A Warm Heart in Winter

by J. R. Ward

  “Daddy! Love you, Daddy!”

  With total abandonment, Nalla threw herself at him, knowing he would catch her, secure in the faith that he would always protect her, ever keep her safe. As his huge arms went around her small, warm body, he was gentle with the pressure.

  “Daddy!” In response to his embrace, her arms wrapped around his neck and squeezed tight, her soft cheek against the side of his face. “You’re back!”

  Every time she saw him, she spoke in exclamations, as if his return to their suite, her bedroom, the house, the dining room, the playroom, was the single most exciting thing that had ever happened in her entire life. He kept expecting her to get over this, bracing himself for the time she got used to him or maybe didn’t love him with such distraction… but it didn’t seem to be happening.

  He wasn’t aware of having shut his eyes until his lids opened.

  Across the room, Bella was leaning back against the bureau, her arms linked over her chest, her face cast in a dreamy way.

  Like the sight of him with their daughter was her favorite thing in the world.

  And instantly, his seas calmed, the churning waves easing.

  Z stood up, transferring Nalla’s weight into the crook of his arm. Kicking the door shut, he went over to his shellan. As he approached, she lifted her lips, and as soon as he was in range, he dropped his mouth to hers.

  With a shudder, he remembered Balthazar flipping off the side of the house and falling down to the ground. Then he saw the male’s extremities twitching, the gloves patting at the snow, the soft shoes that had found those crevices in between the stones kicking at the base of legs that otherwise did not move.

  The final image was of the snowflakes, few and far between, that drifted down onto the open eyes that stared out of that frozen face.

  “What time is it?” Z asked roughly. Not that he really cared.

  “Last Meal is coming soon. It’s about five?”

  “I’m hungry,” Nalla announced.

  Z smiled at his daughter. “Well, then, let’s go down and get you fed.”

  “Yay!”

  More with the hugs, and as Z closed his eyes again, he found himself back outside in the cold, hearing what Balz had said as he’d come back from wherever he had been—

  Right back open with those lids. Yup. He was not shutting the damn things for any longer than a blink right now. And maybe for the next five years.

  “I’m ready to eat, too,” Bella said as they headed for the door.

  Stepping out into the Hall of Statues, Z smelled the fresh plywood from down in the sitting room, but there were other scents on the air, too, aromas of well-cooked food reminding him they were all going to get through the storm. In fact, they had gotten through it. Things were raging outside, the wind ferocious and the snow no doubt falling by inches that would turn into feet. But they were safe and warm and dry—all who lived in the house, not just his own little family.

  Downstairs in the dining room, people were gathering, and as they came up to their three seats, he passed Nalla off to Bella.

  “Where going, Daddy?”

  “I’ll be right back.” He touched his daughter’s cheek and then smiled at his mate. “Just going to check that no one needs any help.”

  “That’s a good thing to do,” Nalla said gravely. “Then you come back.”

  “Yes, I’ll come right back.”

  As he walked off toward the pantry, the lie stung, but he told himself he wasn’t going to be gone long. This was just… a compulsion he hadn’t felt for a very long time.

  One that he knew he better act on or there would be no rest for him.

  The steel door into the basement had recently been upgraded, and it was painted to look like the old wooden ones that filled the jambs in the kitchen and the pantry: But for the pattern of bolts around the various panels, you might be fooled into thinking it was made of ash like all of the others throughout the house.

  As he went to enter the code, he was glad that the doggen were all too busy getting Last Meal on the table to pay much attention to him—which meant he only fielded four inquiries about whether he needed anything, and one nervous drive-by from Fritz, who was apparently checking that the four no-thank-you’s Z had given were in fact what he’d meant. As always, it was like wading through a morass of hospitality, and in the past, this obsequious obstacle course had driven him insane. Now, he understood it was just the way of the doggen and he was used to it.

  The steel portal was like a barricade, and he put his shoulder into the effort of opening the damn thing, the well-greased hinges offering no protest at being called into service. The descent down the steps was a familiar one, and when he got to the lower level, he knew his way through the rabbit warren of spaces. V’s forging room was down here. So were the massive furnaces. And the storage areas.

  The latter was what he was looking for.

  Each family had their own unit, the lineup of closed doors unlocked because even though everyone in the mansion knew everybody else’s business, privacy was respected.

  His was the one on the far end, and there were motion-activated lights along the ceiling that woke up as he went along the concrete hallway. The smell was damp air and the minerals in the groundwater that was right under the poured floor. The second he took notice of the musty scent, he felt bad, as if he’d betrayed Fritz in some way.

  If that doggen knew there was any humidity down here? He would hit this hall with a fleet of dehumidifiers and enough hot water and suds to scrub down a naval carrier.

  When he got to the door to his and Bella’s unit, he took a deep breath and didn’t waste time opening it up. No amount of hanging around was going to change what was in it.

  Another light came on inside as he crossed the threshold.

  Not much to see. Seasonal clothes for Bella, packed in plastic containers that had been vacuum sealed. Seasonal clothes for Nalla that were likewise put away, but probably wouldn’t be worn again because she was growing so fast. No seasonal anything for Z. He wore the same muscle shirt, leathers, and leather jacket no matter the weather.

  The only time he mixed shit up was with his socks. Sometimes they were black. Sometimes they were white.

  Call him a party animal.

  There were a couple of boxes of study books that were Bella’s. Quilts that had been brought over from her farmhouse. A sofa and chair from there that were draped with drop cloths.

  He thought of that property that Bella still owned, the one that was next to what had been Mary’s condo. It was so strange. But for the random proximity of those two pieces of real estate, so much would never have happened: Mary had met John Matthew through her work at the local suicide prevention hotline. Bella had known what John was, even though Mary, as a human, had not. Then the three of them had been brought in to the training center, where Mary had met Rhage, and Z and Bella had met, and John Matthew, an orphan in the human world, had found a set of loving parents in Wellsie and Tohr.

  Now, years later, John Matthew was a brother and had found a mate in Xhex. Rhage and Mary were mated and had adopted Bitty. And Z and Bella were parents. Wellsie was gone, though, and that was a loss that would never go away. But Tohr had another love in Autumn, although not as a replacement for his beautiful first shellan. There were others who had entered the Brotherhood’s world as well, like the Band of Bastards, and the Chosen.

  The Scribe Virgin, gone.

  The Lassiter era, commenced.

  Yet for all the changes, the past was still in the shadows.

  Z went to the back of the storage unit, to a Hammermill box that had previously held ten reams of printer/copier paper. The lid was not taped down, the corrugated cardboard forming a sturdy enough seal—and it wasn’t like anybody was liable to poke around with it.

  Bella knew what was inside.

  As Z knelt down to the hard floor, both of his knees cracked, and so did his spine. His fingers trembled ever so slightly as he reached forward. The resistance t
o opening the box was slight and overwhelming at the same time.

  Putting the lid aside, he peered in, the light from the ceiling flowing over his head and shoulders and creating an outline of him in shadow on the wall.

  The sleeping pallet was folded up, its felt corpus thick and mottled due to the cheap collection of fibers that had been woven together to form its weight. Given its size, it took up the whole of the interior, as if the box had been precisely made for the purpose of storing the thing.

  Z took the blanket out. Holding what he had slept on for… God, years and years… he found himself remembering when he had put it away, first in the closet in his bedroom, and then in this box that he’d gotten from the office, and finally down here. He’d been determined to turn his life around. He’d lost the female he had bonded with—

  No, even worse, he’d told Bella to leave.

  And yet even after she was gone, he’d decided to try to better himself. To learn how to read and write. To stop being so brutally angry.

  Destroying his mistress’s skull, which he had slept beside since he had killed her, had been part of it. So, too, had been starting to sleep in a bed.

  Little had he known that he had been preparing for Bella’s return. And it was only after she had returned and, by some miracle, taken him back, that he’d realized what he’d been doing. He’d been afraid he’d fail, however, and that was why he’d had to set her free. After a century of hating himself, he’d had no reason to believe he’d be close to worthy—

  Z twisted around with a jerk. “Hello?”

  There were a couple of footsteps, and then Mary, Rhage’s shellan, stepped in between the open jambs of the storage unit. The female was not vampire, but neither was she human anymore, really. The Scribe Virgin had taken her out of the continuum of time, the result of a bargain Rhage had struck to save Mary’s life from her terminal cancer. In return, the brother had to live with his beast for the rest of his nights, and you know what? He seemed very satisfied with his choices—and Z could totally get it. Mary was a bastion of calm and reasonable, the perfect foil to Rhage’s out-there.

  “Hi.” She smiled as she ran a hand through her short brown hair. “I hope you don’t mind that I followed you.”

  Z looked down at what he was holding. “I used to sleep on this.”

  There was no need to fill her in on anything or provide any context. The two of them had spent hours together, sorting through his past, talking things over, reframing when and where they could. Mary was not just a stellar social worker; she was also very wise and very caring. She had helped him so much.

  “You slept on it for a long time,” she said as she leaned against the jamb. As usual, she was wearing well-washed jeans and a cozy sweater, the enormous gold Rolex on her wrist not fitting her no-makeup, unfussy-brunette-bob vibe. But she always had Rhage’s watch on.

  “Any particular reason you decided to revisit that blanket tonight?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” For a moment, he hoped she would fill in the answer—because dollars to donuts, she was well aware of why he was here. But he should have known better. He had to do the work. “Maybe it’s because of what happened to Balthazar.”

  “Seeing someone you live with that close to death is really upsetting.”

  “It’s also what he said when he came around.” Z filled her in on the demon comment. “He was looking right at me when he spoke.”

  “Did you feel as though it was a message specifically for you?”

  “I did.”

  When he didn’t go any further, she prompted, “And do you think that your mistress has returned from the dead to haunt you?”

  Z thought that over for a moment. Logically… ? “Well, no. But that’s exactly where my mind went when I heard the word ‘demon.’ ”

  “Makes sense to me.”

  He looked back down at the folds of the pallet. “But you know… it’s not just that.” He thought about Nalla running toward him in the bedroom. “It isn’t all gone. What I think about myself, my insides.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “The… filthy part.” He glanced over at her. “What the voice tells me, you know, about what I really am, what my family fails to see.”

  “What do they fail to see about you?”

  “How dirty I am.” His voice became small. “How… filthy I am.” Before Mary could say anything, he cleared his throat. “But I mean, we’ve been through all that already. We’ve spent how much time talking about what was done to me by that female?”

  Only silence came back at him. Which was frustrating as fuck.

  “Why isn’t it gone?” he demanded. “My life is good. I’m in love, I have a daughter. Everything is good.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “So what the fuck?” He frowned. “And I’m sorry, I don’t mean to get all pissy with you.”

  “It’s totally understandable. I’ve been a resource for you, and I’ve done what I can to help. If you want to direct that animus to me, I can take it.”

  “But you can’t make it go away.” He motioned next to his head. “This fucking shit is always going to be with me, huh. No matter how much better I get.”

  Mary came across to him, kneeling down and meeting his stare levelly. “When was the last time you felt the need to come down here?”

  “It’s been… well, not since I put this box away.”

  “And when was the last time that voice in your head kept you up during the day?”

  “I dunno. Guess a month, maybe longer.”

  “And your last nightmare?”

  “October.”

  When she just stared at him patiently, he rubbed his face. “Okay, fine, it’s getting better. Compared to the every-waking-minute it used to be. But goddamn… I just get exhausted retreading the same territory. The same pain. The same weakness.”

  Mary nodded. And then said, “You know, I have a theory about injury and healing. It’s just anecdotal, from my own personal experience with trauma—which, granted, is nothing measured against your own.” She shifted around to sit cross-legged, like she was prepared to stay for however long he needed her to. “In my opinion, souls are no different than limbs. If you break a leg or an arm, it’s going to hurt when it happens, sharply and unbearably. Therapy is like what you do to set the bone properly in a cast and monitor its mending. It’s the physical rehab, the stretching, the follow-up X-rays. But the limb is never the same. On rainy days, the joint aches. If you run a marathon on it, it will be sore. Maybe the healed part isn’t quite right. Souls are the same. There are different marathons we run, whether it’s the day-to-day interactions with our spouses or the people we work with. Maybe it’s an event like Balthazar getting hurt. Perhaps it’s an anniversary of a bad night—or even a good one, like a holiday or a birthday. These are the marathons our souls run, and sometimes, where we have healed aches. Or worse. And that is a nonnegotiable part of being a survivor.”

  Z stroked the felt with his hand, feeling the coarse nap. “I guess I thought the work was over.”

  “It’s never over. If we want to be conscious in our lives, in ourselves, the work is always necessary.”

  “Physical therapy forever.”

  “So that you can function better and feel better and be healthier. You can’t undo the injury, but you can always work with what you have.”

  “I wish I didn’t have to.” He looked back at her. “Shit. That sounds lame.”

  “No, that sounds very human.” Mary shook her head with a little laugh. “I mean vampire.”

  Silence eased into the space between them, and in the back of his mind, he thought that Mary’s ability to be comfortable in the quiet was one of the many reasons she was the right therapist for him.

  Taking a deep breath, he returned the pallet to where it had been and placed the lid back on top. Then he pushed the box into its previous position.

  He stayed where he was for a couple of heartbeats. Then he got to his full heigh
t and offered his dagger hand to his brother’s precious shellan.

  “Care to hit Last Meal?” he said as he helped her to her feet.

  “I want you to keep something in mind.” She stared up at him. “You know all the hours we’ve spent together?”

  “Yes?”

  “Were they so bad?”

  “You mean, did I like them? No. I’m sorry, but that would be a no.”

  Mary shook her head. “Not what I asked. Were they so bad?”

  “No.”

  “Could you do it all over again? Like from the start ’til this moment right here?” She pointed to the concrete between them. “From when we first met down here to now?”

  He thought about the conversations. Some had been like pulling teeth. Some had been kind of easy. Others had wiped him out emotionally. One—or no, two—had actually made him vomit.

  A few they had even laughed through.

  “Yes,” he said. “I could do it all over again.”

  Mary put her hand on his forearm. “Then you have exactly what you need to continue to heal and survive and thrive. If you can look me right in the eye, and say, yup, I got this. I can continue talking. I can keep learning about myself and my place in the world. I can express my doubts and fears, in a supportive environment, and know that I’m not dirty. I am not filthy. I was abused. I was a victim. And none of it was my fault—nor did it change the purity of my soul or the depth and beauty of my heart. If you can keep working those tendons and ligaments and joints? You will be okay, no matter how many times you feel as you do tonight.”

  Z took another deep breath. “You know, I try to say those words in my head. When I get like this, when I doubt… what I am inside.”

  “Good.” She patted his arm and dropped her hand. “Someday, you’ll believe them.”

  He considered his chaotic, nasty thoughts. “How do you know that for sure?”

  She leaned in and kept eye contact with him. “Because, my friend, they’re true.”