by Brenna Lyons
Scott stared at him wearily. “Why?” His voice slurred slightly, the alcohol taking its toll. “Why would he care?”
“Because, we’re wired that way. Your mother probably hid you because she knew your father would demand you. We can’t be separated from our children—at least if we know they exist.” Frustration welled up in him. It was impossible to explain the soul-deep need to love and guide a child that their curse instilled in them. There was so much Scott didn’t know about himself. They were blessed that the young man hadn’t had a brush with printing and done damage in his madness, all for the stupidity of one woman. “Dear Ani! How could he make this mistake in the first place? It’s common practice to—”
“Check a woman’s cycle. I know.”
Adam stared at him in shock. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that Scott might have magnified the damage without knowledge of what another child out of printing would mean—or more than one. Did he even know how to check a cycle? How to ghost? Could he learn those things without training?
The young man blushed. “My mother imparted that rather useful bit of information to me along the way. Good thing too. I have no intentions of playing the part of my dear old Dad, the sucker—or allowing some poor kid to live my life. Thanks but no thanks. I am quite capable of learning from someone else’s mistakes, at least if they affect me.”
“I don’t think I understand.” What was he saying? Either his father was sloppy, which would mean he’d have to answer for it to the Council of Lords, or Lynne had done something truly heinous. Adam wasn’t sure which would be worse.
“It was no mistake. I was no accident. Mom set them up, played us all like a fine instrument.” He grumbled several harsh curses under his breath, ending with a clear ‘bitch.’
The term made a lot more sense this time around, but Adam’s Blutjagd spiked anyway. This time, it spiked in sympathetic fury at the type of woman who’d plan something like this. If she knew what the Warriors were—enough to teach Scott a little about them, she knew why this was a bad idea and did it anyway.
Scott stiffened, shooting him a bleary look that was none-the-less dangerous, his hand creeping to his weapon as if gauging his need to draw it. Adam forced his rage back, rallying his calm. The pure instinct to fight when faced with Blutjagd was something his young charge hadn’t learned to rein in yet. Scott wasn’t his enemy, and he wouldn’t give him reason to react. He nodded, and the young man relaxed, laying his hand on his thigh.
“How?” Adam asked. “How does a woman arrange something like this? Warriors aren’t usually sloppy.”
He snorted, a harsh sound of mirthless laughing. “You should learn to take your used condoms with you. You know, I carry mine out and dump them in a garbage can somewhere at random. Four or five loads over a few days from two of your finest was all it took.” His smirk melted into a look of misery. “More than enough.”
Adam winced. A single insemination would have been enough. If there was one thing they had to be mindful of it was how fertile they were, how easy it was to impregnate a woman at or even near high cycle. If anyone knew it, Adam did.
Scott closed his eyes, laying his head back, looking lost and lonely, worn beyond his years despite what he was—or maybe because of it. His arms went lax as sleep closed on him, a drugged sleep, but still sleep he needed.
“Which one?” Adam asked. “Which one is your father?” He had to know that. Calling in the Armens without a clue of which brother sired him would end with two near-mad Warriors at each other’s throats—and Scott’s.
“Matthew Armen,” he whispered.
Adam pulled out his cell phone and started dialing, watching Scott’s breathing become deep and even while the phone rang three times.
The connection opened. “Armen manor. Jordan here,” the voice on the other end intoned, a grim answer for a manor. Then again, a head-count summons from König wouldn’t have put the houses in a good mood.
“It’s Adam, Jordan.”
“It’s not one of ours,” he replied immediately.
Adam ignored his statement. He’d expected that greeting, more or less. “I need to speak to Matt. It’s—an emergency of sorts. Can you patch me through?” If Jordan refused, he’d have König order it. Damn it! He wasn’t going to pass this message to Matt through anyone else.
“Don’t have to. He’s right here. Hang on.”
“Thanks.”
There was a long moment of fumbling before Matt came on the line. “It’s not one of ours,” he repeated.
Adam sighed. “There’s no easy way to say this, Matt, so I’m going to come right out and say it. I’m standing here with your son.”
“That’s impossible,” he exploded. “Antony is upstairs, and Tevin just walked out the door.”
Other angry shouts echoed over the line, and Adam winced.
“You put this on speaker?”
“Of course, he did,” Tyler Lord Armen shouted. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, Lord Maher, but—”
“This is no game!”
Scott shifted uneasily, and Adam forced his Blutjagd back, unwilling to disturb him. He lowered his voice and began again.
“I am standing here with Matt’s son. Not Tevin or Antony. His oldest son.”
He paused. There was absolute silence over the line, most likely in shock.
“His name is Scott Danvers. Mother—Lynne. Born January the fifth, twenty-twenty-six.”
“Dear Ani.” Several curses followed close behind.
Adam couldn’t tell who said it. He continued. “He’s a smart-mouthed, bitter little punk who’s been hurt by this as much as you have. He’s also an honorable young man who faced his first beast tonight and sent the bastard to ground, with no training to do it and no sacred weapon to help him do the job. Now, if Armen is going to claim he’s not one of theirs, Maher would be proud to give him a home.” That wasn’t really an option, and they all knew it, but Adam had a point to make, and he would make it in his typical style; they didn’t call him Conan for nothing.
Matt’s voice shook. He tried to say something several times, and he cleared his throat twice before he managed to force words to emerge. “I’ll be there in three hours if I have to charter a jet to do it.”
“I knew you would. Call me when you hit the tarmac, and I’ll give you directions.”
“We will,” Jordan answered for him. Then they disconnected.
Adam flipped the phone shut and settled onto the weight bench, watching Scott sleep. In a few hours, his life would change forever. But, whether being thrust into the Warrior world would bring him balance or grief remained to be seen.
Chapter Two
“Enough of this shit, Adam! Get the fuck out of my way and let me see my son.”
The shout echoed through the apartment—and through Scott’s head. He winced, opening his eyes. He rubbed at his forehead, memories of the previous night leaving him cold. So, the old man actually showed up.
“Big deal,” he whispered. It wasn’t like this was going to be a happy family reunion.
A chorus of voices rose, competing with each other.
“You can’t go barreling in there like this,” Maher replied calmly. “Not in this rage.”
Scott pushed to his feet, heading for the door though his bladder demanded the bathroom.
“Damn you, Adam. If you don’t step aside—” He stopped talking, his mouth dropping open in shock, his eyes tracking Scott from the moment he came into view.
The other three men turned to him, following the first man’s line of sight. The silence in the room was absolute, so much so that Scott felt his muscles itch to fight. The shock on their faces said it all. Why had Maher bothered?
“Disappointed?” Scott asked, trying to convince himself that he didn’t care if they were. “Well, that makes...” He swiveled his head as if conducting a head count. “Five of us, I guess, unless there are more of you hiding in the hall. You can get out of my apartment any time. I di
dn’t ask Maher to call you in the first place.”
He turned for the bathroom, pushing away the burning question of what they would do next. He’d taken them off the hook. No doubt, he’d come out to an empty room, and that would suit him just fine.
A spike of the same energy he’d felt from Maher the night before warned him that one of them was coming—but not Maher. The energy had a different feel to it than his.
Scott turned, sidestepping the attack at his back, backhanding the man to the floor smoothly, a different one than the one who’d been talking when he caught sight of them. The other three surged toward him, and Scott prepared to take them all on. He’d fought worse odds, though the fact that they were Warriors probably meant they were superior fighters. To his amazement, the two strangers took down the one rising from the floor. That left him even more unprepared for what Maher did.
The Warrior placed himself between Scott and the other three, offering his back to Scott much as Scott had with Melaina the night before. It was an undeniable move of protection. Maher pulled his blade, apparently ready to gut the first man if he escaped the other two. “Stay at my back,” he grumbled.
“Stand down,” the oldest of them ordered, pushing back on his attacker. “Stand down, or I will kill you myself.”
The fight drained out of Armen immediately. He nodded, though he glared at Scott as if the reprieve would only last as long as they held him at bay.
Scott recovered his wits enough to be offended by this greeting. “I always knew I didn’t want a father. Family sucks. Thanks for the reminder, Maher.”
The younger of the two guarding his attacker looked at Scott in seeming dismay. He motioned to the glaring man. “This is not your father.”
“Then, I guess you are.” The ages would seem to indicate that.
He took a step toward Scott, his expression strangely—hopeful? No, it had to be something else. Why would he give a damn about a kid some groupie popped out?
“I guess I am. Gods alive, there is no question that I must be.”
Scott turned for the bathroom, emotions he didn’t want to feel pulling at him. Family was nothing special. They just let you down eventually. He had to remember that. “Thanks all the same, but I don’t need you.” He’d done without a father for twenty-three years. What did he need this shit for?
He closed the door before someone could decide to attack him again, forcing his breathing to even, panic making his head spin worse than the slight hangover he’d earned.
* * * *
Matt’s stomach rolled at Scott’s words. How could his son just walk away like that? The water turned on full-blast behind the door, and Matt’s hopes sank. It was that simple for him? Just tell him to go away and wipe his own father out of his life? He couldn’t. Now that Matt knew Scott existed, he couldn’t let him shut him out like this.
“It’s not what you think,” Adam assured him, sheathing his sacred weapon again.
“Isn’t it?” Fury welled up at the situation he was dealt. Even if Scott hadn’t received him with open arms, he should have given him a chance. If Matt had known about him from birth or before, it was a chance he would have had. There might be too much damage now, and what would he do if it came to that? Go insane.
Lynne is insane. “Lynne is damned lucky she’s in an asylum. I’d have to kill her for this if the opportunity arose.”
“Matt,” his father began, half in warning but half in seeming dismay at his lack of control.
“She hid my son from me,” he thundered. “She turned him against me.”
Adam winced.
“What?” Matt snapped at him.
“Maybe I should have told you the whole story up front, before you came here and met him. I counted on a different outcome.” He waved off the many questions welling up in Matt. “Did you look at him, Matt?”
“Of course, I did. He’s the image of Antony. How could anyone doubt that he’s mine?”
“No. Did you look at him? Yes, he’s angry; he has the right to be pissed off, but...”
“But?” Matt prompted him, his fury fading in light of his need to know his son. Almost twenty-four years! She cost me a lifetime with one of my children.
“He’s scared. You have a life that doesn’t include him. What if you want to keep it that way?”
“I don’t,” he snarled. “You know I could never want that.”
“I do, but Scott doesn’t. His understanding of Warriors is limited. His mother—”
Matt growled at the memory of the blade chaser that had carried his son.
Adam hurried on. “She didn’t tell him much. Just enough, I suppose.”
“Not enough,” Jordan grumbled.
Matt turned to him, his rebuke dying in his throat at the sight of the empty Jim Beam bottle in his brother’s hand.
“How much of this did he drink last night, Adam?” Jordan inquired. “I could still smell it on him when I took him on.”
“Half of it.”
Matt winced, fisting his hand that his son had come to this. It was Lynne’s fault. He would have been stable if he’d been raised with the Warriors.
“He didn’t have the best of moments,” Adam admitted. “He battled his first beast, met his first Warrior and...found out who his father is. This is all new to him.”
His Blutjagd blazed nearly out of control. “Lynne didn’t tell him my name?”
Adam flicked a red-faced look at each of the Armens in turn. “She...didn’t know which name to give him. This... Lynne wasn’t so picky about who fathered her son—or how.”
Jordan choked. He and Matt stared at each other. Memories of his farewell from Lynne when she’d announced that she was moving danced in Matt’s mind. He’d found out later that she’d spent the following night with Jordan. They’d laughed about it at the time, at the true blade chaser she’d been, getting the most Warrior cock she could before she lost her supply. The implications of what Adam was saying were no doubt as clear to Jordan as they were to Matt.
“Oh, no. She wouldn’t dare,” Jordan managed.
“She did dare,” Adam confirmed. “Before you attack him again, keep in mind that, until the beast last night, Scott had two candidates for the position. At best, he considers you both gullible.”
“At worst...” Matt’s mind refused to consider the rest. Lynne could have told him anything in the time she had.
The shower turned off, and Scott emerged, wrapped in a towel. His jaw tightened. “I thought I invited you to leave,” he hinted, brushing past them to a battered bureau.
“I can’t do that.”
He snorted in seeming disgust. “You make a habit of staying where you’re not wanted?”
“I make a habit of teaching, protecting, and nurturing my children, even those who hate me for it.”
Scott turned with a navy blue T-shirt in hand and a scowl on his face. “I’m past needing nurturing, I can protect myself, and there’s nothing you can teach me that I want to learn.” He pulled the shirt over his head, motioning pointedly to the door as he pushed his arm through.
Tyler raised a hand to still Matt’s counterargument. “You’ve met your first beast. Whether you like it or not, that wound of yours is only the first. Unless you want the next one to be fatal, you will have to learn to do your duty—”
“I don’t have a duty. Where do you get off, coming to my home and demanding anything of me?”
“Our laws—”
“Your laws! They are not mine. My laws fall under the penal code of whatever locality I hang my hat in. In case you missed this, I’m not part of your precious family, and I don’t want to be. Live with it.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“Bet me.”
“Scott’s right,” Jordan offered. “He does have a choice.”
Matt turned on him, barely restraining the urge to gut his older brother by a year. “You know he doesn’t.”
“Sure he does. Every Warrior does. Do your duty or face the co
nsequences.”
Matt’s Blutjagd burned fiercely at that, and he took a step closer to Scott, placing himself between Jordan and his son. His hand settled on his sacred weapon.
“Matt,” Tyler warned.
“You’re not killing my son,” Matt managed in a low, dangerous voice.
“Matt—”
He turned to include his father in his arc radius, glancing to Scott out of the corner of his eye, nearly wincing at his pallor. “You’re not. Either of you. He has the right to be angry. At me, if he wants to. At the situation. At the entire Warrior world. At—his mother, I surely hope. You’re not killing him for it.”
“He needs training. You know this life has to be driving him insane.”
Scott pulled jeans out of another drawer. “You know what’s driving me insane? All of you.” But, his hands shook and his face was tense. He glanced toward the bathroom, probably laying odds on his chance of reaching the dagger he’d left with his dirty clothes.
Matt’s heart ached. Though he knew what Jordan was doing, instinct honed in raising two sons told him that Scott wouldn’t be driven to his family by fear of the consequences. “I want to talk to my son alone,” he requested.
Jordan passed the empty liquor bottle into Matt’s hands on the way out the door. Tyler followed him with a clap on his shoulder. Adam nodded his agreement and shut the door behind them.
Matt waited for Scott to finish dressing, heartened that he’d stopped glancing toward his weapon when no signs of attack came. He took his time, pulling on his jeans and socks...even a pair of hiking boots, but he didn’t face Matt when he was done. Scott stared at the kitchenette, his fists clenched, seemingly waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Matt sighed. “Believe it or not, you’re not just a duty to me. I really do want to get to know you.”
“It’ll pass. It’s just the shock of finding out about me. It’s fine, you know. I haven’t had a father for twenty-three years. Don’t put yourself out.”