"Are you in love with him?" Brennan snapped.
"No, you idiot, I want him dead as much as you do, but I'm not so wrapped up in my own petty jealousy that I can't see what's right in front of me."
The sound of a hard slap and the housekeeper's scream propelled Alfred's feet toward the kitchen.
"Hit me again," he heard Esther growl. "And I will rip your lily white throat out myself."
"Don't fucking threaten me," he snarled.
"Sorry, am I interrupting something?" Alfred asked, leaning in the doorway.
Esther and Brennan whipped their heads around to look at him, shock paling their faces. The housekeeper was pressed against the wall with her hand over her mouth, still trembling.
"Slight disagreement about dominance, that's all," Brennan sneered. "I'm sure you, of all people, understand that."
"Hm... I've never had to resort to violence in my own domestic disputes," Alfred said, with a shrug. "You alright, Esther?"
"Perfectly fine," Esther said, coldly.
"Great. Well, we brought Aiden for a visit, but I don't see Benjamin anywhere. Could you point me in the direction of the nursery?"
"It's—"
"Shut up, Brennan. I would be happy to fetch Benjamin for you, Alfred, if you would be so kind as to wait in the sitting room?" Esther shot him a pointed look, and he shrugged, sending her an easy-going grin.
"No problem," he told her, lightly. "I'll just go check on Aiden and Oscar, then."
She froze in mid-stride, sending him a shocked glance.
"O–Oscar?"
"Oh come on, you expect me to believe that Brennan didn't tell you? My betrothed is named Oscar, and his son was sired by the late Duke Elliot."
Esther whirled on Brennan.
"Why... didn't you tell me this?" she growled.
"You didn't need to know," Brennan told her. "It didn't have anything to do with anything."
"You... you told me that Olivia's infant cousin had been orphaned and they took him in! You said nothing about him being of royal blood!"
"Why does it matter?" Brennan asked, defensively.
"Why! You know why! You... God damn it, Alfred, will you excuse us?"
"Certainly," Alfred said, with a grin.
He slid away down the hallway and held the recorder out to catch whatever came next.
"You expect me to murder an infant?" she snarled.
"Not necessarily," Brennan said, petulantly. "If we got rid of Alfred..."
"Keep your voice down!"
"...and Oscar," he continued, in a whisper. "Then the problem would take care of itself."
"How do you figure?"
"We'd send the kid off to some family in some other kingdom. He would never know."
"That kid has family outside of Oscar," she snarled. "Just how many people am I going to murder for you, Brennan?"
"As many as it takes!" Brennan snapped. "That throne is mine."
"No," she said, as though she had suddenly realized something. "No, it isn't. You had the opportunity to win it, and you couldn't do it. You had every opportunity to challenge him face-to-face, and you chose to play these manipulative little games instead. Poison? What kind of a man thinks of poison right off the bat? No, Brennan. I was wrong to help you."
"Where are you going?"
"To clear my conscience and beg him to take Benjamin in when we're both dead."
"Don't you dare!"
Something slammed against the wall so hard it shook, and Alfred was back in the kitchen in a split second. Brennan had morphed, tearing through his clothes, and had sunk his claws into Esther's back. He had her neck clamped in his razor-sharp teeth as he pinned her against the wall. Instinctively and without thought, Alfred body-slammed him into the floor. Esther slid down the wall, leaving a smear of blood on the cream-colored walls. Brennan fought Alfred, tearing into his soft human flesh, and Alfred morphed. The poor housekeeper wailed and fled, screaming for help through the halls. Esther lay barely breathing on the floor as the royal brothers rolled around, tearing into each other as fur flew through the glistening kitchen.
Alfred finally gained the upper hand and pinned Brennan face-down on the floor.
"Esther!" he shouted, as soon as Brennan was secure. "Damn it, Esther, stay with me."
Esther gasped for breath, but Brennan's claws had punctured her lungs and they were rapidly filling with blood. With a strangled gasp and a wide-eyed, silent plea, Esther faded away.
"You sick son of a bitch," Alfred snarled, bashing his brother's head against the floor. "Look at what you did!"
"Bitch deserved it," Brennan growled.
Alfred smashed his head on the floor once more. He would have killed him if the peacekeepers hadn't chosen that exact moment to burst into the room.
"Highnesses," one of them said. "We received a call..."
He trailed off in shock as his eyes lit on Esther's body. His face changed from stern to furious, and he whirled on the princes.
"What happened here?" he demanded.
"He did it! He's crazy! His girlfriend's a boy, and he was overcome with jealous rage!"
"Yeah, keep talking," Alfred said, pulling the recorder from his pocket. "It's all on here," he told the peacekeeper. "Do with it what you will."
Three more peacekeepers entered, and the first instructed them to put both princes in shackles until he could listen to the recording. Brennan fought, whined, bargained and threatened as they restrained him, but Alfred ignored it. He'd given his power to the people. All he could do now was sit quietly and wait for them to come to their conclusions. The peacekeeper's face grew red with fury as he listened to the conspiracy, then purple when he heard the replay of Esther's final moments.
"Request use of the royal dungeon?" the peacekeeper asked Alfred.
"Granted," Alfred said.
They released him and hauled Brennan away. He struggled, and one of them knocked him over the head so he slumped, unconscious. They loaded him into a royal blue carriage and drove away toward the palace. Alfred rubbed his wrists and ankles and shot an apologetic look at Esther's body.
"Sorry, love. I didn't think he'd go so far so fast. To be fair, though, you contributed your fair share to your demise."
He knelt down beside her, touching her cooling forehead.
"Your intentions were true, in the end. Benjamin will grow up with family, and I will love him as my own. Sleep tight, princess."
He closed her eyes and stood, meeting the watery gaze of the housekeeper.
"Where is Benjamin?" he asked.
"In the nursery, sire," she sniffled. "I'll fetch him for you."
"Please do. I will be in the sitting room. No child should see their mother like this."
The housekeeper sobbed and buried her face in her apron as she retreated down the hallway. Alfred closed the kitchen door and walked back the way he came, more purposefully now. His clothes were torn and hung loosely from his human form, but he didn't notice. He had more important things on his mind. He ran into a peacekeeper who had just finished interviewing Oscar.
"Excuse me, sir. There is a body in the kitchen. Would you arrange...?"
"We will handle it, your highness," the man answered, with a deep bow. "Word has already spread through the peacekeepers about the trouble your brother was causing. Might I have your permission to inform my town about the truth of the matter?"
"Please do," Alfred said, emphatically. "And that extends to each of you. I think a bit of transparency will be a refreshing change for all of our people, don't you?"
"I do indeed, sire," the man said, with a somber nod. "It has been a bit difficult to manage tempers of late."
"Indeed. Good man. Carry on," Alfred said, clapping a hand on the peacekeeper's shoulder before moving past him into the sitting room.
"What happened?" Oscar asked, jumping to his feet.
"I'll fill you in later," Alfred groaned.
His head was beginning to ache in four different ways.
&n
bsp; "But you should know that we will be bringing Benjamin home with us. Poor kid was essentially orphaned today, and I made his mother a promise."
"Of course," Oscar said, without hesitation. "Does he have a nursemaid, or shall I double Helga's salary?"
"This is why I need you around," Alfred said, with a humorless chuckle. "I didn't ask."
The housekeeper arrived then, carrying the little bundle in her arms.
"Here you are, sire," she said.
"I'll take him," Oscar said quickly. "Does he have a nursemaid or a wet-nurse?"
"Nursemaid," the housekeeper said, sniffling. "Her highness insisted on nursing him herself."
"Poor kid," Oscar sighed. "Lost your mama?"
The tiny baby made a face and squirmed.
"How old is he?" Oscar asked, as his heart broke.
"Just three months," the housekeeper answered, with a trembling chin. "Poor little thing."
"Look Aiden, this is Benjamin," Oscar said, kneeling down beside his son.
Aiden wrinkled his nose at the baby and poked it.
"Yamin?" he asked.
"Yeah, Benjamin," Oscar said. "He's going to come home with us, okay?"
Aiden blew a raspberry and returned to pulling bits of fluff off the carpet.
"I think he'll be fine with it," Oscar said.
"It'll be an adjustment," Alfred said.
"We can handle it," Oscar said, confidently. "As long as I don't get pregnant any time soon, anyway."
"You do realize you just jinxed us, don't you?" Alfred asked, with a tired smile.
"I don't believe in jinxes," Oscar retorted, sticking out his tongue.
He probably should have.
Chapter 22
It took three months of round-the-clock work for Alfred to sort out the mess, and he and the kingdom were better for it. When King Axelcior dropped in to determine just what exactly had happened, Alfred took the opportunity to consult with him about the business of running a kingdom successfully, and was able to get some extremely useful advice. Immediately after that meeting, Alfred announced that his royal court would be dismantled, and replaced by elected officials. The people responded in an overwhelmingly positive way, and it wasn't long before Alfred was conferring with a whole new group of advisers who had been living in the kingdom with the most vulnerable people all their lives. They provided him with alternative perspectives, and helped him identify the real problems plaguing the populace. In between caring for his son and nephew, Oscar spent his time pouring over legal texts and finding ways to reconcile the law with the people's reality.
A multitude of addenda were passed in those months, and each of them went up for a vote in the prince's court prior to being enacted as law. This again made the people feel secure in Alfred's decisions, and he was quickly earning his title in the hearts of his subjects. Removing all legal barriers to male midwifery was first on the list, and paved the way for male mothers to seek aid and legitimacy for their children. Meanwhile, on the domestic front, Alfred had asked Gina and Octavia to move into the palace, and had offered to give the secondary estate to Oren and his family. They had accepted, on the condition that Oren's mother could keep control of her farm, and enough money to hire farmhands to replace her children, who would be pursuing education. Alfred handled this by simply splitting Brennan's salary evenly between Oren and his mother.
Oren, upon meeting baby Benjamin, instantly fell in love with the child. He looked virtually identical to Oren's own children, and was only a couple of months older; the three babies got along perfectly, and Oren petitioned to adopt Benjamin on the basis of blood relation. Alfred granted the request after conferring in depth with Oscar, who had been acting as the baby's mother for the three previous months. Oscar happily agreed; he would miss his little nephew, but he thought it would be better for the boy to be raised with his brothers and by someone who had loved his father.
Brennan, meanwhile, was rotting in prison. His sentencing was still under discussion; under previous generations, he would have simply been put to death in the ring by the royals and the families of those he had murdered. Alfred was firmly against that solution and his advisers could see no alternative, so they were locked in a stalemate. Esther's parents and the Duke's wife called the palace every week looking for answers, but he had none to give them for a very long time. Frankly, Brennan was at the bottom of his priority list. That was until King Axelcior called one evening and asked to speak to the prince directly.
"How can I help you, your majesty?"
"I have two angry families haranguing me nearly every day. What are you doing about your brother?"
"To be frank, majesty, I haven't come to a decision about that as of yet."
"Oh? Why not? Too close to home?"
"Something like that. Look, both of the people he murdered hailed from your kingdom. What say I let you take him and do with him what you will?"
"Hm... sounds like you're passing on your responsibility, boy."
"Perhaps," Alfred said, tiredly. "Though I'm more than happy to let him rot in there forever. Whatever love I once had for my brother died the day he killed the mother of my nephew. Still, he is my brother. I cannot allow a death match to happen on my grounds, not again. It would undo everything I've worked for these three months. Blood sports are off the table, whatever the reason."
"I see," the King said, thoughtfully. "Very well. I will send a team of soldiers to retrieve him. Have him ready at dawn."
"Yes, your majesty. Thank you."
"My pleasure. I respect what you're trying to do, your highness, but I believe you're fighting a losing battle if you think you're going to civilize the blood lust out of your people."
"Noted," Alfred sighed. "Goodnight, Axelcior."
"Goodnight, young Alfred."
Alfred sighed as he hung up the phone.
"Burges," he called, exhaustion heavy in his voice.
"Highness?"
"Have my brother ready for transport in the morning, please. King Axelcior has requested to sentence him in his own kingdom, due to the fact that Esther and Elliot both hailed from there."
"Yes, your highness. Permission to speak freely?"
"Granted."
"You are under no obligation to your brother. You have spent your life simultaneously protecting yourself from him, and him from himself. Forgive yourself for this."
"Thank you, Burges,” Alfred said.
Burges bowed and left. In spite of Burges’s kind words, Alfred’s heart still settled like lead in his chest. He knew he was sending his brother to his death. He admitted he deserved it. He was a killer, a sexual predator and an all-around sociopath. Maybe it was in his blood. Maybe it was his way of dealing with their mother’s death and their father’s abuse. Whatever it was, it had gotten completely out of control while Alfred was otherwise occupied, and there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t fix everything all at once, and he had to accept the fact that he couldn’t fix Brennan at all. Some things, he was beginning to see, were out of reach for even his power. That night he took comfort in Oscar’s arms, and Oscar, missing his nephew like a mother misses their child, took comfort in his. They spent the night licking each other’s wounds, holding each other together even as they fell apart.
FOR THE FIRST TIME in months, Alfred, Oscar and Aiden had breakfast together. Afterward, they moved to the nursery, where they played on the floor with little Aiden, too tired and heart-heavy to talk much. It had been a difficult ordeal, but they had finally managed to get everything on the right track. Alfred's mind drifted from one memory to another of his brother as a child, noticing much in retrospect that he hadn't noticed at the time. Brennan had been cruel and manipulative even as a child. He realized that it was their mother's influence which kept Brennan in check and, once she'd passed, their father had only exacerbated his inner psychopath. The knowledge saddened him, though it lightened his sense of responsibility considerably.
Aiden grew bored of the blocks he was p
laying with and crawled over to Oscar, laying his head on Oscar's belly.
"Baby," he said, clear as a bell.
"What did you say?" Oscar asked.
"Baby," Aiden said again, rubbing Oscar's belly.
Oscar and Alfred exchanged a meaningful look.
"Oscar... is there something you want to tell me?" Alfred asked.
"You've been so busy and stressed out, and with your brother and everything..."
"Oscar..." Alfred said, with a warning in his voice.
"I've suspected for a while," Oscar said, quickly. "But I only found out for sure yesterday. I was going to tell you, but..."
"Brennan," Alfred finished, nodding. "Thank you. I don't know how I would have reacted last night."
"Well... how are you reacting now?"
"Are you kidding?" Alfred said, smiling tiredly. "I'm ecstatic. You're carrying my baby, and with male midwifery being legal now, we'll get you the best care around. How far along are you?"
"About three months," Oscar said, stroking Aiden's head tenderly. "I'll be showing soon."
"Then we better get you married, hadn't we?"
"I suppose so," Oscar laughed. "Frankly the idea of planning a wedding after all this work we've been doing seems like a grueling task."
"Fortunately for you, I happen to have the best party planner in the kingdom on staff," Alfred said, proudly.
"You do?"
"Of course!"
Alfred hopped up and ran across the hall to his room. He returned moments later with a beaming grin lighting his sleep-deprived features. Three minutes later, Burges followed him into the room.
"Burges, how does your schedule look for the next couple of weeks?" Alfred asked.
"Crystal clear, your highness. The new court has reduced my responsibilities significantly."
"Excellent! Would you be so kind as to throw us the most ridiculous, extravagant, indulgent wedding two people have ever had?"
"It would very truly be my honor, sire," Burges said, bowing to hide his sparkling eyes and wide grin.
"Thank you, Burges," Oscar said, with a matching grin. "I'm sure you'll do a wonderful job."
"I have never thrown a poor party, sir," Burges said, proudly. "If you will excuse me, I have some planning to do."
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