by Scott, Helen
“It’s like Budapest,” I said, trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about. I knew if I sounded weak or like I questioned the words, then he would just brush me aside and assume I didn’t know what I was talking about.
“Budapest, hum?” he repeated, pausing to reevaluate me for a moment, the firm grip he had on the woman’s hair lessened slightly. “Are you one of the Maximus boys?”
I gave him a nod, even though I wanted to shake the man and tell him to stop thinking with his cock for one minute and worry about his daughter instead.
Maximus boys… Fuck. I really wanted to ram my fist into his face for that one. Even if it was, technically, the truth.
Being with Marcella was giving me a taste of a life free from the expectations of our station in this world. Among the councilors? The reminder was like being waterboarded.
“Oliver, see to Isabella. Take her home,” Councilman Walker addressed his Enforcer, who simply nodded in reply and finally tucked his prick away.
I’d seen way too many cocks tonight, and the pussies no longer interested me, so it was definitely a damp squib as sexfests went.
“This way,” I informed him, as I began weaving through the shadows once more.
Before he could ask why we were taking such a circuitous route, I pushed a thought into his head that the Councilman didn’t want anyone to see us leaving together. It made enough sense for him to accept it without question.
When we arrived at the men’s bathroom, I mentally knocked on my brothers’ minds to let them know a stranger was with me before I went in and pointed the Enforcer to the woman.
“She went for you again?” Oliver muttered, and as he took in the state of Isabella, he grimaced. Her tits were out, hair all over the place, and the way she was sitting? Well, let’s just say I knew she wasn’t wearing panties.
“Yes, Oliver. Most inconvenient,” Darius lied, cutting us a look that told us to shut the fuck up.
He grunted. “Thank you for sending one of your men. The Walker family will owe you a favor for saving us from an embarrassing situation tonight.” The words came out sounding pained, and I understood. Markers were precious commodities among this set.
“Of course. I’m sure you’d do the same thing,” Darius replied suavely.
I knew better than any of the others, since I was monitoring the guy’s thoughts, that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in summer of this guy helping us out. He would have spread rumors to get as many people to see Marcella’s fall as possible, and that just pissed me off. He and his master wanted us off balance. Hopefully, the marker would offset that, but it didn’t stop me from wanting to ram my knee into the bastard’s junk.
Apparently, I was projecting, because Darius cocked a brow at me, and I obeyed the silent command to stand down.
Oliver bent and scooped Isabella up, throwing her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes while she limply reached for first Darius, then, as they passed him, Barclay, and incoherent mumbles ran from her mouth like verbal sewage.
Once they were out of earshot, Darius grumbled, “Well, at least they owe us now. It isn’t the first time Isabella has done this.”
Squinting at him, I asked, “You and she had a thing?”
“A long time ago, but I’m not the man who fucked her over. He was a Maximus, though, and she gets the scents confused.” His lips tightened. “Kronos.”
And that one word explained it all.
Dipping my chin, I grunted, “We need to get cleaned up. Otherwise Marcella is going to lose her shit.”
“She wouldn’t if you’d explained to her how most council pursangs loathed salsangs, Darius,” Barclay countered with a grim look shot the Enforcer’s way.
Darius made a noise. “She knows, but she’s choosing to avoid the truth.” He held up his hands in a ‘what can I do?’ gesture, and he wasn’t wrong.
Marcella had been shunned because of her past, so considering who we were? Shunned was being kind.
“If Barc shifts into his wolf, would that be enough? Make us all smell like him?” Keiran asked.
My quiet brother was always the one who put three and four together and came up with twelve, instead of most people who would come up with seven. He was always the one to get us back on track too. But his idea had legs, and the more I thought about it, the more I believed it would work.
“If you want me to do this, that’s fine, but no one can let my wolf out of this room if he takes over,” Barclay warned. “I’m around too many enemies, and he’s on edge.”
“Let’s just hurry up,” I demanded, wanting to get this over with. If I was honest, his wolf always filled me with unease. I’d always attributed it to how different his thought patterns were as the wolf than as the man. It was strange, unsettling, to see someone’s mind change so much. I loved him, but the wolf? Not so much.
Barc stripped out of his clothes while Darius stood in front of the bathroom door, stopping anyone from coming in or going out. As soon as he turned into his wolf, he whined. The animal clearly didn’t like the situation, and I couldn’t blame him. A bathroom on the top floor of one of the fanciest buildings in Boston was hardly where a wolf wanted to be.
He started rubbing up on Keiran and then me, his shaggy coat leaving fur behind on our tuxes. Fan-fucking-tastic. Why didn’t we see that coming?
I wet my hands down and tried to get as much fur off the black material as possible. “Are we good yet?” I asked, trying not to piss the wolf off.
“Maybe? Let me smell you,” Darius said, although there was a humorous undertone to his words that suggested he found this whole situation hilarious, and just wasn’t laughing on the outside—the council pricks weren’t all outside of this bathroom.
Though smacking him would have been a nice way to end the day, I refrained and walked the few steps to where he rested against the door.
He leaned forward to sniff me, then he shook his head. “I can still smell her on you. Getting him on your legs isn’t exactly going to solve the problem when you smell of Isabella on your chest and arms.”
The asshole could have led with that instead of standing there watching Barclay rub up against me and Keir for no reason.
Sighing, I walked back over to where Keir and Barc were standing before dropping into a squat. There was no way I was sitting on the bathroom floor—I didn’t care how fancy the place was. Men weren’t exactly great at keeping things clean. I should know, I’d been living with other guys all my life. We were filthy, and not just our internal thoughts either.
Barc came over and rubbed his slobbery snout all over my face, before body checking me so hard with his hips that I ended up on the floor anyway. If I wasn’t aware that he couldn’t read my thoughts, I would have wondered if he’d done that just to gross me out. While he probably had done it on purpose, especially since he did it to Keir a moment later, I knew it was just him, or his wolf, being playful.
Playful.
Fuck.
More like gross. I’d need to disinfect myself before the night was over, and this tux? I didn’t give a fuck if it had cost two grand—it was going in the trash.
I sat there while he rubbed between us, covering us in wolf fur from head to toe to the point where I was practically spitting because it felt like I was breathing the stuff in. A noise by the door drew my attention, and I saw Darius’s shoulder shaking with silent laughter. Asshole. He was lucky he had several other pursangs’ scents on him that Isabella’s didn’t stand out, otherwise he’d be down on the bathroom floor with Keir and myself.
“Don’t forget Barclay’s suit,” the asshole said, before I could tear into him.
With a sigh, I heaved myself up off the floor, grabbing the suit that we’d set on the counter, and tossing it to Keir. There was no way I was getting back down on the floor.
As I began to wipe the fur off my tux once more, I watched as Barclay all but rolled around on top of the fabric of his own clothes. Seemed he was being extra thorough with himself and
Keir, which made sense since they’d had the most contact with Isabella.
“Darius, why did we do Councilman Walker family a favor? They’d crush us if they had an opportunity like that,” I mused, as I remembered what had been going through Oliver’s mind.
“How do you think I get what I want? Telling someone they owe you is a powerful tool. It works doubly well for me since I’m known for my age and my connections to the Cavalry. The Reapers too, to a lesser extent.
“If someone owes me a favor, then they are usually willing to do almost anything to clear the debt. It’s something that can come in handy, especially since the Sires could quickly send our world spiraling down into its own destruction.”
His reasoning was sound, but I was still uncomfortable with how easily we would have been exposed if something like that had happened to us. Not that any of us were likely to start using Kronos, but still. The woman had been tenacious, and all I could think about was what would have happened if Marcella had been there with me while Isabella was claiming that Barclay was her male…
Several rather disturbing images flashed through my mind. In fact, there’d have been less blood shed in a human horror movie than this bathroom. So saying that it wouldn’t have been pretty was an understatement. Plus tearing the throat of a councilman’s daughter out certainly wouldn’t win us any points.
Before I could let Darius know what I thought about his favor policy, he told Barclay to change back.
“I can’t even smell Isabella in the room anymore, so we, well, you, should be fine,” he murmured grimly, before running a hand through his hair. He strolled to the mirror, made sure that he hadn’t messed anything up then turned to exit the bathroom.
Barclay was barely dressed when he opened the door, and we all froze when we saw Marcella on the other side. I was the first to start moving, and her suspicion was streaming down our bond until I was almost as suspicious as she was—fuck, she was powerful. Her strength was almost like a fist to the nose. It was intoxicating too. Every ounce of me responded to her dominance in a way that made me want to shove her on her hands and knees and fuck her into submission.
“Love, we were just coming back to you,” I stated softly as I reached out for her. The silver flash in her eyes made me pause and drop my hand. I scanned her mind, just surface stuff, but enough to know that anger and fear were riding her, hard.
She thought we’d left?
How the hell could she think something like that?
In that brief moment, I resolved to make sure she knew how much she meant to me and that I would never leave her. Only death could separate us, and even then, if one of us died, we all did, so our souls could float together in the ether or wherever the fuck souls went. I wasn’t a goddamn mage. I didn’t know shit like that, but I did know that she wasn't getting rid of any of us any time soon.
We were going to be the dogshit on her shoes—going nowhere and proud of it.
Now we just had to figure out a way to make her realize that.
“What the hell was taking so long? I have six mates, and only two stuck by my side tonight,” she growled. Her voice started off angry, but by the time she finished, she just sounded upset, which made my heart hurt.
I glanced behind her, expecting to see Cade and Gideon grinning since they were the only ones not on her shit list in that moment, but they weren’t. Both of them looked worried, their lips pursed and eyebrows drawn together, which surprised the hell out of me.
“It’s my fault,” Barclay said from behind me. “My wolf needed some air, so I let myself shift. It was dumb, and I shouldn’t have done it, but the guys came and brought me back. Don’t be mad, sweetness. I just hate being stuck in a concrete jungle.”
By the time he finished talking, the shifter was standing next to me without a hair out of place as he slowly reached for our mate. After a moment of studying him, she took his hand.
“Don’t do that again. You scared me.” Marcella almost looked like she had tears in her eyes, but I knew it had to be a trick of the light. Our mate wasn’t overly emotional like that. Was she?
She’d been weird ever since that shit with Morgana, and ever since, determining her baseline was hard going. It was difficult to imagine the Marcella we’d met at Westbrook would be standing here, dripping sex and tears as she reproached us for leaving her alone for too long…
I didn’t wish for that Marcella back, at least, not for my sake. But for hers? Yeah. Whatever she was going through was hitting her hard, and that concerned me. But how could I protect her from something that went so above my pay grade? The answer was that I couldn’t, and it fucking sucked.
“That was never my intention, my love,” Barclay soothed, raising her hand to cup his jaw and simultaneously taking advantage by kissing the inside of her wrist.
“I want to go home,” she whispered, turning to look at Darius, who she’d almost completely ignored until that point. “You can come with us or you can stay. I don’t care either way.”
Turned out that even though we had fucked up, Darius had fucked up more than any of us by thinking that Marcella would be okay with something like tonight happening. She loved us, always would, and that was why she had been scared and angry. The whole thing just made me love her more, even if she was a little scary sometimes. The best women kept you on your toes, and I may as well have been a ballet dancer doing pointe work at that moment.
10
Marcella
The limo ride back was filled with stony silence. My anger radiated out of me in waves, which I was sure my mates could sense, not that it stopped my emotions at all. I just wasn’t used to seeing Darius appear so meek and mild. Usually, hell, even with the Cavalry and the Reapers, he had been strong and formidable. It was like everything about him changed when we walked into that room though, and I couldn’t help but wonder why? What had happened in his past to make him act that way around those stuck up assholes?
When we were back in the safety of his penthouse, my pursang mate disappeared immediately, walking straight into his bedroom and shutting the door behind him. If that wasn’t a silent ‘fuck off’ then I wasn’t sure what was.
I knew I should go after him, but I couldn’t tamp my anger enough to go and be supportive. I needed him to understand why I was upset before I could focus on what was going down with him. I was the one who should be pissed off, not him, and yet there he was, stalking off like I’d offended him.
As soon as the front door to Darius’s luxury home closed behind the rest of us, I began pulling each piece of jewelry off and placed it on the coffee table. I kicked off my heels and stripped out of my dress, tossing it on the couch in the living room next to where the heels had landed. As soon as I was in nothing but my bra and panties, I ran my fingers through my hair, pulling at all the hair spray and bobby pins that the stylist had put in it to make me presentable. I wished I could set it on fire, but even though I could call on Gideon’s powers for that, I didn’t want to accidentally burn the place down.
Even if Darius deserved some punishment for being a jerk off tonight.
None of what I had been wearing, nothing about my appearance at that party, had been me. It was all a high gloss that had been painted on me by my Enforcer mate to make me fit into the mold that the council expected, and that pissed me off. Royally.
Those sons of bitches were in for a surprise tomorrow that was for damn sure. Especially after seeing how they treated me and my mates, other than Darius, of course, I wasn’t about to put any more effort toward pleasing them. They had already made up their damn minds about us before we even walked into that room tonight. No one had come forward to introduce themselves to me, and Darius had been happy shoving us in a corner like we were something to be ashamed of.
As far as I was concerned, the only bastard who had something to be ashamed of was him.
If I wasn’t good enough to be his mate, well, fuck him and the horse he rode in on.
“I’m going to shower,” I declared,
my voice almost a snarl, as my fingers caught in yet another chunk of hair that wouldn’t be separated without some shampoo and conditioner.
I felt bad about my tone, but I didn’t wait to see if any of them would respond. My anger was riding me too hard, and I didn’t want to take it out on them when it sure as shit wasn’t their fault, so I stormed off and went into the bathroom.
The glory of the washroom was lost on me. Sure, the luxuries were nice, the amber marble fixtures and the gleaming chrome fittings were definitely pretty, but I’d have been happier back at the cabin we’d just left. This just felt like an extra dose of pretentiousness, and it reminded me of who Darius was before he'd become my mate.
This was his world. Those jackasses were people he associated with on a regular basis, and his attitude was par for the course. All his work, all the shit he did for the Maximus line and the council, funded homes like this one, and that made the luxuries seem like they were coated in pig swill.
The best parts? The unlimited supply of hot water and the rainfall showerhead. And as they both began to work their magic, I started to calm down some, but the more I learned about the pursang society I lived in, the more it aggravated me.
I’d been on the outside looking in at Westbrook. Stuck in my own misery and self-pity, and failing to see that the way I was treated was standard for anything that wasn’t as pure as the driven snow.
It was almost like we were still stuck in the age where you paid for your bride with goats. I was worth more than any number of goats, and if Darius couldn’t see that then I’d... I wasn’t sure what I’d do, but I would think of something.
The water slipped through my clean hair and washed the conditioner away as I began to soap up, and I pushed all thoughts of the council to the side. In the big picture, they weren’t that important anyway. Not now the Sires were awake and around to cause mischief.
“Want some help in there, sweetness?” Cade’s voice called.