CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR || COLE
When Eli and I returned to my home, I immediately knew something was terribly wrong. The door was unlatched, its wood splintered. Someone had broken the lock.
I put a hand on Eli’s chest to stop him from pushing the door open.
He froze, his brows drawing together. “Nicolas—”
I shook my head sharply, and he broke off. Then, when I nodded down at the splintered doorframe, he followed my gaze. His eyes widened in alarm.
He took a step back, his movements nearly soundless. But to my senses, the faint squeak of his shoes, the rustle of his clothing, the rapidly accelerating pounding of his heartbeat—all of it was far too loud.
I slid my arm around his waist, prepared to whisk him away at vampire speed. But when we turned, a dark-haired vampire blocked our path.
My stomach lurched. Godric.
I hadn’t seen him in eight centuries—not since my maker, Magnus, had let me go. But I knew precisely who he was: Magnus’s right-hand man. If he was here, my maker wasn’t far behind.
“Get behind me,” I growled, stepping in front of Eli.
“Hello, Nicolas,” Godric said softly, his black eyes staring into mine. “You have no wish to fight me.”
His words were laced with a thread of power that might have worked on a much younger vampire. As it was, it merely pissed me off.
I launched myself forward. I had no weapons to destroy him with, but I needed to incapacitate him before he could harm Eli. This vampire was dangerous.
Godric sidestepped me easily, moving in a blur of speed.
I intercepted him before he could go for Eli, grabbing him by the throat and throwing him to the ground.
His reflexes were incredible. He rolled in a fluid motion, his body moving with the momentum rather than against it. An instant later, he launched himself back to his feet. There was a small cut on his forehead, and dark blood, nearly black, trickled from it.
He narrowed his gaze at me. “That hurt.”
“Good.” I stepped in front of Eli again, keeping him at my back. If Godric wanted to harm him, he’d have to kill me first.
Given that he was twice my age, that seemed a likely possibility. Fear threaded through me at the thought of what might become of my beautiful human.
“Nicolas, stop!” a new voice said from behind me.
My blood ran cold. It was a voice I hadn’t heard in centuries.
So very much like my own.
I turned—and it was like staring into a mirror. Thierry stood in the doorway. His electric-blue eyes, precisely the same shade as mine, were fixed on me. His golden hair was a touch longer than mine, but otherwise, I could have been gazing at my own reflection.
Behind me, Eli let out a soft gasp.
A tall, broad, sandy-haired man stepped out of the doorway behind Thierry to join him. His piercing blue eyes narrowed in challenge. For a split second, they seemed to flash gold.
A wolf, then.
But his scent was too strange for that—it spoke to something other.
But then my gaze slid back to Thierry. The last time I had seen him, he had tried to kill me.
He had driven a silver dagger through my chest and set the room ablaze.
But I hadn’t felt anything at the time—no sting of betrayal, no grief that it had come to that between us.
No revulsion that my twin brother had looked at me and seen a monster that had to be destroyed.
And now—now, I felt it.
I felt it all.
And the years crashed down on me. Years spent without my brother, without my best friend. Without the twin I used to know better than myself. Without the first person I had always loved more than myself.
I had gotten so unbelievably lost—to the point where I hadn’t even minded.
So lost that I had barely even noticed his absence.
“Thierry?” I asked, bewildered. “Why—”
Something in my voice broke, and the sudden hot lump in my throat choked off my words.
My twin studied me for a long moment, his eyes widening with disbelief at whatever he saw written across my face.
“Hello, brother,” he whispered, his voice abruptly ragged. And then his unreadable expression cracked right down the middle, and I could see it all—the many years of grief and anguish he had racked up—as plainly as I had ever been able to read him.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, my voice—too thick—betraying the storm of emotions I felt at seeing him again. “And why are you with Godric?”
Thierry’s electric-blue gaze searched mine for a moment longer, his obvious grief mixed with both wonder and disbelief. “We need to talk.”
* * *
Eli sat next to me on the couch, his fingers threaded with mine.
Thierry’s gaze kept drifting to our joined hands, his eyes oddly glassy.
Next to him sat the werewolf—who Thierry had introduced as Jeremy, his mate.
I hadn’t been aware that werewolves ever mated with vampires.
Though Jeremy’s heart didn’t beat in his chest, so “werewolf” might not have been the most accurate word to describe him.
“Magnus is alive,” Godric said once we were all settled. “Has he reached out to you?”
Jeremy shot him a look that managed to be equal parts annoyed and bemused. “Jeez, man. If that’s how you warm people up, I feel sorry for Rico.”
I stared at him. Who the hell was Rico?
“Indeed,” Thierry said, shooting Godric a silencing glare. “I will do the talking. You’ve done quite enough, I think.”
“Magnus,” Eli whispered. I glanced at him to find he was paler than he ought to have been.
He stared at Thierry, transfixed. But the expression on his face was almost like he was seeing a ghost. Of course he was unsettled.
After the tussle with Godric outside my front door—where anyone could have seen—it was no wonder he was shaken.
I made a mental note to check in with him later and make sure he was okay.
Then Godric’s words sank in.
Magnus, the sadistic vampire who had turned Thierry and me, was still alive. I had heard, centuries ago, that he had died—and Godric along with him—at the hands of a coven of deeply aggrieved witches.
I stared at them blankly, numb all over, the way I had spent so much of my endless life. I tried to make the words make sense, but they didn’t. But when Eli sucked in a sharp breath beside me, I realized I had gripped his hand harder than I intended.
“I’m sorry,” I said immediately, pulling away from him. There was an unseemly quaver in my voice. The walls felt like they were pressing in on me.
“It’s fine,” Eli said, shooting me an alarmed look.
I barely noticed. My veins felt as though they were filled with ice water.
Magnus had done this to me.
He had stolen my humanity.
He had forced me to kill my first victims.
He had robbed me of any trace of hope, compassion, or emotion—everything that had once made me human.
His beautiful face—more stunning than any marble statue of even the most perfect angels I had ever seen—rose in my memories.
His mocking smile, the sick pleasure in his eyes when he had tried to force Thierry and me into bed with him—it was seared into my brain.
The way his gaze had shifted from pleasure to murderous fury the moment he was defied.
Dread built in the pit of my stomach.
If he still lived, Eli wasn’t safe.
None of us were.
“Well?” Thierry prompted, watching me intently.
I stared at him, trying to make sense of his question.
“Has this asshole contacted you?” Jeremy said, frowning at me. He shot Thierry a strange look that seemed to convey volumes.
Thierry glanced back at him and nodded slowly, as though Jeremy had spoken aloud.
I gave a start. They were blood-bonded?
But what could they possibly mean? If Magnus still lived, why on earth would he reach out to me? He wasn’t one for diplomacy. He would have started with violence.
“No,” I said at last, fighting to keep my voice calm.
“He’s here,” Thierry said, still studying me. “In Los Angeles. We believe he’s looking for you. We think he may attempt to form an alliance with you.”
“An alliance,” I repeated, revulsion twisting in my gut.
“He’s attempting to rebuild what he once had,” Godric said softly. His gaze slid from me to Eli and then back again. His expression grew more thoughtful. “He’s seeking an ally. A creature who would help him kill anyone, anywhere, anytime, without a shred of mercy.”
“And he came here. To me,” I said, my voice dull. “Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“But—wait. No! That’s not Nicolas,” Eli said immediately, his voice going hard. “It’s never been Nicolas.”
Thierry’s brows shot up at the heat in his voice.
But based on the incredulous expression on his face when he studied Eli, he disagreed wholeheartedly.
Of course he did. Because no matter what Eli believed, I had been capable of taking any life that suited me up until about two months ago.
It didn’t matter that it was true—the idea that such a thing could have changed just by meeting the lovely Doctor De La Cruz was laughable.
“Okay, fine,” Eli said, glaring at me. “Yeah. Sure, you were capable of taking any life you wanted. But you wouldn’t have. Innocent people don’t fit your victim profile.”
Surprise flashed through me. How could he have intuited my thoughts so accurately?
I shot Eli a narrow-eyed look. What else had he sensed from me? Was he even aware he was picking up on my thoughts?
“You’re already blood-bonded,” Thierry said, his voice dropping to a whisper. His eyes went wide, and his hand flew to his mouth. Then his gaze met mine, the corners of his lips turning down almost comically. “Nicolas. Are you… did meeting Eli…”
He swallowed hard, his eyes turning glassy all over again.
Jeremy automatically put a hand on Thierry’s shoulder, the expression on his face filled with such tenderness that I almost had the urge to look away, as though I were seeing something immensely private, meant only for them.
“Are you experiencing emotions, brother?” Thierry finished, his voice dropping to a choked whisper. His gaze slid to Eli and then back to me again. “For him, perhaps?”
I could see the centuries of grief and pain in his eyes, mingled with his hope—his horridly fragile and perfectly human hope. And I understood what my brother was truly asking me: was I myself again?
“Yes,” I said, not liking the disbelieving note in his voice. I locked eyes with him defiantly. “I am.”
Thierry stood, his expression becoming unreadable.
I stood as well, mirroring his movement.
“Nicolas?” he gasped out, his voice growing choked and thick.
And then it hit me—the enormity of what had just happened.
Thierry was here.
My brother was here.
After eight centuries apart, he was here.
And I was too. I didn’t know how to do this, or what came next, but we were both here now, in this moment.
And for the first time in an eternity, I was finally a person who could care for him again.
A person capable of loving him, understanding him, and being his best friend, the way we once were so long ago.
If I had never met Eli, I might have reacted poorly to seeing Thierry again. Or perhaps I wouldn’t have been bothered at all, so long as he didn’t attempt to harm me—again.
But now…
Now I could feel it. I could feel it all.
The years we had lost. The horror of the creature I had once been—and perhaps still was, to some extent. But most of all, I could feel the possibilities.
Eli had given me my brother back, too.
“I’m here,” I said, my voice thick. “Brother, it’s good to see you. I got… lost.”
At my words, Thierry’s whole expression broke open.
We both crossed the distance in the same moment.
Thierry threw his arms around me, and I threw my arms around him. And I wasn’t sure who went first, but we were clutching at each other, my grief and pain and hope palpable.
Hot tears, sudden and fast, poured down my cheeks.
I was no longer a cold and perfect creature.
I was no longer a being who was always in total control of myself and everything around me.
And that was okay.
In that moment, I only knew two things for certain.
First, that I loved Eli with all of my newfound heart and soul.
And second, that no matter what else happened, Thierry and I were going to be brothers again.