Blood-Bonded by Force (37 page)

“That stuff is between Arc and Pändra,” Nỵko said. “It’s for them to work out.
Stop
letting it affect your relationship with her, Thomal. Get out from under Arc’s shadow. You’ve been living there for way too many years.”

The accusation slammed into Thomal.
Years
?! He glanced over at Dev. His friend’s eyes dipped down. It was a stab in the heart.

Nỵko shook his head, looking disgusted down to his very core. “Sack up and be your own man, will you? For once.”

Thomal stood in place, mute and stiff as he tried to keep his anger churning so that the truth of Nỵko’s words couldn’t get in and hurt him. Didn’t work, entirely. He gritted his fangs against his bottom teeth. A humming sound invaded his head, and his body began to shake so hard, his vision bounced. Blood coated the side of his face and neck, slipping down to his shoulder and upper chest.

Turning abruptly, he walked out of the hospital’s main entrance on numb feet.

Chapter Forty

First thing Thomal did when he returned to his Oslo bedroom in the mansion was throw up. Hanging over the rim of the toilet, he fed the contents of his stomach into the porcelain bowl, then dry-heaved a few more times as visions of the confrontation he’d just had with Nỵko swam around in his mind. Not the violent part.
Fuck that
! It was the shit about Thomal and Arc.

You’re too weak to defy your big brother
.

Get out from under Arc’s shadow. You’ve been living there for way too many years
.

A lot of what Nỵko had said felt unpleasantly right—
right
: what a screwed concept. But something wasn’t fitting…or maybe missing, like a secret he and Arc had both conspired to maintain. Thomal had no idea what, though.

Wiping a wrist across his mouth, Thomal hefted himself up from the toilet and got in the shower, weary beyond description. Sex club antics, followed by the Om Rău breach, insane worry over his wife when she’d been carried off by Jøsnic, the strident clang of his radar, more insane worry about Pändra when she’d shown up barely alive back in Ţărână, Nỵko beating some
sense
into him, and then being gutted by Nỵko’s accusations—it all might’ve, oh, stressed him out a bit. Head bowed, hands braced on either side of the shower handle, he let hot water sluice over him.

Before Dad died, he made me promise to look after you
.

You’ve always had to work twice as hard as the other men for half the results, Thomal. Frankly, I’ve never agreed with your decision to go into the Warrior Class
.

I hate losing. You may be used to it, but I sure the fuck am not
.

Thomal’s head sagged deeper between his shoulder blades, water flooding his eyelashes. What had he been doing all these years? Did he even know who he was…who he wanted to be…who he was supposed to be? Had he been living the wrong life this whole time and that’s why he felt so pissed off? Cranking the shower hotter, Thomal squeezed his eyes until spots littered the backs of his lids. There were just too many possible boned-up answers to those questions for him to think about it right now.

He concentrated on returning his appearance to normal, using the special soap Pändra had given him to scrub all the ridiculous shit off himself: the scorpion tattoo on his neck, the dye from his hair, and his paint shirt. The soap smelled vaguely of acetone, and by the time he was done, he stank like a damned nail salon.

His wet feet slapped the tile floor as he stepped in front of the bathroom mirror. Normal?
Riiiight
. His golden boy appeal was gone for now, hidden beneath a leather mask of tension and confused hurt. His eyes looked like they’d been plucked out, rolled around in red glitter, then re-inserted into their sockets; like he’d been crying on the inside and it was bleeding out. A bizarre and uncomfortable thought. The cut on his cheekbone was still oozing blood. He opened his medicine cabinet, pulled out bandages, and butterflied the skin closed. He’d have a beaut of a bruise tomorrow. If he was lucky, the injury would turn into another scar: a daily reminder in the mirror about what a no-load he’d been these past eight months.

You’ve watched how Pändra has worked for Thomal’s forgiveness
.
You
know
she’s earned a second chance from him
.

Dammit, he
was
a coward. He grimaced. Fuck, but he hated that word.

He toweled off, and dressed in blue jeans, a green T-shirt, and Adidas running shoes, then grabbed his art pad and pencils out of his satchel, taking a seat at his desk. No more escaping, no more avoidance. He was going to pour everything in him out onto the page. Be real…or be whoever ended up on the sheet of paper. Maybe figure some shit out.

An hour into the drawing, the realization hit him.
Hard
, like something between a bear trampling and an avalanche. He staggered to his feet, his stomach roiling with nausea again. Chucking his art pad on the desk, he took off at a run for his brother’s house.

Barging inside without knocking, he stormed through the living room and found Arc and Beth in the kitchen.

“I’m a dunce,” he panted, his lungs making tight grabs for air. “It took me nearly a year to figure this out, but I get it now, you know. It’s finally in my head”—he jabbed two fingers at his temple—“who you’re really angry with, Arc. Maybe I was too consumed by guilt before to see the truth, but now it’s clear as a full moon. I mean you have every right to be pissed as hell at Pändra. I’m not saying you don’t. I
saw
what she did to you, too.”

Arc’s expression blackened. “Go upstairs Beth,” he said, his voice low and tight, sounding all kinds of full of suppressed violence.

“Why?” Thomal bit out. “So you can keep your wife locked in more of your cold silence. You’ve told her exactly Jack and shit about what happened, haven’t you?”

Arc leveled a heavy stare at him.

White-faced, Beth left.

Thomal sucked in a breath. “Let’s not pussyfoot around this thing anymore. The person you’re really enraged with is
me
.” He paced away a couple of feet, running a hand over his hair. “Nỵko told me I’ve been living in your shadow, and damn the hell out of me if it isn’t true. I just realized that I’ve done a real number on myself all these years, letting my insecurities about you and Dad rule me. You were always Dad’s favorite.” A weird grief clogged his throat. “His pride and fucking joy. And on some unspoken level I think you and Dad both agreed you were better than me.
You
had to look out for
me
, right?
You
were stronger.
You
were the tougher fighter than your silly doofus of an artist little brother. I’ve lived with doubts about myself my whole life because of that.”

He braced his hands on his hips. “But, here’s something, Arc. When Jaċken created the Special Ops Topside Team—an
elite
military unit—he chose
me
to man it, didn’t he? Not you. And all that shit you said about me getting hurt all the time? I don’t lack talent, Arc. I go balls to the wall with everything I do.” He shook his head. “That night in the hotel with Mürk and Pändra, I saved your life. For the first time ever,
I
saved
your
life, big brother, and I think deep-down in a place you’re ashamed of, you hate me for it.”

A muscle jumped in Arc’s face.

“All this time,” Thomal forged on. “I thought I was feeling guilty because I didn’t kill Pändra when I had the chance. It made all my doubts about my choice to become a warrior rise up and bite my ass. But now I realize that
this
is what I’ve been feeling guilty about.” And if he was a poet, maybe he could appreciate the wretched irony of sacrificing himself to a loveless marriage so that Arc could go home to his wife and kids and have a long and happy life…only to have that very sacrifice be the thing that destroyed his brother. But Thomal wasn’t feeling particularly poetic at the moment. “And here’s another thing. Pändra didn’t deserve to die. There’s a lot of goodness in her—even that night I picked up on it. Look how far she’s come over the last months. While you and I remain the Last Angry Men. Well, I’m done. I want my marriage. And until you can get your negativity under control and stop giving my mate the stink-eye, I want you out of my life.”

The skin over Arc’s cheekbones flared red while the rest of his face went pale. “Don’t,” he said through tight lips.

Thomal inhaled a shallow breath as pain drilled into his chest, coagulated, then dropped like a lead blob into his stomach, kept going and sagged into his legs. His knees went oddly nerveless. The relationship he’d always thought he’d had with his brother was
gone
. The support, camaraderie, the solid foundation they’d always shared as the almighty Costache brothers, two against the world, had only ever been a wax statue. Put under the extreme heat of intense scrutiny, it’d melted. What had they ever really been?

Thomal braced a hand on the kitchen island before he fell down. “You’re not a bad man,” he said in a raspy voice. “The things you’ve said to me…I know you didn’t mean to hurt me on purpose. You just couldn’t stand to have the image of yourself as the better man destroyed, and…and that’s not your fault, either. Dad planted the idea in you.”

Thomal licked his lips. “You also didn’t fail me the night with Pändra by not saving me, okay? Now that I’m seeing things more clearly, I’m grateful Pändra came into my life. Because if she hadn’t, I never would’ve figured out that I’ve been living a lie.” Thomal’s voice dropped lower, became more scratchy. “I love you, Arc, but I need to figure out who I am.”
Be your own man, will you? For once
. Could he be the warrior who also painted? Well, why the fuck not? “And I’m sorry, but that means I need to get some space from you for a while.”

He couldn’t bear to see any more of his brother’s reactions to what he was saying. There was a good chance he’d waver. So he just turned around and walked out the door, gripping the handrail as he picked his way down the front steps, moving like he was one hundred fifty years old. He paused at the bottom, pulling a hand down his face. It’d been one helluva last twelve hours. If he had anything left in his stomach, he probably would’ve fertilized the fake plants at the bottom of Arc’s porch steps.

His cell phone beeped. It was a message from Nurse Shaston. Pändra was back in her bedroom. Not even a Vârcolac could’ve recovered from major surgery that quickly, but such was the miracle healing power of Pändra’s ring. She still no doubt needed rest. He shouldn’t bother her. But as he started walking, a visceral, nearly violent, need to see her set his unsteady feet on a path directly for her door.

He knocked softly on Budapest. A second later the door swung open, and he was met by the sight of his wife wearing a pair of deconstructed jean shorts and a blue tank top with thin pink stripes on it, her blonde hair caught back in a low pony tail.

He nearly startled. Her face looked shockingly beautiful, without a hint that the middle of it had been concave a few short hours ago. But such was the healing power of Dr. Jess, who had mad skills in just about every discipline, including plastic surgery. ’Course the man had been studying medicine for nearly eighty years.

Pändra gave him a blank stare.

Before he could get something earthshattering out of his mouth like, “Hi,” she turned around and walked over to her bed, bracing her spine against the post and clasping her arms behind her back. A wave of heat flushed through him, most of it landing squarely in his cheeks. That was the position she took every time he came to feed—the position he’d demanded she take. Jesus, she was going to let him
feed
after everything she’d been through?

“Please…” He stepped into her room. “Don’t. I just came to…I wanted to check on you, that’s all, see how you’re doing.”

“Why?”

“Why?”
Always answer a question with a question when stalling for time
. He didn’t know what to say.
Because I care
, would sound unbelievable. He said it, anyway, and, yeah, Pändra’s eyebrows slanted.

“Truly?” she asked. “All of a sudden, I’m your twinkle, am I?” She took a step away from the bedpost and tilted her head to one side, studying him as if he was a laboratory curiosity. “Nỵko told you about Jøsnic raping me, didn’t he?”

What…? Thomal’s stomach jacked up into his chest to play bumper cars with his heart. Holy shit!
What
?!

“His nibs can finally forgive me now that I’ve received a proper comeuppance for my sins, is that it?”

The room spun away, disappearing into the eye of a twister. He groped behind him for some place to sit. Nausea exploded in the pit of his stomach. His legs stopped holding him up and he sat down abruptly on the carpet.

Pändra gave him an astonished look.

Her words made another round inside his head, resounding like a hard clapper against his ears. Black rage at what had been done to his woman surged through him with such force he was powering to his feet in the next blink and moving in a blur of speed for the door. “I’m going to kill him!” he gnashed through the points of his fangs, welcoming his anger, if not the reason for it. Fury was so much better than—

“Thomal—stop.”

Something in Pändra’s voice brought him up short. He turned back around, his breath hot inside his lungs.

“You truly didn’t know about what Jøsnic did?” she asked quietly.

“No,” he fairly growled. An animal rose inside him. If he wasn’t on his way to inflicting some
extremely painful
revenge on someone in about two seconds, this room was going to get annihilated. “And for the record, I would
never
wish rape on you as payback. I never wanted you dead, either, so that I could be free of you. I would’ve come after you in the Hell Tunnels, too, but I’m not a half-Rău, so I couldn’t.”