Why hadn’t they been formally mated by now? ’Cuz maybe that was something they needed to get on the goddamn calendar.

Not that he was feeling territorial or anything. Or still a little jealous of his very handsome, yet very happily mated cousin Saxton.

Nah.

There was just something about a power outage in the middle of a blizzard that made a young male’s thoughts turn toward romance.

This time they were going to be better prepared for the great outdoors.

As Qhuinn zipped up a Mount Everest–worthy parka from his hips to his chinny-chin-chin, he felt like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Add in a set of Gore-Tex mittens, a hood, and a coat of Chap-Stick on the lips, and he felt like he was going to war out on a tundra.

He also knew what steamed broccoli felt like. Jesus, it was hot under all the thermal gear—and not in a fun way.

Turning his head, the miner’s light strapped to his skull hit Blay’s chest. His mate had grabbed a load of wearable duvet as well, and as long as a person didn’t focus on the twelve-foot-deep gash on that cheek, the sheer beauty of the male was almost overwhelming. Between that wind-burned face and those bright blue eyes and that red hair, Blaylock, son of Rocke, was positively edible.

And okay, fine. Maybe that scratch on the cheek was just a minor injury, but the thing certainly seemed like a mortal wound—

The emergency lights came on, offering a quarter of the normal illumination—and saving all kinds of retina burn.

“Thank you, Ruhn,” Blay murmured as he looked to the ceiling fixture.

“Guy’s a frickin’ genius.” Qhuinn switched off his headlamp, but kept the contraption noggin-bound on a just-in-case. “Let’s do this.”

Hitching an arm through the rung of a five-foot stepladder, he led the way back into the garage. The lights that were motion-activated came on at that reduced level, but it was more than enough to see by as they tromped along the concrete floor, passing by the riding mowers that were drained and draped for the winter, as well as the thirteen ancient coffins that were lined up like something out of a Bela Lugosi movie.

The damn things freaked him the hell out—not that he’d shared that little slice of pansy with anybody. He always worried Dracula was going to crack open one of those fuckers—which was pretty rich because Qhuinn actually was a vampire.

“What about Bela Lugosi?” Blay asked as he unlocked the door to the back forty.

“Just rambling. Hey, did you think Frank Langella was hot?”

Blay glanced back. “In that Dracula movie from way back? I mean . . .”

“You’re blushing.” Qhuinn laughed. “You so did. You so thought he was hot with those high collars and that widow’s peak.”

“Whatever. You had a crush on Jordan Catalano—”

Qhuinn pulled Blay’s parka forward. “I’ve got a crush on you. Right now. And forever.”

Okay, that giggle was pretty much the high point of Qhuinn’s night. No, wait. The true high point was going to be getting the male naked and bent over in front of him—

“Oh, my God,” Blay said. “You can’t talk like that right now. We’ve got a job to do.”

“Did I say that out loud? For real? Oopsy. You want to spank me for being a naughty boy? Please? Commmmme onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.”

Blay was laughing as he stepped out of the garage, and this was the intention. It was always good to hear that sound and know that Qhuinn was the reason for it—especially on a night like tonight, when a strange, paranoid feeling was not only persisting, but being egged on by things like broken windows and moaning wind and electrical failures.

Outside in the back, they didn’t run into any wind at all. The great stone house was a helluva buffer, the front taking the lashing, the rear spared. Overhead in the sky, the snow had finally started to fall, the flakes rushing by up high illuminated by the exterior security fixtures that were back on at half-power, the variegated angles of the roof acting like the aerodynamics of a car, the airflow whipping past the peaks and valleys in a fixed, organized pattern. Not that there weren’t some icy anarchists. Some of what was coming down—or across, as the case was—broke free of the masses and drifted toward the ground, clearly exhausted with all the frantic, conforming congestion.

“Over here,” Blay said.

Qhuinn humped the ladder across to a row of three windows that were only halfway shuttered. “Okay, let’s have a look at this.”

“I’ll hold the ladder base.”

“Perfect.” Qhuinn set the thing up and put a foot on the first step. “And please feel free to ogle my assets. Don’t be shy about it, either.”

Blay laughed, his breath leaving in puffs of white. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You should also feel no obligation to keep your hands to yourself. And this is more than a mere suggestion.”

Down at the other end of the house, at the library, there was another group gathered with a bigger ladder. Because yes, sometimes size did matter. Balz and Z were focusing on the second-story windows of Wrath’s study, and that was a heck of an elevation.

“I wonder how many other shutters failed,” Blay murmured.

“More than we want, for sure.”

Qhuinn went up to the second-to-the-last step and surveyed the shutter’s nonfunctioning landscape. As he came to absolutely no viable conclusion, he tried not to envy Ruhn’s obvious Mr. Fix It confidence—and he sure as shit wasn’t going back down to the ground until he figured things out.

The steel shutters that were mounted over every single piece of window glass around the mansion were not just sunlight blockers. They were windproof, bulletproof, fireproof, vampire-proof, and anti-tamper. Every sash setup had a set custom made for it, and the protective suits were painted the gray color of the stone wallings and set on tracks so the interlocking panels could unroll from their top mounts and click into place. Like little garage doors.

Only these weren’t coming down.

Qhuinn grabbed the lower lip with his gloves and pulled. And pulled again. “Yeah, it’s frozen in place.”

“As in ice frozen or not-moving frozen?”

“I don’t know. Gimme a screwdriver.”

Putting a hand down, he got the slap of the tool’s handle against his glove. “When in doubt, force it, right?”

“Usually, you just shoot things.”

“And you were worried I wouldn’t mellow with age.”

The flat head went right into a ridge on the lower lip like the shutter had been designed for just this kind of hard-muscled persuasion. After a test lean, Qhuinn put his shoulder into it. And then his whole upper body. And nothing happened—

All at once, the stuck became unstuck and Qhuinn pitched forward. But not to worry, his face caught his body weight—with a ringing bang followed by an old school washboard scrub as the shutter continued down its track.

“—don’t fall!” Blay reached up. “Oh, God!”

Qhuinn shoved himself off the house and mostly kept the wince to himself. “It’s okay. I needed to shave anyway.”

And hey, the frigid temperature had created a nice numbness. Plus, bonus, his nose was still attached: He knew this because he could poke at it with his puffy glove.

Secure in the knowledge that no aesthetic damage had been done—in spite of the fact that his schnoz now had its own heart rate—he clomped down and moved the ladder over to the next window in the lineup of three. The process was repeated, with the absence of the face-plant because now he was ready for it.

“One more to go—”

Just as he was about to step down again, a sensation like he’d been tapped on the shoulder startled him. With a wrench-around, he glanced over the back gardens and the forest rim beyond them.

“What is it?”

Qhuinn’s eyes searched the darkness outside the reach of the dimmed security lights. Familiarity with the estate filled in the winter details he couldn’t visualize fully: the pool, which was drained and covered for the season; the flower beds and blooming fruit trees, which were likewise on lockdown and draped with burlap; the snow-covered sloping lawn on the far side of the brick walkways. And after all that, the tree line’s boundary of coniferous sentries.

“What’s wrong, Qhuinn?”

Shaking himself, he intended to look down at his mate. But his eyes would not leave the back forty.

“Nothing,” he lied. “It’s . . . nothing.”

Over at the other end of the house, by the library, Z was coiling up a rope that was locked on Balthazar’s waist. The Bastard was not paying attention to any of the safety shit, and not surprisingly, he was already starting up the side of the house.

Oh, and not using the ladder that had been leaned into place.

Because why the fuck would you use the ladder.

No, no, the twenty-footer, which had been properly tilted and footed for safety, had been eschewed with the dismissal of a race car driver being offered a tricycle. Instead, Balz was somehow managing to tiptoe his way up the stone, his fingertips and toes cruising along the mortar joints.

“How the hell is he doing that?” Rhage muttered as he came around the corner.

“Bubblegum on his shoes,” somebody with the brother answered.

“Is he even wearing shoes?”

“He better be or those little piggies of his are going to be frozen bacon in the next minute and a half.”

Z let out a little more lead, and then a little more. After which he felt compelled to call out, “You need to set some hooks now and loop yourself in.”

“I will,” Balz said. “Just a bit farther.”

“You got this, Z?” Rhage asked.

“Yeah. I’ll scrape him off the snowpack when he falls off.”

“Call us for backup if you need us. We’ve got those ground-level shutters out in front to deal with.”

Z nodded, and stayed focused on the Bastard. And of course, there was no setting hooks and loops going on. Balz just kept crabbing his way up the stone wall, finding fingerholds, toeholds, in the seams of mortar. When he got to the problem window, some twenty feet up, he reached over with his left hand, grabbed on to the track of the shutter, and pulled himself across so he was in the center of the no-go issue.