The Last Emperor
Page 6
As if he’d heard, Nika Marisek found Arit on the busy platform and he jerked his chin in Arit’s direction while speaking to Arit’s sire.
Who didn’t even have the grace to pale or appear especially guilt-ridden.
“No, no, no,” Arit said to the security team leader who finally approached him. “Nobody told us Benjic was a member of the tour group.”
The shifter frowned. “The tour package was purchased in his name.”
“A lot of capitol shifters make arrangements through Benjic. He’s never before come along for the ride.” Arit shook his head when his sire exited the compartment to stand beside Nika on the raised platform. “He needs to climb back onto the train.”
“We brought additional security personnel from the capitol to protect both His Highness and Elder Benjic, and as your company’s guidelines demand, each bought a tour package, although learning extensive survival skills is included in our job training and is therefore unnecessary for you to provide them during our stay. Our group is large, but only a small subset of us will tax your services for more than room and board.” The bodyguard scowled. “Elder Benjic assured us that your lodge and camp could handle this many people.”
“We wouldn’t have sold the tickets if we couldn’t absorb a big group.” Irritation skittered up Arit’s spine. “The number of people isn’t the problem.” He glared at Benjic. “He is.”
From the raised platform, Nika Marisek smiled, and his eyebrows climbed into his hairline. Of course, he was a shifter. He’d heard every word of Arit’s exchange with security despite the screech of the train, but where Arit’s parentage had become an open secret among the tribes during the past many summers, perhaps the rumors hadn’t reached the lands of men, nor the newly discovered crown prince yet.
Interesting.
And so like his sire to spring a quasi-secret son on a royal who had probably deemed himself safe from a mating pact forged before the war. Arit bristled at his unwitting role in his sire’s manipulative gamesmanship. “I never agreed to this visit and I don’t want to see Benjic, not under these circumstances.”
One corner of the crown prince’s lush mouth curved.
Stare unblinking, Benjic finally met Arit’s gaze across the crowded train station. “You’ve invited me to the Urals many times.” He shrugged a diffident shoulder. “Here I am.”
Foul temper screamed through Arit, fueled in part by desire from an unwelcome mating heat dumping adrenaline into him. Instinct demanded he march to the platform and jerk Nika Marisek away, drag him far from the shrewd intrigues of his scheming sire, but heeding this foolish hormone-driven compulsion to protect a potential mate was madness. It would only feed his sire’s purposes. Still, Arit clenched the hands dangling at his sides into fists. “I want you gone.” He huffed out a furious breath. “I want you both gone.”
The security leader frowned. “You’ve been paid handsomely.”
“I’ll refund you.”
His sire’s stare glittered with smug triumph. “You can’t afford to send business away this late in the tourist season.”
Fury clouded his vision red—because his sire was right. Dad would have already laid in provisions for the overflow of customers, and Arit didn’t look forward to telling the extra help he’d kept on at the lodge and the upper camp that they wouldn’t receive the additional pay, either. He tried to keep as many workers as he could busy with maintenance and new building projects during the off-season because the money often meant the difference between warmth and suffering through the frigid winter, but shifters who staffed the lodge especially were ill-equipped for construction or heavy labor. They were maids, cooks and waiters, the tour photographer…most of whom had never wielded an ax or a hammer. The guides he employed stayed on full-time, Arit always found work for them, but he’d been less successful for those working inside the lodge. The days between late autumn and when the snow began to fly was hard for them. Less this year, he’d hoped, thanks to this late season reservation. Damn his sire for putting the economic future of Arit’s people in peril. “I’ll figure something out.”
The crown prince turned to Arit’s sire, a polite smile curving his lips. “Problems?”
“My oldest son owns and operates Shifter Frontiers.” Benjic dipped his head to indicate Arit across the station. “He hates me.”
“Incorrect.” Arit grimaced. “Hate would require mustering the emotional energy to passionately care about you. I don’t,” he lied.
The burly shifter next to Marisek growled. “We didn’t know you had a son outside the capitol.”
“Wait. What?” The human woman rounded her eyes. “He has another kid?”
“Technically, I don’t.” Benjic waved at Arit. “He refuses to let me claim him as of my blood.”
“I already have a dad, a fantastic dad.” Arit shook his head. “You’re just the asshole who knocked him up.”
The woman grabbed the crown prince’s hand and clenched it in hers. “Nick—”
“Perhaps we could continue this conversation inside?” He squeezed the human’s hand. “It’s rather cold for Lydia and rude to her, too, because she can’t hear as sharply as we do and is therefore missing parts of the conversation.”
Benjic gestured to the stairs of the raised platform with a flourish. “Of course, Your Highness.”
Ire rising, Arit pivoted and marched into the train station. He made a beeline past the gift shop and ticket window, to the diner. Before he settled on a stool at the counter, Doria placed a mug of steaming coffee in front of him.
“That him?” she asked, her stare sweeping the customers streaming from the train.
Wrapping his fingers around the mug, Arit let the heated ceramic warm him. “Apparently.”
Doria sniffed. “Doesn’t look like an emperor. You sure that’s him? His hair is a disgrace.”
Normally, Arit would agree. Shifters didn’t cut their hair unless an alpha lost a challenge for leadership or the alpha suffered a significant military loss. Occasionally, shifters crazed with grief shaved their heads after the death of beloved mates, but the trend had increasingly fallen out of fashion as more and more of his generation adopted the aristocratic practice of mating to strengthen regional businesses rather than allowing mating heats to steer them toward appropriate spouses. Goddess forbid the peasantry learn from noble mistakes. Most shifters viewed short hair as a humiliating punishment these days.
Arit’s fingers itched to run through those bright, honeyed curls anyway. “He was raised by humans, remember. He likely adopted many of their customs.” Which made the lust firing his blood that much more disastrous. He sipped his coffee and frowned. “I heard he knits, for fuck’s sake.”
Doria glared at him and whapped him upside the head with the flat of her palm. “I knit.” She sniffed. “Don’t be a jerk.”
He rubbed the sore spot. “Definitely an omega.”
“Why? Because he runs a yarn shop and knits? I manage this diner and I knit, too. Been a beta since I took my first breath and if I was an omega—or he is—that’s no embarrassment or reason for shame.”
Annoyed, Arit wrinkled his nose. “I didn’t say an omega is inferior. An omega just wouldn’t be a good match for me.”
“What?” She blinked, at a nonplus. Then, she widened her eyes. “Oh.” She grinned. “Isn’t that something? All things considered, I mean.” The rag she industriously scrubbed the spotless counter with froze. Her mouth gaped. “Oh my stars, is that your sire?”
Arit glanced over his shoulder and through the glass doors of the diner. Benjic, the human, the shifter who’d ogled her, and several others had gathered into a group to argue in low voices in the lobby of the train station. With the noise from the engine still roaring on the tracks and the diner’s twin doors muffling sound, Arit couldn’t make out what they said, but the wooden smile on the crown prince’s face as he watched the others persuaded Arit he was better off not knowing. “Benjic says he’s my sire. We disagree.”
“I’ll respect him when he earns it.” He ducked out of the way when Doria raised her palm to clock him again. “I’m serious. He abandoned us. Not Dad alone. He left me, too. He never sent coin to help raise me, never wrote to find out how I was.” Arit sneered. “I wasn’t politically convenient to him until I became an adult, and now I’m supposed to fall over myself greeting him with open arms?”
“Your sire signed over his ancestral lands to you for your future before he took off. Stop acting like he’s a deadbeat who never provided for you. He did. Your dad was as stubborn and as proud as your sire, too.” Doria narrowed her eyes on him. “You don’t know what your dad was like when you were young, but I remember. Emyn didn’t turn down Benjic’s gift of your family’s territory because, as eldest child, the land is your birthright, but he would have rejected financial help from your sire otherwise. He washed his hands of his mate as soon as Benjic hopped the train to the capitol. Which is probably why your sire didn’t try harder with you.” She shrugged. “No point. Emyn would have smacked him down for his trouble.”
A bubble of laughter caught Arit by surprise. “Dad would not.”
“You think your dad was always sweet?” Doria rolled her eyes. “You come by your temper natural and not from your sire alone.”
Maybe.
And maybe Benjic had deserved the full measure of his dad’s wrath by taking off for the capitol like his ass was on fire, leaving his dad to parent a new baby alone. “Doesn’t matter.” He turned back to his coffee as the group, still squabbling, plodded toward the diner. He grinned, smile full of teeth, when the glass doors whooshed open behind him. “What’s important is, if Benjic believes he can show up and all will be forgiven, he’d best think twice.”
“Nick is giving up the throne, hot shot. No purpose in mating your pansy ass, anyway,” the shifter accompanying the crown prince said with a snarl.
“Rolan, please.”
Stare unwillingly drawn to the crown prince in the reflection of a mirror behind the diner’s counter area, Arit shuddered. Wild lust pulsed through him, setting his teeth on edge. “On that much, we agree.” He squared his shoulders, fighting the hormone-driven desire as best as he could. “The mating pact between the imperial family and my tribe was voided by law after the war. Even if that wasn’t the case, Benjic surrendered any rights to me as his son when he abandoned us in the Urals to scrabble for power in the capitol.” His gaze flickered to his sire. “I want him to return to the train and head back to the cities where he belongs.”
Nick Goode, who was also Nika Marisek and the tribe’s last emperor, arched an eyebrow at him in the mirror. “Keep your friends close and your enemies…?”
Arit lifted the coffee mug to his lips. He gulped down half the steaming beverage, hoping the sting of his burned mouth might distract him from the unwelcome urge to toss the pretty blond prince to the ground and mount him. “Benjic isn’t my enemy.” He glared at his sire. “He’s nobody to me.”
“Wonderful.” His sire had the audacity to grasp his hands in front of him and nod, pleasure glinting in his eyes. “You should have little trouble with my presence at the lodge if I am no one to you.”
Arit scowled.
“We need to keep an eye on him, and the council sent him to keep an eye on Nick. None of us trust each other.” The human huffed out an irritated breath. “As long as everyone understands Nick doesn’t have to marry anybody, I’m okay with that.”
“Nick is still ironing out the details of the funeral and abdication ceremony, too,” the one called Rolan chimed in. “Benjic has council authority to negotiate the final arrangements. Sending for another elder would take time.”
“My parents, brothers, and sisters have waited too long to be laid to rest already.”
Wincing, Arit finished his coffee. In the rush of his mating heat and the unwelcome appearance of his sire, he’d forgotten the crown prince had traveled to the empire his family had once ruled to ensure his lost family was properly buried. A glance at Nick in the mirror showed the shifter as cool and collected as he’d been on the train platform, as distantly regal as he’d been during the media frenzy over the tribal fetes held in his honor. Fascinated, Arit’s dad had followed every report. He’d tried and ultimately failed to get tickets to the farewell gala hosted by the Ural tribe and would have dragged Arit along, too. His dad’s obsession with gossip about the last emperor knew no boundaries and he’d shared his excitement with Arit, who had never known the crown prince’s calm façade to crack in the media spotlight. Not once.
He was royalty and proved it with every frown he smoothed away, with all the tears for his dead family he hadn’t shed.
Perhaps the mating heat attuned him to Nika more keenly because, despite the crown prince’s cool demeanor, Arit felt his heartache. He couldn’t see it. Nick stood at the door of the diner with the rest of the tour group. His body remained loose, his features placid. Even his eyes hid the depths of his grief, but Arit sensed the roiling pain in the prince’s chest just the same. He didn’t have to tell Arit that he needed to bury the bones of his family as rapidly as possible and delays caused by capitol parties and this trip to the Urals while scientists identified the remains had been excruciating to him. Arit knew the prince’s hurt in the marrow of his bones.
So fierce was the perceived agony, Arit couldn’t demand prolonging it a single day. “Fine.” He stood and snatched his mug. He swallowed the final dregs of his coffee. “As long as we understand no mating pact will be fulfilled here, Benjic can stay.” He pivoted to glare at his sire. “You’ll leave Dad alone, or I’ll—”
“I have no interest in causing Emyn more pain.” The elder frowned. “I loved him. We were a poor match, but I did love him. I always will.”
“You mated someone else, though. We’re due to meet with your son and daughters once we return to the capitol.” The woman narrowed her eyes. “I thought shifters mated for life.”
Arit sighed. “We do.”
Chapter Five
Built from native timber and granite mined from the Urals, the main lodge of Shifter Frontiers was surprisingly extravagant. Shuttles from the train station in the valley had climbed a third of the way up the nearest peak and pulled into a circular drive. The building boasted only two levels but seemed to stretch forever, partly due to natural stone patios that bled into the rugged terrain surrounding them. Rather than intruding into the environment, the place blended with the rocky plateau upon which it’d been built, despite acres of tinted glass windows intersected by stone pillars and rough wooden beams.
Nick hadn’t expected luxury. The business advertised itself as a retreat to learn tribal heritage in the wild. He’d anticipated a campground.
He was presented with a resort.
“This is the beating heart of Shifter Frontiers,” Benjic said, pride saturating his tone, as he, too, exited the shuttle. “I assigned the property rights to Emyn for our son when our mating failed. He began renovations to the tribe’s old headquarters, including the addition of an upper camp and updating a hunting cabin for use as their personal quarters. He improved the grounds around the lodge with extensive hiking trails and an amphitheater where bonfires are hosted during the summer. Cross country skiing and snow tubing are popular in the winter with locals and tourists alike.”
Nick frowned at the elder. “Didn’t you tell me this was your first visit to the resort?”
Mouth thinned to a grim line, Arit circled around the van. “His spies are everywhere.”
Benjic snorted. “I read the promotional package your dad sent.”
Nodding, Arit herded the group from the second and third vans plus the one Nick had taken from town toward the lodge’s front door. “And your spies report everything we do,” he told Benjic.
The elder arched an eyebrow. “I talk to Emyn frequently these days, if that counts.”
Chuckling, Nick joined the others
streaming inside. Keeping his attention on where he would stay rather than on the tempting ass of his potential mate stretched his early childhood training to the breaking point, but he managed by focusing on the massive fireplace that dominated one wall, oak floors dotted with soft fur pelts, and wide windows showcasing spectacular views of mountains disappearing into wispy clouds. Pleased, he noted the fire had been stoked high. Sweat prickled his skin under his thin shirt. More than one finger in their entourage crept to tug at a shirt collar in the lodge’s heat, but the important thing was Lydia would be warm. Nick and Rolan had acclimated to human temperature levels while growing into adulthood in the lands of men, but the rest of their group began shedding extra clothes the moment they walked through the lodge’s entrance. They draped jackets on the backs of sofas lining the cavernous hall and rid themselves of the neatly stitched vests which were fashionable in the tribes. Some unbuttoned as much of their black dress shirts as propriety allowed.
Lydia accepted the displays of flesh with the dignity—and avarice—of a queen given her due. “Take the trunks upstairs, please,” she said, shrugging out of her own coat with a gratified hum. “Rolan and I will share a room, so you can put ours together.”
When his brother started at that grand announcement, Nick laughed. “While I appreciated your discretion in the capitol, I knew you and my best friend had begun circling each other,” Nick told him. He tapped his nose. “Scent doesn’t lie.”
Arit’s eyes widened. “She’s human.”
Shoving down brutal disappointment, Nick nodded. “That matters?”
“Not to me.” His potential mate pointed an accusing finger at Benjic. “He voted with the purists to close the borders after the war.”
“Living in the capitol hasn’t deadened my sense of smell, boy. I recognized the start of his heat, and although human bodies aren’t engineered to mate as ours are, no one could mistake the change in her scent as she responded to him.” The elder shrugged. “What Rolan and Lydia do in the privacy of their room is their business and none of mine.”