Chapter Forty

First thing Thomal did whenhe 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 Nyko 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 Nyko had said felt unpleasantly right—right: what a screwed concept. But something wasn't fitting…or maybe missing, like a dirty, little 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 R?u breach, insane worry over his wife when she'd been carried off by Josnic, his destructive radar, more insane worry about Pandra when she'd shown up barely alive back in ??ran?, Nyko beating some sense into him, and then being gutted by Nyko's accusations 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 Pandra 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 Pandra has worked for Thomal's forgiveness. You know that 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 Pandra. 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 and continued. "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. "Nyko told me I've been living in your shadow, and damn the hell out of me if that 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." A weird grief clogged his throat. "You were always Dad's favorite, 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 Jacken 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 Murk and Pandra, 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 Pandra 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. Pandra 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 Pandra by not saving me, okay? Now that I'm seeing things more clearly, I'm grateful Pandra 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 a one-hundred-fifty-year-old man. 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. Pandra was back in her bedroom. Not even a Varcolac could've recovered from major surgery that quickly, but such was the miracle healing power of Pandra'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.

Pandra 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. "Uh…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, Pandra'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. "Nyko told you about Josnic 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.

Pandra 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 Pandra's voice brought him up short. He turned back around, his breath hot inside his lungs.

"You truly didn't know about what Josnic 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-R?u, so I couldn't."

She watched him for a long moment, more of that laboratory curiosity look, then sat on the edge of her mattress, hooking her insteps on the bedrail. Her bare feet somehow made her seem kind of vulnerable. Hard to believe her body had been crowded into a black leather slut suit earlier this evening. "I wasn't raped," she said. "Josnic was carting me off to do the deed when Nyko arrived."

The admission jarred Thomal. Then her words sank in all the way. I wasn't raped. He pressed the heels of his palms to his closed lids. He could barely think straight, but…but… Dropping his hands, he spoke around the thickness in his throat. "So you're okay?"

He heard her soft inhalation. "O??rat wasn't exactly tea with the fecking queen, but"—she shrugged—"more or less."

"I'm sorry." That just fell out of his mouth, lamely and without the necessary elaboration; there was so much he was sorry for. But because this mole hill actually was a mountain, he wasn't sure how to even begin to scale it.

"Why the change in attitude toward me?" she asked.

He ran a hand across his nape. Guess he was going to have to find a way. "I suppose this," he said, pointing to his butterfly bandage. "Nyko beat the pride out of me. Or maybe it was more like he was beating truth into me, making me acknowledge things I've known all along. About you."

She smoothed her palms down her thighs to her knees. "Like what?"

"Like how hard you've worked to change. I should've given you props for it, Pandra, but I've been tangled up and not seeing things straight for a long time. I…I just couldn't get past Arc's hatred of you, and my own guilt. But I want you to know that I've put Arc out of my life for now so—"

"No." Her eyes flew to his face. "No, Thomal, I don't want that. He's your brother, and you love him dearly. The last thing I'd ever want is to come between you two."

"This isn't entirely about you, Pandra—not at the core. It's about me figuring out who I am outside of being Arc's little brother. Until I get that squared away, I can't redefine my relationship with him on the level it needs to be. If that makes sense."

She nodded, but her eyes were sad. "I still feel right gutted for being the one to upset that apple cart, though."

"Don't." He stepped further into her bedroom. "I'm coming to realize what a good thing it is…this stuff with Arc. It's a son of a bitch to deal with, yeah, but…it's necessary." He exhaled. "Can we…? I'd like to move forward, Pandra. Put the past in the past. You're my bonded mate, and I'd like to give our relationship a chance, if you'll…" He shuffled his feet. "I don't deserve a chance. I never gave you one. I've spent eight months blowing it, so I wouldn't blame you if you refused to change things between us—kept it with me just coming to you for feedings and that's it—but…" He swallowed, the tendons in his throat going taut. "I'm hoping you won't."

She gazed into his eyes, so deeply that for a moment he saw the thin border of her pupils against the black of her irises. "I suppose that depends on if you can forgive me."

He twisted his mouth, probably his whole face, the idea was so stupid. "There's nothing to forgive, Pandra."

She shook her head and began to speak.

He cut in. "You didn't rape me, okay? I volunteered for that mission."

"Thomal," she chided softly.

He rubbed a hand over his non-injured cheek. "All right, look, you were troubled at the time you did that stuff to me and Arc. I know that. But you're not the same woman you were back then." He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. "Truth is, I didn't come here to forgive you, but to ask you to forgive me."

She sat there in silence, her lips moving together and her hands rubbing her knees.

He scraped his fingers inside his pockets, collecting lint under his nails.

"Say, do you want to go out?" she asked him suddenly. "Neck a few pints at Garwald's or something?"

He paused, frowning internally, then his pulse bounced out of rhythm. She was asking him out on a date? He barely stopped himself from yelling, Hell, yes! "Are you sure you feel up to it?"