Gates of Rapture(2)

I’ll do one better. I’ll tell you what your real problem is: You need to get laid.

Okay, Brynna had a point. He chuckled.

That’s better, asshole. Just remember, you built a strong force here on Mortal Earth and tied it to Thorne’s army on Second. We’re not helpless anymore. Trust in that, beast-man.

Beast-man.

He laughed. Brynna always made him laugh.

She smiled as she swept her gaze forward in the direction of the event grounds. Do you see this obstacle set? I’m going to win it tonight.

He shifted the child in his arms, getting a little more comfortable as he moved steadily forward. A stack of logs fifteen feet long, bark still on and braced by huge steel girders, climbed at a steep angle sixty feet into the air. Creating the obstacle-set had been a feat all by itself, but the Thunder God Warriors—the nickname for all Militia Warriors in any country—had outdone themselves.

The teamwork required to pull the games together had been an army-growing exercise. And if Leto knew one thing, it was how to build an army.

He stopped and stared up at the precise stack of logs. To win this set, a warrior would have to possess thighs of granite and speed, extraordinary speed, preternatural speed.

You haven’t got a chance in hell, he sent. He loved poking the bear.

She turned and glared at him. Like hell I don’t.

He merely smiled.

She rolled her eyes. If all those brats weren’t hanging on you, like you were Christ or something, I’d flip you off.

Brynna learning restraint? he sent. Impossible.

She sighed. I’m trying.

Brynna had been one of the biggest surprises of his life, and a good one at that. She was tall, six-two, and had a couple of tattoos and piercings, straight black hair just past her shoulders, and steel-gray eyes. She was a refugee Seer, having escaped from a Seers Fortress a few centuries ago. Through the future streams, Diallo had found her and brought her to the colony to escape Second Earth Seer oppression.

She liked men, and more recently she’d discovered she liked making war. She was now a Militia Warrior.

She’d suggested more than once that they take their friendship to a much more productive level, but he’d refused. Sex with Brynna would have been wrong. She was his friend. No, she was more than that. She was his best friend. As much as he wanted to take a woman into his bed, he valued all that she was in his life way too much to dilute it with sex.

But there was another reason he’d refused.

His breh had shown up in the form of Warrior Thorne’s sister: Grace Albion. Her surname was an ancient designation the family had all but dropped. Grace and Thorne’s family originally came from the British Isles. Everyone knew her simply as Grace. But oh, God, even thinking about her brought a flush rising to his skin.

He took a few deep breaths. Thoughts of Grace tended to bring on his beast more quickly. Sure enough, the vibration strengthened, so shit.

But Grace was gone. She’d been gone all these months, having left with the Fourth ascender, Casimir, to who the hell knew where. Because no one could find her in the future streams, not even Marguerite, Thorne’s powerful Seer breh, it was presumed Grace was off-dimension. He wouldn’t be surprised if Casimir had taken her to his home world, Fourth Earth. Casimir wasn’t a warrior, just some very powerful but worthless hedonist who had also caught Grace’s breh-scent and somehow enticed her to go with him.

But all of it was a nightmare starting with the bizarre fact that Grace had caught the scent of not one but two brehs: himself and Casimir. The breh-hedden alone was such a new concept on Second Earth that no one could explain why Grace had actually ended up with two.

But Grace had taken it in stride, one of her many fine qualities, even if the situation had ruined something in Leto’s heart. She seemed to have a strong intuition that her bizarre connection to Casimir was necessary, to Leto’s survival as well as her own. So instead of completing the bonding ritual of the breh-hedden with Leto, she’d taken off with Casimir, convinced she had to for all their sakes.

He was still pissed off as hell about Grace leaving, but he couldn’t exactly complain since she was better off with anyone other than his own sweet self. He had issues, maybe a hundred of them. But having served as a spy would do that to a man, split his soul deep, make him question everything. He was still recovering from that mission. Though well out of it, a century of living apart from his warrior brothers and of joining forces with a hated enemy had done a number on his mind.

That he was still alive seemed like some kind of cosmic joke. He deserved to die. He knew it, and there were way too many nights when, yeah, that was exactly what he wanted. He’d betrayed his warrior brothers and he’d betrayed Endelle, the leader of Second Earth, by building an army of two million on behalf of that bastard Darian Greaves.