He had been desperately wanted.

Until he had fully arrived.

And that was the beginning of his story … which had ultimately landed him here.

In another cave. On another December’s eve. And as with his actual birth, the wind howled to greet him, although this time, it was a return to consciousness as opposed to an expelling unto independent life that brought him forth.

As with a newly born young, he had little control over his body. Incapacitated he was, and that would have been true even without the steel chains and bars that were locked across his chest, his hips, his thighs. Machines, at odds with the rustic environs, beeped behind his head, monitoring his respiration, heart rate, blood pressure.

With all the ease of unoiled gears, his brain began to function properly beneath his skull, and when thoughts finally coalesced and formed rational sequences, he recalled the series of events that had resulted in him, the leader of the Band of Bastards, falling into the custody of what had been his enemies: an attack upon him from behind, a concussive fall, a stroke or some such that had rendered him prone and on life support.

At the non-extant mercy of the Brothers.

He had surfaced unto awareness once or twice during his captivity, recording his captors and his whereabouts in this earthen corridor that was inexplicably shelved with jars of all kinds. The returns to consciousness had never lasted long, however, the connectivity in his mental arena unsustainable for any length of time.

This emergence was different, however. He could sense the shift within his mind. Whate’er had been injured had finally healed and he was back from the foggy landscape of neither-life-nor-death—and staying on the vital side.

“… really worry about is Tohr.”

The tail end of the sentence uttered by a male entered Xcor’s ear as a series of vibrations, the translation of which was on a delay, and whilst the words caught up to the syllables, he shifted his eyes over. Two heavily armed figures in black had their backs to him and he reclosed his lids, not wishing to reveal his change of status. Their identities were duly noted, however.

“Nah, he’s tight.” There was a soft scratching sound and then the smell of rich tobacco rose up. “And if he slips, I’ll be there.”

The deep voice who had first spoken became dry. “To chain our brother back in line—or help him murder this piece of meat?”

The Brother Vishous laughed like a serial killer. “Such a dim fucking view of me you got.”

’Tis a wonder we are not better aligned, Xcor thought. These males were as bloodthirsty as he.

Such an alliance was never to be, however. The Brotherhood and the Bastards had been e’er on different sides of Wrath’s kingship, the line drawn by the path of the bullet Xcor had put into the throat of that lawful leader of the vampire race.

And the price of his treason was going to be exacted here and soon upon him.

Of course, the irony was that a countervailing force had since interceded upon his destiny and taken his ambitions and focus far, far from the throne. Not that the Brotherhood knew any of it—and nor would they care. In addition to sharing an appetite for war, he and the Brothers had in common another core feature: Forgiveness was for the weak, pardoning the act of the pathetic, pity a capacity possessed by females, never fighters.

Even if they became aware that he no longer carried any aggression toward Wrath, they would not release him of the reckoning he had so rightfully earned. And given all that had transpired, he was not bitter or angry at what was coming his way. It was the nature of conflict.

He did find himself saddened, though—something that was not familiar to his makeup.

From out of memory, an image came unto his mind and took his breath away. It was of a tall, slender female in the white robing of the Scribe Virgin’s sacred Chosen. Her blond hair waved down o’er her shoulders and trailed off at her hips on a gentle breeze, and her eyes were the color of jade, her smile a benediction he had done naught to deserve.

The Chosen Layla was what had changed everything for him, recasting the Brotherhood from target to tolerable, from enemy to co-existable tenant in the world.

In the short year and a half Xcor had known her, she had had more effect upon his black soul than anyone who had come before, evolving him a greater distance in a lesser time than he would have e’er thought possible.

The Dhestroyer, Vishous’s fellow Brother, spoke anew. “Actually, I’m down with Tohr ripping him the fuck apart. He’s earned the right.”

The Brother Vishous cursed. “We all have. Gonna be hard to make sure there’s anything left at the end for him to have at.”

And herein was the conundrum, Xcor thought behind his closed lids. The only possible way out of this deadly scenario was to reveal the love he’d found for a female who was not his, never had been, and was not e’er going to be.

But he would not sacrifice the Chosen Layla for anyone or anything.

Not even to save himself.

As Tohr walked through the pine forest of the Brotherhood’s mountain, his shitkickers crunched over the frosted ground and a bracing wind hit him square in the face. In his wake, as tight on his heels as his shadow, he could feel his losses filing along with him, a grim, mournful lineup as tangible as chains.

The sense he was being pursued by his dead made him think about all those paranormal TV shows, the ones that tried to pin down whether ghosts actually existed. What a load of bullshit that was. The human hysteria around supposed misty entities floating up stairwells and making old houses creak with disembodied footsteps was so characteristic of that self-absorbed, drama-creating lesser species. It was one more thing Tohr hated about them.

And as usual, they missed the point.

The dead absolutely fucking haunted you, running their cold fingertips of remember-me up the back of your neck until you couldn’t decide whether you wanted to scream from missing them … or from wanting to be left alone.

They stalked your nights and prowled your days, leaving a minefield of sorrow triggers in their path.

They were your first and last thought, the filter you tried to push aside, the invisible barrier between you and everyone else.

Sometimes, they were even more a part of you than the people in your life that you could actually touch and hold.

So yeah, nobody needed a dumb-ass TV show to prove the already known: Even as Tohr had found love with another female, his first shellan, Wellsie, and the unborn son she had been carrying when she’d been murdered by the Lessening Society, were never further away from him than his own skin.

And now there had been yet another death in the Brotherhood household.

Trez’s mate, Selena, had gone unto the Fade mere months ago, passing away from a disease for which there had been no cure and no relief and no understanding.

Tohr hadn’t slept properly since.

Refocusing on the evergreens around him, he ducked down and pushed a limb out of his way, and then sidestepped a fallen trunk. He could have dematerialized to his destination, but his brain was banging around so violently in the prison of his skull that he doubted he could have concentrated enough to go ghost.

Selena’s death had been one big-ass fucking trigger for him, an event affecting third parties that had nonetheless grabbed his snow globe and shaken it so hard that his inner flakes were whizzing around and refusing to settle.

He had been down in the training center when she had been called unto the Fade, and the moment of death had not been silent. It had been marked by a sound torn from Trez’s soul, the audio equivalent of a gravestone—and Tohr knew that one well. He’d done it himself when he’d been told about his own female’s death.

So, yeah, on the wings of her love’s agony had Selena been carried forth from the earth unto the Fade—

Dragging himself out of that cognitive loop was like trying to pull a car from a ravine, the effort required tremendous, the progress made inch by inch.

Onward through the forest, though, through the woods, through the winter night, crushing what was underfoot, with those ghosts of his whispering behind him.

The Tomb was the Black Dagger Brotherhood’s sanctum sanctorum, that hidden site where inductions occurred, and secret meetings were held, and the jars of slain lessers were kept. Located deep within the earth, in a labyrinth created by nature, traditionally it was off-limits to anybody who hadn’t gone through the ceremony and been marked as a brother.