Aaron Graver—Graver to his MC—stared down at his brother, Justiss.  For a second, he just stood there blinking because what his eyes were telling him was outside the realm of possibility.

Was that blood? 

It couldn’t be.  

Seriously. It couldn’t be.  

Even as his mind scurried through several further denials, more ruby red liquid spilled from a source unseen on Justiss’s prone form, and the man’s body seemed to be shrinking before him as though his essence, his very power was disappearing with every lost drop. 

A croak escaped Graver as terror flooded him.  He’d known fear before, but this went beyond fear. Justiss couldn’t die. He just... he couldn’t. 

Letting out a bellow that merged both halves of his soul, bear and human, his sensitive ears picked up on the clatter of dozens of feet running toward him in response to the cry that was meant both for battle as well as his grief.

There’d been a celebration of sorts happening in The Nomads’ MC rec room. Earlier that evening, Justiss had challenged and beaten a sorry SOB called Logann. Against the current Prez, Mars Donner, Logann had been spreading shit around better than a farmer did come sowing time. As Mars was newly mated, he couldn’t fight in a challenge. If he died, the nature of the mate bond would take his woman with him. So, Justiss had stepped up to the plate to take down the threat to the club’s leader, and he’d survived, mowing Logann down like the sorry sack of shit he was.  

But now, here Justiss was. He wasn’t partying like the rest. He wasn’t celebrating the fact that as thanks from the Prez, he now sat on the MC’s council. Instead, he was here. On the floor. Gasping for breath. Dying.  

Graver choked on the thought, and it was what he needed to drop to his knees and seek the source of the blood. His paralysis shamed him. He’d wasted precious moments gawking when he should have been putting pressure on the injury.  Hell, he knew to do that. Why hadn’t he been stemming the blood flow from the start?

But more terror rushed through him like a bad acid trip as the stench of death suddenly became overpowering in the air. It clung to the atmosphere with a scent that was impossible to define and yet unmistakable. He gulped air in through his mouth, trying not to inhale the smell of Justiss’s death, as his MC brothers finally reached him, tens of them yelling and hollering the instant they saw the downed man on the floor. 

“What the fuck is wrong with him?” Mars, the club’s current Prez, barked, falling to his knees too and helping Graver look for the wound that was causing such heavy blood flow.  

“I don’t know. I just found him like this,” Graver bit off, then moaned when he finally found the source of blood. It was thin but deep. A stiletto blade.  

“Moses,” Mars hissed. “That fucking knife of his. Hicks, Shark, and Jarvis, you bring me that motherfucker alive. I want to slit his throat for taking Justiss down like this. Lowlife cowards.” He let out a sigh as more blood pooled around the hands Graver held tight against the tiny wound. It was deep in Justiss’s belly, right in the soft tissue where the most damage could be done with the smallest of incisions. “It’s too late, Graver,” he murmured softly, moving his blood-stained hand to Graver’s wrist and squeezing gently.  

But Graver wouldn’t hear of it. “Fuck off, Mars. It isn’t too late. It’s never too late.”

He’d lost too many people, lost too much family to lose J. 

Justiss wasn’t blood, but he might as well have been. He was one of the brothers who had come around when Graver’s siblings had been slaughtered. Who’d held Graver’s ma while she wept and had been the one to take the fists she’d beaten against his chest as rage and sorrow and horrendous woe had flooded her until her only outlet had been violence.

He and Mars had been the ones to come and deliver the news of his elder brothers’ deaths—both of them—but Justiss, more than Mars, had taken the grief Graver had been too young to handle. He’d watched, horrified, as his mother had sobbed out her heartbreak, not seeking her youngest but finding comfort in the strong arms of some of the Clan’s eldest.

Justiss had become a source of strength to the Graver family, and a world without Justiss was no world at all.  

He gulped down his fear.

How could he…?

What could he even…?

The idea of telling his ma that another MC member had been slaughtered froze him to the core. He couldn’t do it. Josephine Graver was already looking thirty years older than she ought to. Grief had worn her down from the bright and vivacious beauty she’d been for most of Graver’s years, to the bitter, withdrawn stick insect that now lived at home. His pa was almost as bad—drinking himself to an early grave that would take his mate down with him. Losing Justiss would be the final nail in the coffin that had been looming for both his parents ever since his bros had passed on.  

Jesus, he was tired of losing people. Why did they always fucking leave him?  

Graver was sick and fucking exhausted of having to be the strong and silent one while the entire world fell about in grief, expecting him to keep it together when he was just as broken as they. Only Justiss had understood. Only Justiss had been his rock. 

“Blood sacrifice,” he whispered. Then, clearing his throat, he repeated himself a little louder. Now that the words were out there, his head seemed to clear and his mind could focus.  He realized it was what he needed to do to save his brother, and by saying it aloud he’d breathed life into the words.

Mars winced. “Are you sure, Graver? You know we only do that with mates. It’s not…”  

“Don’t even fucking say it, Mars. I don’t care if it’s not right, or if it’s not done. I’m doing it. I can’t lose Justiss. My ma can’t lose him. If he goes, she goes. And that’s it. The whole pack of cards comes tumbling down.”  

Mars let out a deep sigh. “I know things have been hard since your brothers passed,” he started, but Graver wouldn’t let him continue.  

“Hard?” he snarled, uncaring when Mars’s jaw turned white as the Prez reacted to his aggression. “Hard? You think it’s hard watching an MC brother die? What do you think it’s like watching your blood die? Justiss is the former, but he sure as fuck feels like he could be the latter. I have to save him, but you know I need your permission for this.” 

He winced again, tattooed fingers coming up to knuckle his nose in agitation. “You know I didn’t ask Jefferson when I saved Annette.”  

Jefferson was the club’s old Prez, as big a sack of shit as the men who, even in death, supported him. Logann had just passed at Justiss’s claws, and Moses was the motherfucker who’d sought retaliation.  There were a few left, but they were dwindling.  

Annette was Mars’s old lady, his blood mate and the woman who had been keeping the MC on track in the wake of Mars’s challenge of, and subsequent victory over, Jefferson. Because of the cocksucking SOB who’d led them before Mars, The Nomads were currently at war with at least four South American gangs. They had a cartel after them and huge internal pressures that were close to making the MC cave in. In the face of all that chaos, Annette had been an unusual bedrock of support for a biker gang. 

Not that Graver came into that much contact with her. He was a newbie, a patch, but still not considered old enough to do any of the tough shit. He only saw Annette as she made her way around the clubhouse, resolving problems and causing more when Mars thought one of his men was looking at her with disrespect.  

He liked her though. She had balls. And she could stand up to Mars, which the arrogant fucker needed from time to time. He was meant to lead the MC, but that didn’t mean he was goddamn perfect.

Even with terror filling him, he could sense Mars’s sheepishness. “I know you didn’t ask him for permission, but I’m not really a full member yet. I’m not old enough, am I?”  

Mars grunted, immediately dismissing that. “Bullshit. You’re tied in through family. You always have been. You’re patched, ain’t you?”  

“Yeah, but I never went through the ceremony.” It was true that the eldest and most powerful in the MC treated him like he was a full-fledged brother, but it was those on the ground level that caused him shit. 

“Because you never needed to go through it. That’s why.” He hauled in a deep breath, peered around the crowd that had gathered about Justiss’s gasping form. Graver didn’t know what he was looking for, but whatever it was, it had him mumbling, “Do it. Save him.”  

As relief flushed through him, he closed his eyes, clenching them firmly to withhold the tears that wanted to fall but couldn’t, not with his brothers looking on. 

Justiss didn’t have to die. 

He could live.  

But Graver would have to be quick. He reached in his boot for his knife and slashed at his wrist. A hiss escaped him at the discomfort but he didn’t care. He leaned over Justiss’s gasping form, noticing he was growing stiller and stiller, his breathing turning into a death rattle that shook Graver to his core. Forcing his wrist against the dying man’s mouth, he waited for the blood gushing out of his wound to hit Justiss’s lips.  

The instant it did, the two-dozen strong crowd surrounding them froze.  

Graver peered around and saw the concern and shock on their faces. Justiss had been an outcast for too many years thanks to his outspokenness of the old Prez’s selfish and inhuman business practices. These bastards hadn’t been there for him then, but Graver had and always would be.  

This blood sacrifice would merely confirm the link.  

It felt right. Even though Mars had spoken the truth and technically what he was doing was ‘wrong’, he didn’t care. Blood sacrifices were rare for a reason. They drained a Shifter of his magic, gifted that magic to the Goddesses who had created them, born them, and breathed life into them, and they took that magic as a price for the life they spared.

Blood sacrifices were tales that were passed over a campfire when Shifters were thirteen and out in the wilds for their first shift. They fed ghost tales and creepy stories.  They were not something to fuck about with. Every Shifter knew that.

That the MC would now have two recipients of a blood sacrifice in its midst made them beyond rare.

Justiss sucked in a breath so deep that Graver and Mars as well as the rest of the crowd jerked in surprise. Then, he gulped. Graver’s blood had spilled over the corners of J’s lips, but now, he sank it back like the finest whisky he’d ever supped.  

And like that was what the Goddesses had been waiting for, Graver suddenly saw nothing around him.  The worried men disappeared, and the stench of death and spilled blood and beer were no more. Crowds weren’t jostling behind him, and their mutters of fear disappeared with them. The sticky wetness on his hands was no more. He didn’t know if he’d passed out or if he was hallucinating, but before him was a woman… a gauzy figure cast in blurred lines that made her features and form impossible to make out.  

What made him think she was a hallucination was the fact she was huge, and for Graver—who stood at six-five and weighed nearly three-hundred pounds in his socks—that was a feat. A huge ball of gold shone at her back, making her silhouette even harder to discern, and Graver blinked, feeling woozy from the loss of blood, but also blinded by that orb of eye-watering light.  Its purity was invasive. It seemed to seep through the air, staining it with its beauty so that everything the light touched felt reborn, renewed, cleansed.

“Ma’am?” he garbled, uncertain of what to say but not wanting to offend.  

The blood sacrifice meant this had to be… But it couldn’t be, right? He was just having some kind of psychotic episode from the blood loss. That was all it was. That happened, yeah? Because this couldn’t be a goddess. It couldn’t be. Could it?

In all the ghost tales and scary stories he’d heard, the thousands that were passed around from kid to kid like an urban legend on coke, he’d never known any tale that involved this.

A soft chuckle escaped the woman, and the sound was like a lightning bolt of tinkling sound—soft and soothing but with the power of a thunder storm. It rattled around inside his head, making him blink at its strength but also at its beauty.  

“I’m not a ma’am, child,” the woman/creature said, her words more tinkling sounds that messed with his head.  

It was like his ears were having an orgasm. The sound of her voice was pure bliss, pure ecstasy, and yet, painful because it was so beautiful to behold. His ears rang with the joy of it but ached with processing so much wonder.

“It’s okay,” she soothed. “I know you’re weak, but you’re an unusual one, aren’t you? Normally, I see the children who are desperately saving the mates I or one of my sisters gifted them. And yet, you are here to save a brother.”  

Words froze in his chest, and he choked on them as he tried to figure out what he could say to her.  

“You need not speak. I know what’s going on in your mind, child. You are my kin, are you not? I formed you and the beast you share that form with in mine own image. There is nothing you could think that I would not know, and I can feel your terror at losing another of my children, Justiss. He has been of great help to you, has he not?”  

Taking on board what she was saying, he could only think, He has been an anchor. The only thing that has stopped me from drowning.  

“Oh, child. I know you lost two of your siblings.”  She sucked in a sharp and pained breath, but even that sound hurt Graver’s ears with its delicate beauty. “I felt your mother’s pain when they passed over, for it was my pain. I granted those cubs to her, and the world robbed them from us both. When they pass, when any of my children pass, I lose contact with them. I wish I could do more for your mother, but sadly, their spirits are with my mother, the Great Goddess, now. They are at peace, if that is any consolation to you and her.”  

You can help, Graver screamed inside his mind. Save Justiss. Don’t take him away from her, from us, from me! 

“You’ve gifted him your blood, and you’ve given me payment of sparing his life. He won’t die today. But you have taken something from him that he might not appreciate, child. And he has taken something from you that you will not appreciate either. I’m sorry it must come to this, but blood sacrifices are no simple matter when it comes to brothers sparing brothers. The Great Goddess, in her infinite wisdom, does not allow the sparing of lives without a costly price—one that must be paid on both ends.”  

He could sense her bitterness at this, and knew she truly wished it was different. He didn’t know what price he and Justiss would have to pay to keep him alive, but it was a price he didn’t mind paying. The problem with mates was, when one died, so did the other. Especially after a long bond. He didn’t think the bond between his parents was that strong, but they’d been together at least one hundred and twenty years. If his mother passed away from the grief of losing another child, even if it wasn’t of her blood but was selected as family, he knew his father would die too.  

Justiss, his mother and father, all three dead in a handful of days.  

He could stop that from happening.  

He had to.  The idea that he couldn’t overwhelmed him with panic.

“Your choice has already been made, child. There is no need to fear and certainly no need to panic. He will live. You and your mother need not live without him. The instant you pressed your wrist to his lips, you saved him. The price you’ll pay is a tough one, but if you’re as generous in spirit as you have been on this day, then the pair of you needn’t suffer overly.” 

Graver frowned, concern flooding him. Paying a price was one thing, something he wasn’t exactly unused to. But… Suffer?  

She shook her head. “I can say no more, child. But you will be rewarded for your sacrifice too. That I promise you.” The gauzy, dreamy figure turned around, presenting him with her back. Even with the glow reduced once she wasn’t aiming her attention on him, she was dizzyingly hard to see. His eyes watered, stinging as he tried in vain to make out her features, but he was gifted with that tinkling laugh that sent shivers down his spine and the faint sound he recognized as fingers clicking.  

And as quickly as that, he came to.  

He blinked, eyes still blinded by the glow of the Goddess but also the bright lights shining straight on him. Headlights?   

He was on the road? When the hell had that happened?  

“Graver! Thank the Goddess,” Kiko, the second in command of the MC, hollered from behind the wheel of one of The Nomads’ few pickup trucks. “How are you doing, buddy?” he asked, his voice a little quieter now.  

Graver blinked again then peered down when he felt a heavy weight on his lap. From the illumination of another set of headlights, he made out Justiss’s head. He didn’t normally dig having dudes lying on him like this, but suddenly it felt right.  

It wasn’t sexual. It was close.  

He needed to be close to Justiss.  

It was a thought that ran rife around his mind. Like scurrying mice chasing after cheese, it pervaded every synapse until he realized this was probably one of the prices the Goddess had meant.  

Proximity.  

He would have to be close to Justiss.  

Not just have to, would need to.  

He could feel it. Justiss was no longer just a buddy, not a brother by choice as well as a brother in his Shifter Clan and MC. He was in his bones. The sacrifice Graver had made linked them in ways that were usually shared between mates and only rarely between anyone else. Now, he guessed that made sense, because in a mate bond proximity was never an issue. Hell, mates could never get close enough. But brothers? Yeah, that could be a problem.  

He dragged a hand through his hair, only now feeling the pounding at his temples. Blood loss. It made him feel weak, a little nauseated, and the added insult, a migraine that felt like it could slam through his skull.  

Jesus.  

“Graver?” Kiko called out, concern in his tone.  

“Yeah. I’m okay,” he replied, voice croaky. “Where is everyone?”  

“They’re on their way.”  

By bike, came unspoken.  

“You are well?”  

Graver reared back in surprise at the new voice. It was tinted with Slavic tones that he knew could belong to one person only: Mischa, Kiko’s new mate.  

He hadn’t seen her, hadn’t even sensed her presence. Fuck, that hollered at him how out of sorts his senses were. He should have known she was there. 

Still, there was no point in crying over spilled milk. He was allowed some semblance of weakness after having donated blood to a dying man and speaking with the Goddess who had created them. “Yes, Mischa, I’m okay.” He smiled at the pointed face, the beautiful features shrouded with blond hair that tumbled over cut-glass cheekbones, which peered around the side of the chair to study him.  

She wasn’t a small woman, but in the huge ass bucket seats of the pickup that shouted wealthy redneck, she looked like a doll.  

Not that she’d have appreciated the comparison.  

“I’m not a doll,” she snarled, and Graver reared back a little as his thoughts collided with her angry retort.  

Kiko cleared his throat then quickly murmured, “Graver, buddy, we’re getting you both to the hospital. Major, as per fucking usual, isn’t at the MC. Where the fuck he goes, I have no idea, but it’s getting on Mars’s last nerve. It wouldn’t be a problem if he wasn’t the only fucking healer we can trust!”  

He rattled on, his anger at Major honest and legit, but Graver knew the ramblings were meant to cover up Mischa’s words rather than be a blast of annoyance at their MC kin. He was too exhausted to figure out why though, and his head started to pound in time to Kiko’s words.  

Graver grimaced. “Kiko, it’s okay. Chill.” His words broke into the second-in-command’s diatribe, and he took advantage of the silence to say, “I’m fine. Let’s get to the hospital though, eh? My head is killing me. It’s like it’s splitting in fucking two.”  

“Sorry, bud,” Kiko murmured, his voice a quiet rumble. Graver sensed the attention on him from both the driver and his mate; Mischa was still peering around the seat, and Kiko kept flashing glances at him from the rearview mirror. He ignored their attention, tilted his head back, and tried to rest, but it wasn’t easy. The roads in this part of Houston were busy.

The Nomads’ clubhouse was deep in Channelview, close to the train tracks but far away from everything fucking else, including a medical center. Plus, they couldn’t go local. So, without asking, Graver knew they’d have to head into the city for anonymity sake.  

Humans knew Shifters existed and they even had treatment centers at some of the bigger clinics for their kind. It wasn’t that they weren’t accommodated, but it was a fact that no one liked revealing their identity to humans.  So much so that there was usually one of their own who could deal with the few injuries that being a Shifter with ‘magic blood’ didn’t cure.

In this instance, theirs, Major, was AWOL.

Since the days when Shifters had come out of the closet, the same time as Hitler had started assfucking Europe, they had learned to be discreet about their identities.

As a race, they’d determined that revealing themselves was the singular way to stop Hitler in his tracks, their intent to pad the regular troops with soldiers who were any government’s idea of a Captain America on ‘roids. 

Of course, humans being the dickwads they were, had taken advantage of Shifters and generally had made it so that not a single one of them wished they hadn’t stuck to the shadows as they had done for a thousand years.  

Still, at times like these, when healers were out and about doing whatever the fuck it was that had them out of the MC all the hours Godsend—Graver had also noticed Major was never at the clubhouse these days, so it was handy that clinics with Shifter healers were close by.  

Justiss’s head was a heavy weight on his lap, one that only made itself known to Graver when J rolled it a little, moaning in his sleep.  

It felt weird to do what he was about to do, but he could only imagine how much pain the other man was in if he felt like he’d been run over by a steam roller. Like his mother had done to him when he was a boy—fuck, she’d done it to him two years ago when he’d broken two ribs and gotten a concussion in a bike crash—he ran his hands through J’s hair, gently rubbing the temples and trying not to feel weird as shit as he did it.  

The man instantly stilled and ceased moaning.  

Graver froze, stunned by the reaction to a simple touch. He heard a gasp, looked up, and saw Mischa was watching, that she too was surprised. He gulped, feeling vulnerable at her attention. It felt imperative that he state he wasn’t gay, that he wasn’t touching him with any sexual intent, but before he could stir up the courage to say the words, she murmured, “It’s okay. It’s fine, Graver. Help him. He’s hurting.”  

He cleared his throat, an involuntary gesture that had him wincing with the pain it stirred in his skull, and returned his attention to Justiss. The man’s hair was white gold in places, dark gold in others. As Bear Shifters, they tended toward tawny—lots of blonds and browns, very few brunets. Graver was a rarity with his blacker than black hair. Justiss wasn’t. 

Weird thing was, the silken strands he sifted between his fingers felt good. Good enough to ease some of the pain in Graver’s own head. Not that it made much sense, if any. Why should running his fingers through another man’s hair make Graver feel better? But there was no denying it did.  

Maybe it was the connection? It was something Mars and Annette referred to and which the Goddess had labelled more as a price, rather than a gift.

Mars had spared his mate’s life by blood sacrifice. A stray bullet from the cartel at war with the MC had ricocheted into their bedroom during a firefight and had struck Annette. To save her, Mars had had to make a sacrifice, and they were crazy close now.  

In fact, he’d seen them together and apart and knew that even if they were in the clubhouse, if not in the same room, they weren’t as content as when they were near one another.  

How did he know that? 

Graver had been tending bar for a long time. It was a great way to earn cash, and he’d been in and out of the MC ever since his siblings had passed on. The Nomads were his Clan though. His bear needed them, so he never tried to live long in the human world because it drove him insane. But when he did, he tended bar, and he’d gotten really good at reading people.  

When Annette and Mars were close, their faces were relaxed, like micro-expression relaxed—lips, chin, and jaw soft. No tension brackets at the nose or pinching between the eyebrows. Their eyes were calm, content. The muscles soft. But when they were apart, it was the complete opposite. Graver had seen Annette when Mars had gone out on club business one evening. The usually calm and collected journalist had been shrill, tension making her usually fluid movements jerky, her face loaded with stress until it had been uncomfortable for him to see. Of course, she might have been in a shitty mood, but moments later, when Mars had returned and swept her up in his arms, it had been like she’d been dosed with fucking Valium or something.  

Was that a fate that he and J would have to endure? 

How would that work? They weren’t gay. That was a fact. Graver liked chicks, and he knew Justiss did too. He was younger than J, but he’d experimented enough to know that pussy was his meal of choice, and he got the feeling J did too the way he eyed the club bunnies when they were around. No man who appreciated a woman’s ass as much as J did was gay or bi.  

Which meant what? 

Things were going to get difficult if suddenly two Alpha males had to start living together, if their moods soured if they were apart, and if they were stressed and miserable if one left the clubhouse on business. 

The Goddess was right. They would be paying a steep price to keep J alive, but Graver knew he would have no regrets. Sure, when J was awake and understood the situation, that would probably change. There would be arguments, and undoubtedly they’d say nasty shit to help them shuffle their ruffled feathers, but no matter what, Graver would never regret saving J.  

No price was too high to keep this man alive. That was a fucking fact—one he’d just have to remember and keep at the forefront of his mind when the bastard fucked him off.  

Which would very likely be the instant he opened his eyes.  

And Graver would never, ever not be thankful the moment he did.