J.R. Ward - The Shadows

“That’s not what I just heard. And before you accuse me of eavesdropping, the two of you were yelling so loudly, I could hear it next door.”

Trez rubbed his short-cropped hair and walked around. “Selena—”

“Are you going to be mated?”

“This doesn’t affect us.”

“It most certainly does.”

When there was a tight silence, iAm decided, Fuck it. “He was sold by our parents when we were infants to the Queen of the Territory—as a mate for the heir to the throne. It was decreed by his astrological chart. He’s done everything possible to escape from it, and the reason he’s pissed at me is because I’m his Achilles’s heel. He’s just freaking out at a close call, probably because the real thing he’s worried about is you and he can’t do anything about that.”

As they both looked at him, he shrugged. “Whatever. I’ve been watching Dr. Phil with Lass downstairs when I can’t sleep.”

“Is this true?” Selena asked.

“Yeah.” Trez went over and sat on the bed. “I didn’t talk to you about it because, honestly, like he said, no matter what they do in three days, I’m not going to mate some female I don’t know and don’t care about and give her the second in line for the throne. It’s just not going to happen—and that’s true whether or not you’re in my life, and whether or not you live a hundred more days or a thousand more years.”

He clapped his hands together as if he were closing a door. “And that’s that.”

Selena was quiet for a time. “You should have told me.”

“I don’t like to think about it.”

iAm rolled his eyes. “Truth.”

“And, Selena, I’m serious. I’m not going to do it in seventy-two hours or seven million.” Trez glanced over. “Did you see our parents while you were there?”

iAm shook his head. “I was only in the palace.” In a cell. “And they’ve lost their station so they were on the other side of those walls. I sure as shit didn’t look them up. They’re dead to me. I couldn’t give a fuck about them.”

“Me, too.” Trez looked back at Selena. “This is my life here. Here is my life—these people, this place, my businesses . . . you most of all. I’m not going to let anyone take it away from me, especially not because some astrologist looked at the stars in the heavens and decided they meant something.”

Selena wrapped her arms around herself. “I really wish you’d told me.”

“I would have if it meant anything to me.”

“And these businesses . . . do you still sell females through them?”

iAm stared at the door. Started inching his way to it.

“They sell themselves,” Trez countered. “I give them a venue to do so, but they are in charge of themselves. They choose who, how much, how often. My job is to keep them safe.”

“While you earn money off of them.”

“They pay the club. Not me.”

“But you own the club.”

“iAm,” Trez said sharply. “I want you to stay.”

He closed his eyes. “That’s not what I’m thinking.”

“No,” Selena spoke up. “If he has nothing to hide, let him say it in front of an audience.”

Great. Just what he was looking for. A job as mediator.

Not.

And maichen was still at the condo.

“Actually, I really do have to go.” iAm glanced back and forth between the two of them. “I’ve never been in a relationship before, so I don’t have any advice for the pair of you. But, Selena, I think you should be aware of two things. One, his entire life has been defined by rebelling against the s’Hisbe and our parents. And two, he has not been with a single female since he got with you last year. He has been faithful to you even when you two weren’t together. So don’t crucify him because you think that the human women who work for him are somehow with him. I’m out.”

He didn’t give them a chance to reel him back into their drama. He had enough of his own. He’d left maichen buck-ass naked in his bed and he was worried she was going to take off without his getting back.

Rushing down to the foyer, he bolted through the vestibule, broke out into the night, and dematerialized to the Commodore.

As he assumed form on the terrace, he yanked back the glass door and rushed across to the corridor that led to the bedrooms.

“ maichen ,” he called out.

Just as he rounded the door to his bedroom, she said, “Yes?”

He took a deep breath as he saw her reclining against the pillows, her bare shoulders emerging from the cover of the duvet.

“Oh, thank fuck,” he said.

“Are you all right?” She sat up. “iAm?”

Kicking off his shoes, he didn’t answer her. He couldn’t. There was too much to say about things he couldn’t change and hated.

Instead, he pulled back the sheets and got in fully clothed. Her body was warm and naked and yielding as he brought them heart-to-heart.

As her arms came around him, and she stroked the back of his head, he shuddered—and realized that in all the years he’d had on the planet, this was the first time he’d had somewhere to go when he felt like the world was a shitty place and time was nothing more than torture to be endured.

It was so much better than even the sex.

This moment where he sought and was given haven? It made him understand why the Brothers lit up every time their shellans came into the room, and why those males would lay down their lives for those females.

“Thank you,” he heard himself say.

“For what?” maichen whispered.

“Being here.”

“Is Selena unwell?” she asked. Because he’d told her why he’d needed to go.

“Not acutely so. But she and my brother got into it.”

“Why?”

“There’s nothing like your fiancée finding out you’re betrothed to another while she’s dying. That is just such an awesome conversation to have.”

maichen stilled. “This has to end.”

“The shit with Trez and that fucking Princess? I agree—if you come up with any bright ideas . . . let me know,” he said starkly.

SIXTY-FIVE

It was very easy to escape from his own house.

Assail simply cracked the window on the upper floor and departed his premises with all the fuss and circumstance of a draft escaping into the night.

He had been tracking the movements of the Brothers in his woods with his night-vision cameras, the huge shapes of the males moving like T. Rexes through his property, their presences sticking to the trees.

Following the sun’s disappearance, he had kept the illusion blinds in place, effectively preserving the daytime, vacant appearance of his interior. It would give the Brothers something to do as they contemplated the where and when of his and his cousins’ nocturnal reappearance aboveground.

Which would not be until he had completed a specific endeavor.

With alacrity, he traveled to the east, to a prearranged location at an abandoned strip mall approximately five miles outside of the downtown area.

The Hertz rental car was parked grille-out against the rear wall of a building that had a faded BLUEBELL’S BIRTHDAY BOUTIQUE, DELIVERIES ONLY sign hanging cockeyed from above a paint-chipped reinforced door.

Ehric put the driver’s-side window down as Assail reformed. “Are you driving?”

“Yes, I am.”

As his cousin got out and Assail assumed the male’s place behind the wheel, Evale spoke up from the backseat. “What do you want us to do?”

“Nothing.”

He put the engine in gear and headed off, moving swiftly, but obeying all traffic laws. He’d gone but a couple of miles when the cocaine that he’d taken about two hours earlier began to wear off in earnest.