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“Really? Oh. Uh, I suppose you could do that—”
Saint laughed and took the jeans, then kissed Jayden on the forehead. “You’re adorable. Don’t ever change.”
Octavius dressed, and as he finished towel-drying his hair, a knock at the door signaled Storm’s arrival with a laptop under his arm.
He handed it over. “Is Saint here?”
Saint emerged and almost missed a step as he spotted Storm in the living area.
Octavius carried the laptop to the coffee table and set it up while keeping Storm and Saint in his peripheral vision, just above the screen. There weren’t many people Saint was wary around, but Storm was one of them. They clearly had a past.
Octavius loaded several maps of the docks on the laptop.
Storm cleared his throat. “You need any blood?”
“No, we have that covered,” Saint said, his voice flat, all emotion tucked away.
Storm worked his jaw, either around his fangs or around the words he didn’t want to say. He glanced across the room at Jayden flicking through the channels on the TV. “I need to know you’re on our side,” Storm said. “I can’t be watching for a dagger in the back while trying to keep everyone safe.”
Saint shrugged. “You know I don’t use daggers.”
Storm’s droll look turned into a glower. “I don’t agree with how you do things, but I appreciate you’re here. If it wasn’t for your arrival earlier, we would have… struggled.”
“You’re welcome. Now tell me what you haven’t told the others. What happened with Mikalis after he tried to kill me at the old steakhouse?”
Storm stiffened. Octavius tapped a few keys, but the maps no longer held his interest. He needed to see Saint grill Storm. Saint might have been the only one who knew Storm well enough to get answers out of him, even if Storm did tower over him in heightandwidth.
“He believed hehadkilled you. We all did,” Storm said.
“And he left?”
“Right.”
Saint snorted. “We know he’s not that emotionally fragile. Whatever happened, you’re not telling me or them for a reason. I just don’t know what that reason is.”
Storm’s cheek flickered. “Can you sense him, as your sire?”
“No, I haven’t been able to since the steakhouse.”
Was Saint’s severing of the link between sire and offspring due to Octavius getting inside Mikalis’s head? No, it couldn’t be that. Octavius had demanded Mikalis no longer hunt them, not that Mikalis cut off Saint.
Storm appeared troubled and took a few moments before saying, “I have faith in Mikalis. I’d ask you to trust me, but I know I don’t deserve your trust.”
A hint of fang showed through Saint’s snarl. “Never again.”
They had history, for sure, and it sounded as though Storm had burned Saint in the past. Octavius wasn’t surprised. Given a choice, Storm would always choose Mikalis, and Saint hadn’t. That made them enemies.
“Then are you with us, Saint?” Storm asked.
Saint thrust a hand into his jeans pocket and leaned against the kitchen counter. “Am I with the Brotherhood?” He glanced up and met Octavius’s gaze. “For as long as Octavius is, yes.” When he met Storm’s glare again, he said, “Am I with Mikalis? You already know the answer.”
“Good enough.” Storm turned his heavy glare onto Octavius. “We have an hour before sundown.”
“On it,” Octavius acknowledged. He couldn’t hack into Atlas now it was offline, but the Atlas data had been stored in an isolated server. He could get into that and look for Vesna’s files, the Nyxian who had helped destroy the Brotherhood’s compound. Felix Quaid had told him Vesna had been worthy of more scrutiny. Octavius hadn’t listened then, but he was now. The Nyxian cult leader had property all over the US and Europe. If she’d had more land in New York, it might coincide with the concentration of nyks. Information like that, Raiden could have hidden. They had little else to go on and when the sun set, the older, more powerful nyks would be crawling from the shadows.
“He knows why Mikalis isn’t here,” Saint said after Storm had left. He approached Octavius, and folded his arms.
“You can read Storm?”
