Whispers in the Dark by Maya Banks

hell for an entire year. He’d been ready to give up after two months. He’d looked death in the face and accepted without blinking the inevitability of his own.
    Rachel awed him and shamed him in equal parts. He had the sudden urge to see her again, even though it had only been a week since the last time he’d seen her. He wanted to hug her. To tell her how damn amazed he was by her. He didn’t think his family told her that often enough. Maybe they’d never told her.
    “Take a load off,” Joe said.
    Nathan blinked his way out of his thoughts and realized that everyone was staring at him. He wiped his palms down the legs of his jeans and settled onto the couch down from Swanny. Soon the room would be filled with his brothers and their wives. People would be sitting on the floor, spilled over the arms of chairs and the couch. And his mom would beam the entire time.
    He glanced questioningly at Swanny, wanting to know if his friend was up for this. They’d spent the last two days alone at Nathan’s building site until Nathan’s mom had had enough and dragged them over for a real dinner, as she’d put it.
    Swanny looked content—more content than Nathan—to be surrounded by so many warm people. But then Swanny didn’t have family. He’d had no one to return to when he and Nathan had been rescued. In Swanny’s position, Nathan would have given up hope a lot sooner. Only the drive to see his family again had kept him sane. What had given Swanny such determination?
    If he could give Swanny a little peace by sharing his family, then Nathan would gladly do it. His mom would adopt him now anyway whether Swanny liked it or not. Nothing much stopped her when she set her mind to something, and collecting strays was a lifelong habit of hers.
    “How is training going, Joe?” Frank asked.
    Nathan traced one of the scars on his arm and didn’t look over for his brother’s response. His dad didn’t mean anything by it. He worried about his youngest sons. The family was thrilled to have them both home, and their brothers were content to have them under the KGI umbrella.
    Nathan hadn’t made a commitment. He wasn’t even talking the possibility. Not yet. Maybe never.
    “Going good, Dad. I’m being assigned to Rio’s team. Van is still working on a third team. That could be months in the works. He’s a picky bastard.”
    “You’ll be taking assignments already?” Marlene asked sharply.
    Nathan turned his head to see his mom walk into the living room with that classic “mom” look on her face, which meant she was displeased. And worried. She put the tray holding the drinks down on the coffee table and motioned for them to get one.
    Joe snorted. “If I had my way, yeah. But for now I’ll just be training with Rio and his men.”
    Marlene frowned harder. “But they live away. Doesn’t Rio live in some jungle somewhere?”
    Joe grinned. “Belize, Mom. And yeah, he lives there. He doesn’t train there. We’ll train here at the new facility. It’s why Sam busted ass to get everything up and running. Well, and we still have permission from Uncle Sam to train at Fort Campbell too.”
    “Well, that’s something at least,” Marlene muttered as she took a seat between Nathan and Swanny. “If it’s all the same, I’d like for my boys not to take off the minute I get them home. Has your doctor even given you the go-ahead for this kind of activity?”
    She put her hand on Nathan’s leg and gave him a gentle squeeze, even though she didn’t look his way or direct her statement toward him. While his brothers worried incessantly over Nathan, Marlene seemed content to give him time and space and not pressure him to do anything at all.
    But that might be because she feared he was one short fuse away from exploding. Which would explain why she hadn’t wanted Rusty to invite him to graduation. He sighed. He just wanted things to be normal, or as close to normal as possible. In the past she wouldn’t have hesitated