Chander sat up and got out of bed. “I’d like to wear real clothes. Jeans, T-shirt.”
“Go take your shower.”
“Stop fondling my boxers and hand them over.”
Alaric handed him the whole pile of clothes and began making the bed. “Yell if you fall or anything.”
“Very helpful,” Chander stated as he headed for the doorway. “Make sure Victor has the coffee ready.”
“Doctor says no caffeine.”
“A cup of coffee isn’t going to kill me,” Chander said as he trailed out of the bedroom.
“No, but I might if you don’t follow the doctor’s orders.”
“And people call me mean,” Chander grumbled.
“Be nice and I’ll let you have pizza later.”
Chander’s head popped back into the doorway. “Don’t toy with me.”
“I’m serious.”
“I have the best mate ever,” Chander announced with a giant goofy grin. Alaric was charmed by it.
“Yes, you do,” he agreed. “Now take your shower and if you’re good for the rest of the day, you’ll get pizza for dinner.”
Chander rolled his eyes before he disappeared and then reappeared a few seconds later. “Alaric?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you arrange for the warlocks and wizards to come over?”
Alaric could understand the urgency. Chander wanted to get to the bottom of his anomaly, and he was only too happy to help him. “Absolutely.”
Chander called out his thanks before taking off, and Alaric headed out of their room into the kitchen. With a smidge of guilt, he poured himself a cup of coffee and greeted the other three men who lived in the condo.
“I told Chand he could have pizza for dinner.”
Curses greeted Alaric’s ears as he took the first delicious sip of his drink.
“What the fuck for?” Baxter asked.
“He likes it.”
“Do we have to eat it?” Benton asked.
“This one time, yes,” Alaric said. “Let’s consider it our welcome home celebration for Chand.”
There were grumbles but the sentinels settled down without any further protests.
“We’re going to have a sorcerer meeting,” Alaric informed them.
“I’ll text Dra’Kaedan,” Benton offered as he fished his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll tell him to bring his warlocks and the D’Vaire wizards.”
“I will handle Vadimas,” Baxter added.
Victor was standing in the kitchen with a strange look on his face. “Everything okay, Victor?” Alaric asked.
“Oh yes, I was just wondering what to do with this chicken I marinated for dinner tonight.”
“Lunch perhaps?” Alaric asked.
The cat shifter beamed and rushed over to Alaric. He threw his arms around him and hugged him. Alaric was so surprised he almost dropped his coffee. Sentinels weren’t exactly affectionate people beyond the few mated ones and then only with their other halves.
“Good morning,” Chander said from behind Alaric.
Chander was greeted by everyone and Alaric managed to extricate himself from the demonstrative housekeeper.
“You’re drinking coffee,” his mate accused.
“You get juice,” Alaric responded.
“I hate juice.”
“It’s good for you,” Victor insisted as Alaric walked over to the table and took a seat. Chander did the same. “I’ll pour you a glass of tomato juice. You’ll love it.”
Alaric winked and kissed Chander’s pissed off mouth. “It’ll be so good.”
“It tastes like butt.”
“I’m trying really hard here not to make a rimming joke,” Baxter said.
“No sex talk,” Chander ordered as he took the glass of hated juice from Victor. “We’re practicing abstinence, remember?”
“Oh my goodness, you poor thing. How will you cope?” Victor asked as he went back to the kitchen. “Especially with a hot mate like Alaric.”
Alaric rubbed the back of Chander’s neck. “I’m a scared virgin,” he told the room. “It gives me more time to get over my nerves.”
“You can’t be serious.” Victor’s eyes went wide. It seemed the cat shifter was not up to speed on the way sexuality worked for sentinels. “Men must throw themselves at you.”
“It’s a sentinel thing. We like to play hard to get,” Benton explained.
“Ben perfected it before I finally got into his pants,” Baxter added.
Conversation waned as Victor brought them all sorts of delicious breakfast foods and Alaric ate his fill while keeping a close eye on Chander to make sure he did the same. Chander didn’t disappoint and cleaned up everything on his plate. The tomato juice, however, remained untouched as the dishes were brought to the kitchen. Alaric made note of it and as he did with his sentinels, would make sure it wouldn’t be served to him again.
Chapter 34
Chander tucked one foot under his thigh as he got comfortable on the couch. He scooted back a little until Alaric’s arm came around to rest on his leg as they curled up together. The living room was full of people, including all the occupants of the Daray household. Joining them were the three D’Vaire warlocks, the Grand Warlock’s familiar as well as his mate, the Prism Wizard, and both young D’Vaire wizards. Victor was passing out glasses of tea and Dra’Kaedan was wolfing down cookies.
Running his tongue over his teeth, Chander thought about turning around and licking Alaric’s face. He was surprised at his thoughts; it wasn’t that he was interested in starting anything sexual—he was hardly in any condition to enjoy it yet—what Chander wanted was to stake his claim. He’d walked in to breakfast to find his housekeeper wrapped around Alaric. For a moment, he’d considered shoving him to the floor and screaming mine mine mine at him.
Sanity had reasserted itself rather quickly after that, and Chander had to laugh at his thoughts. He’d been the one to keep shoving Alaric away, and now he wanted to all but piss on the man because he’d been given a hug. It was completely unreasonable and he knew it, but he’d never claimed to be perfect. Now he was glad he was mated to a sentinel and since they were rarely demonstrative, he could keep from embarrassing himself.
He laid his hand over Alaric’s where it rested on his thigh and waited for Dra’Kaedan to finish off the plate of snacks. The man really did love to eat.
“Where are we?” Chander asked.
“Living room,” Baxter replied. Chander glared at him.
“He means, with the anomaly, you tool,” Benton snapped.
“So many tool jokes, so little time.”
“Anyway, Vadimas?” Chander asked.
“I’ve compared the anomaly to everything in our database, and there is nothing remotely close to it,” Vadimas said. “I can’t even tell you if it’s a virus, infection, or something you were born with.”
“He’s over six hundred years old. He should have some blood samples from prior doctor visits,” Delaney, one of the D’Vaire wizards, suggested.
Vadimas tossed an accusatory glance at Chander. “Except he never went to the doctor.”
“I didn’t have time to run to the doctor every time I got a headache,” Chander countered.
“Most people make it there to have the occasional physical,” Vadimas argued.
“I apologize for not having the foresight to get at least one physical,” Chander replied sourly.
“As well you should,” Vadimas retorted. Chander heard Alaric’s chuckle from behind him.
“Tell me exactly what this anomaly does,” Chander demanded.
“It’s eating the heart muscle,” Dra’Kaedan answered. “On a microscopic level, all the tissue is a fucking mess.”
Chander didn’t know it was quite that bad, but he wasn’t going to overthink it. It was happening and he had to deal with it. If he allowed himself to sink into a funk, he’d lose precious time he didn’t have to fix it. “Okay, so we can probably rule out being born with it.”<
br />
“I don’t see that we should,” Vadimas said. “It may have been something that was there and increased in severity as you aged. Or it might have been there all along and been triggered by something that changed in your medical history.”
“Changed how?” Alaric asked.
“Dra’Kaedan was once under a plethora of dark spells,” Vadimas explained. “It was stable until he mated. Once that bloodbond was there, the spells began to tear apart. He, for all intents and purposes, died as a result. His parents were able to bring him back from the other side of the veil.”
“Do you think our matebond triggered his heart attack?” Alaric asked. Chander laced their fingers together. Even if that was the case, he was not going to allow Alaric to blame himself.
“I can’t say at this point with any level of certainty,” Vadimas revealed. “But we do know it reacts to your blood. When Chander received his transfusions, it became more active. I wouldn’t call it a negative reaction though. Sampling his blood afterward, we could see the cells with the anomaly present clustered around your added cells.”
“Not all my cells have the anomaly?” Chander asked.
“No, it appears fifty percent of your blood volume has it,” Dra’Kaedan explained.
“Why can’t we simply remove the affected blood cells then?” Delaney asked. “Alaric could resupply his blood.”
“It’s something we thought about,” Dre’Kariston said. “The problem is when his blood volume was reduced due to the tear in his heart, as his body regenerated cells they continued to produce half regular cells and half with this anomaly present.”
“It comes from my marrow then,” Chander replied.
“It would appear so,” Vadimas agreed.
“What can do that?” Chander asked. “Can a virus or infection?”
“If the virus is attacking the marrow yes,” Vadimas explained. “We don’t have that many infections in sorcerers, but I have consulted human medical books and they do suffer from infections of the marrow. You may just be the first to have contracted this.”
“A wonderful thing to aspire to,” Chander deadpanned.
“I’m stuck on the half thing,” Dre’Kariston said. “An infection or virus wouldn’t have such a neat, even distribution.”
“You have a theory?” Alaric asked.
Dre’Kariston scrunched up his face. “Not a well-defined one, and I can’t offer any real science to support it.”
“We’re treading into new territory here,” Chander stated. “Even a germ of an idea is better than nothing, which is all we’ve come up with so far.”
“All right,” Dre’Kariston replied. “No laughing but what if you’re a hybrid?”
“A hybrid?” Chander echoed in disbelief.
“It’s half of all your cells,” Dre’Kariston pointed out. “Exactly half. If you look at the blood of your assistant who is half necromancer and half druid you’d find that neat even split of cells. His necro ones are more dominant, which is why he can practice dark sorcery and not druidic spells. Maybe whatever your other half is, you have to figure out a way to access it.”
Chander let that idea settle into his brain. “Your theory is I’m half necromancer and it’s a type of hybrid that can use both sides of their magic?”
“It’s just a theory, but I don’t think we can disprove it,” Dre’Kariston said. “We don’t know who your parents were, so we can’t trace your bloodlines. The problem is, hybrids don’t usually have half their blood eating their heart muscle.”
“The other interesting fact to consider is, no hybrid has ever been Fate-born or Fate-chosen to rule a race, and Chander is the Arch Lich,” Vadimas added.
“I thought of that,” Dre’Kariston responded. “It does make it less viable. Perhaps it’s another type of dark sorcery we don’t know about.”
“There are certainly races we don’t know and ones we’ve never added to our database. Some even belong to the Council,” Vadimas replied. “Sentinels, for example, weren’t added until Alaric offered to allow me to take a sample of his blood.”
Chander smiled. “I don’t suppose I’m half sentinel?”
Vadimas returned his grin. “It would answer everything if you were. A resurrected race combined with one that is not—even the one that is responsible for that resurrection would be incompatible with life.”
“Not to butt in but didn’t you say Alaric gave Chander blood? How could he do that if it’s incompatible with life?” Victor asked.
“Fate makes exceptions for mates because her law of mates supersedes the incompatibility of races,” Vadimas said. “No matter what race you are, when you have your matebond ceremony you become unable to have any blood transfusion except for that of your other half. She has added some kind of Fate magic to that blood to be sure it works over whatever race combination you are.”
“That holds true for all races except for vampires,” Chander told his housekeeper. “Vampires who mate with humans follow that rule, but if you have a matebond between two vampires they’re still able to handle other blood. But that’s because they need it to live and cannot feed off one another.”
“Oh, okay, that makes sense,” Victor replied.
“So, what we’ve discovered so far is we can’t rule out anything,” Chander said.
“No, and I’m most anxious to rule out something,” Vadimas responded. “Right now, it feels as if we are exploring so many different options we’re making little progress.”
“I was waiting to hear my idea was so absurd we could toss it out,” Dre’Kariston added with a wry smile.
“It’s viable,” Chander insisted. “Difficult to prove but like you, I can see the logic in the fifty percent split of cells.”
“We have a very basic test we use to distinguish races,” Vadimas explained. “There are enough differences in our basic genetics we don’t need advanced DNA unless we are trying to prove heritage. If we did a more in-depth analysis of your blood we may be able to look into Dre’Kariston’s theory. Right now, we’ve been focusing more on how the anomaly reacts to certain agents to treat it most effectively.”
“Has Chander’s blood ever been matched to the other necromancers in the database?” Dre’Kariston asked.
“I entered it into the system a month ago when I first got it,” Vadimas said. “No matches. Which is strange—the necromancers have been very good about donating samples. We have an ongoing project to get as many of the Council members in our DNA database and most of the sorcery races have been eager to help. The shifters are somewhat less interested in participating, but that doesn’t affect this situation. Shifters and sorcerers have very different blood.”
“So, we’d know if Chand was going to change into a dragon?” Brogan asked.
“Yes, if he’s a hybrid, he’s certainly no beast,” Vadimas replied.
“How does the leader of the necromancers not have any living relatives or anyone of his bloodline in the database?” Idris asked.
“A very good question,” Vadimas responded. Everyone turned to stare at Chander but he was just as clueless as they were.
“I was supposedly left on Elder Hubert’s doorstep when I was a couple of weeks old,” Chander explained. “That’s all I know. I already had the skull on my chest and the elders recognized the significance of that. I was crowned Arch Lich.”
“Everything was normal when growing up?” Dre’Kariston asked.
“Yes, I was normal,” Chander said. “Except I stopped growing in my mid-teens and I still look like I’m fourteen.”
Alaric chuckled. “Not quite.”
“Close enough,” Chander replied.
“No pain, no other strange issues when you were young?” Dre’Kariston asked.
“My magic has always been very strong, but I’m the Arch Lich so that’s not unusual though I can access it faster than any other necromancer. With the experience I have now, I know I shouldn’t have been able to resurrect the Reverent Knights and the Venerable Knigh
ts all in one day but I did. But no pain until the last couple of years.”
“I never thought about that before,” Dra’Kaedan stated. “You resurrected the four most powerful fallen knights in one day when you were seventeen. We’re close in age and our magic is pretty damn close in strength. There’s no way I could have cast four strong spells like that when I was seventeen.”
“Weird, I know,” Chander replied. “And it really pisses off the elders.”
“You did have help though, right?” Dre’Kariston asked. “The story has always been you had the other leaders of the Council with you.”
Chander nodded. “They were there. Killian healed Drystan and Conley since we had their bodies and they were killed with swords. We didn’t want them to have any scars. But I resurrected them alone. The others spread the story that they helped but mostly Egidius spent the time bitching and conning me out of Conley’s body, and Jurdann as an air mage couldn’t offer much to help.”
“Your magic sits close to the surface, but it’s grown at a normal rate,” Dra’Kaedan said.
“Exactly.”
“All right, we can start with more in-depth testing of your DNA to see if we can gain additional information. I didn’t think to push further because I never considered the hybrid theory. I’ll talk to your doctor and see if there are more tests we have overlooked. We can’t leave any stones unturned,” Vadimas insisted.
“Give me an avenue to research,” Chander demanded.
“I’ll call you this afternoon after I speak with the doctor and decide how to divvy up our different avenues.” Vadimas rose to his feet.
“Thanks, everyone, I really appreciate it,” Chander told them. They all said their good-byes and headed out. Chander was exhausted and overwhelmed by all the possibilities but also eager to get to work to find out how to fix whatever was eating his heart. He turned around on the couch to see Alaric and found him grinning.
“You guys are really smart. You’ll figure this out.”
“Maybe I’m half unicorn,” Chander suggested. “Vann would love that. He’s always wanted to meet one.”
“Nope, can’t be a shifter.”
Rise of the Lich Sentinel Page 24