Dear God, what have I done?
Unfortunately, he had an iron-clad answer for that last query. At least on a biological level. On a moral one? He’d seriously SCUBARed his life—screwed it up beyond all recovery. That painful bastard stepchild of being FUBARed—which he also was. Or would be once Ember learned about this.
If she didn’t know already.
He’d be lucky if she only shot him in the heart. Or head …
And not the one that rested on his shoulders.
“Did you hear me?”
Needing a moment to catch his bearings, Bastien drained the glass of whisky in his hand before he stuttered for the first time since he’d learned to speak. “Uh … yeah.”
That deceptively nonchalant tone got him a vicious slap from the stunning long-legged blonde in front of him.
Not that he blamed her. He wanted to slap himself, too.
He held his hand up to stay the royal security guards as they moved in to take Alura into custody. Last thing he needed was an even bigger scene during his parents’ anniversary party that Alura had crashed so that she could ensure she had a large audience for the verbal bomb she’d just detonated on top of him.
But then, she was good at such spectacles and he had to give her credit—unlike Ember, Alura was always one for a great performance. The more attention on her at any given time, the better.
Positive. Negative. Alura didn’t care, so long as she was at the center of it. Which was no doubt why she’d come here in full military regalia, with her accommodation ribbons clearly visible so as to garner as much sympathy as she could. Let everyone know that she was a decorated war hero from the most prominent military family Kirovar had ever bred.
And that he was nothing more than the kn?ttr who’d wronged her.
Yeah, that about summed it up.
“Bas?”
Even better … there was that infamous tone that said he was in trouble with his family. Only instead of coming from his mother, it was his older sister using it. “All’s well, Lil. I’ve got this.”
Moving to stand by his side, his ever graceful sister, Lillian, swept a condemning stare over him and then down Alura’s body, taking in her ACU battlesuit that clashed greatly with the formal wear everyone else had donned for the black-tie event.
Yeah, he could have done without the condemnation and resentful disdain in Lil’s green eyes.
It was matched only by the searing sneer Quin had pinned on him from the other side of the room.
With as much dignity as he could muster, Bastien set his empty glass down on the windowsill right as his father stepped into the fray with that hostile grimace that was nowhere near as effective at quelling his actions as his mother’s tsking. Strange whenever Bastien thought about it. Even at sixty, his father was a huge beast of a man who wasn’t known for compassion or diplomacy, yet he’d never once intimidated Bastien.
At all.
Something that had made his father insane from the moment Bastien had first opened his eyes seconds after birth and, according to his grandmother, pinned an insolent stare on the monidar. Then yawned and reached for his mother, who had petted him every day since.
Aside from a few well-noted ass-kickings, anyway. For all her doting and loving, his mother wasn’t a pushover—especially not when it came to her kids.
Alura, on the other hand, tucked her chin to her chest and shrank back at his father’s approach. A bad move, as the one thing his father despised in all creatures was a weak spine.
With one made of absolute iron, Bastien put himself between them so that his father couldn’t reach Alura without stepping past him. “Sorry we disturbed the party, Saeir.”
“What have I told you about bringing your—”
“Careful what words you choose, Alvaldr,” Bastien said sharply, cutting him off with his royal address to remind his father of their audience before his father made the situation worse for them all. The man had obviously missed Alura’s stunning declaration on her arrival to the room.
And since everyone in the gargantuan crowd was holding their communal breath to catch every single word of the scandal, they had yet to repeat the news for the emperor’s hearing.
Like that would last.
Clearing his throat, Bastien turned and gently took Alura’s arm. He pulled her forward to meet his father.