, he thought as he waited to be cleared at the back entrance. It was all he had, and at least his father had offered to take him into his audience with the—
The first of the three portals was sprung, and Nate stepped inside a cubicle-like space.
Sweaty palms. Pounding heart. Shaking hands.
The second clearance was granted, the heavy steel door releasing so that he could take another couple of steps and wait for another review. Looking up, he noted the tiny holes in the steel ceiling. Mounted as they were, they were not unlike the stars in the sky, so small compared to the expanse they were on. But they were nothing to wish on. If you were a trespasser dumb enough to make it this far? You were going to get hit with enough nerve gas to get turned into an inanimate object.
He was passed forward again, and as he confronted the final checkpoint, he just pictured his father standing tall and true in the homey kitchen on the far side, Murhder’s red-and-black hair and leathers a comfort—
The seal let go, he pushed the way in… and stopped as soon as he stepped forward.
Across the way, it was Zsadist by the Aga, not his father.
Behind Nate, the steel door shut itself and relocked, and abruptly, the details of the kitchen got a little blurry, while the scents in the air got sharp: Scones. Coffee. OJ.
“Ah, hi,” he said.
“Hey, son.”
“I—um, listen, I really appreciate that the Brotherhood is giving me the opportunity to apologize,” Nate heard himself blather in a rush. “And I don’t expect to be put back on the field schedule. I’m ready to work at anything I’m offered. If you guys want me to clean something, train the young, data entry… I don’t care—and if it’s nothing, I understand.”
Those yellow eyes, so like Nalla’s, narrowed, and he couldn’t blame the guy. Yeah, sure, everything was good between the two of them, but there were levels, so many levels.
“So, you expected your father here, yeah?”
Nate nodded his head. “Yes, but I’m prepared to go in and face the Brotherhood and my King on my own. It’s my past, no one else’s.”
Zsadist came forward, and now the two were eye to eye. For a split second, Nate’s gaze dropped to the black slave band that had been tattooed around the Brother’s throat, and he thought of his own ink. He’d gotten his because he’d needed a physical expression of his pain. Now, he saw Amore’s work as evidence that he was a survivor.
And he wondered if Z didn’t feel the same about his own.
“You know,” Nate murmured, “I’m done running from what… happened to me in the past.”
Zsadist inclined his head. “That’s exactly why I wanted to catch you. If you ever need to talk… I know what it’s like. Trying to play normal when your head is a tornado. Mary is super helpful as a resource and my daughter, I mean, she’s trained in counseling, and she loves you more than anything. Sometimes, though, it’s good to know you aren’t alone. Even the people you’re closest to can’t really relate—and aren’t you and I glad that they don’t carry around what we do.”
Nate blinked a couple of times. And found it was hard to breathe.
“I’m going to take you up on this offer.”
Z nodded again. “Good. I was hoping that was going to be your response.” Then the Brother smiled, flashing his fangs. “Now let’s get this shit over with so we can go to your party.”
* * *
Who’da thought that the sound of packing tape screeching across the bottom of a moving box would be a happy thing.
As Nalla made another 3D out of a 2D, and flipped the cardboard cube upright, she measured how much more she had to go. Dismantling her room in her parents’ quarters had gone quickly. Then again, all she had were clothes, the photographs on the walls, and the stuff in her bathroom. The latter had taken up the most time, and she had culled that herd of two-year-old mascaras and eye pencils that had turned into tiny I-beams with a fresh-start rush that had made her dizzy.
Heading over to her bureau’s bottom drawer, she took out the pairs of flannel PJ bottoms, and the last of her sweatshirts…
Then she slowly straightened and looked around.
“Am I done?” she said to herself.
Glancing back at the open doors of her closet, she got an eyeful of two empty wire hangers on the rod, a lone pair of strappy heels in a shoebox on the floor, and a single silica gel satchel that had fallen out of something. Across the way, there was the stripped mattress, the bedside table that only had a lamp on it, and her cell phone that was charging on its pad. Other than the rug needing a quick vacuum and the overflowing wastepaper basket in the bathroom, it looked like she was… done.
The wave of sadness that came didn’t make sense. She was super excited about moving and setting up a household with Nate. It didn’t matter to her that his place out there in the woods was small and modest, and Vishous had had to add a layer of mhis to make sure they were safe from the enemy.
Finally, she was making her own home. With the male she loved.
Which was what you did. Young didn’t stay young forever. Growing up was as inexorable a process as dying, and if you were lucky, you made it to maturity in one piece. Or semi-one piece.
