The Belve Ravennati entered the room and took their seats on the left side of the horseshoe. Aunt B waved at Isabella. Isabella studiously ignored her. Her two sons sat by her. The Italian brothers looked very similar: both dark-haired, both with intelligent, sharp eyes and a carefully shaped sprinkling of dark stubble on their jaws. The taller, leaner one had striking eyes, pale hazel and framed with dark eyelashes. They stood out in sharp contrast to his nearly black hair. The other was shorter, more compact, with dark eyes. One of them was Gerardo and the other Ignazio, but I couldn’t remember which was which. I couldn’t recall which had married Desandra either, but I was pretty sure the shorter of the brothers was the one who got slapped.
I leaned over to Desandra. “Which one is the father?”
“The handsome one,” she said, her voice filled with mourning.
Thanks, that helps a lot. “Hazel eyes or brown?”
“Hazel. Gerardo.”
So the shorter, slapped one, was Ignazio.
A moment later the Volkodavi came through the right exit and took their seats on the right side of the horseshoe. Good idea. Minimized the chances of them lunging across the table at the Belve Ravennati and trying to murder each other with their forks.
People were taking their seats. The dinner was about to start.
“You’re not fit to sit at this table,” Jarek said.
Round two.
“Make me move,” Curran said.
“You’re nothing. You will always be nothing,” Jarek said. “Weak like your father.”
You bastard. I reached over under the table and touched Curran’s hand. He squeezed my fingers.
“My father has a son who rules the largest pack in the Southeast of the United States,” Curran said. “How big is Budek’s territory? Oh wait. Your son doesn’t have a territory, because you murdered him.”
A string of servants came in, rolling enormous barrels.
“Is that beer in the barrels?”
“They’re called casks, Kate,” Barabas said quietly behind me. “And I believe they’re full of wine.”
Lyc-V, the shapeshifter virus, treated alcohol like poison and tried to get rid of it the moment it hit the bloodstream. But if a shapeshifters drank fast enough and in large volume, they managed to hit a buzzed stage. Besides, there were some humans in the hall. This place already was a pressure cooker: one wrong word and it would explode. Why the hell would anyone want to add alcohol to this mix?
“The only reason you rule at all is because your country is filled with gutless dogs,” Jarek said. “Here you’re not fit to scrape shit off my boots. Come over here and I’ll teach you what a real alpha is.”
He just wouldn’t shut the hell up.
“You’ve been scheming and plotting for thirty years and your territory will fit into mine ten times,” Curran said, his tone slightly bored. “I could give the same amount away and not miss it.”
On the left Gerardo was glaring at Radomil across the table. The wine barrels kept coming in. Could this get any worse?
“You had a chance to join me,” Jarek said. “You spat on it. And you think you can come here and tell me what to do with my daughter?”
“Make way for the lord of the castle,” a man called out. The djigits at the entrance directly opposite us came to attention.
“Your daughter is a grown woman,” Curran said. “She can speak for herself.”
“Until she belongs to another man, she is mine to do with as I please,” Jarek said.
That does it. I leaned forward. “Hey, you. Either put your claws where your mouth is or shut the fuck up. Nobody wants to hear you yip.”
Jarek’s eyes bulged. Green flared in the depths of his irises, an insane hot flame. He opened his mouth but nothing came out.
“Yes, just like that,” I told him. “Less talking, more quiet.”
It dawned on me that Curran was sitting completely still, staring straight ahead with focused intensity.
“Lord Megobari,” a man announced.
I turned. At the far entrance, between two djigits, Hugh d’Ambray strode into the hall.