The Last Emperor

by Kari Gregg

  His aunt widened her eyes, but the leader of their group wiped his features into an expressionless mask, giving away nothing.

  “Referring to my relatives as a plural is inaccurate unless you count our servants as family. Mother and Father wouldn’t have, although a few retainers stayed with us to the end and were executed alongside us, but we children developed different feelings on the matter. Averlee was more beloved by us than any of Father’s sisters, for instance. Probably because we were isolated from everyone—including our relatives and other nobles—to preserve the secret of Toly’s deformed leg. We infrequently saw anyone who wasn’t a servant.” He smiled down the table. “Greetings, Kaya and Dorn. I’m glad you survived the war. Dorn has been a vocal critic of the rebel council, so I knew he’d survived the genocide, but I often wondered about our other retainers. I’m happy Kaya survived as well. Too many friends and allies were slaughtered in the purges.”

  The group’s leader flinched. “The tribes never sought to punish those who served nobility, only to free them.”

  “Unless our retainers did not wish to join the rebels, in which case they were murdered or forced to flee.” Nick widened his grin, focusing his attention on Dorn. “Did you know the couple who adopted me bought a farm not four hours from the location you chose for your exile?” he asked the man who had privately tutored him and the emperor’s other children in the common tongue, Greek and Latin, Moorsha, and two local dialects still spoken within the tribes. Nick dredged up unfond memories of Nan, the tongue spoken by the tribe into which he had been promised to marry and had been taught since shortly after his birth. “Dad kept my hair short and my physical appearance changed a lot as I grew, but I didn’t dare leave our village until my teens,” he continued in the more guttural Nan. “I was too nervous to wander far. If you’d seen me, you might have recognized me. I couldn’t risk it.”

  Gray-headed, his old tutor frowned. “You drag out your trailing ‘es’ suffixes, as he did.”

  Nick dipped his head in acknowledgment. “To be fair, I’ve had no use for Nan or any other language other than the common tongue the past twenty years.”

  “Lack of practice.” Dorn sniffed in contempt. “How many times did I urge you to speak other languages in your private rooms to perfect your accent?”

  “Mother wouldn’t allow it. She claimed anything other than Moorsha was either pretentious or barbaric.” Laughter bubbled up inside Nick’s chest at the old complaint, but his joy died at the abrupt pallor of his adopted brother seated next to him. “Rolan?”

  “You speak Nan?” he asked with a gulp.

  Surprise arrowed through Nick. “Do you?”

  “Not anymore,” Rolan replied in the common tongue, head down, shoulders hunched.

  Sick regret twisted Nick’s stomach. Had Rolan been born in the Ural tribe in which Nan was still spoken? Growing up, Nick hadn’t asked his brother’s origins, and Rolan had never prodded into Nick’s history either. Traumatized boys forced to run from cruel and bloody war, they’d only wanted to leave their shattered lives behind them. Building a future with the man and woman who had rescued them from the carnage had been difficult enough. Alone, they’d mourned the birth families they’d lost, and when the stress of leaving the tribes for the lands of men overwhelmed them, they’d each turned to their individual rescuers for comfort, Nick to Dad and Rolan to Mom.

  The only time that wasn’t the case was when Rolan roamed their farm in his animal form. Rolan’s wolf wasn’t shy about seeking out Nick, sitting with him, cuddling or playing. That Nick never shifted too hadn’t bothered Rolan. His beast wanted only to be with Nick in whatever form Nick chose to take. The snowy fur of Rolan’s ruff, as well as white patches booting all four paws, and Rolan’s compulsion to accompany him, proved his adopted brother had emerged from the noble families, who had fought relentlessly, though ultimately failed to reach their emperor during the war. His primarily gray pelt indicated Rolan’s origins could be found in the lower aristocracy, where mixing with the peasantry prevailed, but he was noble nonetheless, with instincts prodding him toward the high alpha of the tribes—his emperor.

  Rolan presented no danger to Nick. That was all Nick had needed to know.

  He’d never paused to wonder if his quest to reclaim his identity might endanger his brother or upset Rolan. The last thing Nick wanted was to remind one of the few he trusted of past horrors. Stomach churning, Nick turned to Rolan. “You don’t have to—”

  “Yes. I do.” Rolan shook his head. “It’s time, for both of us.”

  “It is time for nothing except a tissue of lies. He is not the crown prince.” Next to Dorn, a woman glared at Nick. “Nika would have known me, and this imposter is too skinny.”

  That startled a chuckle from Nick. “I know you, Kaya. Perhaps I am astounded the rebels allowed their fiercest opponent to escape them.” Setting aside his concern for Rolan to revisit with his brother later, he rubbed his flat stomach. “Opportunities for sweetmeat pastries are scant where I’ve been.”

  “Bah! The real Nika would have greeted me before the silly teacher.” She glared at Nick. “Who fed you? Kissed your ouches? Listened and encouraged you?”

  Nick blinked. Confusion swirled inside him. “Averlee did.”

  Kaya tossed her head back and roared with laughter.

  “You were an amazing cook, don’t get me wrong. You taught me a lot in the kitchen, risking my parents’ disapproval to show me how to prepare meals.” Nick shrugged. “You also chased us kids from your kitchens with a meat cleaver whenever we had the temerity to try to sneak a snack.”

  Swiping a palm over her watering eyes, Kaya waved her other hand dismissively. “You are right.” Her chortles faded, but not the wattage of her smile. “If you had been born in my bloodline, I would’ve made a fine cook of you. But you are still too skinny.”

  The man next to Kaya straightened his spine. “What about me? Do you know me, Mr. Goode?”

  If the interrogation team thought referring to him by his adopted surname would shame him, they were wrong. Nick had loved Paul Goode, and his chest had swelled with pride when he’d assumed the name of the man who had risked so much to guide an injured, grief-stricken orphan to safety. Two orphans once they had found the refugee group headed to the border with Mom and Rolan among them. His parents had been imprisoned by the tribes and forced to work in brutal conditions, but they had never held what they’d suffered against their adopted tribe sons. Nick could only hope to be as decent and honorable as his dad. He squared his shoulders and met the stare of the man who questioned him. “No, I don’t recognize you. I’m sorry.”

  Dorn snickered. “You wouldn’t. He is a janitor at the clinic.”

  The leader of the group scowled. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Only his blood will.” Beside Nick, Peter frowned. “I object to this unnecessary farce. The terms we agreed upon—”

  The leader of the group cut a silencing hand through the air. “A test and a minor one.” His gaze narrowed on Nick. “If he is who he says, he’ll face many challenges far more troublesome than this from the media, political elites, and the peasantry.”

  Nick nodded “I’m counting on it.”

  “Nevertheless.” The attorney’s lips thinned to a disapproving line. “Any more stunts like this—any variance from the itinerary we negotiated—will result in our immediate departure and rescheduling interviews in my office at our convenience after the DNA panels prove he is Nika Marisek.” His eyebrow arched. “I promise our convenience would not be convenient for you.”

  Their leader grimaced, but instead of answering Peter, he concentrated on Nick. “What about me? Do you know who I am?”

  He did. “Elder Benjic, of the Ural tribe,” he said in flawless Nan before switching back to common tongue. “I was promised in marriage to one of your children when I was a toddler, but I only met you once, years later at a festival moon feast. You were accompanied by your son, Harr, who
was to be my husband.” He wrinkled his nose. “He and I were permitted a single dance, a waltz throughout which he criticized my appearance, my conduct, my family, and every other shortcoming he could pluck from thin air. He apparently believed asserting himself as the high alpha of our future mating required disrespecting me as much as possible. He was rude and obsessed with his own importance.” Nick lifted his chin. “Afterwards, I begged Mother and Father to renegotiate the alliance. No offense.”

  “None taken.” The glint in his eyes hinted otherwise. “He was a child, intimidated at and insecure about meeting the imperial family. Harr mated inside the Manowan tribe years ago.”

  “I remember coverage of the wedding in the human papers.” Nick curved his lips. “I was…relieved.”

  Dorn chuckled.

  “Aye, that’s one mating pact that won’t be revoked.” Kaya winked. “Even for an emperor, Harr won’t break it. The fool fell in love with his wife.” Kaya grinned. “His daughters are solidly mated, too. Benjic would risk his power base in the capitol if he broke any of those alliances, so you should be safe from mating machinations.”

  “We haven’t proven who he is yet.” Lydia crossed her arms over her ample chest and glowered. “Can we manage to not marry him off until we do?”

  Peter held up his hand. “The Council outlawed mating pacts after the war. As such, my client is free to marry whomever he pleases.”

  Silly human.

  Technically, the rebels forbade mating pacts that had kept the separate tribes from each other’s throats for centuries as a barbaric habit of a failed aristocracy, but the tribes could not be parted from a tradition that might as well have been bred into their bones, especially since the pacts still achieved the goal of peace. The council’s efforts to eliminate mating pacts had simply driven the practice underground.

  Nick expected to be mated as soon as he proved his claim. The only genuine question was to which tribe he would belong and, unluckily for Benjic, without a child to fulfill the pact struck in Nick’s infancy, Nick was free to choose his allies for himself.

  While the others bickered, Nick studied Benjic. He vaguely remembered the elder. At their single meeting, Nick had been distracted by his intended husband and his horror at the possibility of mating such an arrogant jerk, but Nick had heeded news reports of the council elder since the war. Benjic was important in the tribes, sly and manipulative. Before the revolution, he’d maneuvered Nick’s father into a mating pact to shore up Benjic’s position among the tribes. Rather than falling from grace alongside most allies of the crown, Benjic hung on to his power base during and after the war—and built upon it. Benjic was the most dangerous man in the room.

  Barring Nick.

  “Don’t fuss, Lyd.” Nick took his best friend’s hand in his and squeezed. “I’m safe.” He nodded at Benjic. “He seems to be out of children to mate me to, so the pact can no longer be fulfilled anyway.”

  Benjic grinned, his smile full of teeth.

  Only once had Nick been as absolutely wrong.

  “DNA tests confirmed my client is who he says: Nika Marisek, youngest son and the sole surviving heir of their Imperial Majesties Eton and Olina Marisek.” Flashes strobed from dozens of cameras as the crisply suited attorney spoke at a podium on the television screen. “As such, the executors of the Wallach treasury transferred stewardship of the Marisek trust to my client this morning.” The flurry of clicks and whirrs from the cameras threatened to drown out the audio. “His Highness’s first act was to order allowance payments to cousins and other relatives who escaped the war to continue exactly as Wallachia prescribed throughout their exile.”

  “Does the emperor plan to return to the tribes?” a reporter shouted above the din off-camera.

  “When will he appear in public?”

  “Has Nika spoken to his aunt?”

  Hunched over a stool at the kitchen bar, Arit glared at the ridiculous television his dad insisted upon and drank his coffee, grateful the heat of the human beverage seeped into his bones to warm him at least.

  His father busily transferred fat sausages into a skillet. “The Stollans are comfortable at the lodge?”

  Arit’s irritation escalated a notch higher at the mention of their latest guests. “I ensured they’d settled into their suites before I left.” He shrugged a stiff shoulder. “Capitol shifters are never comfortable outside their luxury condos.”

  “If they want the best, they should have paid extra to reserve the imperial suite.” His father pointed his spatula at Arit. “They also prefer to be referred to as tribe, not as shifters.”

  He struggled to mask his reflexive sneer, not successfully judging by his dad’s frown. “The name of the adventure tour business is Shifter Frontiers. Our slogan is ‘Run wild.’ We’re shifters, not some polite tribe.”

  “I’m not arguing against the marketing.” His dad poked the sausages frying on the stove. “Just saying the customer is always right, and when the customers come from the capitol, they don’t like to be called shifters.”

  Waving a hand at the empty kitchen, Arit growled his annoyance. “No customers are allowed in our private quarters, Dad.”

  “You’ll forget.” His mouth pinched. “You always do after a long night hunting.”

  Coffee scorched a path down Arit’s throat. “I tracked a herd of deer for them last night. We didn’t take one down. The Stollans are disorganized hunters and don’t know how to work as a pack yet, but we stumbled over the herd’s tracks when I gave the standard tour around the lodge’s grounds. Trust me, they are ecstatic to have me as their adventure guide. Happy enough to put up with any idiosyncrasies of mine, of which they might not approve.” Snooty city shifters might bristle at what they considered uncouth behavior, but in his experience, they’d tolerate a lot for a chance at the taste of hot blood on their tongues. “It’s fine.”

  Dad sniffed his disdain. “You should work on developing tact with our paying customers.” He frowned at the television, where the press conference appeared to be winding down in a flurry of shouted questions. “Speaking of tact, your sire called.”

  Arit groaned. Instead of responding, he shoveled eggs into his mouth.

  “You can’t continue avoiding him.”

  He swallowed his food. “Want to bet?”

  Dad scowled. “He’s your father, too.”

  “Despite all evidence to the contrary.” Arit tucked into his scrambled eggs while he waited for his dad to finish the sausage links. “He ignored us for years because our existence wasn’t politically convenient to him. Why should I care what he wants now that he’s decided I’m useful? He’s nobody to me. I don’t know him. I don’t even look like him.”

  “No, you resemble me, always have, but you definitely act like him.” His dad smiled. “Brash. Stubborn. Unforgiving of those you believe let you down.”

  Arit sneered into his breakfast. “I don’t believe he let us down. He abandoned us. His absence is demonstrable fact.”

  Dad scooped sausage links onto a waiting platter. “Before the war and during it, we all did crazy things.” He pushed the platter down the counter toward Arit. “I don’t regret having you, could never regret our child, but if Benjic and I had invested time getting to know each other before rushing into a mating, we might have realized we were a bad match. I don’t blame your sire for leaving. If he hadn’t, I would’ve kicked him out of our den.”

  Maybe.

  Probably.

  His dad couldn’t be more of a polar opposite from Arit’s power-hungry sire if he tried. As much as one of his fathers lusted for political position, the other craved hearth and family. His dad wouldn’t have tolerated anything risking his son, and if Arit’s sire had ever balked at a gamble to win higher status in the capitol, Arit wasn’t aware of it. The shifter had arranged mating alliances for the four children he’d produced in the capitol mating he’d pursued after leaving his first family in an outlying tribal territory, despite new laws forbidding the tradition aft
er the war. His sire had focused on strengthening his seat on the council while his dad had fiercely protected Arit and their home. He could imagine Dad tossing Arit’s sire out on his ass if his schemes endangered their child.

  “He still could have helped. Something. Anything.” Arit snarled his scathing contempt for the sire who had rejected him. “He didn’t admit I existed until a few summers ago.”

  “But he did acknowledge you.” His dad grabbed a plate and sat on the stool next to Arit at the breakfast bar. “And he left you his ancestral land.” He spread his hands to indicate the house and waved at the mountains outside the kitchen window. “The same property holdings we used to build the lodge…and your career. The adventure tour business wouldn’t have made it through our first season if your sire hadn’t pushed capitol clients our way, either.”

  “Most of whom didn’t want to reconnect with their beast or shifter heritage.” Many who had booked tours at first had never run on ground wilder than the parks the capitol cultivated for city shifters. Even today, the learning curve of first-time guests was shockingly steep. “They only meant to curry favor with Benjic.”

  “Only at the beginning. You convinced our capitol clientele to explore their tribal roots, and they came back for more. When they did, they brought friends and colleagues which expanded our customer base.” Dad scooped eggs and sausage onto his own plate. “I’m not saying your sire is a saint, but he made your professional success possible. He provided for your future and helped when we most needed it. The business would’ve gone under without his intervention.”

  Those recommendations might be enough to win his dad’s forgiveness for years of neglect, but Arit wasn’t as nice. “He whispered in ears on our behalf, and I’m grateful he did.” He speared a sausage link on his fork. “Doesn’t mean I’ll suddenly be his pal.” He tipped his chin toward the television. “Especially when he’s fresh out of mate-able capitol children to fulfill a pact no shifter would recognize as legally valid.”

  “He wanted to reunite with you long before the emperor returned from the dead.”