“You’re telling me to give up the man I love,” I said.
“I can’t say I approve of your choice. He’s powerful, but also paranoid and xenophobic. He will be difficult to bend.”
“Oh that’s rich,” Curran said.
I unclenched my teeth. “I can go years without worrying if you approve of me. And I have no interest in bending him. I like him the way he is. You have no right to comment on my relationships.”
“I’m your father. That’s the great privilege of parenthood; we can comment on whatever we want.”
“I don’t want you to be my father.”
“Of course you do,” Roland said. “You want to be loved, just like all of us want to be loved by our parents. Don’t you want to know about your mother? What she was like? About our family?”
“Our family consists of monsters.”
“Yes. But we are great and powerful monsters. Love demands sacrifices. When you love something, the way you love your people, Blossom, you must pay for it. Besides, I’m not forcing you to leave him, only the position of power that comes with him.”
“How exactly does this get around me challenging you?”
“You claimed a territory. I made you step down in retaliation. This demonstrates to those who are watching that I have power over you and our relationship is much more complex than the simple rebellion of you against me.”
“You are incredibly powerful,” I told him. “But I’m your daughter. If you hurt Curran or Julie, I will hunt you. I will dedicate every waking moment of my life to killing you, and I will succeed. Maybe not now. Maybe in another century or two. But I will never give up. Your powers work half of the time, when the magic is up. My sword works always. Promise me, Father. Promise it.”
Roland looked at Curran. “So be it. But this is the last concession I’m willing to make.”
“We have a deal,” Curran said. My heart broke into small jagged pieces.
Roland smiled again. “I always gave my children what I thought they wanted. Usually they wanted power. I am giving you what you need instead. Consider it an early wedding gift.”
There wouldn’t be a wedding. The Beast Lord and the Pack were one and the same. Even if we tried to make it work, we’d fail. The Pack would pull and pressure him to spend time at the Keep, where I couldn’t be, while I would pull and pressure him to stay with me.
Roland rose. “The two of you have some choices to make. I shall leave you to it. Oh, and I would like to be invited to the wedding.”
“No,” Curran and I said at the same time.
Roland paused by the door, his face wise, his eyes timeless. “I’ve often asked myself why I could never raise my children to be the people I envisioned them being. I believe it was because they were with me. Power corrupts, it is true, but none succumb to its rot as readily as the young. You don’t see it this way, but what I am giving you now is a blessing. You will understand in time.”
He put his hand on the door handle. “Almost forgot. Teleportation by water requires an incantation and the ignorance or agreement of the one being teleported. Aar natale.”
The words clicked in my mind, their meaning clear. “Interrupt?”
My father nodded. “That’s all you have to say to stop a teleportation incantation.”
He walked out.
If I stayed with Curran, Atlanta would burn and the Pack would die. I could do nothing to stop it.
“Fighting him will be difficult,” Curran said.
“Yes.” Understatement of the year.
“Do you like being the Consort?” he asked.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
He came over, crouched by me, and took my hands into his. “Kate, do you like being the Consort?”
I couldn’t ask him to give up the Pack for me. But I couldn’t lie to him either. “No. I never wanted to be the Consort. I just wanted you.”
“Then problem solved. Barabas!” Curran called.
The door opened and Barabas stepped inside, his face puzzled. “I just saw a man leave. I’ve been at the guard station since we got here. I’m positive he didn’t come in. Unless I’m insane, none of us let him in.”
“I want you to release a general announcement to the Pack,” Curran said.
“Should I get a pen and paper?”
“No, it will be short.”
“I’m ready,” Barabas said.
Curran looked at me. “Effective tomorrow, we are retired. Jim has our blessing.”
What?
Barabas opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
“Take your time,” Curran said.
“You what?”
“We are stepping down,” Curran said.
“You can’t!”
“We just did.”
“But—”
“We’ll talk about the details in the morning.”
“But what do I tell them?”
Curran sighed. “Which them?”
“Them!” Barabas waved his arms. “Everybody.”
“Tell them we quit. Thank you, Barabas. That will be all.”
Barabas blinked several times, turned around, and left the room. The door behind him closed.
“You’re leaving the Pack?” I couldn’t believe it.
“No, we are leaving. Together. It’s freedom, Kate. Freedom from paperwork, freedom from sorting through petitions. We can have a day off whenever we want. We can have sex whenever we want. You can run Cutting Edge, I’ll help you apprehend bunnycats, we can go to Julie’s plays or whatever the hell she does, without having to make excuses . . .”
I put my hand on his lips. “But you’re the Beast Lord.”
He kissed my fingers and took my hand off his mouth. “I haven’t liked being the Beast Lord for a while now. I built all this so my family—so you—would be protected. Then I almost had to kill my own Council so that I could leave to save my mate. In the end, Roland just walked past all of my defenses. Screw this. I’m done with it. This is the best way to protect you and Julie for now.”
“You created all of this. I can’t ask you to give up your life for me.”
He smiled. “I know. You did it for me. You moved into the Keep with me. My turn.”
Words came running out of me, one over the other. “You realize that my father won’t leave us alone? He can’t help himself. He meddles. He won’t attack us directly. Instead, he’ll find some ancient god with an axe to grind and suggest to him that Atlanta might be a nice place to put down roots, just so he can watch us take him down. Didn’t you see him? He was so happy I passed his little test. He’s already thinking of ways he can manipulate and use me and you.”
“That’s fine,” Curran said. “He’ll meddle with us instead of the Pack and we’ll deal with it. The real question is, will you still love me if I’m not Beast Lord?”
I put my arms around him. “Of course I’ll still love you, you stupid idiot. The Beast Lord is an arrogant jerk. I never wanted him. I only wanted Curran.”
“Stay with me,” he said.
“Always,” I told him.
EPILOGUE
“I LIKE THIS ONE,” Julie announced.
I surveyed the three-story house. Solid, with thick walls and grates over the windows, it was built post-Shift from hard brown stone. Curran tilted his head. The announcement of our retirement had hit the Pack first thing in the morning and spawned a shit storm of enormous proportions. We were supposed to be attending an emergency Pack Council session, except the three of us sneaked out of the Keep instead. We had breakfast at a small mom-and-pop joint and then stopped by a Pack real estate office. Once Nina, the real estate agent, a red-haired woman in her forties, regained her ability to speak, she sprang into action. This was the third house we had seen and I really liked it. It sat by itself on a five-acre lot on the outskirts of Atlanta, only three miles from Cutting Edge. Peach trees grew in the back, but the house itself sat in the middle of what would be a grassy lawn in the spring. Julie circled around and reported the presence of a pool in the backyard.