Blood Father

  Not before his relationship with Vanya had changed him, at least to some degree.

  Besides, Saber hadn’t invaded the valley 480 years ago, killed Kagen’s mother, or enslaved his father. Saber had not taken Keitaro to Mhier and done gods-know-what to him out of spite, cruelty, and vengeance. And none of that mattered anyway.

  That was then.

  This was now.

  “Look,” Kagen finally said, his voice at least steady, if not altogether friendly, “I know you’re telling us everything you can. I do.” He turned to regard Nachari then, and his tone softened a bit more. “It’s just…damn. There’s so much we don’t know. Will it be day or night when we emerge? Will we retain all of our powers? Can we still function as we do in this dimension? Can we communicate telepathically with each other in Mhier or with Napolean and our warriors back here in Dark Moon Vale? How many lycans are we potentially facing—a few, a dozen, a thousand? Can we get out the same way we get in?” His voice began to rise with concern. “What are the odds that Keitaro is even—”

  “Kagen!” Nachari interrupted. “Saber doesn’t know. I don’t know. None of us know anything yet.”

  Just then, Nathaniel Silivasi shimmered into view on the rooftop terrace, materializing just behind his twin. More than likely, he had come in response to Kagen’s increasingly erratic emotions. He placed a steadying hand on his twin’s shoulder and inclined his head gracefully. “Brother.”

  The greeting was met with respect. “Nathaniel.”

  Nathaniel’s touch was as light as a feather, nothing intimidating or intrusive, just a symbolic gesture of solidarity, as if he was trying to say, I’m here.

  Kagen glanced at Nathaniel’s hand and willed his muscles to relax. “I’m fine,” he whispered, hoping to reassure the vampire.

  Are you? Nathaniel asked on a private telepathic bandwidth. He turned his attention to Nachari and Saber and stoically regarded them both: “Brother…soldier.” He tightened the pressure of his hand on Kagen’s shoulder. “Is all going well this night?”

  Nachari gave Nathaniel a knowing glance. “As well as can be expected, under the circumstances.”

  Saber smirked. “Just peachy.”

  Kagen clenched his eyes shut and tried to devise an internal plan to ratchet things down a notch. He opened his eyes, angled his body ever so slightly toward Saber, and bowed his head, infinitesimally. “Apologies.” He tried to stop the next words from rolling off his tongue, but they spewed out anyway. “Son of Jaegar.”

  Hell—now that was uncalled for, he thought. Not to mention untrue.

  Saber chuckled in response to the glib apology, cloaked in a fresh, new jab, and slowly ran his tongue over his teeth, over his fangs. “Forget it. You’re obviously on edge.”

  “Forgot,” Kagen clipped, clearly taking offense at the appraisal as he shrugged his shoulder abruptly to dislodge Nathaniel’s hand.

  Nathaniel glided forward in an instant, placing his large muscular frame between Kagen’s chest and Saber’s back, before the newest member of the house of Jadon could get up and offer Kagen exactly what he was itching for: a fight. He eyed Saber intently and spoke as plainly as he could. “He’s trying to provoke you, Saber. Why? I don’t know. Don’t let him.” He spun around to face Kagen then and gestured toward the far end of the terrace. “Take a walk, healer.”

  Kagen linked his hands behind his back, cracked his knuckles, one at a time, and took several paces back to gain some space. There was a reason why he lived in borderline isolation at the end of a winding dirt road, on the other side of a stony bridge that crossed a rushing stream; and it wasn’t so he could socialize on a daily basis. “Yeah, fine.” He strolled away, brooding, taking several measured strides in the opposite direction of the other males, until he stood at the far end of the terrace, at the edge of the iron railing, alone.

  Stopping to stare at the ground, he couldn’t help but notice a particularly ugly pine cone on the terrace floor. It had fallen from the low branch of an overhanging Ponderosa, one that had grown right out of the rocky face of the canyon wall, and the oblong thing was half brown and half black, oddly rotting from the inside out. Somehow, Kagen found the presence of the hideous pine cone disturbingly ironic, and then he booted the misshapen thing over the side of the ledge, watching as it soared like a rocket, traveling so fast and so far that it was impossible to tell where it landed.

  And just like that, the fuse was extinguished.

  The growing rage…was gone.

  Strolling back to join the others, he sighed. “Saber…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I…”

  The hot-blooded male held his gaze, waiting.

  “I don’t know what my problem is, okay? But you’re not it.” It was as close to an authentic apology as Kagen was going to come.

  Saber shrugged it off. “Been there a time or two, myself.”

  Kagen smirked. “Yeah, I imagine so.” He took several deep breaths in a row before continuing to speak. “There is something else, a little less petty, that I wanted to talk to you about.” He gestured toward Nachari and Nathaniel with his open hand. “That we wanted to talk to you about.”

  “And that is?” Saber asked.

  Kagen sighed. “It’s about your offer to come with us to Mhier, to help us navigate the territory…utilize the map.” He ran his fingers through his hair, feeling suddenly weary. “It’s just…we all talked it over, and we’re not prepared to let you do that. You’re not coming with us on this one.”

  Saber didn’t react. He didn’t snarl or flinch or even cut his eyes. He simply chuckled in three clipped bursts and then grinned, the derisive sound a paradoxical mixture of acceptance and contempt. “Ah’ight.”

  “Ah’ight?” Nachari echoed, looking at the male who sat beside him through the corner of his eye. “That’s it?”

  “What the hell do you expect me to say?” Saber replied. “That’s jacked up? That’s typical? Whatever. You don’t want me with you—it’s all good.”

  Kagen frowned, feeling unexpectedly burdened. “No, soldier”—the term was at least better than Dark One—“it’s not all good. It’s all necessary.”

  “Necessary for whom?” Saber asked.

  “For everyone involved,” Kagen said. He set his jaw and met Saber’s steely gaze head-on.

  “Look,” Nachari intervened, setting down his pen on the easel and swiveling in his chair to face Saber directly. “This isn’t some sort of prejudice or malice. This isn’t about the past or any unresolved issues between you and us.”

  Saber raised his brows. “So you’re saying that all those issues—what I did to your women, what I put Vanya through—they’ve all been resolved?” He eyed Nachari, Kagen, and Nathaniel in turn, his wary eyes awaiting a reply.

  Nathaniel whistled low beneath his breath. “You offered your blood to settle the score. Kristina drew it, Deanna refused it, and Vanya forgave you. On some level, Jocelyn owes you her life; so yes, I am willing to call the scales balanced, at least as far as my household is concerned.”

  Saber nodded, accepting Nathaniel’s words. “And you, healer?” He stared pointedly at Kagen. “You didn’t try to pick a fight with your brothers this night—you tried to pick one with me. Can you honestly stand there and tell me you aren’t still harboring a grudge?”

  Kagen considered Saber’s words carefully. “I’ve picked more fights over the centuries with my brothers than I can count, so don’t flatter yourself, Saber.” He smiled faintly. “Honestly, I haven’t even had time to think about it since you told us about Keitaro: It’s been the furthest thing from my mind, Dark—” He caught himself before he said Dark One again. “Dragon,” he offered, making polite reference to Vanya’s pet name for the hot-tempered male.

  Nachari chuckled beneath his breath, partly because—well, he was Nachari—and partly because he was trying to ease the tension. “I like that better anyhow. It suits you.” He rolled the word off his tongue in a deliberate Romanian accent: “D
ragon…”

  Saber rolled his eyes, but there was nothing playful in the gesture. “All right; that’s fair.” He angled his head to acknowledge Nachari directly. “Nicknames aside, wizard, you still haven’t answered my question: Have you also resolved what happened…between me and your destiny?”

  Nachari’s jaw tightened, and his expression grew all at once stern. “What happened between you and Deanna?” he echoed, his voice dropping to a cautionary tone. “What you did to Deanna,” he clarified.

  “What I did to your destiny?” Saber repeated.

  Nachari shrugged, and the gesture was guilelessly honest. “Maybe—maybe not—point is: You’re one of us, Saber. I don’t know how many ways we can tell you that, show you that. And as far as we’re all concerned, you’re here to stay.” He stared at the vampire with penetrating eyes, and then he gestured with his head, indicating the familiar, concealed pouch in Saber’s front right pocket. “I will say this: You could help things along quite a bit by putting that damn Crest Ring on your finger—oh, maybe before the next millennium.” He held up both hands for emphasis. “Just sayin’.”

  Saber tapped his hip pocket and nodded. “I’m working on it.”

  “And we’re working on it,” Nathaniel said candidly.

  “Point is…” Nachari picked up where he had left off. “None of that has anything to do with what we discussed about going into Mhier, our decision to do it alone.”

  “Alone?” Saber said. “Just the Silivasis and Ramsey Olaru.” It was clearly a rhetorical question.

  Kagen frowned. “Look, Saber; the fact that you even offered to take such an enormous risk—just to help us find our father?” His voice faltered on the last word, but he pushed through it. “We all know what that means to a male like you.”

  “A proud male,” Nachari clarified. “Independent.”

  “Obstinate,” Nathaniel said, apparently trying to keep it real.

  Saber snarled at the Ancient Master Warrior, but his eyes were smiling this time.

  Nathaniel took a step back, chuckling.

  “We know what that took,” Kagen repeated. “It’s not a small thing. But us, accepting your offer, that’s not a small thing, either.”

  “You have a two-and-a-half-month-old son,” Nachari said.

  “And you’re mated to an original princess, one who has been through more than enough in the past year,” Kagen added.

  “We can’t risk it,” Nathaniel chimed in.

  “No way, no how,” Kagen said. “There’s a good chance, a very good chance, that none of us are going to come out of this alive, that none of us are coming back. Keitaro is our father. We owe him everything. But you? You owe your destiny and that child. You owe Lorna and Rafael, at least a chance to get to know you. The stakes are too high. We can’t gamble with the lives of so many who have already suffered so much.”

  Saber nodded slowly, carefully considering Kagen’s words. “And Ramsey?” He obviously had to ask. “How is that different?”

  “Ramsey doesn’t have a destiny or a son,” Kagen said bluntly. “If you were unencumbered, if things were different—well, things might be different.”

  “Even Braden is staying home on this one,” Nachari said. “It is what it is.”

  Before Saber could reply, Braden Bratianu sauntered up to the circle of vampires. Since he lived at the brownstone with Nachari, Deanna, and Sebastian, it wasn’t unusual for the curious youngster to try and eavesdrop on adult conversations, and he had obviously overheard the tail end of this one. He threw his hands up in the air, huffed with indignation, and stomped his foot on the deck, looking for all intents and purposes like a spoiled brat, a recalcitrant boy in a man’s body. “Dang, Nachari!” He glared at the wizard in defiance. “So when were you going to tell me?”

  Nachari rubbed his brow with his thumb and forefinger, belying his frustration. “Braden…”

  “No…no! That is so messed up!”

  Nachari shook his head then. “We so don’t have time for this, Braden,” he muttered beneath his breath. Turning to face the youngster head-on, he lowered his voice and spoke in a measured, paternal tone: “I’m going to make this real short and simple: Since your parents placed you in my care, you have been kidnapped by lycans and nailed to a cross, where you ended up getting your neck broken, I might add. You erased the memory of a twelve-year-old girl and got so sick when you merged with Napolean, after the Dark Lord Ademordna tried to possess him, that you threw up your guts and broke several of your ribs. Not to mention, you recently got into a confrontation with Ramsey Olaru over Kristina.” He paused to amend his last comment. “Okay, well, it wasn’t much of a confrontation, really. More like—”

  “More like some half-crazed, rock-throwing, chest-thumping display of insanity,” Nathaniel added, smiling. He glanced at Braden and grimaced. “Yeah, Ramsey described it to me. You’re lucky he didn’t snap your little confrontational neck.” He shrugged. “Just making an observation.”

  Nachari cut his eyes at Nathaniel and quickly rushed his next words before Braden could take offense, which was the last thing they needed. “Point is: You weren’t placed in my care so I could use you as I see fit, whenever the need arises. I’m supposed to be your teacher, your mentor, your protector. And you are not going into the completely unknown world of the lycans with us. You’re just not.”

  Braden slowly sucked his teeth, smacked his lips, and crossed his arms over his chest, taking a judicious step back. “Ah, okay. So it’s like that, then?”

  Nachari narrowed his gaze, about to lose his patience. “Yes, Braden. It’s exactly like that.”

  “Fine,” Braden snapped. “I’ll just go find my woman, then—leave you all to it.” He threw up his hands in frustration and stomped away.

  “His woman?” Nathaniel asked, his bottomless black eyes narrowing in question.

  Nachari shook his head and sighed in exasperation. “Kristina.”

  “Oh,” Nathaniel said, apparently hesitant to pry any further. “Does Kristina know this?”

  “He never lets her forget,” Nachari said, his voice thick with exhaustion.

  Kagen smiled, thinking about Braden’s latest antics: Ever since Napolean had shared Nachari’s secret with the flighty youngster, the secret the demoness Noiro had told him during his captivity in the Abyss—the fact that he was not beholden to the Curse; he would never have a Blood Moon; and he could, in fact, sire female children one day and was, consequently, promised to Kristina—Braden had become like a blowfish, swollen with self-importance and masculine pride. “If she doesn’t kill him before he turns twenty-one,” Kagen told his twin, “I don’t think Napolean is going to leave her a choice.”

  Nachari shrugged. “Female children…pretty valuable.”

  Nathaniel nodded in assent. “Indeed.”

  And then they all turned back to regard Saber. “Sorry about the interruption,” Kagen said. “At this point, I don’t know what else to add to what we’ve told you, only to say thank you for offering.” He made a profound gesture of respect then, by holding out his hand in an offer of friendship. He only half expected Saber to take it.

  Saber stood, stared at the extended palm, and took a reflexive step back, moving away from the healer. “Despite what you might think, I can reason objectively…sometimes.” His mouth turned up in that wicked, scowl-laced grin so characteristic of the male. “And I understand your reasoning. It’s cool. Honestly. No need to get too formal.”

  Nachari pushed back his chair and stood up brusquely. He took one determined stride in Saber’s direction and, without hesitating, punched him right in the bicep. His eyes flashed red, and his fangs extended of their own accord. “Damn, Dragon,” he snarled, inclining his head at Kagen’s outstretched hand. “Take his hand already. Shit. See, that’s why you’re still having trouble fitting in.”

  “Damn,” Saber snarled, “and I thought it was because my mom only packs bologna sandwiches in my lunch.”

  Nathaniel burst in
to laughter, clearly amused by the all-too-human reference.

  Saber threw up both hands and laughed, surprising the heck out of all of them. “I was going to, wizard,” he said. Stepping confidently forward, he clasped Kagen’s forearm instead, and both of their palms instantly linked around each other’s wrists before sliding forward into a firm, finger-clasping grasp. “Be careful,” he said next, his tone betraying the seriousness behind his otherwise playful demeanor. “The beta lycans are no match for our kind, but the Alphas are deadly. And Mhier is their world.”

  Kagen nodded solemnly. “We understand our enemy, and we have a score of our own to settle.” He relaxed a little then. “Just take care of Vanya and Lucien.”

  “Always,” Saber replied, finally releasing Kagen’s grip. He turned to regard Nachari. “When are you leaving?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” the wizard answered, “around six AM.”

  Saber’s posture straightened reflexively. “Well, may the dark lords be with—” His eyes grew wide as he caught the inexcusable slip and immediately ducked out of Nachari’s reach, covering his exposed bicep with a palm. “May the gods be with you,” he quickly amended, laughing.

  “Dude,” Nachari barked. “You are so incredibly jacked up. You do know this, right?”

  Saber cringed, and then he smiled.

  And his smile gave Kagen hope.

  If the celestial deities could take a lost, soulless monster like Saber Alexiares, give him to a princess, and bring him back into the light, even just a little, enough to actually smile and mean it, then they could also lead the Silivasi brothers to their father.

  To Keitaro.

  After all these years.

  They had to.

  Kagen paced to the other end of the terrace, once again, needing to clear his mind, to find solace in isolation. As he glanced at the vast night sky, he felt oddly connected to the dark, expansive void; he couldn’t help but wonder what the future held, just what were they about to embark upon; and he had to reassure himself once more: