They reached the oasis just as the sun was at its zenith, which at this latitude meant it was directly overhead. It was frighteningly hot and dry and Taylor had never been so glad to see a pool of water in her life. But it wasn’t just the heat that made the oasis a retreat for her.
About half the size of a baseball diamond, the pool was shaded by palms and surrounded by grasses. Unlike many oases, this one sprang from a shallower source of water in rocks close to the surface, gushing and bubbling just at the surface in a continual renewal of the supply.
The overflow ran off in a narrow curving stream, channeled by rocks, for a league before drying out in the baking heat of the desert and being reabsorbed into the sand.
They had been warned ahead of time by Alexander to dismount and walk to the pool and bring back buckets to water the horses first. In this way they would avoid a stampede that would muddy the pool and make it useless for days.
Shortly after the noon hour, they had set up camp next to the oasis. Brody had declared they would rest there until the next day, while the barrels were filled and food found, before returning to Jerusalem.
It had been one of the few things he had said that day.
He had returned to the fire sometime during the night for she had found him there, his body curled around hers, when she woke at first light. But when she turned in his arms and begged him for details, a shadow touched his face. “Not now,” he said quietly. “I will tell you, I promise, but not now.”
“Did you make love?” she asked. “You can tell me that much at least.”
He hesitated. “Yes,” he said at last. But the single word was so heavy and flat, her heart fell.
She stroked his cheek. “We’ll figure it out,” she whispered, hoping she was right.
Brody rested his head against her shoulder and held her tightly. Surprised, she wrapped her arms about his shoulders and let him cling to her. If he had been human, Taylor wouldn’t have been surprised if he had wept against her. He was trembling.
After a while, Brody let her go enough to bring his mouth closer to her ear. “He’s not the same Veris. He is, but he’s not. I love him, but at the same time I miss him badly. I want him back and I’m scared hollow I’m going to fuck this up and lose him forever.” His hand touched her shoulder. “I know that’s selfish. I know you’re dying inside each day he’s gone, too. But this is all falling on me, because this other Veris won’t look at you even though he wants you.”
“I’d be terrified if I were you, too,” she said gently.
He laughed against her neck. “No, you wouldn’t. You’ve got courage for blood. You’d have defied Veris somehow last night. You would have made it work. I don’t know how you do it, but you always manage it somehow.”
Taylor shook her head. “I stood there and watched him bare his fangs against your neck. Do you know how much I longed for a sword in my hands? To have the sort of power you two do? I was helpless.”
“You stopped him anyway. It was you, Taylor. He told me so.”
She rolled away from him so that she could see his face. His black-eyed gaze was steady. He wasn’t lying.
“Then maybe there’s hope for Veris yet,” she suggested.
Brody drew in a sharp, quick breath. He sat up as if he’d suddenly been shot full of energy.
Taylor rose up as well and he kissed her. “Thank you,” he said. “I’d forgotten that. You’re right. There’s hope.”
Taylor clutched at her stomach as it rolled rebelliously. There was no time to hide it or even ride it out like yesterday. It was coming whether she wanted it to or not.
With a moan she scrambled for the cold fire pit, the chainmail jingling, and vomited into the ashes, hard and long, until her stomach was completely empty. Even before she was done, she felt hands pulling her hair back and a damp cloth on her forehead.
She fell back on her butt tiredly, gray dots floating across her vision and her throat burning.
Alexander wiped her face with the cloth, his expression concerned. Brody supported her back.
“Alexander knows eastern medicine,” Brody murmured. “He’s good.”
Alexander’s gaze flickered to Brody and back to her. “Are you with child, my lady?”
“No,” Brody said.
Taylor stayed silent.
Alexander’s expression didn’t change. “The food you western people eat does not carry well in these parts. It’s likely you ate something yesterday that had already begun to decompose.”
“I’m sure that’s all it was,” Taylor said. Her voice was strained. “I’ll be more careful about what I eat. Thank you, Alexander.”
He got to his feet and nodded. “Please let me know if I can be of further service.”
Brody had accepted the bad food explanation as the only possible one, which added to Taylor’s guilt. By the time she had eaten food that had passed Brody’s finely tuned inspection and climbed onto Goliath’s back, she was in a foul mood of her own.
It didn’t help that the tension between Brody and Veris was hard enough to bounce off. Alexander seemed to be lost in his own thoughts, rousing only to give the necessary directions to the oasis.
It was a relief to slide off Goliath and move away from the three of them when they reached the water. Taylor headed for the nearest patch of shade, laid down and went to sleep.
She woke to find her head pillowed by her folded-up blanket, her hands free of her gauntlets and her feet free of her shoes. Her belts had been loosened and her sword and knife were standing point first in the sand next to her.
There was a cup of water, too, along with fresh dates—probably from the trees around the oasis—plus more food that would have been checked over by Brody.
She lifted her head. Brody’s gear sat in a pile a yard away.
The shade had lengthened over her. It was close to sunset. She had slept the afternoon away. Clearly, her body had needed the restorative. But in the meantime, what had Brody and Veris done to each other?
Carefully, she sat up. Her stomach tilted, but that was all the protest it gave. So she ate the food and drank the water, consuming all of it mechanically despite a distinct lack of appetite and an urgent need to go in search of Brody.
While she ate, she gazed around the bowl of the oasis. There had been considerable progress during the afternoon. The three wagons of barrels were almost completely filled. The teams of soldiers were working on the last one now, sealing each barrel with hot wax to prevent leakage. Most of the men were stripped to the waist. Both Brody and Veris were overseeing the operations, each looking after their own wagons.
Alexander sat on the other side of the oasis, under shade. Observing, as usual.
Taylor tightened her belts and added the sword and knife. She made her way around the edge of the oasis, dodging the horses, until she reached the point where the run off created a happy-sounding tinkling stream that had carved a channel out of the desert and wound its way around bedrock for a league or more. She started to follow it.
At one point the stream dropped about three feet onto bare flat rock, creating a tiny waterfall, before oozing over the rock and continuing on into the desert. Or a miniature shower, depending on a modern perspective.
Taylor stared at the water, her skin itching.
“Screw it,” she muttered and stripped quickly. She took the knife into the water with her, laying it on the flat rock, close by her hand. But she unbound her hair and let the water cascade through it before sitting up and rinsing off.
“The sword isn’t much use if it’s not by your side,” Brody told her.
She smothered her yelp of surprised. He stood next to the pile of her clothes.
“I have my knife,” she said, holding it up.
“Not much use against a sword,” he said. “If I were the enemy, I now have your sword, which you left here for me to pick up.”
She bit her lip. “Damn.”
Brody grinned. “Shall I bring it to you?” He bent down to pick up her sword belt and pulled the sword from it.
“For all the good the blade does me, why not?”
He tramped across the stream to stand in the inch-deep water in front of her and hold out the blade. “Sometimes just the offer to fight is good enough.”
“Good enough for what?” She took the sword and lay it down on the flat rock just at the edge of the water flow, where it was dry.
“Good enough to test their resolve. To see if they really mean it.” Brody stared down at her, his hands on his hips.
“Mean to fight?”
He nodded. “If you pull your sword—if you make the offer to fight and their hearts are truly not in it, they’ll take off running, leaving you the victor.”
Taylor was having trouble drawing her attention away from the proximity of Brody’s thighs to her face. The knowledge that he was naked beneath the tunic, that his cock was accessible underneath a thin layer of cloth, was distracting her. She licked her lips.
Brody smiled. “You’re not thinking about fighting.”
“Damn it, no. It’s all your fault.”
“No, it’s your fault. You suggested I not wear what I’m not wearing.”
She could see his cock pushing at the tunic, lifting it.
Taylor pummeled her attention back to the subject. “What if they don’t turn tail and run?”
Brody dropped his hands to his belt buckle. “Ah. Well, now you’re screwed. Now you have to fight him. You probably shouldn’t have picked on him in the first place.”
“Great. So I can bluff, or fight if I’m called on it.”
“That’s right.” He dropped his sword next to hers. The knife clattered next.
“I can’t fight with a sword.”
“Better stay by my side then,” he said. “Stay very close.” He pulled the rest of his clothes off in less than a minute. They flowed off him like water off a duck’s back, with more grace that she’d ever manage. He tossed them all onto the sand a bare yard away.
“You’re so beautiful,” she said with a sigh as his body emerged.
“That’s my line, isn’t it?”
She smiled. “Men can be beautiful, too, and you are. You’re perfect.”
Brody picked her up and wrapped her legs around his waist. “You’re wet.” His hand cupped her ass, the fingers tickling her cleft. He kissed her, his tongue sliding gently inside.
“And you’re sandy…and hot, too.” Taylor touched his chest. “You’ve been out in the sun too long.”
Brody nodded. “I’m glad I fed when I did the other night, or I’d be very weak by now and feeding among this small group could be a problem.”
“Get wet. That’ll cool you off.”
Brody put her on her feet again and lay down under the tiny waterfall. He gasped as the water covered him. Taylor sat down and washed off the dust he had smeared on her and sat up and waited for him to finish his impromptu shower.
Brody came up from under the waterfall, laughing and shaking the water out of his hair.
“What?” she asked, smiling at his amusement.
“If you look at our location on a modern map, I think you’ll find we’re somewhere inside the borders of Jordan.”
“That’s what’s funny?”
He laughed again. “What’s funny is that it’s all your fault that I’ve started thinking about stuff like that. How maps change over time. Language. I’ve spent all these centuries resenting the hell out of time for being stuck with it. Now I’m finally starting to see how… I don’t know, how privileged I actually am to be able to see the changes first hand. Humans don’t get to see that. They don’t live long enough.” He sobered, his arms around his knees. “There’s a lot of things I love about you, Taylor, but for that one alone, I would give you immortality, if you asked me for it. It took me a thousand years and you, but I can see a way for it to be considered a gift, now.”
Taylor kissed him, trying to hide her tears. It helped that her cheeks were already wet. There was no answer she could give Brody that wouldn’t compromise her right now, or make her want to confess everything.
Then the kiss changed and grew erotic as their kisses so often did. It helped that they were both naked. Brody cupped her breasts and tugged on the nipples, making them hard. The little spurts of electric pleasure shot straight to her clit, making her gasp and her clit to bloom. Her pussy grew moist all over again.
She stroked Brody’s cock, curling her fingers around the massive shaft and felt his hips shift at her touch. She pressed her thumb against the seam on the underside and he jerked hard.
“Unfair,” he muttered.
“All’s fair.”
“That so?” He grabbed her hips and flipped her with his considerable strength, bringing her onto her hands and knees in the water. Taylor felt the touch of water on her wrists and calves, then Brody’s cock was pushing against her vagina. His hand curled over her shoulder. “All’s fair,” he growled and slid into her in a hard, smooth stroke that buried him to the hilt.
She gasped and may even have cried out. She wasn’t sure. All she was conscious of was Brody’s thick cock inside her.
Then he reached between her legs and found her clit with his fingers and began to pluck at it in time with his thrusts and in time with what his other hand was doing to her nipple.
“No, I’ll come too fast!” she protested between ragged inhalations.
“Come around me. Squeeze me,” he growled. “Scream for me.”
She hung her head, feeling the roiling climax already building from deep inside her belly. Her body began to shake. There was no putting it off. It was coming.
“Chríost. Veris,” Brody whispered.
Taylor lifted her head. Veris stood a dozen feet away. How long had he been watching? It didn’t matter. She could see he was caught up in their passion. The juncture of his thighs was swollen, his cock erect under his tunic. His hands were balled into fists as he stared.
Taylor lifted herself to her knees, letting Veris see Brody’s hands on her breast, and her clit.
Make the offer, Brody had said.
She dropped her hand to her breast. Stroked it. Cupped it. It was incredibly arousing to offer herself to a man who was like a virtual stranger in one sense, especially when she was being fucked by another and right on the verge of climaxing. She curled her arm around Brody’s neck, needing the support. Her body was trembling, moving in little shifts that matched Brody’s heavy thrusts up into her. He had not stopped.
“God, I’m coming, Taylor,” Brody whispered.
“Come,” she said.
He came with a choked groan and it triggered off her own delayed climax. She rolled her head back against Brody’s shoulder and closed her eyes as she cried out her pleasure in pulsing hard waves, made more intense by the fact that Veris was watching.
But when she opened her eyes, Veris had gone. She couldn’t stop the little moan of disappointment that spilled from her.
She still trembled when Brody slipped from her body and washed traces of himself away from her.
“He followed us here,” she said, trying to sound analytical and calm.
“Followed which one, is the million dollar question,” Brody replied.
“You, of course.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that simple anymore.”
“Why not?”
As he got dressed, Brody told her of his nighttime tryst with Veris and the awful ending. Taylor frowned, thinking it through as she carefully dried off and dressed, then strapped her sword and knife back into place. “He would have even less reason to follow me now.”
“He’s on a knife edge. Davina is fucking with his mind so much, I don’t know what he’ll do any more. He’s not the Veris we know.”
“But we still have to make him commit to you.” Taylor wiped at her eyes. “We have to get him away from that woman. He’s dying inside and he doesn’t even know it.”
Brody kissed her forehead. “Like you say. We’ll figure it out.” But he seemed distracted and for the rest of the evening around the campfire, even though he stayed within sight of her and Veris sat on the other side with his men, Brody’s conversation was stilted and vague.
Taylor challenged him on it. Brody frowned. “I’m thinking. Hard. Sorry, Taylor. I’m not good at mentally multi-tasking like you and Veris. I’ve got half an idea, but it needs refining before I dare even mention it out loud.”
Only half-satisfied, Taylor left Brody to stare into the fire and poke at it with a long stick for the rest of the night. Which left rather more time than she wanted to catch Veris’ lingering, speculative stares across the flames.
Taylor declared she was tired and going off to sleep far sooner than she was ready, after the day’s long nap. As a result, she tossed and turned on her blanket, listening to the men talk more freely than they did when she was among them. For that reason alone, it was probably better she not be at the fireside, so she resisted getting up and going back.
Eventually, she went to sleep, hoping the morrow would be an easier one and that Brody would not find the night too taxing in the meantime.
* * * * *
BRODY WAITED BARELY TEN MINUTES after Taylor left the fire to slip away himself. He caught Veris’ eye as he left and took the same route out of the oasis as they had last night, but didn’t go as far. He waited in a shallow hollow between dunes, where the air was still and warm.
It didn’t take Veris long to follow. He slid-walked down the side of the dune, his sword slapping his thigh. “You called. I come. What—”
Brody’s punch took him on the jaw before he was barely into the dell. It was meant as a sucker punch and it worked. There was no way to take out Veris in a fair fight. Not with his height, weight and reach.
Veris landed on his ass, but he didn’t stay there. He came up streaming blood from his nose, mad as a bull and swinging.
The fight lasted a few short, ugly minutes and ended bloody, as Brody had expected it to. Veris got him on his back and beat the crap out of him. Brody deserved it. But he had got his licks in and was willing to pay the price for daring to pick a fight with someone like Veris.
Veris got to his feet and let Brody painfully roll over onto his hands and knees, trying to figure out how to breathe through what was left of his face. It would take a few minutes for the healing to kick in to the point where he could see straight. He stayed, swaying, on all fours.
“There was a point you were trying to make, I presume?” Veris said.
Brody nodded.
“Do you feel you’ve made it?”
Brody nodded again.
“Really?” Surprise tinged Veris’ voice. Brody heard him squat down next to him. “Keep your chin up so the blood runs back down your throat. It’ll feed the tissues there and help them heal faster. Then you’ll be able to speak.” The tone was neutral. The words helpful.
Brody lifted his chin. In a few seconds he was able to clear his throat with a cough. Vocal chords again. Well, well. How many of these types of beatings had Veris gone through?
Veris was sitting on the sand now, his arms on his knees. “Can you speak yet?”
“I think so,” Brody said. His voice sounded strained. “Make that yes.”
“You were planning on explaining this, weren’t you?”
Brody nodded. He rolled over so he was sitting on his butt facing Veris.
“You don’t look pretty anymore,” Veris said.
“You never did.”
Veris’ mouth lifted at the corner. “At least I fight better than you. A product of a long life, that apparently you are more familiar with than I thought. Speak, Brody, or I will take great delight in taking apart what is left of your face again. You are trying my patience.”
Brody nodded. “I know. Thing is, I can’t explain it. Most of the time, when I hit a quandary like this, I used to talk it over with you. You’re the clear thinker. You could cut through a problem faster than anyone I know, except maybe for Taylor, but this is so much about her I’m not going to lay it out for her to fix.”
Veris stared at him. “In your future, you mean?”
“Yeah.” Brody squeezed the bridge of his nose and felt bones creak. His nose was healing nicely, but still felt swollen. “But it’s also about you, asshole. Your future self. Not you sitting there. Although it’s also about you sitting there.” Brody sighed. “I know you can’t follow this. We’re not giving you nearly enough information and that’s not fair for you and you can’t cope with the idiom or the cultural references either. But you’re all I’ve got.”
Veris was silent for a long moment. “I believe you may be underestimating my usefulness. I may lack knowledge, but I can reason as well as my future self.”
Brody pushed at his cheekbones. One was still broken. The pain of bones moving made him hiss. “And fight.”
Veris shrugged. “I learned early, apparently.” He shifted and settled himself in the sand. “A quandary, you said. There are very few true quandaries in the world.”
“I think I’ve got a real one on my hands.” Brody let his hands drop from exploring the damage of his face. “You rejected Taylor today.”
Veris drew a slow breath. Brody could hear it. In the stillness of the dell and with his senses all on hyper alert while he healed, he could hear the inhalation as clearly as his own breath.
“That’s what this is about?” Veris asked.
“No, but that’s what made me start thinking. Mostly, Taylor has been doing it up until now and I’ve let her because she’s good at it. But that kicked me into gear and made me start this discussion with a sucker punch. She didn’t say a word, but I know she didn’t like the fact that you walked away.”
“Most ladies would take that as a form of politeness, not an insult,” Veris growled.
“I keep trying to explain that Taylor isn’t like anyone you’ve ever met.” Brody scrubbed at his hair, which was full of sand now. He stretched his shoulders and heard them creak, then realized he was putting this off. “Okay, here it is. You’re not like the Veris I remember. You’re not like the Veris I love.”
“Understandable.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Brody said, thumping his fist into the ground. “There’s been changes. There’s differences. You’re not…right.”
Veris stared hard. Then: “You’ve been here before. To this…time. We’ve met. Here.”
Brody took a breath. “In Jerusalem.”
Veris rubbed his thumb over his bottom lip thoughtfully. “That’s why you’re here.”
“Yes.” Brody found his hands curling into fists. “I love Taylor. I know you have the hardest time with that idea, but there it is. I love Taylor in a way you don’t understand. I love her as much as I love you.” Brody clenched his hands together. It was so important that Veris grasp this. “The other Veris—he would never ask me to choose between you. He would know I couldn’t do that.”
“I am demanding that of you?” Veris sounded curious.
“You’re going to. By rejecting Taylor today, you outlined the shape of things to come. There will come a time when you ask that of me.”
“You don’t know that,” Veris said softly.
“Yes, I do,” Brody insisted. “You are denying her. Denying yourself. You want her. Tell me you don’t want her. Tell me that and I will call you a liar.”
Veris drew in a breath to speak. But he didn’t speak.
Brody nodded. “There is something stopping you. It’s not just Davina, or you would have dealt with her already. Taylor and I don’t know how to fix it, because we don’t know what it is and you won’t tell us. You don’t trust us enough for that. We’re running out of time. All sorts of time, that you have no idea about. That’s why I must speak tonight, because you will ask me to choose between you and Taylor. It will come to that and when it does, I think…I really think Taylor will be my priority.”
“Your wife comes first, of course.”
Brody groan and clenched his fists to his temples. “Fuck, Veris, stop being reasonable! I love you. I love Taylor, but if you make me choose, I’m going to choose her! It’s nothing to do with being married to her! I’m not married to her at all! I’m bonded. She won’t marry me. She won’t marry you, even though you asked her.”
Veris sat forward. “I did?” he said sharply. “When?”
Brody winced. “Sorry, too much information. Forget I mentioned it.”
Veris held out his hand. “When did I ask her? It’s important.”
“Far, far into your future, as you currently reckon it,” Brody said flatly. He slapped the sand by his hip. “Are you even listening to me, Veris? Do you grasp the quandary now? I want Taylor, but to keep her, I have to keep you and I’m not even sure I want you anymore.”
Veris recoiled. “I’ve changed that much?”
Brody sighed. “Physically, you’re exactly the same, which makes it confusing. You sound the same, speak the same, walk the same. There’s so much about you that is the same that when I first saw you I was fooled. It took a while for me to notice the differences. They only show up when you’re put under emotional pressure. I’m guessing that’s not something that happens to you a lot these days. You’ve learned dozens of tricks in the last few centuries so you can avoid emotions, until Taylor and I came along and messed things up for you.”
“This other Veris of yours…he is a master at emotional pressure?” Veris asked, his brow lifted.
Brody shook his head. “No! Not even close! But he would never have walked away from us this afternoon. He would never make me choose as you are going to.”
“You are going to risk everything—the woman you love, even me, my future self—based on the assumption that I will absolutely force you to that choice,” Veris said softly.
Brody closed his eyes. “Tell me I’m wrong,” he begged.
Veris was silent for so long that Brody thought he would not answer at all. Then he stirred and sighed. “You already know how Davina entered my life, do you not? You have hinted as much.”
“She force-bonded you to her,” Brody said.
“The first night she met me,” Veris added.
“After she had chained you to the wall in her dungeon,” Brody finished. “Then came a night of sexual pain and torture. And every other night she chooses to call you to her. Sometimes she loans you out to other “masters”‘ too. All of them enjoy pain, all of them like blood along with their sex.”
“It’s been seventy-eight years next month,” Veris said. He sounded almost wistful. “You asked a curious question yesterday. You wondered why I didn’t deal with her in Normandy. How did you know I had been thinking about killing her? Is that what the other one did?”
Brody grimaced. But there was no ducking it now. “Yes,” he admitted.
Veris nodded. “You wanted to know why I didn’t. Would you like me to tell you now?”
Brody jumped. “Yes,” he admitted. This could unravel the mystery of Veris.
Veris took a deep breath. “In the country that would become Norway, around 460 A.D. I had a wife who I took into the woods one night for a tryst after a feast at the king’s hall. She disappeared that night. The village mourned the loss of my beautiful wife and said I murdered her in a jealous rage because the king favored her.
“They couldn’t prove anything. There was no body. So I was beaten, hung, whipped and smeared with excrement. I was thrown out of the village naked and with no weapons. The kingdom next to mine would have nothing to do with me, because that was the kingdom my wife came from, according to my sister. I had to travel under an assumed name and find work far abroad, with no references. I never saw my sister again. I lived off the land for months until I could start earning money enough to buy lodgings.” Veris patted the scars on his stomach. “Not all of these are from humans.”
“Bears?”
“Some. This all happened before I was turned, so the scars are a permanent reminder.” Veris grimaced. “Just in case I ever manage to forget.”
“What did happen to your wife?” Brody whispered.
Veris lifted his shoulders a tiny fraction. “I couldn’t explain to them what happened because I don’t remember a single thing about the day, my wife, or the feast. I remember nothing except for waking up beside a cold fire the next morning, naked, next to a pile of women’s clothes that Marit said she had given my wife—the woman I can’t remember.”
Brody felt a chill settled around his guts. Surely, if Veris and Taylor had gone back to that time, they would have told him? But, a whole day and night? Then he realized that this time jump had lasted that long already. So it was possible.
His sense of fear enlarged.
Why would they not have told him?
The truth hit him in a rush.
Veris would have been human. He wouldn’t have wanted to tell Brody, to tease him with a long-gone state that Veris had just enjoyed for a whole twenty-four hours.
Brody shuffled forward, closer to Veris. He cupped his jaw, looking into his eyes. “Did they describe your wife to you?” he asked. “Did you ask them?”
Veris snorted with derision, then his laughter faded as he really saw Brody’s expression. “I didn’t ask,” he said slowly. “They simply extolled her virtue and her beauty. Her ethereal qualities. Her glowing…” He licked his lips. “Her glowing skin and…” He drew a shaky breath. “Dark hair,” he finished. “Dear God, it was Taylor,” he concluded.
Brody nodded.
Veris put his face in his hands. He stayed that way for many long moments. When he looked up again, his eyes were dull. “Is it going to happen again, here? You will just disappear?”
“I won’t,” Brody said. “But Taylor will. You should be prepared for that. Even I will be…my old self. I won’t have my future memories anymore. You will go on knowing the little we have told you about the future, but I won’t know anything about it.” He tried to smile. “You can tell me about it. I promise to be stupefied.”
“And I will never see Tyra again,” Veris concluded.
“Oh, you will,” Brody assured him. “In time.”
“If I commit to you now.”
Brody drew a breath. “Yes.”
“But if I make you choose between me and Taylor, you’ll pick her.”
Brody held up his hand. “It’s not that black and white, Veris. You’re trying to dramatize, like you always do—”
“Yes or no,” Veris growled.
“I won’t pick one.”
“I’ll presume that your inability to directly answer means you are afraid to say yes, you’ll pick my wife over me.”
“Your wife?”
“She was mine before she became yours, no?”
Brody sucked in his breath so sharply it hurt. “Veris, for Christ’s sake—”
Veris’ blow was a sucker punch, just like his. No warning, no telegraphing. Unlike Brody’s, it knocked him clean out.