Dorian had been estranged from his brothers for five decades, but there was one thread that would always bind them: a mutual, all-encompassing hatred of the man who�d turned them into vampires.

Augustus Redthorne.

He�d been a difficult father as a man, a brutal bastard as an immortal, and for Dorian and his brothers, the only good thing about his royal ascendency was that he spent so much time overseas on diplomatic missions, they hardly crossed paths. Even after his brothers had relocated to other states, leaving Dorian to clean up his own messes in New York, their father rarely set foot on American soil. When he did, he was easy enough to avoid; he spent most of his time in Manhattan, meeting with the other supernatural leaders and the heads of the greater vampire houses.

Several months ago, however, Augustus turned up at Ravenswood after cutting short a trip to France. Normally Dorian would�ve retreated to his penthouse in Tribeca, but something held him back.

His father seemed unwell�not a word Dorian had come to associate with any vampire, let alone the king.

The two barely exchanged words, and it took his father a full month to finally admit what Dorian had already suspected: he�d fallen ill, and he needed time to diagnose the problem. To find the cure.

It wasn�t possible for an immortal vampire to get sick, yet he was. Clearly. Dorian wouldn�t have believed it if the evidence wasn�t staring him right in the face, night after night.

Dorian hated his father with a passion that rivaled the burning sun over the Sahara, but that didn�t mean he wanted him to die. He tried to help, but Augustus refused the intervention of a freelance witch, refused any spells and enchantments Dorian procured. Eventually, he stopped feeding, turning away human blood donors and blood bags alike. Even demons.

Dorian had felt like a child again, peering through the gap of the door into his father�s study, watching him pore over his books while his dinner turned cold and the candles burned to nubs. Augustus spent all his time in the makeshift laboratory, examining his hair and blood under the microscope, taking notes, making sketches, performing experiments. Dorian was instructed to inform the other leaders and houses that Augustus was attending to important, groundbreaking research and could not be disturbed.

If there were breakthroughs, he never shared them with Dorian.

If there were regrets, he never shared those either.

He was, in his final months, as he�d always been�completely unreachable.

Gabriel was right.

In the end, it wasn�t an enemy attack that had taken Augustus.

It was an illness. A violent, human illness that had ravaged his body, thoroughly and ceaselessly, until his final labored breaths. And with those breaths, Augustus asked his eldest son for the simple courtesy of a fast end.

For centuries, Dorian had wanted his father to suffer. To live in agony for betraying his family, killing his wife and youngest sons while condemning the other four to an eternity of misery.

But for that brief moment, there wasn�t two and a half centuries of anger and resentment. There was only the last wish of a dying man, and Dorian obliged, for both their sakes.

Dorian opened his eyes now, the sulfuric smell of the match lingering in his memories. Suddenly he wanted to tell Gabriel everything, to relieve himself of the great burden of these secrets. He wanted his father�s death to draw them close, as his life had driven them apart. He wanted them all to know how much he loved them, how he�d never stop searching for the answers his father couldn�t seem to find.

But when he looked at Gabriel now, the tension in his muscles, the fist clenched at his side, he knew he couldn�t burden him with this. He couldn�t burden any of them.

Not until they were safe.

"He died by fire," Dorian finally said. That, at least, was true.

"By his own hand?"

"By mine." Dorian scrubbed a hand over his mouth. "He asked me to do it, Gabriel. To end his suffering."

"Suffering from what?"

"He wouldn�t say." JrNovels.com