J.R. Ward - The Shadows

Opening things up—

Xcor froze halfway across the threshold.

His five fighters were not, in fact, talking over one another as they passed around bottles of alcohol along with surgical tape and gauze for their wounds. Instead, they were seated on the available furniture that had been rented to them along with the home. There was no drink in any hand, and not even the metal-on-metal sound of guns being cleaned and daggers getting resharpened.

They were all there: Zypher, Syphon, Balthazar, Syn . . . and Throe, the one who hadn’t belonged, but had become indispensable.

None of them were meeting his eyes.

No, that was not true.

Throe, his second in command, was the only male staring at him. Also the only of the group who was standing.

Ah, so he had been the one to organize this . . . whatever it was.

Xcor shut the door behind himself. And kept his weapons on.

“Have you something to say?” he inquired, staying by the door, meeting Throe’s stare straight on.

His second in command cleared his throat, and when he spoke his accent was that not just of the upper class, but of the highest of vampire social orders: that of the glymera .

“We are concerned about your direction.” The male glanced around. “Of late.”

“Indeed.”

Throe appeared to wait for something further in response. When none came, he uttered a curse of frustration. “Xcor, where has your ambition gone? The King has a single, half-breed heir and you suddenly forget about our collective quest for the throne? You put our goals aside as if a bowl now empty of its contents.”

“Battling the Lessening Society is a full-time endeavor.”

“Mayhap if you were in fact fighting.”

“The slayers I killed tonight were of my imagination, then?”

“That is not all you do at night.”

Xcor bared his fangs. “Be of care where thee tread the now.”

Throe cocked his brow in challenge. “Shall I not say it in front of them?”

As he felt his males’ eyes swing over to him, he wanted to hit something. He had thought his meetings with Layla had been unwitnessed. Clearly, that was a miscalculation.

And if he told Throe to stay silent? He might as well condemn himself to something worse than what he had been doing.

“I have nothing to hide,” he growled.

“I beg to disagree. You spend too much of your time under that maple tree, like some lovesick—”

Xcor materialized in front of the male, such that a mere inch separated their faces. He did not touch Throe, but the soldier stepped back nonetheless.

His second in command did not back all the way down, however. “Do you wish to tell them who she is? Or shall I.”

“She is irrelevant. And my ambitions are restrained by no one.”

“Prove it.”

“To whom.” Xcor tilted his head and jutted out his jaw. “To them? Or is it you who has the problem.”

“Prove that you are not going soft.”

In the blink of an eye, Xcor withdrew his steel dagger and pressed it to the male’s jugular. “Here? Now?”

As Throe gasped, the sharp tip nicked his flesh, a line of bright red blood gracing that oh, so shiny pale blade.

“Shall I prove myself on you,” Xcor said darkly. “Would that suffice.”

“You are distracted,” Throe snapped. “By a female . You are weakened by her!”

“And you are deranged! I choose not to kill the rightfully elected King of the Race—and that is a crime over which you attempt to secure a mutiny among my fighters?”

“You were so close! We nearly had the throne! The dominoes were aligned, the glymera was going to do your bidding—”

Xcor pressed that dagger in again, ending the tirade. “Is this traitorous meeting about my ambition—or yours? Permit me to inquire precisely whose loss you are mourning.”

“You are not leading us anymore.”

“Let us ask them.” Xcor broke off and stalked around the room, looking at the bent heads of his soldiers. “What say you all. Are you going with him or staying with me?” As curses broke out in the tense air, he pivoted to Throe. “Because that is what you’re doing, is it not? Presenting them with a choice—either you or me. So, I say, let us proceed to the endgame with all due haste. Where dost thou stand, bastards mine?”

There was a long pause.

And then Zypher lifted his eyes. “Who is she?”

“That is not the question I posed to you.”

“That’s the question we want answered.”

Xcor felt his temper rise. “She is none of your business.”

There was no way in hell he was going to explain the liaisons with his Chosen.

Zypher’s nostrils flared as he took a deep breath. “Jesus . . . you’ve bonded with her.”

“I have not.”

“I can smell it, too,” someone said. “Who is she?”

“She is of no consequence.”

Throe spoke up, loud and clear. “She is a Chosen. Who lives with the Brotherhood.”

Annnnd herewith the chaos he had previously anticipated: The room erupted with male voices, all of them talking over one another, snippets of the Old Language mixing with English and German curse words.

Meanwhile, Throe took out a pristine handkerchief and pressed the white square to the wound at his throat. “I fail to understand why she meets with you—just what do you have over her? There must be some kind of inducement—money? Or is it a threat of some kind?”

Xcor let the insult stand, as it wasn’t just close to the truth; the male had hit the nail on the head. The only reason the Chosen Layla met with him was that he knew the location of the Black Dagger Brotherhood’s mansion, and she was terrified he was going to sack the property: There had been one night, nearly a year ago, when he had followed her blood trail and stumbled upon the great secret. And Throe was right—he had leveraged the discovery to his benefit.

She had promised him her body in exchange for his keeping the site sacrosanct.

And though he had yet to call upon her in a carnal way, out of respect for her pregnancy, her virtue, and her station . . . he would have her.

Eventually, he would take what was his and mark her as his own—

Shit, had he bonded ?

Xcor refocused on Throe and his Bastards. “Let us concern ourselves with this mutiny and not anyone’s imagination. So what say you. All of you.” There was a long pause. “Any of you.”

He supposed, as he awaited a response, the fact that Throe remained upright and breathing was proof that Xcor had, in fact, somewhat softened. Trained by the Bloodletter, he had not forgotten what he had learned in the war camp, but of late, he had come to realize that brute force and bloodshed were simply one means to an end—and there were others that could be more effective.

For example, Wrath had proven the point with the way he had handled the final assault against his throne. That king and his mate had shut down even the most foolproof attack against his rule—and they had done so not only without one life being lost, but with a castration so complete, the very powers of the glymera had been stripped away.

And Wrath, as a leader now chosen by his people, had unassailable power.

Throe broke the silence, addressing the fighters. “I believe I have made myself clear. I feel strongly that we should resume the quest for the throne. We shot Wrath once—we can get at him again. He might be democratically elected, but he cannot continue to rule if he isn’t breathing. And then we need to remarshal support within the now-disenfranchised glymera . By coordinating a constitutional strategy with the former members of the Council, we can argue that Wrath overreached his powers and—”

“You are a fool,” Xcor said quietly.