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“He said to trusthim, not to trust Mikalis. He knows Mikalis isn’t coming. They were always inseparable. Storm would cut off his own arm if Mikalis ordered it.” Saint didn’t bother to hide his emotions now, and his disgust at Storm’s devotion was obvious.
Theyhadbeen close. “What did he do to you?”
Saint’s smirk faded and all the light humor snuffed out of his eyes. Octavius almost wished he hadn’t asked. “We fought. Ferociously. He won.”
Shit. Octavius lifted his gaze from the laptop screen. “What did you fight over?”
“Mikalis ordered him to imprison me, so he did. Without question.”
Octavius didn’t need to know the details. He knew what it felt like when the people you loved turned on you. “I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Everything always is. Doesn’t change the hurt though.”
“No.” Saint moved to the filthy window behind Octavius. “But I’m out now. I met you, and Jay. The Brotherhood appears to be changing. It’s not all bad.”
If only they’d met before, when events weren’t so dire. They may have had more time to explore whatever this was between the three of them. All that time, Saint had been close but out of reach behind bars. The unspoken secret. All those years, Storm had known who Saint was and hadn’t said a word.
Jayden smirked and asked, “Did you and the big guy ever… you know?” He raised his eyebrows.
Saint’s laugh rumbled. “What makes you ask?”
Jayden gave his hand a wave. “I’m sensing some physical tension there.”
“Technically? No. Although, in the early era, the lines blurred some. It wasn’t like now. Gender and desires were fluid. Fucking, feeding, sex, it was all the same. Octavius would have hated it.”
Octavius laughed to himself. Stormwith anyone was an image he did not want in his head, and Saint’s “technically” could mean a whole array of different sexual scenarios. “Is there anything you didn’t try and fuck?”
“Not if it had a heartbeat and was willing.”
He wished he’d never asked but chuckled anyway, at himself, at Saint and at Jayden, and the crazy trio they’d become. Despite the chaos raging outside, he’d never felt more at ease. “What happens after?” Octavius asked, but as his heart cinched, he ran his gaze down the list of Vesna’s properties, needing to pull back from the fear of losing the precious thing they had together.
“What do you mean?” Saint asked.
“Say we stop Raiden, we kill the nyks, the Brotherhood goes on. What do we do?”
Saint focused on Octavius in that way he did, pinning him down. “What doyouwant?”
He wasn’t even sure. Have a relationship with Saint and Jayden? How would that work? Saint wouldn’t stay with the Brotherhood. They’d never come around to the situation they had with Jayden, breaking the rules, drinking from the vein. It went against everything they fought for. Octavius and Saint were nyks, and when this chaos was all over, they couldn’t be a part of the Brotherhood.
Octavius wasn’t sure he could go back to drinking from blood bags. It didn’t feel right. Having Jayden as a feeder feltnaturalbecause Jayden consented. But the Brotherhood wouldn’t see it that way. Storm would never allow such blatant disregard for the rules.
Several of Vesna Dragovic’s addresses listed in numerical order stood out among the hundreds listed on screen. Octavius opened Google maps and zoomed in on the structures, adjacent to a pier stretching out into the Hudson. They definitely hadn’t been aware of these premises before.
Why would Vesna need multiple New York warehouses? Perhaps more interestingly, the largest of the warehouses, surrounded by Vesna’s properties, wasn’t owned by her. Her holdings created a ring around a much larger property.
Whatever the Nyxian had stored there, it couldn’t be good considering their operation to create more nyks at Eagle Lake.
“I think we’ve got something here.”
Saint leaned over Octavius’s shoulder. “What am I looking at?”
“It’s a map of downtown Manhattan. These are all old warehouses, marked for redevelopment, but building work in that zone never seems to get off the ground. You see all these little buildings? These are connected to a Nyxian operation we didn’t know about.”
Saint tapped the screen over the larger warehouse, the one not highlighted, in the middle of the rest. “What’s this one?”
“She doesn’t own that one.”
