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calmed him down a bit. Of course , questioning; that’s all the council wanted. After all, Oskar Vadovsky and his protégés
     had no idea what had happened eight hundred years ago. All they knew was that a member
     of the house of Jaegar had been staked to a post in the red canyons, sacrificed to
     the sun by their enemy, and the male hadn’t burned. They weren’t stupid. Two plus
     two was usually four—Dark One plus sun usually equaled death.
    They knew Saber was an imposter.
    And they wanted to know how…when…why.
    Who knew?
    Damien would give the chief of council the information he needed, clear his sons of
     all wrongdoing, and deal with the hand he was dealt afterward. It was his mess to
     clean up, after all. Looking at his sons, he made an instant decision. He wasn’t going
     to lose anyone else, not today. They were safer surrendering. He held his wrists out
     in front of him. “Damien, Diablo,”—he put more than a fair amount of authority into
     his voice—“don’t fight this.” He eyed them sternly, each one in turn. “I mean it.”
     He paused, considering his next words. “There are some things…about your brother…you
     don’t know. Some questions I need to answer for the council. Your names will be cleared
     in all of this as soon as I’m through. Trust me. Just go along, for now.” He leveled
     a threatening glare at the soldiers, hoping to make his intent crystal clear, if not
     implicit: You can have me, but if you mess with my boys, I will kill each and every one of you
     with my bare hands .
    A wry smile curved along the corners of Achilles’s mouth, no doubt in response to
     the unspoken threat: Dark Ones didn’t take well to challenges, and they were always
     eager to fight.
    Dane shook his head in utter bewilderment, his own need to lash out barely bridled
     beneath the surface. “What are you talking about, Dad?” He watched in disgust as the
     soldier snapped the cuffs on Damien’s wrists and locked them in place. “Is that really
     necessary?” he snapped.
    “Orders, my man,” Achilles responded.
    Diablo sneered at the guard, and a low, answering growl rumbled in the guard’s throat.
     He swept his angry gaze to Damien. “What don’t we know about Saber?” he asked, his
     voice betraying his mounting dread.
    Damien simply shook his head. As the soldiers displayed two more pair of handcuffs,
     Damien nodded with authority at his sons. “Submit…I mean it.”
    “Talk, right now!” Diablo said, tucking both of his arms behind his back to avoid
     being cuffed. The male was this close to starting a fight the Alexiares clan could not ultimately win.
    Damien shut his eyes. Dark Lords , he had never meant for this to happen. He raised his head, squared his jaw, and
     reopened his eyes, commanding the attention of both his sons. “Know this,” he bit
     out in a raspy yet remorseful voice. “Saber is your brother. He has always been your
     brother. He will always be your brother. That is all you need to know.” He swallowed
     his angst and gestured at the extra pairs of handcuffs. “Go ahead. They will not resist.”
    “You bastard,” Dane whispered, his voice barely audible. “What did you do?”
    Damien spun around angrily then, glaring at the youngest of the two twins. “I did
     what I had to, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.”
    Diablo exhaled a reluctant breath and slowly shook his head. “It? What’s it , Dad?”
    Damien drew from a waning well of courage and opened a private family bandwidth in
     order to communicate telepathically with his sons. He would not share his humiliation
     with the guards. Not now. Maybe not ever. Eight hundred years ago, when I set out to sire a family , to fulfill the demands of the Blood Curse , something went wrong. I was able to sacrifice the firstborn as required, but before
     I could stop it, the second child was murdered by the human woman’s brother: a vampire
     hunter. He swallowed hard and pressed on. Saber