by Kaye Draper
“So, the lessons are going that well, huh?” I said dryly.
I had just rescued my mate from the clutches of his evil elder, some distant great-aunt or something. The short, gnarled old woman had been dragged here by Theo and forced to teach Fin about his magic and why the hell it seemed to be more powerful than he knew.
Fin wasn’t enjoying the process.
“Now I know why that shrew outlived three husbands back on the other side of the rift,” he said gruffly. “They probably killed themselves to get away from her and used their luck magic to do it!”
I huffed. “So dramatic, Finnie.”
He glared green daggers at me. “You try spending hours with the fiend while she yammers on about how a real leprechaun wouldn’t need to be taught.” He scoffed. “You’d have stabbed her in the eye in the first five minutes. I’ve lasted over a week.”
I laughed. “Fair.”
Smoothing my hand over my hip, I checked my weapons for the hundredth time that morning. My inner cat was all...prowly...at the thought of Theo being put on display. Again.
“He’ll be fine, Sabertooth,” Fin said dryly, not missing my fidgeting.
“Fuck off,” I snarled. “Are you learning anything useful in those lessons of yours?”
He leaned sideways and nudged his shoulder into the side of my thigh as we walked, making me stumble a bit. “Maybe.”
The sly, shit-eating grin on his face said the answer was yes.
“She knows that if anything happens to the sovereign while she’s around, the clan is going to get all the blame,” he relented. “So, she’s been extra helpful when it comes to working magic in your bird’s favor.”
I sighed. “He’s not my bird, Fin.”
Fin arched a brow but kept walking. “Oh, right. Just that one casual fuck.” He scratched the slight fuzz of red stubble on his square jaw and pretended to be confused. “Only...isn’t it funny how all your so-called casual fucks somehow end up being bonded to you for life? Huh. So weird.”
I stuck out my foot and he tripped, nearly falling on his face.
Fin cackled like the monster he was as we went through the front door, past a couple of guards, and down the steps to the front lawn, where Theo’s second press conference was about to be held. “Seriously, Sam,” he said, setting one small, strong hand on my thigh, halting me. “Why don’t you just admit that you care about the guy? No one who matters will give a fuck. In fact, I think the rest of us will be relieved. It’s painful watching you bumble around, pining. And after seeing how you lightened the fuck up after bonding to the siren? I’m all for it! Makes my life a hell of a lot easier.”
I bared my teeth at him and crossed my arms over my chest. “I am not...pining! You want me to bare my fucking soul? Fine. I love him. Okay? I want him. Everything in me says he’s mine.” I threw up my hands. “But none of that fucking matters, Fin. Because he told me he doesn’t want me. Not like that.” I looked away, feeling like an idiot. And a sap. Was I really going to cry about how some guy didn’t love me, when I had three others who did? Fucking pathetic.
“I don’t need anything from Theo but a job,” I said firmly.
Fin looked up sharply and tried to say something, but I barreled on. “This whole mate nonsense is nothing but a pain in my ass, and I’m fucking fed up with it. I’ve got all the lovers I need. It was one moment of lust. One massive fucking mistake! Can we just move on?”
The leprechaun closed his eyes and shook his head in total defeat. “Behind you, Sam.”
I whirled, one hand going to the knife strapped to my thigh, part of me honestly expecting some sort of threat.
Theo stood there, his back ramrod straight, his expensive-ass suit flawless, and his polite smile giving away nothing and everything all at once. “Excuse me, Viceroy,” he said softly, as if I was nothing more than one of his guards. “I wanted to speak to you about security.”
I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
“Yeah,” I said, swallowing hard. “What?”
Theo’s eyes flicked to the side, and I thought I felt just the slightest shimmer of heat in the air. “When I go down off the stage to shake hands. You don’t have to come. I’ll keep Thor and Loki nearby. They are capable of deterring anyone who would wish to do me harm.”
His expression remained easy and warm. But his words were stilted, too formal and distant.
“But, I—”
He turned on a heel and walked away. “I know how much you hate crowds, Viceroy. You can do your job just as well from the stage.”
It felt like I’d just swallowed poison. “For fuck’s sake,” I muttered to myself.
I startled when Fin patted me on the back of the thigh. “Good job, Sabertooth. Just stellar.”
I growled. “Shut up, Fin.” For once, I meant it. I never wanted to speak to anyone again as long as I lived, since apparently all I could do was fuck things up.
Fin nudged me with his shoulder and went to join Emerson in the preparations. I swallowed down bile and tried to remind myself just who the fuck I was.
So Theo had heard me say he was nothing but a mistake. I was pretty sure he felt the same way. Big hairy deal.
I wondered how long it would be before I had to go back to hunting for the association while we found some way to cram all my mates into my old apartment.
Good fucking job, Sam.
I did a lap around the area to satisfy the predator inside me, even though there were guards and staff for that. Then I made my way up onto the stage with dragging steps, taking up a place behind and to the right of Theo while the reporters and city officials settled into their folding chairs on the lawn. Shaking off my emotions, I made myself focus, watching the crowd, scenting the air, constantly keeping an eye and ear out for trouble.
“Looks clear to me,” Em’s deep voice said in my ear, filtered in through the earpiece. He was on magical lookout duty again. I knew he could see me, so I nodded to confirm that I’d heard.
The shindig began and Theo slipped into his usual perfect persona again. But it felt different this time. He was changed, in the eyes of the people before us. He had opted to discard his vanity charm, leaving his feathers and his slightly sharper features on full display for today’s press conference. He wasn’t playing human anymore. Now he was just playing politician.
I hated shit like this. But even I had to admit a rising sense of...pride. Theo answered all their questions and addressed every concern calmly and patiently, never rushing or glossing over anything to make himself look better. He just...was.
And that was no small feat. We’d all heard the wild accusations and crazy fear mongering that had been going on since Theo’s big reveal. The crowd of participants for the press conference was bigger this time—with a few plain old non-media, non-official citizens thrown in as a show of openness and goodwill. It was also being televised on what limited TV broadcasting was available to the richer citizens of Westhold. I bristled at every question or accusation that came up, wanting to bite and claw every time some asshole opened their mouth to suggest that Theo’s position was part of some big conspiracy brought about by fiends to manipulate humans and take over. One popular theory was that once the fiends got a fiend sovereign in every US city, they’d start farming humans for food. And of course, it would start here, then take over the world. Another theory was that the fiends would use their new human farms for breeding purposes, to create more curs to use for their armies.
I forced myself not to be caught on camera rolling my eyes. But it was a challenge. As if the few fiends who were capable of taking some sort of human-esque form were organized enough and had the spare time to sit around dreaming this shit up rather than just trying to survive day to day. Morons.
But Theo handled it all as if nothing bothered him. The only time he redirected the conversation was when the questions turned to his family and how he’d been raised. He told them that he’d been ingrained with the idea that he had to hide what he was to survive. B
ut he didn’t share how he’d been abandoned by his biological parents. How they didn’t think he was fiend enough. Or how even now, one of his family members would rather see him defeated or dead than leading a city. I unobtrusively lifted a hand to rub at my chest, to ease the ache there. Then I dropped my hand to rest lightly against the butt of my gun. Gods damn it, Sam. Knock it off.
It was a long afternoon.
I’d been given an itinerary for the day, but I really didn’t read it. Theo would speak. Some other people were giving a presentation. There’d be all the questions. Then there was freaking food and socializing at the end. It was annoying. But all I had to do was stand around, show my support of the sovereign, and make sure no one died. I wasn’t surprised when the sheriff and the chief of police came up to talk about how the police were at a disadvantage without curs on the force and how Theo’s new policy to allow curs into jobs like law enforcement meant that they could keep the city and the human officers safer from beings who were stronger and faster than human cops. They also talked at length about how each cur had their own special set of strengths—talents that could be honed and used for the greater good of Westhold.
I was surprised when my guild members took the stage right after that. Fin stepped onto a riser at a smaller podium set up specially for him. He stressed the importance of the hunter’s association and explained to everyone in clear, vivid detail how the hunters risked their lives outside the walls of the city every day to keep Westhold safe from the monsters that roamed the wastelands—monsters that weren’t sentient in the way fiends like Theo could be. He emphasized that the threat wasn’t with those who wanted to be part of society—it was from the monsters who were only driven by the need to find food.
He stressed how important the hunters were in making sure the police force could focus on the day-to-day safety of the citizens inside the walls, and I realized that not everyone knew just how important that job was. A lot of regular citizens saw fiend hunters as gritty, bloodthirsty weirdos who got a thrill out of killing. They didn’t realize just how grim things would get if there weren’t hunters willing to risk their lives beating back the wilderness.
They also seemed shocked to learn how many human fiend hunters died doing their job.
The realization of that ignorance was staggering to me. I’d always known that what I did was something no one appreciated. But it paid my bills. I never let myself stop to feel undervalued. It just was what it was.
Fin was joined by a group of humans from the association, and I watched in shock as hunter after hunter—all of them human—took the time to talk about...me. They told stories about hunts I’d taken that would have cost human hunters their lives. They told the gathered crowd how much they wished there were more people like me to help them. How they wished there were more curs who were brave enough to take that risk. And how much more likely that would be, if the discrimination stopped and curs could do their jobs without the constant badgering they knew I’d endured all these years. I cleared my throat around the lump that had formed there. This whole thing was supposed to be about Theo. Why was I being praised?
I glanced to the side and found Theo standing there, watching me while the other hunters spoke. He nodded his head in acknowledgement and I narrowed my eyes at him. He knew this was getting to me, that I didn’t know how to handle being...thanked. But I could see the bigger picture too. Theo had hired me and named me viceroy. He had seen how hard I worked to protect Westhold when no one else had. Just another reason why he would make a good sovereign no matter what his species.
My jaw dropped when Fin and his herd of hunters left the stage only to be replaced by...a blushing and stammering Emerson. I had to be passed out somewhere having some sort of concussed dream. This couldn’t be real.
The ogre lifted his head and squared his shoulders, bending slightly so his soft, deep voice would be heard through the mic on the stand in front of him. He spoke in gentle, hushed tones, endearingly shy. He warmed up as he talked about how much he loved to fix things and create things, and how no one saw him as anything but a big, dumb ogre all his life. He glanced at the audience with warm, determined red-brown eyes as he told them about how Theo planned to change things for curs like him, so they could have a chance at vocations and training. So they could have a chance to live a normal life doing something they were good at.
I watched as Emerson shyly made his way off the stage amid a rousing round of clapping and encouragement from the gathered humans. They could all see it. They had to. How Theo had been so proudly and publicly accepting of me and my guild, how he’d given us all a place to thrive and brought out all of our talents by simply giving us a damned chance.
And that’s all he was asking for now. A chance to show them what he was capable of as a leader.
It was a successful day for Theo. Westhold was already seeing the benefits of his rule, even from barely a month in power. He had increased trade, ensured better wages and job opportunities for curs, and ramped up city improvements and protections. That was more than the previous sovereign had done in his entire reign. A lot of the officials present were practical people. They were willing to ignore Theo’s genetics, so long as their town was safe and prosperous.
Of course, there were always the assholes in any group. But Theo handled them with just as much grace as the rest. It was exhausting just watching him, and I felt a slight, wry smile lift one corner of my lip. The man was a masochist.
I was yanked from my amusement when I felt a tingle of magic and Emerson’s voice boomed in my ear. “Incoming!”
I lunged, wrapping one arm around Theo’s trim waist and dragging him backward off the stage, my other hand yanking my gun out as we fell. I went loose, rolling and taking the impact for both of us with a breathless grunt.
Theo had sense enough not to question things or try to insist he was a big man and could protect himself. He just let me manhandle him, trusting that I had my reasons. You have no idea how refreshing that shit was. Most people would be all panicking or insisting they were fine.
“Move,” I growled, shoving him under the stage.
His eyes were sparking with rage, but he did as he was told, rolling onto all fours and crawling between the metal supports and under the wooden plank floor. I stood, gun in hand, but no targets in sight. Fucking magic. I’d rather grapple hand-to-hand with an enemy any day, not just stand here waiting to die.
Jules appeared at my side, and a line of guards took up position in an oval around the stage. I could feel Angel out there somewhere behind me calling on his magic, probably soothing the small crowd of people in their little wooden folding chairs.
Magic tingled over my skin, a different flavor than Angel’s—less warm ocean and more freezing river. Jules lifted his hands and his eyes went completely white. Fat droplets of water formed in the air around us, hanging motionless and waiting. Then he flung his hands upward over his head, sending up a shower of reverse rain. My eyes darted upward, and I watched in awe and horror as Jules’s water coalesced into a sheet of shimmering moisture above our heads...just in time to quench the massive fireball that had been headed right toward the assembled crowd.
The flames went out with a hiss, leaving behind a cloud of steam. My heart thundered in my ears. Theo muttered something from under the stage, his voice low and filled with rage. Then Emerson was on the com again, his deep voice shaky and relieved. “It’s gone. Nothing else on radar.”
Jules dropped his hands and what was left of his water evaporated into thin air. The butler yanked his jacked straight and smoothed the front with a hand that only trembled a little. “As Mr. Stone says. I think that was a one-time use spell. Clearly purchased for the occasion.”
Theo grumbled and I bent to grab his hand and pull him out from under the stage. His skin was searing hot to the touch and I glanced at him in surprise, gripping his hand when he tried to pull away. He had just had his phoenix shift. He should be at his most human-like stage right now. He didn’t h
ave any magic right after he burned it all up in his phoenix form. “Theo?”
He tried to pull away, but I didn’t let go, stepping into his space and crowing him back toward the stage, where hopefully no one else could hear me except Emerson in his headset. “What is this? Is it a spell? Did he do something to you? Tell me!”
Theo’s eyes sparked with magic as they met mine, and his mouth was a grim, unhappy line, all traces of his amiable mask erased. “It’s not a spell, Sam.”
I growled. “You’re burning up, Theo. That can’t be right. It’s not your time.” I raked my eyes over him, hoping whatever was going on wasn’t about to cook his vulnerable human body alive. Panic clawed at my chest. Fucking magic. I was completely helpless against magic. But Theo had people who weren’t. “Emerson,” I said into my com. “Get Angel over here now! Behind the stage.”
I whipped my head to the side, searching for Theo’s creepy butler. “Jules!”
“Sam,” Theo ground out. “Stop.” He yanked his hand out of my grip with a surprising burst of strength. “I’m not in any danger. And I’m not your fucking mate, as you’ve so clearly pointed out. So stop overreacting!”
I watched in surprise as he yanked his tie straight and stormed off around the side of the stage to explain the failed attack to the public. Jules stepped up beside me and arched a brow at me. I watched over his shoulder as Angel appeared at the side of the stage, his long hair coming free of its ponytail in shimmery wisps and his gold eyes shimmering with magic and concern. He was headed toward me, but a sharp word from Theo had him stopping and turning to the sovereign.
“There’s something wrong with Theo,” I bit out, gesturing at the stubborn ruler with my gun-free hand. I supposed I didn’t need the weapon anyway, since all Carlyle was capable of was cowardly long-distance pot-shots using borrowed magic. Finding out who’d sold him that fireball was going to be a big priority once I beat Carlyle to a bloody pulp. I shoved the gun back into its sheath.