Nexus (6 page)

“What leads you to that?”

I grunted. “Ryan and Collin, right?”

“How did you know?”

“I know.”

“And?”

“And it’s simple. Collin’s taken an interest in Julian, and Ryan and Julian are like a minute old as a couple. Ryan’s jealous, that’s all.”

“Ryan Dean used to be a model. Why in the world would he—”

“Have you ever known Ryan to be logical?”

“No, that’s Leith’s job.”

“There you go.”

“Well, Marot, let me go put my house in order and I’ll call you—Wait, you called me. What’s wrong?”

Marot. It was my warder name.

Some of us had special names, some of us didn’t. The more public a figure you were, the more likely you would get a call sign to protect your identity, and while I understood, it was also confusing at times.

“I have demon trouble.”

“Pardon me?”

“And maybe warder trouble as well.”

“Start at the beginning.”

I explained, and he listened and grunted. I heard him cover the phone to talk to someone, and when he came back he told me that he was having Deidre make some calls as we spoke. It was nice to have two sentinels as backup. 

“What should I do?”

“For starters, I’ll send someone to you immediately. It sounds as though you’ve disrupted the flow of things around there, and I don’t know if Tarin is a demon or a warder, but there’s a warder in there somewhere, and he’s either doing this himself or the corruption stems from his sentinel.”

“How likely is that?”

“Not very, but we still have to act on the assumption that this is the case.”

“Okay.”

“Let me do this. Let me contact the council now and see what I can find out about the sentinel, and I’ll call you back in a few minutes. Meanwhile I’ll send Leith to stay with you.”

I would have preferred my best friend. “I think I’ll just call Malic to—”

“No.”

But he’d said it too fast. “What’s wrong?”

He didn’t answer.

“Jael?”

He cleared his throat. “Malic and Jackson are on another plane with Raphael. He found Moira. She was the demon lord Saudrian’s mate, you remember.”

I remembered that Saudrian had tried to turn Leith into his champion and that Raphael had killed him. And I knew that Moira had vowed to kill Raphael, who was my fellow warder Jackson’s hearth, for being the one to take her mate’s life.

“Why would you let Raphael get anywhere near her?”

“As you know, Raphael is a demonic bounty hunter, and apparently one of his contacts let him know where Moira was. Since Jackson was not going to let him go alone, he went with him. But Malic wasn’t letting Jackson follow without backup, so he went to keep both of the others safe.”

It was just like Malic to go. He would never say he cared; he would just show it instead. I felt a pang of guilt for being away.

“Ryan and I are here to guard the city, so Leith can come assist you.”

“I should be at home.”

“You should be with your hearth, and especially now as it sounds like both he and his family—your family—are in danger. Let me know if you need Ryan to come as well.”

“I won’t.”

“I’ll send Leith to you shortly.”

“Thank you. Ask him to bring my swords. Please keep me apprised of the other situation.”

“Of course.”

“You say that like you would have told me if I hadn’t called.”

“Malic made me promise not to. He wanted you to enjoy your time with Joe.”

Which again was just like him. Malic never came out and said that my happiness, or that of my hearth’s, meant anything to him. But he showed it.

“Please keep me in the loop.”

“I will.”

I hung up and let my head fall back.

“Are you all right?”

Turning to look at Joe, I exhaled deeply. “There’s trouble at home.”

“Like what kind?”

“Like I should be there.”

Joe took a breath and squeezed my knee. “Let’s just deal with this problem with my dad, and then we’ll fly home.”

I shook my head. “No, Joe, that’s not what I—”

“Marcus.” He cut me off, taking my hand. “Everyone will understand a work emergency, and why would I stay here if you couldn’t come back? I need to be with you, especially if you’re going to be putting yourself in danger. A warder has to be able to return to his hearth and home to be cared for and find sanctuary and draw power. I understand my role, and it’s as vital to me as it is to you. I love you and I know my value. But I can’t leave my family in danger, and I know you can’t, either. So let’s handle this and then go home so you can fight alongside your brothers.”

He was decisive and firm and absolute. It was hard to contain my love for him, because really, the man was phenomenal.

“Just say, ‘Yes, Joe, I agree.’”

“Yes, Joe, I agree,” I sighed.

“I go with you, Marcus. Don’t be stupid.”

Of course he did.

IV

W
E
WERE
all sitting in the living room when the doorbell rang. Barbara went to get it, and when she came back less than a minute later, she had a strange expression on her face. The reason was obvious a second later; Leith Haas was trailing after her and she was a bit overwhelmed.

I understood why.

He was shorter than me—most men were—but not small. At six-two, long and lean-muscled, the man was not someone you looked at and thought
delicate
or
fragile
.

“Hey,” I greeted, rising from the couch.

He didn’t hold out his hand or try to hug me. He simply passed me a scabbard with dual sheaths, and I took it, feeling instantly calmer now that I could defend myself and everyone I loved.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He smiled as he moved beside me to bend over and hug Joe.

Everyone saw him do it, and their faces all broke into similar smiles.

“This is Leith Haas,” I explained to the room, “and he’s a warder just like me. Leith, this is Joe’s family: his father, Elliot, his mother, Deb, and his sister, Barb.”

Leith smiled, and I watched Barbara, especially, react to the dark aqua blue eyes, the way he curled a long piece of hair behind his ear and the play of muscles under his clothes. There was no missing the man’s beauty, but what I had always admired more was his gentleness, the quiet and calmness that he spread, and how thoughtful he was. Leith tended to think before acting, and I appreciated that quality about him.

“How’s Simon?” Joe asked after the man’s hearth.

The shy smile got big and out of control. “He’s good, Joe. Thank you.”

“Oh.” Barb sucked in a breath.

I watched her eyes roam over Leith, from the long dirty-blond curls that fell to the middle of his back to the broad shoulders and muscular legs. Between the golden tan and his hair pulled back into a queue, you thought “surfer” not “warder,” but unlike her, I knew the man was deadly. When the doorbell rang, he excused himself to answer it.

“Your friend is gorgeous,” Barbara breathed.

“He’s got a really hot boyfriend too,” Joe told his sister.

“How do you know?” I growled.

“Don’t be jealous, baby,” Joe teased, patting his lap.

He had no idea how badly I wanted to lie down so he could pet me.

“Marcus, Leith is gay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I told Barb before my eyes flicked back to Joe.

“Simon has a voice almost as sexy as yours, Marcus Roth,” my boyfriend teased again.

I really wanted to be alone with my man. I was almost thrumming with need.

“Marot,” Leith called to me, and when I looked up—because he’d used my warder name, names we never called one another—I found myself looking at two men.

I turned and stepped in close to Joe.

“This is—”

“Shane Harris?” Deb said, looking at the man on the left.

“Mrs. Locke,” the man said, his eyes passing over her as he looked for—“Joe!” he cried.

“Shane?” Joe lifted his face.

“Ohmygod,” Shane gasped, crossing the room preternaturally fast, going down on one knee so he was at eye level with Joe. “Holy shit.”

Joe reached up and put his hands on the other man’s face. When he did, he smiled. “Shit, Shane, how long’s it been?”

Apparently Shane Harris was more than content to stare into my boyfriend’s eyes for the rest of his life.

“Joe,” he finally breathed, his thumbs grazing over his cheeks.

“Marcus,” Leith said under his breath dangerously.

I turned and found my friend with narrowed eyes, a clenched jaw, and his hand on the pommel of his sword. He very much wanted to separate Shane Harris’s head from his body. This was my hearth Shane Harris was touching, and that made my friend nervous. And not just for me, more for himself. Warders losing their hearths, for any reason, was cause for panic. To lose your hearth to another, as our fellow warder, Jackson, had, was close to unbearable. But I had more faith than that.

My relationship with Joe was the longest that existed in my clutch—my group of five warders. Ryan and his hearth Julian had not yet made six months, Malic and his hearth Dylan were even newer, Leith and Simon had just hit seven months, and Jackson and Raphael were verging on three. So they all reacted to the very idea of losing their hearths as cause for deliberate, violent action. Joe and I, the old married couple at just shy of six years, were the anomaly, and so instead of reacting, Leith looked to me to guide him. I had to let him see what faith and trust looked like.

“What are you doing here?” Shane asked, absorbing Joe’s face with his eyes, tracing over it with his hands, utterly, completely, entranced.

“I’m here for my grandfather’s eightieth,” he replied, smiling as he leaned back, away from Shane’s touch, done now with the reunion. He tipped his head back, up at me, reaching at the same time. “And my partner Marcus Roth came with me.”

I took hold of the questing hand, squeezing lightly, smiling over Joe’s happy sigh.

Beside me, Leith exhaled as Shane Harris finally looked at me.

“You’re a warder?” he asked as he stood up, his tone, his stance both combative.

“I am.”

“Joe”—he cleared his throat—“is your hearth?”

“For six years now.” I added the five months in that it would take us to reach the milestone without thought.

He was visibly stricken, and no one said a word.

“I never told him what I was.”

Which was his mistake and not mine. I had trusted Joseph Locke after the first night I had him in my bed. What was Shane Harris’s excuse?

“So what the hell is going on here?” Leith asked, uncharacteristically brash for him. Normally, he only raised his voice around people he knew well, but I was guessing that Joe being thrown into the mix—or the question of a hearth—was what was rattling him.

“Hello,” the other man who had come in with Shane said.

I turned to look at him and found myself smiling. He reminded me right away of my friend, Jackson Tybalt, a fellow warder. There was similar brown hair that spilled to his shoulders, familiar brown eyes though Jackson’s were darker, and the smile, warm and inviting, was also like my friend’s.

“I’m Kyle,” he said, moving forward, offering his hand to me. “Kyle Riggs, and it seems that all of us are long on tempers and short on manners since none of us introduced ourselves proper.”

He was right. We had gone directly to anger and assigning blame.

“Like I said.” He smiled as he squeezed my hand. “I’m Kyle. Who’re you?”

I told him my name and introduced Leith, and then Shane also presented himself properly. Once all the handshaking was done and we had all calmed down a little, Leith asked Shane and Kyle what they were doing there.

“We’re here on behalf of our sentinel, William Boyd, to find out what happened today at Mr. Locke’s store,” Kyle told him. “He got a call from the council on a concern from your sentinel, Jael Ezran. Our sentinel would have come himself to address the matter, but he’s in Portland at his daughter’s wedding to, and I quote, ‘the wrong guy’.”

And with that, the tension in the room dissipated, and everyone was talking at once.

Joe got up, put a hand on Shane’s shoulder as he had still not moved, squeezed gently, and then leaned sideways into me. The show of solidarity, without him even thinking about it, made me flush with happiness.

Shane rose slowly and lifted his hands for quiet.

“Last month our sentinel stripped one of our number, Tarin, from our clutch. He had been conspiring with demons.”

“Why?”

“He needed money,” Kyle chimed in. “His hearth, she wants things, and we all knew it was leading down a bad road, but there is nothing you say to a warder about his hearth.”

No, there wasn’t.

“I would do whatever my hearth asked of me as well,” Kyle said.

“Are you married?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yes, sir, just as long as you all—six years.”

And in his mind, his marriage and Joe’s and mine were exactly the same. A hearth was a home, and a warder’s home was not to be trifled with. When I saw his eyes flick to Shane, I realized that his fellow warder was making him uncomfortable with the way he was looking at Joe. I wasn’t all that crazy about it either.

“The demons, Arcan and Emir, they said that Breka had paid Tarin so that I shouldn’t have been there in my father-in-law’s store,” I said to both of the warders.

“I have no idea who that is, but just like you all, we don’t chat with demons. We kill them.”

And that was good to hear.

“So where is this Tarin now?”

“We’ll find him; it’s not your concern.”

“Oh, the hell it’s not,” Leith said quickly. “We need to speak to Tarin and find out what he promised these demons, and we definitely need to track down—” He turned to me. “Who?”

“Arcan and Emir.”

“Yeah, them.” Leith returned his attention to Kyle. “And I guess their boss, Breka, and kill them all.”

“Tarin—”

I cut Shane off. “What’s his real name?”

“Tanner. Tanner King.”

“So Tanner,” I said, humanizing the warder so we all understood what it was that we were talking about, “is no longer a part of your clutch, correct?”

“Yes.”

“So basically you have to find him first and protect him, because once the demons find out that they paid him for a service that doesn’t exist, they’re going to hunt him down and kill him.”