A Warm Heart in Winter

by J. R. Ward

  “Yeah, absolutely,” Qhuinn replied.

  He figured that was a good, broad-spectrum answer, capable of treating a variety of inquiries: Would you like a drink and a round of pool? Would you like to watch a movie? Would you like to head to bed?

  Actually, that last one required more of a Fuck, yeah.

  Blay frowned. “You want to do that?”

  “What?”

  “I said, it’s Layla and Xcor’s night to do bath and play, but Lassiter’s got diamond art going on in the library with the other kids, and has asked everyone to join in.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Exactly.” Blay cleared his throat. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” He flashed his pearlies, hoping to hit the a-okay mark. “I mean, I’m not thrilled with being stuck here all night, but I thought I’d go down to the training center and check in with Luchas for a while. I was going to stop by his room when I got my medical release—but time got away from you and me, didn’t it.”

  Just as a very attractive blush bloomed across his mate’s face, a strange sound wove into the background noise, low and persistent. Qhuinn looked to the windows that faced out the front of the mansion.

  “Holy crap, is that the wind?”

  He walked over and opened the door into the vestibule, stepping through to the cathedral-like portal of the house’s grand entrance. When he went to lean outside, he had to put his shoulder into the effort, and you want to talk about a slap in the face? The wind was a one-two punch of cold and powerful, the skin of his cheeks stripping back, his eyes burning, his front teeth humming a tingle tune.

  Given all of that arctic-ness, he wasn’t exactly sure why he went all the way out. But one minute, he was on the cusp; the next, he was standing at an angle into the gusts and looking in the direction of the distant suburbs… and even farther away, to the downtown skyscrapers and the bridges.

  Darius, who had built the manse, had chosen a defensible position on the tallest of the mountains just north of the city of Caldwell. The descending acreage, which was extensive and as pine-packed as a Christmas tree farm, was protected from enemies and humans alike thanks to V’s mhis. But that invisible force field had no dimming effect on the wind at all. The gale-worthy blasts didn’t so much weave their way through all those conifers as tear their way past the linked boughs to batter the front face of the mansion.

  He actually pivoted and double-checked that the great stone house was holding up all right, but he shouldn’t have worried. All those tons of gray rock and all that cement were standing strong, as if the mighty, sprawling construction was part of the mountain as opposed to something built upon it.

  “Big storm,” someone next to him said, loud enough so he could hear the words over the freight train in his ears.

  Qhuinn glanced at V. “Yeah.”

  Overhead, the sky was a milky white, the cloud cover dense and low and threatening. No snow was falling yet, but the white stuff was coming. There was a thick, winter humidity in the air, the harbinger of flakes aplenty.

  “You guys want to come to the Pit?” V said as Blay joined them. “Foosball. Booze. No Lassiter.”

  Qhuinn glanced at his mate. And then both of them answered, “Perfect.”

  * * *

  As Blay sat on Butch and V’s leather sofa, he was seriously enjoying the view in front of him. Qhuinn was at the far side of the Foosball table, the male’s powerful body tilted forward, his eyes tracking the action, his hands twirling the rods and switching grips at a breakneck pace.

  Or should that be “breakwrist”?

  Across the box of spinning plastic block figures, John Matthew was the opponent, and seeing the two going at it reminded Blay of the way things had been before their transitions. So many hours playing video games together in his bedroom at his parents’ old house, the three of them trading off handsets, trading Doritos for Lay’s, trading gummy bears for Tootsie Rolls.

  “Swiss Miss, no marshmallows.”

  A white mug appeared in front of him and he looked up at Butch. “You are a gentlemale and a scholar.”

  “I barely got through high school and I cuss a lot. I’m not sure I’m either of those.”

  “Well, you’re a good host, how ’bout that.”

  As the Dhestroyer grinned, the male parked it at the other end of the couch and nursed his own mug. When the Brotherhood had moved in together over at the big house, Butch and V, then both mate-less, had bachelor-padded it here in the old caretaker’s cottage. Now, their shellans were living happily with them, but the Pit, as the place was known, remained a frat house extension of the more formal and very definitely kid-friendly atmosphere across the courtyard.

  “Looking at stuff to put under the tree for the twins?” Butch asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “On your phone there?”

  Blay glanced down at the cell in his hand—and decided the fact that his mate could still distract him so much that he forgot what he was doing was a good sign.

  “Oh, yeah, actually, I love this bouncy castle. I know they’re a little young, but… come on. We can put it outside the playroom, you know in that hall by the movie theater? The older kids will enjoy it, and we can sit with the twins in it.”

  “Great idea. But I think you’re going to have to keep Rhage away from the damn thing. I mean, he loves a good bouncy castle.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  Butch lifted his mug in salute. “Things you learn in snowstorms, my friend.”

  “Speaking of kidlets, do you and Marissa ever want any?” Blay shut his phone down and put it away. And then realized that Butch had frozen with his mug halfway to his lips. “Oh… shoot, I’m sorry if that’s too personal—”

  “No, no, it’s all good.” Butch followed through and took a sip from his mug. “And I don’t know. Sometimes we think about it, but it’s not a priority. Especially as I watch how hard all you guys work at it—”

  The howl started low, as just another round of wind blowing, but as the sound of the gust grew in intensity and persisted so much longer than all the others, he and Butch looked to the Pit’s door. On the outside of the cottage, the decorative shutters whistled and rattled, and then there was a groan, the load-bearing exterior walls complaining—or maybe it was the rafters of the roof?—about the force of the storm. Cold drafts, born from the glass panes of the windows and the main door’s loose seal, snaked around Blay’s ankles, and even the Foosballers halted their cranking conflict and looked up from their spinning—

  More groaning, definitely coming from up above.

  Dust filtered down from the old beams, and over at V’s Four Toys, a.k.a. the computers from which the security and monitoring systems for all the Brotherhood’s properties were run, Vishous got to his feet as if he were prepared to throw himself over his equipment to protect it.

  There was a pause, a relenting. But then everything redoubled, the rattling noises, the protests from the little house, the drafts and the eerie whistling, everything rising again like the Creator had His fingers on the volume knob of the world.

  Abruptly, some kind of group-think thing happened, and everyone headed for the door to the courtyard at the same time. Well, except for V, who started to type really fast on one—no, two—keyboards.

  Qhuinn was in front and opened the door—only to get blown back off his feet. In the blink of an eye, Blay jumped forward and caught his mate, hitching a hold under those big, heavy arms and keeping all that weight from hitting the floor. And even though it might have been inappropriate, for a brief moment, he closed his eyes and breathed in deep, relishing the scent of his male—

  The ripping sound was so loud, you could hear it over the storm.

  “The fountain cover!” someone shouted.

  In the center of the courtyard that separated the mansion and the cottage, a marble fountain the size of a Greyhound bus station was a winterized focal point—and the blizzard’s winds had set upon the canvas tarp
that covered the basin and the sculpture. With invisible teeth, it had grabbed ahold of that stretch of woven and waterproof, and ripped it free of some of the sandbags that secured it in place. A good half of the expanse was flapping, a flag that was making the most of its freedom.

  Blay ran across the snowpack, the cold biting through his cashmere sweater and icing his bare hands, the force of the wind pushing against his chest and making his eyes water. And he almost caught the damn tarp. There was a fleeting moment when one corner of the tear came at him, and a split second when his fingers felt a lick of fabric—but then the heavy-duty canvas twisted around and was gone, gone, gone, heading for the front of the mansion on an up-up-and-away that was no more threatening than a Kleenex fluttering.

  Except it had one bag still with it.

  One single sandbag was along for the ride, still hanging on—until it didn’t.

  As the thing went AWOL, breaking free of its tie, the math on the trajectory of the ten-pound projectile was not good.

  In a Murphy’s law hole-in-one, the tarp managed to toss that dead weight directly at an expanse of diamond-pane windows on the second floor—and what do you know, the old leaded glass shattered like it had been hit by a skull-sized rock.

  “Motherfucker!” someone barked.

  Yeah, let’s not allow that to happen again, Blay thought.

  The rest of the tarp was still ragged and wiggling loose, tugging and pulling and flapping against those other sandbags. More tearing. More projectiles likely—

  As he got in range again, the fabric slapped him right in the face, whipping at his cheek. But he snatched hold of the canvas and leaned back, pulling the bucking expanse away from the fountain’s basin, and out of the grip of the frigid gusts. Qhuinn joined him in the effort, helping the ground-game part of things as they dragged the lineup of bags away from the cobblestone skirt of the marble fixture.

  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 Fritz-cicle 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.”