Out of the corner of his eye, Blay got a load of V and Butch hightailing it up the stone steps for the mansion’s entrance.

“Did you check on the twins!” Blay yelled over the wind at his mate. “Are they okay?”

Qhuinn held up his phone and nodded. “Layla just texted! They were in the playroom on the other side of the house. She says the sitting room was empty when the glass broke!”

“Let’s take this over to the garage,” Blay hollered. “Before there’s any more damage!”

“You’re bleeding,” Qhuinn hollered back.

“Breathing? Of course I am. Over there! Let’s go over there!”

Qhuinn’s mouth was moving, and going by his glower, he was clearly cursing, but he followed the lead. Together, they dragged the ungainly weight toward the garage, the sandbags flattening a path in the snow-covered side lawn like a Zamboni on an ice rink. And Blay would have just tucked the production off to the side of the stone steps, next to the bushes, but he knew that Fritz wouldn’t have approved—and that the elderly doggen was liable to go outside in the storm and insist on taking it out of sight on a tidy-up.

The last thing the household needed was a Fritzcicle in the front yard.

Growing colder by the moment, Blay trudged through the snow, his loafers breaking through the icy top inch of the snowpack, all crunch, crunch, crunch. As the wind made staying upright a struggle, his white clouds of breath went the house-ward way of the tarp and the ball-busting, window-breaking, sonofabitch sandbag.

Not that he was bitter.

As they approached the closed garage doors, he triangulated in on the keypad mounted on the side wall.

“What’s the code?” Blay shouted.

“Try the one to the training center!”

With a half-frozen forefinger, Blay punched in the numbers, hit the pound key—ta-daaaaaa. With a laconic trundle—like the goddamn garage door had no clue they were fucking cold and needed to get out of the wind—the panels lifted and rode their track, retracting to reveal a sparkling-clean, concrete-floored equipment corral nearly the size of a soccer field. The storm’s gusts barreled into the space as soon as they had even a six-inch opening, rattling the tops of the metal trash cans, blowing over a row of weed whackers, whipping past V’s R8 and Manny’s Porsche, neither of which would be taken out until spring.

As soon as they could duck under, he and Qhuinn dragged the tarp in and folded it up in a messy way. If Fritz wanted to micromanage that part of things, fine—

Qhuinn was suddenly right in front of him, and before Blay could say anything, his mate took a grip of his chin and brought up a black-and-white bandana.

“What are you—”

When Blay tried to lean away, Qhuinn wouldn’t let him, pressing the folded cloth to the side of his face. “Hold still, wouldya. You’re bleeding.”

As a vicious gust shot into the garage, their bodies got thrown to the side, and Qhuinn must have willed the garage door back down because the panels started to descend again—you couldn’t raise the things without the code because they had closing-activated copper locks, but you could drop them into place.

And good thing. It felt like it was getting even colder. Or maybe that was just his extremities’ last gasp of sensation before frostbite turned him into a statue.

“I’m fine,” Blay said as he thought about that broken window in the front of the house. “We need to go help—”

The garage door thumped into place, the wind’s last foray ending in a high-pitched whistle, the relative silence something you had to acclimatize to after the din.

“—go down to the training center right now,” Qhuinn finished in a normal voice as he rubbed his hands together for warmth.

Outside, the howling ascended in volume again, and Blay had a sudden urge to count everybody in the frickin’ household. If someone were to get stuck out there? If they left the house on foot and got disorientated? If they took a car and lost traction on the road?

They weren’t going to last long.

Shaking himself back to attention, he tried to remember what his mate had said. “The training center? For what?”

“I just told you. You’re bleeding.”

The door into the house opened and Tohr leaned out. “Everybody okay in here?”

“No—”

“Yes—” Blay batted Qhuinn’s nurse routine away from his face. “Did anyone get hurt upstairs?”

“No, the second-floor sitting room was empty,” Tohr replied. “We’re boarding up the hole and closing the daytime shutters right now. Hey, do you want me to get Doc Jane for that wound?”

Blay glared at his mate and spoke deliberately. “No, thank you. We’re not going to bother a doctor about a scratch that is going to heal within the hour—”

“We need to check him out right now,” Qhuinn said. “Maybe get a gurney?”

“Are you even kidding me?” Blay rubbed the side of his face to prove he was fine—until the scratch started protesting the attention. Keeping a grimace to himself, he announced, “I am very sure I’m not bleeding out, and someone else might need something.”

Tohr smiled. “How about you guys check in later at the clinic if it looks like things are not resolving on their own with the injury?”

As the Brother gave them a little wave and disappeared back into the house, Qhuinn walked around in a tight circle.

“I’d just feel better if someone looked at it. You know, to be sure . . .” He let the sentence fade out as he blew into his cupped hands.

The helpless look in those mismatched eyes was such a surprise. Especially because what was going on was on a shaving-nick level.

Blay went over and put a hand on Qhuinn’s shoulder. “You know I’m fine. Come on, a minor scratch is nothing compared to you getting stabbed last night—”

“But you’re who matters. Not me.”

There was the temptation to laugh . . . until Blay realized the male was serious. With a frown, he shook his head. “I don’t understand that statement at all. You are a father, a hellren, a Brother. You are everything—”

“None of it matters without you.”

Blay just stood there and blinked. The bleak tone was not normal at all.

“Qhuinn, you know I’m not going anywhere.” He pulled his male in close. “I’m right here and going nowhere.”

The shudder that went through his beloved was the kind of thing that easily translated from one body to the other. And was another testament to something Blay couldn’t quite understand.

“I wish you could promise me that.”

Blay pulled back at the whispered words. “What are you saying? You don’t trust me?”

“It’s the world I don’t trust.” Qhuinn brought the bandana back up, and dab-dab-dabbed at the cut. “I worry about gunshots and knives and car crashes and—”

“Let’s stop that list. Your point is taken.”

Qhuinn glared over at the tarp. “I didn’t even know I had to be concerned about fucking fountain covers.”

Okay, time for a redirection of all this, Blay decided. “Let’s go inside. See if we can help with that window.”

“Yeah.” Qhuinn put an arm around Blay’s waist as they started walking toward the door into the back hall. “Lean on me if you need to. Like if you feel dizzy or weak.”

“You’re trying to make me laugh.”

“And get you against me.”

“I’m all yours.”

Qhuinn stopped, his affect instantly lightening up. “Now? Here? What a great idea—”

“No, not here.” Blay pulled his lover along with a laugh. “But later.”

“Wherever we are? Assuming the coast is clear?”

“Fine.”

Throwing out his anchor, Qhuinn had calculation in his eyes. “Wherever we are. If the time is right, it’s wherever.”

Dear Lord, what am I agreeing to, Blay thought. But that was the thing, wasn’t it. He loved the edge of his true love.

“Deal?” Qhuinn prompted.

Blay felt a naughty smile hit his face. “Deal.”

They started walking again, and as they hit the shallow steps into the house, Qhuinn narrowed one last, mean look back at the tarp.

“You know,” Blay remarked, “if you’ve really got it in for that thing, I’ll bet Fritz will let you light it on fire.”

Qhuinn halted in mid-step and popped his brows. And then he yanked open the door with an expression of total focus.

“Fritz!” he called out. “Get me the flamethrower!”

They’re not shutting.”

Zsadist paused his hammer-and-nail routine and glanced down from his perch on a stepladder. “What aren’t shutting?”

Payne, who was holding a six-foot-long plywood section to the sitting room’s busted window for him, also looked at Tohr.

“You mean the daylight shutters?” she asked. “Because they’re fine in here.”

The other brother walked across the antique carpet, his shitkickers crunching over broken glass. Bending down, he picked up the sandbag that was next to the silk sofa and then glared around like he was searching for other signs of storm-related vandalism and equipment failure.

And PS. Z thought, if it was true that the shutters were failing? Fuck the snow, they had bigger problems. Of all the human myths around vampires, those rats without tails had gotten one thing right: No sunlight. Ever. So the mansion, like any other house inhabited by the species, had custom-made shutters that got locked into place during the day.

Windows needed to be covered before daybreak.

“I should amend that,” Tohr muttered. “Some of the shutters aren’t working. I just needed to check we were covered in here.”

“How many are bad?” Payne asked.

“We got three sets across the back, so far. But this is a big house, as you know, and that wind is a bastard. We’re definitely going to lose some trees tonight, and that means all the windows should be protected.”