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“He… did?” Then why the fuck was Mikalis still AWOL?
“They had… a relationship.”
Wait. What? “Who did?”
“Octavius and Saint.”
Wait, a relationship as in… a romantic relationship?
“Fuck me, Octavius has a heart?”
In the many centuries Zaine had known Octavius, he hadn’t once reacted in any way to the idea of companionship, or even getting laid. Centuries ago, he’d been their healer, and more recently, he’d been more interested in computers than people. “How do you know this?”
“I saw them… after he kicked me from the chopper. I have wings, you know. I tracked him—”
“Again with the wings,” Zaine muttered. He really needed to get a pair of those upgrades.
“I followed him, watched him, because none of this makes any goddamn sense.”
Then Storm had been way ahead of them this whole time? Who knew he had brainsandmuscles?
“What I saw…” He huffed, like a big dog on a hot day. “Anyway, they were close. I don’t know if Octavius freed Saint, but even if he didn’t, they had formed a partnership. Mikalis took that from him, as well as everything else in marking him as a traitor. Wherever Octavius is, he’s not going to help. We’ve burned that bridge.”
If Mikalis had killed Eric, Zaine wouldn’t have been sitting at that table either.Mikalisburned that bridge, and he had a whole lot of questions to answer. No wonder their leader was keeping his head down.
But also, thinking back to when he’d seen Saint and Octavius together, it had been brief, between them beating the shit out of Zaine and throwing him into a kiln, but there had beensomething. A connection between them. Octavius had also let Saint feed from him—Zaine had scented blood as soon as they’d let him out the kiln.
And Mikalis had killed Saint.
Octavius was out there alone, thinking nobody gave a shit about him.
Zaine wasn’t the only asshole here. They all were. Why hadn’t they seen the truth earlier? Why hadn’tanyonebelieved Octavius?
“He might talk to me,” Eric said.
Had Eric lost his mind? “Or he’ll kill you as revenge for Mikalis killing Saint.”
“If we can find him, he might see me as an outsider, not really Brotherhood.”
“No,” Zaine said, then added, “Fuck, no. He’s threatened to kill you before.”
“He was protecting the Brotherhood. Things have changed.”
“No.”
Eric gave him a sympathetic look—the damn puppy dog eyes Zaine could never resist. “You keep saying no like I’m going to obey, when we both know that’s not how we work.”
“Kærasti, please no, don’t do this. I will get on my knees and beg you in front of Storm, I don’t care.” Octavius was lethal. He’d kill Eric before Zaine could try to stop him. And now he had reason to.
Eric hesitated. “All right, fine… But it’s clear we need to find him, if we can’t find Raiden. Maybe that laptop doesn’t mean anything, or maybe it means we’re all fucked when it reaches one hundred percent. Either way, Octavius will know.”
Storm rubbed his face and tried for the fiftieth time to get his thumbprint to unlock it.Denied. “We sure don’t know what it means.”
“But we do know something is very, very wrong with the current picture,” Zaine said. “We all feel it, right? It’s not just me feeling as though we’re on an edge, peering into the abyss?”
“You’re right,” Storm agreed. “I fear Octavius was right, and Raiden was the real threat, although I don’t know why Raiden would turn on us. But we all missed it, and I suspect we’re about to pay for that mistake.”
Zaine slumped in the seat. Maybe they deserved this. “What do we know about Raiden?”
