“Not what you think,” he managed to choke out past the pain.
“No?” She shoved a photo into his face that Alura had posted of them in the restaurant. One that had been picked up by a number of news agencies and broadcast all over. Ironic really that it had more coverage than the assassin’s attack on his mother two days ago, or the near miss he’d had himself just yesterday. “Guess I’m hallucinating, then.”
Cursing his stupidity, he righted himself even though all he really wanted to do was find an ice pack and a bed. “Why are you so mad anyway? I asked you before I did it.”
And that was definitely the wrong thing to say as it sent her off into a round of incoherent sputtering that resulted in the only recognizable words being pieces of vulgar profanity that would have gotten slapped had he let them fly.
But at least it got her talking to him again. This was the longest conversation they’d had since the night he asked her to marry him.
With one last choice insult for his manhood, she started off.
Bastien took her arm and gently pulled her to a stop. “Em—”
“Don’t you dare!” She jerked free of his grasp and raked a scathing glare over him. “You knew how much this would hurt me and yet you did it anyway. How could you?”
That question left a bleeding welt on his soul. And the answer was so simple that he couldn’t understand how she missed it.
Because he’d wanted her to tell him not to go. To say that she wanted him back. That she still loved him and there was some hope left for him to hold on to.
She’d cut him off completely and he’d been beyond desperate. That was why he’d done it.
Instead, she’d told him that she didn’t care what he did. To go out with Alura.
But her fury now gave him the very hope that he’d been praying for. “It was only dinner. I took her straight home. Nothing happened between us.”
“You think I believe you? That I’d ever believe you after this?”
She should. He’d never been on a worse date in his life.
“What’s going on here?”
Bastien went cold at the sound of his older brother’s voice intruding on their fight. Dritvík! That was the last thing he needed.
Disgusted, he watched as Quin joined them. Almost even in height to him, his brother had wavy brown hair that was two shades darker than his, and hazel blue eyes. Eyes that he focused on Bastien with a condemning stare. But that didn’t faze Bastien at all. He was too used to it. Too used to Quin judging him as lacking in all things.
Since the day Bastien was born, his older brother had been jealous of the attention their mother had given him. Jealous of the fact that Bastien had the privileges of being a visir without having all the hassles of training to run the empire. It ate at Quin and made him a snotty, acerbic shit most days.
And today he was in a particularly bad mood. He curled his lip at Bastien. “Must you sully our good name every chance you get? Don’t you have more important things to worry about than chasing after another piece of tail? Like finding the bastard who tried to kill our mother?”
“Stay out of this.”
But it was too late. Ember was already leaving.
“Em!” Bastien started after her.
“Go to hell, Cabarro!”
Quin jerked him to a stop. “Show some dignity, damn you! You’re a visir of this empire! We don’t chase after common filth!”
Growling, Bastien slugged his brother. “You’re not fit to speak of her and don’t you dare insult her again!”
“I’ll have you whipped for this!”
“Go for it, theren. I dare you.” Bastien laughed in his face at the mere thought of what their mother would do if Quin even attempted to have him harmed.
Wiping the blood from his lips, Quin curled his lip. “One day, Bas, I hope you get what you deserve.”
“And what’s that?”
“A lesson in who your real family is and what hanging out with trash like that gets you.”
FIVE WEEKS LATER
All his life, Bastien Aros Cabarro had stupidly thought the most frightening three-word phrase in the entire Kirovarian language was his full name when spoken by his mother in that nut-shriveling tone she had whenever he did something that displeased her.
He was wrong.
Truly the most frightening three words? Bar none? Those sons of bitches had just flown out of the mouth of his ex’s baby sister. In a crowded room of people his parents would murder him over scandalizing.
“Bastien, I’m pregnant.”
Stunned by this unbelievably cruel hatchet of fate, he stared blankly at Alura as if Ember had cold-cocked him again, and honestly, it was what this news felt like.
This could not be happening.
Not now. Not tonight in the middle of my parents’ thirty-third anniversary party.
Not with Alura …