Before his brother walked out of his room.

The sight of that slight frame in the long black robe was a shock even though he’d thought he’d been prepared for it. Putting his hand over his mouth, he tucked an arm across his aching chest and just watched.

God, that rough gait. The cane.

“Oh, Luchas,” he whispered.

Reaching out, he ran his forefinger over the figure—except doing that stopped the footage. It was okay, though. For a while, he just stared at his brother’s contours. It had to be among the last moments of the male’s life.

Qhuinn thought of pulling back that hood and exposing . . . what had frozen beneath it.

To clear that memory, he continued with the file. When Luchas left the camera’s field, there was a cut to another feed. And another. And another, as his brother went down the corridor of the training center. And then the file ended.

The next attachment was from the subterranean tunnel, and Qhuinn witnessed his brother limp along to the right, heading for the hatch. When Luchas came up to it, he hesitated.

And glanced back over his shoulder.

That was when Qhuinn finally got to see his brother’s face from under the hood. He froze the feed. There was no fear. No anxiety. Luchas’s expression was simply . . . grave. “Resolved” was maybe the better word for it.

With a pounding heart, Qhuinn tried to memorize exactly what it all looked like, the turn of that ruined body, the angle of the cane, the line of the mouth, the cast of the eyes. But that was stupid, right? He could play this file anytime—and if he lost it or deleted it by mistake, not that he would, he could always ask V for another copy.

“I miss you,” he whispered. “I wish you were here . . .”

Yet the file had reminded him of how much pain Luchas had been in. How pervasive the agony and untenable the hours must have been. When he considered his brother’s suffering, he supposed . . . that it was a blessing of some kind that he could at least understand why his brother might have reached the end of his journey. But that was a sad tally of fortune, wasn’t it.

As a groundswell of regret made Qhuinn’s heart skip beats, he didn’t know how he was going to make it to the end of the files.

He hit play again. It was nearly impossible to watch Luchas turn away, and there might have been some more rubbing of the eyes. And then after Luchas entered the code to the hatch and stepped through, the feed ended. So Qhuinn teed up the next one. This recording was of the parking area in the cave, and it showed his brother walking past the Tahoe and the snowmobiles. Luchas paused again, but he didn’t look back once more. He just pulled the camo drape to the side . . . and then with a swirl of snow from the storm, he stepped out of sight.

At that point, the feed switched to an exterior camera mounted somewhere on the lip of the cave. It showed Luchas struggling through the freezing cold onslaught, the winds lashing at him, his body weaving. And then there was nothing but white, the black robes eaten up by the blizzard.

V left no extra time on that one. He just cut it where it was.

One last file. But wasn’t this the end of the story?

In danger of losing it, Qhuinn fired up the final attachment, and it took a moment for his eyes to resume proper functioning—at which point, he frowned. The footage was from a camera inside the subterranean tunnel again. There was about thirty seconds of lead time . . . and then someone entered the frame.

“What the fuck?” he said.

As Blay stirred next to him, he absently reached out and soothed his mate. Then he held the iPad closer. Like that was going to make a difference?

Maybe V had made a mistake.

The figure strode along, and when it got to the hatch, it entered the code and stepped out. Then there was footage tacked on from the area inside the cave and then outside, in the storm. Which was still raging.

Even though the time stamp was about five hours later.

Close to dawn. Very close.

When the image stream ended, Qhuinn rubbed his eyes and prayed he was not going to have to kill someone who lived among them all—

He sat straight up.

As a chill of realization came over him, he nearly threw the iPad aside. Instead, so he didn’t disturb his mate, he moved slower than he wanted to, peeling the covers back, slipping one foot and then the other out from the warmth. Making sure that Blay was tucked in, Qhuinn padded over to the walk-in closet and willed the light to stay off. Thanks to the illumination from the bathroom, he threw on whatever clothes he came to.

And then he left as quickly as he could, making sure that he closed the door softly behind himself.

The mansion had never felt so enormous as when Qhuinn jogged down the red-carpeted stairs, his bare feet soundless, his heart pounding like he was on a flat-out run for his life. When he hit the foyer’s mosaic floor, the cold registered on his soles, but that was not the reason for the goosebumps that rode up his arms and across his chest.

He looked right, into the library. The Christmas tree had been left on, its red, green, and gold lights blinking, its bulbs and garland sparkling. Red skirting had been tucked around its base, and presents were already appearing on the velvet. Likewise, stockings had started to be hung at the fireplace. There would be a countless lineup of them come December 24th, the human tradition fully embraced.

Glancing left, the dining room was closed down, the chandelier dimmed, the table glossy and polished and empty of everything but a huge bouquet of red roses and holly in the center. Beyond that, the kitchen was also silent.

But not all was quiet.

He followed the theme song for Magnum, P.I. into the billiards room.

Lassiter was sprawled on one of the couches that faced the new concave TV screen, his blond-andblack hair spilling over the throw pillow he’d wedged behind his head, his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. He was wearing wool leggings that seemed like the lower-body version of a hair shirt, and a My Little Pony T-shirt that shouldn’t have been warm enough—and evidently wasn’t, given the blanket he’d pulled across his chest.

As Qhuinn stopped in front of the sofa, the angel paused what was on the big screen with the remote and looked up without surprise.

Like he’d been expecting this.

He also didn’t jump to his feet and assume a defensive response.

Meanwhile, Qhuinn just stood there like a dummy. “Hi.”

Lassiter shifted into a sit, piling the blanket in his lap. “Hi.”

“I, ah . . .” Dragging a hand through his hair, he felt himself start to sweat. “Ah—”

“You don’t have to apologize.” Those strangely colored eyes were steady as they stared up. “I understood in that moment why you went after me and I understand now.”

At a loss, Qhuinn looked around at all the things he’d seen before: The pool tables, the mounts of sticks on the wall, the balls arranged in their triangles on the felt. He saw the Persian rugs under each play area, the leather sofas, the bar with its top-shelf liquor bottles and its sparkling glasses.

“You want something?” Lassiter said as he got up.

“Ah . . .”

“That’s a yes.”

“Are you drinking? ’Cuz you don’t usually drink.”

“Not alcohol.” The angel went behind the bar. “Sit. I’ll make us some fruit juice for the vitamin C. You can’t be too careful with scurvy.”

Qhuinn sidled up to the long, thin granite counter and parked it on a stool. And then he watched in silence as Lassiter sliced four Hale Groves pink grapefruits in half and started to squeeze them on an old school glass mount, the kind that had a ribbed center to do the grinding and a circular base to catch the juice.

Clearing his throat, Qhuinn figured there was no reason to wait for better words. “So the night my brother died—” At that moment, he realized he would never use that other word. As accurate as it was. “—I know that you were in the tunnel. Just before dawn.”

Lassiter didn’t say anything; he just kept working the halves on the grind part. The juice that filled the base was pink as a blush and smelled like sunshine.

“That’s how Luchas’s remains were still there the following night,” Qhuinn said quietly. “You stayed with him all day long and blocked the sun from him. Didn’t you. You protected him . . . so I could see him one last time. Didn’t you.”

Lassiter tipped the juicer over a rocks glass and then put the serving in front of Qhuinn.

“I repaid you by attacking you.” Qhuinn swallowed. “And insulting you. Oh, shit, Lass, I didn’t mean what I said. I didn’t mean it—”

“It’s okay.”

“No.” Qhuinn reached across the bar and touched the angel’s arm. “It’s not. Thank you for what you did for him and for me. And I’m truly sorry.”

Lassiter paused in the middle of working on his own serving of juice—and his eyes stayed ducked. “Just so you know, I can’t really talk about some things. It’s the rule.”

Qhuinn slowly straightened on the stool, a shimmy of awareness going down his spine and landing in his ass cheeks, causing them to pucker.

It was easy to forget who Lassiter was. What he was. The enormous power he held.

But at this moment, Qhuinn became fully in touch with the fact that he was sitting across . . . from a deity.

“I do what I can,” the angel murmured as he tossed the rind and picked up the last of the halves. “I do what I’m allowed to do. You know, to make things easier. My heart broke for you, and yet all I could do was stand on the sidelines and watch the crash. It’s fucking torture . . .” As his voice broke, he cleared his throat. “But I do what I can.”

Lassiter poured the juice into his own glass and then clinked the rim of Qhuinn’s. “Bottoms up.”

As the angel tossed his back, Qhuinn did the same—and had to click his tongue at the tartness. As the burn rushed down into his gut, his stomach rolled—but not from the grapefruit.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like for you,” Qhuinn said.