Blood Brother Cursed (Sexton Blood Brothers #2)

Chapter 12

A Bit Panicked

When Astrid woke, her body ached, especially her lower body and upper legs. There was something hard and warm wrapped around her, and it took her a moment of staring at a muscular arm to remember the previous night.

As soon as she did, the cat shifter started kissing the arm. This got a soft moan and the faint smell of lavender and leather. Then she felt something harden at her back. Pushing her hips back, she began to stroke the hardness. The arm tightened around her.

With a. smile, she turned to face Phoenix as her hand slid down his perfectly sculpted body, finally reaching the growing shaft. He began to respond without opening his eyes, his mouth covering hers. Then Phoenix pushed her body against the floor as he picked up where they left off.

A while later, sweaty and disheveled, Astrid lay on top of him, kissing his face. “I want to wake up like this every morning.”

It was as if a light bulb went off in his mind. Phoenix looked up at her, panic clear in his eyes. He quickly moved out from under her. “No, no, no, no. This can’t have happened. I can’t – I can’t—"

Astrid placed a hand on his arm as he was putting on his pants. “It’s ok, Phoenix. Nothing happened to me, see?” She pulled away, showing him her naked body.

“I can’t cause your death, Astrid. I couldn’t live with myself.”

She took his hand. “If anything, I’ve never felt better than I do right now. My body isn’t tingling—well,” she moved her free hand, “not like it was after the shock. The pain in my chest is gone. If anything, it feels like you completely healed me.”

“It’s temporary.”

“How do you know? Have you healed people before the last time you said goodbye?”

“Well, no, but—"

“How about this? You said that people don’t die in front of you. What if I don’t leave your side until we break the curse?”

“What if there is no way to break the curse? Eventually, you’ll get sick of me, and then—"

She made a dismissive sound. “If anything, you’ll get sick of me. And if that’s the case, we won’t be close anymore, right?”

He gave her a wry look. ‘That’s not how it works.”

“You can’t know for sure, can you?”

He sat down on the broken bed, “You don’t understand, Astrid.”

“You think I don’t understand how it feels for everyone close to me to die?”

“I’m much older than you, and I’ve lost more people.”

“Ok, I lost my father and my brother, so I’m not going to hold any stock in you saying that quantity is more than quality of relationships. I’ve never been close to anyone else, so—" She threw her hands out to emphasize how she felt.

“And I’m sorry for that, but I—"

“Phoenix.” She moved over to him and took one of his hands, then sat back on her heels. “I’m scared, too. It may not be a curse exactly, but I understand how much it hurts and how it’s easier to believe that being alone is better than losing someone.”

“Then you should know it’s not worth it.”

“No, I don’t know that. And I don’t feel that anymore. When I met you, you upset me and pissed me off. I hated the fact that you wanted to help because I didn’t think you could help me. You very quickly proved me wrong. Now, I want to help you.”

He looked up at her. “I don’t want to get you killed.”

“So,” she shrugged, “just stay with me until we figure something out.”

“There’s no guarantee that will keep you safe.”

“Are you kidding me? I have a dragon shifter who can control other people’s minds. I honestly don’t think that I could be in better hands.” She moved forward between his thighs and wrapped her arms around him. “Please don’t leave me. I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

She felt his body relax, and then he wrapped her up in his arms and pulled her into his lap. He then rested his head in the crook of her neck and nuzzled her. At first, Astrid giggled because it tickled, but his smell soon made her relax, and she began to kiss the top of his head. For a while, they just held each other.

His voice sounded sad as he said, “You still have work to do, don’t you?”

“I don’t have any equipment.”

He pulled away and looked up at her. “It’s probably outside. Why don’t you get dressed, and we’ll go get it.”

Astrid slipped a robe over her lithe body, and as soon as she was covered, he lifted her into his arms. He carried her out of the room and into a huge hallway with high ceilings. Astrid started paying attention to the place, and she finally asked, “Where are we?”

“One of my homes. It’s built not too far from the base, but they don’t know it. The place is kind of like a bunker since it’s underground.”

“So, how do you get stuff here?”

“I run a big company. Did you never… never mind.”

“No, don’t start that again,” she said and squeezed his shoulder but quickly became distracted. “Holy cow, you are solid. That is some very… I hope I’ve always got a front-row seat to this show.”

He laughed. “Well, until we figure out this curse, I—" Phoenix stopped. “They’re getting ready to move. Something’s up.”

“What do you mean? Who’s getting ready to move?”

“The people who attacked you. The facility is preparing to deploy a small group off base, and that means that they probably have found someone else.”

“How can you know that?”

Phoenix didn’t respond as he turned and ran back down the hallway. He placed her down carefully. “Get dressed. We have to go.”

“Go? What do you mean?”

“In that last set of notes you sent me yesterday, there was something that matched what Evander said the last time I saw him.”

“I thought he talked about the curse.”

“No, the whole reason that we were meeting. I’ll explain while you dress.” Astrid was perplexed but did as he said. Phoenix finished dressing as he explained, “I met your brother when he was jogging around town. He bumped into me, and I gave him a snarky response. He gave me such a sincere apology that I felt bad. He wanted to buy me a coffee or something because he had caused me to drop my breakfast on the pavement, and I knew I shouldn’t, but I accepted. I could tell he was a shifter, and he wasn’t from the area.”

“How could you tell?”

“His accent was much thicker than yours.” He gave her a wistful smile as he said it. “I figured it would be one coffee, then he would be on his way, but we chatted a bit after leaving the bakery.”

“The same one where I met you?”

“The same one where you doused me, Elliott, and Mabel, yes. Anyway, he could tell I was a shifter but didn’t mention it until we got close to the forests. Then he started telling me about some shady things going on at the military base. He wasn’t sure what they were doing, but he knew that it involved people with abilities.”

“Wait, I thought you said that that’s something that companies have been trying to exploit more recently?”

“No, companies and the military have been trying to weaponize abilities for at least a millennium. It’s only recently that they’ve moved into experiments that destroy the people with abilities. Somewhere along the way, they’ve lost their minds because by destroying people with abilities, they destroy the abilities. They can’t be harvested.”

“That should be obvious.”

“Fools never learn. Anyway, your brother went out trying to figure out what they were doing to people who ‘graduated’ from the program. The next thing I knew, he was dead.”

“Do you think they knew about his abilities?”

“I doubt it. Humans don’t seem to realize it isn’t just women, so they probably never even considered that he could be capable of anything beyond being a soldier. And they didn’t think he was particularly good at that.”

“I’m sure he was amazing! How can anyone talk about Evan like—"

Phoenix put a hand on her as she was getting more upset while struggling to put on a pair of pants. “Astrid, he wasn’t a fighter. He was amazing at most things, but Evander wasn’t a fighter.”

“No,” she said and stopped struggling. “He really wasn’t. I have no idea why he chose the military.”

“Evander told me that he’d had a fight with your father, and he joined out of anger.”

“That doesn’t seem like Evan.”

Phoenix smiled at her. “Oh, he had a temper. I think that he hid it from you pretty well. Or maybe I just saw a side of him that was a bit bitter after fighting and seeing people die. I know the things that were being done to women upset him, too. I’m pretty sure that was because he was afraid you would be found and dragged off. He talked about you a lot, you know.”

Astrid dropped the pants and walked over to Phoenix. Placing her head on his chest, she said, “I miss him. All of these years later, and I really miss him.”

Phoenix hugged her. “I do, too. And we always will.” He stepped away. “But right now, we need to get moving.”

Astrid looked at him, then nodded. “Right. Right. Hold on, I just need a few seconds to finish.” She sat on the ground and slid both pant legs up at the same time. “Do you know what happened to him?”

“He tried to enter one of the company’s facilities after hours. I don’t know exactly what happened—I’m a civilian who had no business with that project, so I wasn’t told anything. It was enough for me to know he was dead, and by the time I was done grieving for him, things had changed. The military covered up his death because they didn’t want to lose the potential. It did cause a serious rift between the military and the company, though, and it’s really only in the last couple of years that they’ve tried to mend that relationship, I think because of the potential exposed by the Mora experiments. Until that happened, there really wasn’t much of a threat since the military didn’t trust the company.”

Astrid felt her anger starting to bubble up, but she worked to keep it under control. The best thing to do was to act, not rage someplace far removed from the problem. “Ok. I’m dressed.” In the back of her mind, she was thinking about work and how she needed to let them know, but Astrid quickly dismissed even opening her mouth about it. If she had to apologize, then she would—right now, what mattered was staying close to Phoenix.

He moved over, easily lifting her off the floor, then said something loudly to the room at large. There was a rumbling, and suddenly, the ceiling started to open above them. “Does the whole thing open?”

“It has to. This is part of the ring of fire. If there’s an earthquake, I have to get out quickly.”

“How on earth could you—"

Her question was quickly answered as Phoenix shifted into his dragon form. “Oh, right. That’s handy.”

The next thing she knew, he flew them out of the mostly destroyed room and into the sky.