Ruhn stepped up to the front door of the farmhouse and found himself straightening his wool jacket. There was blood on it. His knuckles were busted. And he had been hit a couple of times in the face, although the pain was muted from the cold.
He was a fucking mess.
After Saxton had dematerialized out of the scene behind the French restaurant, Ruhn had spoken with the Brothers for a time. They didn’t seem particularly bothered by any of the violence or the fact that he’d nearly killed the human. But their opinion was not what mattered to him.
He knocked on the door and stepped back, stomping his boots in preparation for going in. And then things were open. Saxton was on the other side, his coat having been removed, his blond hair flopped off his cowlick as if he had been dragging restless hands through it.
His stare locked on Ruhn’s left eye, the one that had its own heartbeat from the swelling.
Ruhn lifted a hand and covered whatever was going on up there. But that was stupid. “May I come in?”
Saxton seemed to shake himself. “Yes, please. It’s cold. I’m making coffee?”
As the male indicated the way in, Ruhn followed the direction and then just stood there in the little entry area at the base of the stairs. Saxton’s eyes traveled around, but always returned to Ruhn’s face.
Maybe his injuries were worse than he thought? They didn’t feel like much. But then, with his high pain tolerance, they never did.
“It’s fine,” he said as he touched his face. “Whatever this is.”
Saxton cleared his throat. “Yes. Of course. Ah, coffee?”
Ruhn shook his head and proceeded in the solicitor’s wake to the back of the house. Sure enough, there were a pair of mugs on the counter and the scent of fresh brew in the air.
“Do you like anything in yours?” Saxton went for the pot and pulled it out from its base. “I just like a little sugar in mine—”
“I was conscripted into a fighting ring. For a decade.”
Saxton slowly pivoted, coffeepot in his hand. “I’m sorry?”
Ruhn paced around and tried not to get lost in how much he hated talking about the past. “It was an indentured fighting ring, run in South Carolina. Humans do them for dogs and birds. Vampires do it for our own species. I spent ten years getting in the ring with other males so that people could bet on the outcome. I was very good at it and I hated it. Every second.”
When Saxton didn’t say anything, he stopped and looked across the homey kitchen at the other male. Such surprise. Such stunned shock.
Fates, he wanted to throw up.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted. Even though he wasn’t sure exactly what he was apologizing for.
No, wait, he knew. It was the fact he had anything like this to confess to such a fine, upstanding male—and also now that he’d spoken of the past, Ruhn was drowning in it once again.
He remembered the stench of the stables where the fighting males were kept. The spoiled food. The kill-or-be-killed reality that had meant he had been in the ring even with those just out of their transitions. He had had to beat others who were weaker than him and be beaten by those closer to his level. And all the while, the masters of the fighting ring had profited from the bodies that had been maimed, crippled…destroyed.
The young ones were what haunted him the most: all those begging, bloodshot eyes, and pleading mouths, and heaving chests from pain and exertion. He had cried every time at the end. When the moment had inevitably come, his tears had run through the dirt, sweat, and blood down his face.
But if he did not do the job, his family was going to pay the price.
And so he had learned that in fact you could die even as you lived.
“I’m sorry,” he croaked again.
Saxton blinked. And then put the coffeepot back in the machine without pouring anything. “I’m not…ah, I don’t believe I knew of such a thing in the New World. I have heard stories about betting on males in brokered combat in the Old Country, however. How did you…if you don’t mind me asking, how did you come to be a part of the practice? ‘Conscripted’ means in servitude. Were you…how did this happen?”
Ruhn crossed his arms over his chest and let his head hang. “I loved my father. He was a male who provided well for my mahmen and his family. We never were rich, but we never were left wanting.” Images of the male chopping wood, and building things, and fixing cars, replaced the ugliness of the fighting ring. “He had a weakness, though. All of us do, and those of us who think they do not are not being honest. He had a gambling problem. He bet on the fights for some time, and eventually racked up so many debts that not only was he going to lose our house—but my sister and my mahmen…well, they were in danger. They were going to be conscripted for…activities of another sort. Do you understand what I’m saying?” As Saxton paled and nodded, Ruhn continued, “I had to do something to cover what he owed. I mean, I wasn’t going to stand by and have those two innocent females pay…Fates, I can still hear the sound of my father begging the boss, weeping for some more time to try to pay up.”
When his voice cracked, he coughed a little. “You know, I think I will have some coffee, if you do not mind.”
“Let me get it for you—”
Ruhn put his hand out. “No. I will do it.”
He needed something to occupy him for a moment; otherwise, he was liable to break down. The memories were too clear, like lasers burning through him. He could still remember the banging on the door when the boss had shown up and threatened to take his sister and use her to work off the debts.
The male had said if their mahmen came, too, it would go quicker. Five years instead of ten. They had until dawn came to make good.
Instead, Ruhn had departed before the sun had risen and he had traveled farther south, to the deep woods that had hidden within them an extensive operation of fighting, illegal gambling, and prostitution. They had tested him out in the offices, sending in a male who had been half his height and twice his weight. Ruhn had taken a brutal beating, but he had just kept getting up, over and over again, even as he had bled from his mouth and from cuts and bruises all over his body.
After they had accepted him, he had made his mark on some kind of document he hadn’t been able to read, and that was that.
Coming back to the present, Ruhn looked down and found a full mug in his hand. Guess he had poured himself the coffee.
Taking a test sip, he found that the taste was perfect—but a sting suggested his lower lip was split. “As I said, I needed to be the one who fixed it. My father was too old to fight, and I was out of my transition by about twenty years at that time. I’ve always been big and very strong. Sometimes what we do to survive…is harder than what we do when we die.” He shrugged. “But my parents were able to rebuild their lives. My sister…well, that was another story.” He looked at the solicitor. “Please know, it was not something I would have chosen freely. It is not in my nature to be violent, but I learned that I will do anything to take care of those I love. I also learned that if someone is trying to hurt me…I will defend myself, to the death.”
He shook his head. “My father…he never got over what happened. He never bet a single penny after I went away, and by the time I came out, they were both working and in good health. I couldn’t see them, of course, while I was fighting. You were not allowed out of your stall.”
“Stall?” Saxton said with horror.
“They kept us underground in stalls, as you would horses. The spaces were six feet by six feet. We were allowed out only to fight, and we had no visitors except for the females they gave us to feed from. That’s what they wanted to use my sister and my mahmen for.” Through a tight throat, he added, “And sometimes we had to service…well. Anyway.”
Saxton seemed to wipe his eyes. “I cannot imagine what that was like.”
“It was…” Ruhn touched the side of his head. “It did something in here. It rewired me, and I wasn’t sure whether it was permanent….Until tonight, I hadn’t been in a position where I was fighting again. It came back, though. All of it.”
He took another draw from the mug, not because he was particularly thirsty, but because he was done with the conversation. The facts had been shared, and he had tried to be honest without talking too much about how ugly it had all been.
How ugly he had been when he’d been there.
As the silence stretched out, he risked a glance at Saxton—
His breath caught. The male’s eyes were full of compassion, not disgust or fear.
“Come sit down,” Saxton said softly. “You’re bleeding and I want to clean you up. Sit.”
When Ruhn continued to just stand there, Saxton went over, took the male’s hand, and nudged him toward the table. As Ruhn sat down, the coffee in his mug was wobbling because his hands were shaking.
That made two of them on the trembling front, Saxton thought as he walked to the sink and started the water to warm up. Peeling free a couple of paper towels from a roll mounted on a dowel, he tried to comprehend what Ruhn had been through.
No wonder the male’s affect had changed as it had during the fight behind the restaurant—that blank stare had been more upsetting than the violence itself. Indeed, after living with the Brotherhood for this long and hearing their stories of being in the field? Saxton was more than well-versed in violence. No, the disturbing thing had been the fact that Ruhn had disappeared into some other part of himself and had had to be all but pried off his prey.
A wild animal unleashed.
Saxton tested the rush of water with his forefinger. It was warm enough. Pumping a little soap onto the Quicker Picker Upper, he got the towel wet and then turned back around. Ruhn was staring into the mug, his brows down, his shoulders tight.
One did not have to guess where the male had gone in his mind.
To have to save his sister and mahmen from being used as veins and no doubt sexual outlets for the fighters? Kept in a stall? All for the mistakes of his sire?
For ten years, penned up like a tiger, not knowing at any given hour whether he was going to be sent back into the ring to be beaten or killed. And along the way, he had to have been injured and learned to live with loneliness and pain.
It was too sad to even contemplate.
Walking over, he expected Ruhn to look up. When he did not, Saxton put his hand lightly on the male’s shoulder.
Ruhn jumped and knocked his mug over. “Oh! I’m sorry—”
“I’ve got it.” Saxton went back and snagged the paper towel roll. “Here. I’ve got it.”
Unraveling a bunch of the Bounty or whatever it was, he threw the stuff down and let its absorbency work its magic.
“Turn toward me.” He hooked his forefinger under Ruhn’s chin and brought the male’s face around. “That’s it.”
Ruhn flinched when he made contact, but Saxton was pretty sure that was more because, for him, reality was a jumbled-up mess at the moment.
“This is quite a cut,” Saxton murmured as he went to work on a laceration over Ruhn’s brow. “And it’s getting more swollen by the moment. Maybe we should take you in to have Doc Jane or Dr. Manello look at this.”
“I’ve had worse.”
Saxton paused. “Yes. I’m sure you have.”
As he resumed cleaning off the dried blood, he wished he could say the right thing, the proper thing…anything that could possibly relieve some of that decade. There were no words, however.
But there was a remedy.
“Is the fighting operation still ongoing?” he asked tightly.
Ruhn shook his head. “There was a revolt by the fighters about a year after I left. They got themselves loose, killed the guards and the enforcers, and slaughtered the boss. The compound is all overgrown now.” He cleared his throat. “I went back, you see. Not once, but a couple of times. I was trying to…make sense of it all. Ultimately, I failed.”
“I don’t know how you could.”
“As I said, I did it for my family. That is the only peace I have ever found.” Ruhn exhaled long and slow. “But you know, I also regret that I let my sister down. Maybe if I had been home, she wouldn’t have fallen in with that violent male. Perhaps I could have done something before he moved her so far away, up here to Caldwell. After I got out, I tried to find her, but she’d left no trail. My parents knew that he was dangerous—I think he must have relocated her as a form of control. I hate that she died without me there to save her.”
“You did what you could,” Saxton said sadly. “At the end of the night, that’s all any of us can do.”
He went back to the sink with what was left of the roll and got some wet with nothing but water. Over at Ruhn once again, he made sure he wiped all the soap away. The rest of what was on the male’s face was bruising, and you couldn’t clean that up.
“You say that I did an unselfish thing with Bitty,” Ruhn said roughly. “I didn’t. I saved her from me. What I did to those men out in that parking lot? I’ve got a bad side, and in the end, I knew she was safer with Rhage and Mary. Plus…what if she ever found out? She couldn’t have a father like me.”
“What do you think Rhage does for the race?”
“That’s different. I wasn’t saving anyone.”
“Other than your sister and mahmen.”
“I don’t know.”
Saxton dried off the area. “This looks bad.”
“It’ll be all right.” Ruhn glanced up. “You are very kind to me.”
Saxton brushed a fingertip over the male’s jaw. And then he stroked the thick hair back, and touched Ruhn’s lower lip.
“You’re cut here, too,” he whispered.
Leaning down, he gently kissed the place that had been torn by a human’s fist. And as he straightened, a warning started to go off at the base of his brain.
As much as he was attracted to Ruhn, and wanted to be with the male, hurt people…hurt people.
Yes, yes, it was the kind of thing you could see with a sappy image as a meme on Facebook, a trite little four-word construction that seemed custom-fit for the snowflake generation’s perpetual, depressive sensitivity. But as a rescuer, it was entirely like him to take in a stray who had been abused. How did he know that Ruhn’s past was truly over, though?
He thought of that look in the male’s eyes—or rather the absence of expression—during that fight, especially when Ruhn had been about to snap the human’s neck.
“It’s okay,” Ruhn said roughly as he pushed his chair back and got to his feet.
“What is?”
The other male took a step back. And then another. “I understand.”
“Understand what?” Saxton asked.
“I don’t trust me, either.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I can see it in your eyes.” Ruhn nodded. “And I get it. You’re trying to reconcile what you saw with what you wish me to be. I live with that all the time. Every day when I close my eyes, I am reminded of the things I did. And if I forget, I just have to look in the mirror.”
“Ruhn, don’t make up my mind for me.”
With rough hands, the male took off his jacket. Then he turned around and yanked his shirt all the way up to his shoulders.
Saxton gasped. That broad back was covered with a pattern of welts—except no, that wasn’t it. They weren’t marks made by a whip. The four-inch-long cuts were far too regular, too surgical—and there were at least thirty of them, fanning out from the spine. They had to have been brined into place, salt being poured over the open wounds when they had been made to ensure that the things didn’t close and disappear as the skin regenerated.
“Thirty-seven,” Ruhn said baldly. “I killed thirty-seven males with my bare hands. And every time I did, they took a knife to me and added to my tally. It was done for the crowd, so they would bet more money. It was for the show.”
Saxton covered his mouth with his palm, tears spearing into his eyes.
As Ruhn pivoted back around, all Saxton wanted to do was throw his arms around the male and hold him until the memories didn’t hurt quite as badly.
But it was obvious that was a no-go.
Ruhn pulled the shirt back into place and put his jacket on once more. “I’m going to go now. But you need to tell me where to drop Mistress Miniahna’s things off.” In a dead voice, the male tacked on, “And not to worry. I will not interact with the females. I’ll leave the things in a safe place and stay away from them.”
“Ruhn, please don’t—”
“So where am I going?”
“You are not lesser than, Ruhn.”
“Oh, I’m worse. I’m a straight-up killer. None of those males wanted to be there any more than I did. They were all conscripted, too, working off debts. They were not killers, not any more than I was—at least not when I first arrived there. But I am a walking trophy to what I turned into. I have blood on my hands, Saxton. I am a murderer.”
The male walked over to the archway. “So tell me, where am I dropping off the—”
“You’re not a murderer.”
Ruhn’s head lowered in defeat. “That’s an emotional declaration, not a legal one, and you know it.”
“Ruhn, you—”
“Look, I don’t like to talk about all of this.” Ruhn’s eyes skipped around the kitchen. “I sweep it under the rug during the waking hours and I pray during my sleep that I won’t remember my dreams. The only time I ever discussed it before now was when the Brothers looked into my background because of Bitty—and even then, I didn’t…well, it doesn’t matter. I guess I’m telling you all this because I feel like you deserve the honesty. There was something happening between us, and it was on both sides. But see, I know who you are, and you don’t…well, unless you know the truth, you don’t really know me. And that look in your eyes? The wariness, the suspicion, it tells me I did the right thing.”
“I can trust you.”
“You don’t have to.” Ruhn touched over his heart. “One thing that I have learned after all these years working for the glymera is that the poor have only their dignity and pride to offer the world. My father taught me that. And I cannot have my dignity if I lie to someone I’m falling in love with.”
Saxton’s breath caught in his chest.
But before he could respond, Ruhn shook his head and turned away. “You know, I actually think it’s best that someone else make that trip into town. I’ve got to go.”
“Ruhn—”
The male stopped, and did not look back. “Please, just let me go. Just…let me leave.”
Every instinct in Saxton’s body told him to stop Ruhn from going.
But it wasn’t up to him.
A moment later, the front door of the farmhouse shut quietly, and Saxton fell into the chair Ruhn had been sitting in. The coffee was still warm in his mug.
That did not last, however.