“Well, I don’t. I’m not getting mated to that female. I don’t care who she is or who set it up or how ‘important’ it is to the s’Hisbe.”
Trez braced himself for a barrage of oh-yeah-you-do. Instead, his brother looked sad, as if he wouldn’t have wanted the curse, either.
“I’ll say it again, Trez. This is not just magically going to disappear. And trying to fuck your way out of it? That’s not only futile, it’s potentially dangerous.”
Trez rubbed his face. “The women are just humans. They don’t matter.” He turned back to the river again. “And frankly, if I don’t do something, I’m going to go insane. A couple of orgasms has to be better than that, right?”
As silence resumed, he knew his brother disagreed with him. But proof positive that his life was in the shitter was the fact that the conversation dried up at that point.
iAm apparently wasn’t into kicking a guy when he was down.
Whatever. He didn’t care what was expected of him—he was not going back and being condemned to a life of service.
He didn’t care if it was to the queen’s daughter.
TWELVE
It was late in the afternoon when Wrath hit the wall. He was at his desk, ass on his father’s throne, fingers running over a report written in Braille, when all of a sudden he couldn’t take one more damn word of text.
Shoving the papers aside, he cursed and ripped his wraparounds off his face. Just as he was about to throw them at a wall, a muzzle kicked his elbow.
Putting an arm around his golden retriever, he tightened his hand on the soft fur that grew along the dog’s flanks. “You always know, don’t you.”
George burrowed in deep, pressing his chest into Wrath’s leg—which was the cue that someone wanted to be up and over.
Wrath leaned down and gathered all ninety pounds up in his arms. As he settled the four paws, lion’s mane, and flowing tail so that everything fit, he supposed it was a good thing he was so fucking tall. Big thighs offered a bigger lap.
And the act of stroking all that fur calmed him, even though it didn’t ease his mind.
His father had been a great king, capable of withstanding countless hours of ceremony, endless nights filled with the drafting of proclamations and summonses, whole months and years of protocol and tradition. And that was before you layered on the perennial stream of bitching that came at you from every corner: letters, phone calls, e-mails—although of course the latters hadn’t been an issue in his pop’s era.
Wrath had been a fighter once. A damn good one.
Putting his hand up, he felt along the side of his neck, to the place where that bullet had entered him—
The knock on the door was sharp and to the point, a demand more than a respectful request for entrance.
“Come in, V,” he called out.
The astringent witch-hazel scent that preceded the Brother was a clear tip-off that somebody was feeling pissy. And sure enough, that deep voice had a nasty edge.
“I finally finished the ballistic testing. Damn fragments always take forever.”
“And?” Wrath prompted.
“It’s a one hundred percent match.” As Vishous sat down in the chair across the desk, the thing creaked under the weight. “We got ’em.”
Wrath exhaled, some of the impotent buzz draining from his brain.
“Good.” He ran his palm from the top of George’s boxy head down to his ribs. “This is our ammunition, then.”
“Yup. What was going to happen anyway is now nice and legal.”
The Brotherhood had known all along who had been on the trigger of the shot that had nearly killed him back in the fall—and the duty of picking off the Band of Bastards one by one was something they were looking at as so much more than a sacred duty to the race.
“Listen, I gotta be honest, true?”
“When are you not?” Wrath drawled.
“Why the hell are you tying our hands?”
“Didn’t know I was.”
“With Tohr.”
Wrath repositioned George so that the blood supply to his left leg wasn’t completely cut off by the dog’s weight. “He asked for the proclamation.”
“We all have a right to take out Xcor. That asshole is the prize we all want. It shouldn’t be restricted to just him.”
“He asked.”
“It makes it more difficult to kill the bastard. What if one of us finds him out there and Tohr isn’t with us?”
“Then you bring him in.” There was a long, tense silence. “Do you hear me, V. You bring that piece of shit in, and let Tohr do his duty.”
“The goal is to eliminate the Band of Bastards.”
“And how’s that keeping you from the job?” When there was no reply, Wrath shook his head. “Tohr was in that van with me, my brother. He saved my life. Without him…”
As the sentence drifted, V cursed softly—like he was running the math on that memory, and coming to the conclusion that the Brother who had had to cut a plastic tube free of his CamelBak and performed a tracheotomy on his king in a moving vehicle miles away from any medical help might have sliiiiiiiightly more right to kill the perp.
Wrath smiled a little. “Tell you what—just because I’m nice guy, I’ll promise you all a crack at him before Tohr kills the motherfucker with his bare hands. Deal?”
V laughed. “That does take the sting off of it.”
The knock that interrupted them was quiet and respectful—a couple of soft taps that seemed to suggest whoever it was would be happy to be blown off, content to wait, and hoping for an immediate audience all at the same time.
“Yeah,” Wrath called out.
Expensive cologne announced his solicitor’s arrival: Saxton always smelled good, and that fit his persona. From what Wrath remembered, in addition to the guy’s great education and the quality of his thinking, he dressed in the fashion of a well-bred son of the glymera. I.e., perfectly.
Not that Wrath had seen it recently.
He put his wraparounds on in a quick surge. It was one thing to be exposed in front of V; not going to happen in front of the young, efficient male who was coming through the door—no matter how much Sax was trusted and consulted.
“What have you got for me?” Wrath said as George’s tail brushed back and forth in greeting.
There was a long pause. “Mayhap I should come back?”
“You can say anything in front of my brother.”
Another long pause, during which V was probably eyeing the attorney like he wanted to take a chunk out of his fancy, pretty-boy ass for suggesting there was an information divide that needed to be respected.
“Even if it’s about the Brotherhood?” Saxton said levelly.
Wrath could practically feel V’s icy eyes swing around. And sure enough, the brother bit out, “What about us.”
When Saxton remained silent, Wrath clued into what it was. “Can you give us a minute, V?”
“Are you fucking me?”
Wrath picked up George and put him down on the floor. “I just need five minutes.”
“Fine. Have fun with it, my lord,” V spat as he got to his feet. “Fuckin’ A.”
A moment later, the door slammed shut.
Saxton cleared his throat. “I could have come back.”
“If I’d wanted that, I would have told you to. Talk to me.”
A deep breath was taken and let out, as if the civilian was staring at that exit and wondering if V’s pissed-off departure might just cause him to wake up dead later on in the day. “Ah…the audit of the Old Laws is complete, and I can provide you with a comprehensive listing of all sections that require amendment, along with proposed rewording, and a timeline on which the changes could be made if—”
“Yes or no. That’s all I care about.”
Going by the whisper-soft sound of loafers treading an Aubusson, Wrath extrapolated that his lawyer was going for a little walkabout. From memory, he pictured the study, with its pale blue walls and its curlicue molding and all the flimsy, antique French furniture.
Saxton made more sense in this room than Wrath did with his leathers and his muscle shirt.
But the law prescribed who was to be king.