In all of our time together I had seen him in a formal suit exactly twice, including today. Curran could be described in many ways: dangerous, powerful . . . insufferable. “Elegant” usually wasn’t one of the adjectives used, and as he walked next to me, I wished I had a camera so I could commemorate the moment. And then blackmail him with it.
He shrugged again.
“You keep doing it, the suit will fall apart.”
“I should’ve worn jeans.”
“Then I’d look ridiculous next to you.” I should’ve worn jeans, too.
“Baby, you never look ridiculous.”
“Smart man,” Aunt B volunteered behind us.
I wore a black dress. Like Curran’s suit, it was custom-made for me by the Pack’s tailors specifically for the trip. The elastic fabric hugged me like a glove, giving a deceiving impression that it was constraining. The artfully draped skirt fell in straight lines, hiding the fact that it opened enough to let me kick an attacker taller than me in the head, and the diagonal strap over my right shoulder ensured that the dress wouldn’t fall off if I had to move fast. The dress also had to be doing wonders for my butt, because Curran had managed to run his hand down my back twice since we left our rooms.
But even the best dress offered no way to hide Slayer, so I didn’t bother. The dress came with a built-in fabric sheath, lined with leather, and my sword rested securely against my back. I’d left my hair braided. Plain black shoes with a low heel fit my feet like slippers. I would’ve felt better in my boots, but boots didn’t go with the dress. Even I had standards.
I did have to surrender my knives, but I wore a bracelet on each wrist and a long necklace, all made of braided silver. They looked like strips of chain mail and weighed as much. Curran insisted on my new fancy jewelry. Given that we were trapped in a castle filled with hostile shapeshifters I didn’t fight him on it.
Behind us Desandra walked in, sandwiched between Barabas and Derek. Aunt B, Mahon, and George followed, then Andrea and Raphael. Raphael was a picture of urbane elegance in black, while Andrea wore a deep rust-red. It looked like blood and she was a knockout.
Doolittle declined to go to dinner and remained behind in his quarters, and I asked Eduardo and Keira to stay with him as well. This place was making me paranoid. They locked themselves in and barred the door before we left. Hopefully Keira wouldn’t decide to explore her buffalo steak fantasies.
Vast, with towering walls, the great hall seemed cavernous. Four big tables, each large enough to seat at least twenty people, stood in two long lines, leaving a large space between them. Toward the opposite end of the chamber, a head table, shaped like a rectangular horseshoe, waited on a raised platform.
I scanned the room, looking for problems. Three exits: the one we just came through, one on the left, and one on the right, each manned by a pair of djigits. No matter where I sat, unless it was at the head table, my back would be to one of the doors. Ugh.
On the left a discreet stairway led to a minstrel’s gallery, a high indoor balcony that spanned the length of the entire left wall. Shadows shrouded the gallery. I saw no movement, but if I wanted to kill someone, I’d put a sniper up there.
None of this was making me feel warm and fuzzy.
About fifty people milled about the hall, some talking in small groups, others by themselves. Men wore suits and tuxedos. Women wore gowns. Most eyes flashed with a shapeshifter glow. People turned and looked at us, looked at Curran, looked at the handle of my sword protruding over my shoulder. A few men looked lower at my chest. They were shapeshifters and notoriously difficult to kill, while I was a human. The fact that I carried a sharpened strip of metal on my back didn’t worry them any. I was an oddity, the human mate. They appraised me like a horse at a livestock market, and my breasts were clearly making a bigger impression than my sword.
Curran locked his teeth.
“We just got here,” I whispered. “It’s too early for you to start killing people.”
“It’s never too early for me,” he said.
“Double standard much?”
Hibla met us halfway across the hall and led us to our seats. Curran and I sat at the head table on the right side of an oversized wooden chair that wanted very much to be a throne and had to belong to the head of the table. Place of honor. Whoop-de-doo. At least my back was to a solid wall.
Curran took his seat, I sat next to him, Desandra sat next to me, and Andrea parked herself on the other side of Desandra and looked at the balcony. Raphael sat next to her, and Mahon and Aunt B sat next to him. George stood behind her father. Barabas stood behind me.
“You’re hovering,” I told him.
“I’m supposed to hover.”
I settled in the large chair. The minstrel’s gallery loomed above us to the right. It bothered me. I couldn’t see into it. If someone shot at us, I wouldn’t know until it was too late. We might as well have pinned a target to Desandra’s head.
“Hibla?”
Our guide leaned toward me. “Yes, lady?”
“Could you tell me who chose these seats?”
“Lord Megobari.”
Great. Changing seats would likely offend him to death, and besides, all seats at this table offered a great target from the gallery.
Curran leaned to me. “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t like the gallery. She isn’t safe.”
People turned toward an entrance directly across from us.
“Someone’s coming,” Barabas murmured.
Curran inhaled. “Kral.”
Jarek Kral walked into the room. He wore a black suit and walked as if everyone in the room owed him allegiance. A few people glared back, while others tried to fade into the woodwork. Four men walked behind him, moving in unison, a well-honed unit. The way they scanned the room for threats telegraphed experience. Wasn’t surprising. Jarek didn’t strike me as the type to make friends.
Jarek made a beeline for our table and took a seat on the other side of the throne. Two of his guys sat next to him, the other two stood behind him. Barabas had given us a basic rundown on Kral’s people. This was his inner circle: two brothers with the last name Guba, a middle-aged bald man who looked like he could run through solid walls, and Renok, Kral’s second-in-command, a tall shapeshifter in his midthirties with a boxer’s jaw contoured by a short dark beard.
Jarek looked at Curran. “I see you grew up, boy.”
Did he just call Curran boy? Yes, he did.
“I see you grew old,” Curran said. “You look smaller than I remember.”
“I’m still big enough for you.”
“You never were, and now you never will be. You’re getting on, Jarek.”
“Last time I wanted to kill you, but you had Wilson with you. Now you’re all alone. I will kill you this time.” Jarek smiled, a controlled baring of teeth.
Curran smiled back. “I wish you’d scrape enough balls together to try. I’m already bored.”
If Jarek managed to provoke Curran into physical violence, the fault would be with Curran. Even if Curran won, we’d have to go home empty-handed and Desandra likely wouldn’t live long enough to give birth.
The Belve Ravennati entered the room and took their seats on the left side of the horseshoe. Aunt B waved at Isabella. Isabella studiously ignored her. Her two sons sat by her. The Italian brothers looked very similar: both dark-haired, both with intelligent, sharp eyes and a carefully shaped sprinkling of dark stubble on their jaws. The taller, leaner one had striking eyes, pale hazel and framed with dark eyelashes. They stood out in sharp contrast to his nearly black hair. The other was shorter, more compact, with dark eyes. One of them was Gerardo and the other Ignazio, but I couldn’t remember which was which. I couldn’t recall which had married Desandra either, but I was pretty sure the shorter of the brothers was the one who got slapped.
I leaned over to Desandra. “Which one is the father?”
“The handsome one,” she said, her voice filled with mourni
ng.
Thanks, that helps a lot. “Hazel eyes or brown?”
“Hazel. Gerardo.”
So the shorter, slapped one, was Ignazio.
A moment later the Volkodavi came through the right exit and took their seats on the right side of the horseshoe. Good idea. Minimized the chances of them lunging across the table at the Belve Ravennati and trying to murder each other with their forks.
People were taking their seats. The dinner was about to start.
“You’re not fit to sit at this table,” Jarek said.
Round two.
“Make me move,” Curran said.
“You’re nothing. You will always be nothing,” Jarek said. “Weak like your father.”
You bastard. I reached over under the table and touched Curran’s hand. He squeezed my fingers.
“My father has a son who rules the largest pack in the Southeast of the United States,” Curran said. “How big is Budek’s territory? Oh wait. Your son doesn’t have a territory, because you murdered him.”
A string of servants came in, rolling enormous barrels.
“Is that beer in the barrels?”
“They’re called casks, Kate,” Barabas said quietly behind me. “And I believe they’re full of wine.”
Lyc-V, the shapeshifter virus, treated alcohol like poison and tried to get rid of it the moment it hit the bloodstream. But if a shapeshifters drank fast enough and in large volume, they managed to hit a buzzed stage. Besides, there were some humans in the hall. This place already was a pressure cooker: one wrong word and it would explode. Why the hell would anyone want to add alcohol to this mix?
“The only reason you rule at all is because your country is filled with gutless dogs,” Jarek said. “Here you’re not fit to scrape shit off my boots. Come over here and I’ll teach you what a real alpha is.”
He just wouldn’t shut the hell up.
“You’ve been scheming and plotting for thirty years and your territory will fit into mine ten times,” Curran said, his tone slightly bored. “I could give the same amount away and not miss it.”
On the left Gerardo was glaring at Radomil across the table. The wine barrels kept coming in. Could this get any worse?
“You had a chance to join me,” Jarek said. “You spat on it. And you think you can come here and tell me what to do with my daughter?”
“Make way for the lord of the castle,” a man called out. The djigits at the entrance directly opposite us came to attention.
“Your daughter is a grown woman,” Curran said. “She can speak for herself.”
“Until she belongs to another man, she is mine to do with as I please,” Jarek said.
That does it. I leaned forward. “Hey, you. Either put your claws where your mouth is or shut the fuck up. Nobody wants to hear you yip.”
Jarek’s eyes bulged. Green flared in the depths of his irises, an insane hot flame. He opened his mouth but nothing came out.
“Yes, just like that,” I told him. “Less talking, more quiet.”
It dawned on me that Curran was sitting completely still, staring straight ahead with focused intensity.
“Lord Megobari,” a man announced.
I turned. At the far entrance, between two djigits, Hugh d’Ambray strode into the hall.
CHAPTER 7
This wasn’t happening. This was a hallucination, caused by stress. Hugh d’Ambray, Roland’s warlord, wasn’t here. He was back in the United States serving my biological father. This was his long-lost twin with the same height, build, and hair, who knew nothing about me.
Hugh looked straight at me and smiled. It was the smile of a fisherman who’d just pulled a prized catch out of the water and into his boat.
No, it was him. All this time I’d been breaking my brain trying to figure out what Curran or the Pack had done to be targeted for this trap. It wasn’t Curran or the Pack. It was me.
“Please rise for the lord of the castle,” the same man called out.
People around me stood up. I locked my teeth and forced myself to move. Curran was squeezing my hand so hard it hurt.
Damn it all to hell. Could I not catch a break just once in my life?
Hugh waved. His voice carried through the hall, a kind of voice that could be quiet and intimate or cut through the clamor of a battle. “Sit, please. No need for formality, we’re all friends here.”
He was real. He was here. Adrenaline rushed through me, sending electric needles through my fingertips. If he thought I would roll over and give up without a fight, he would be deeply disappointed.
Everyone at our side of the table went very still. They were all watching Curran and me, and they realized something was really wrong. Andrea’s face turned chalk-white. She recognized d’Ambray. Before she left the Order of Merciful Aid, she had climbed high enough in its ranks to receive briefings about Roland, who was considered the greatest danger the Order would eventually face. She watched Hugh the way one watched a rabid dog. Raphael leaned closer to her, his eyes fixed on Hugh as well. He knew, too. She must’ve told him.
Hugh crossed the hall, coming toward us. Tall, at least two inches over six feet, he was muscled like a Roman gladiator, and his suit failed to hide it. He moved with perfect balance, gliding as if his joints were liquid. Before my mother and Voron had run off, Hugh had been Voron’s protégé. My adoptive father trained him, honing him into the perfect general to lead Roland’s armies. Fighting Hugh would be like fighting my father. It would be the second-hardest fight of my life. The first would be my real father.
I scanned the doorways. No troops. Hugh hadn’t called in the reinforcements. Did he think he could take me and Curran by himself?
Hugh was getting closer. Dark, almost black hair fell over his shoulders, longer than the last time I saw him. A small scar marked his left cheek—also a recent souvenir. His eyes were an intense dark blue and they laughed at me as he approached.
I stared back at him. Yep, the gig was up. Now what?
Hugh circled the table. He would have to sit next to Curran. Dear God.
Curran’s face turned into an expressionless mask. He squeezed my hand and leaned forward slightly, putting himself between me and Hugh.
Don’t attack him, Curran. Don’t. Do. Anything.
A djigit pulled Hugh’s chair out for him. Hugh smiled, a happy wolf confident in his lair, and picked up a glass. A server appeared as if by magic and poured red wine into it. Hugh raised the glass. “We have been truly fortunate to host the mighty Obluda of the Carpathians . . .”
He turned to Jarek Kral, who raised his fist with a self-indulgent smile. Behind him the four shapeshifters howled, and others echoed their howls at the tables.
“. . . the famous Volkodavi of Ukraine . . .”
Radomil and his family nodded. The members of the Volkodavi hooted and pounded their tables.
“. . . and the fearless Belve Ravennati.”
The Italian brothers nodded. Their pack members howled and slapped their table.
“Tonight we welcome honored guests to our humble abode.” Hugh turned to us. “The Beast Lord and his Consort join us to add their wisdom and expertise to the joyous occasion of welcoming new life into this world. You honor us with your presence.”
The silence was deafening. We would not be hooting or punching things.
Curran unlocked his jaws. “The honor is all ours.”
Hugh turned to the gathering. “Let us eat, drink, and celebrate.”
He sat, set down his glass, and turned to Curran. “I do so hate speeches.”
“I can imagine,” Curran said, the same calm expression on his face.
Hugh flashed him a quick smile. “I thought you might. You and I, we are men of action. At least once the speech is done, they’ll bring us food.”
A nod to The Princess Bride. It was my favorite book. Did he know or was this a coincidence? If he knew, how the hell did he know?
A string of servers came into the hall, followed by a cart pushed b
y another four. On the cart an enormous roasted boar lay on a huge platter lined with grape leaves.
“Ahh. Excellent.” Hugh picked up his fork. “I’m bloody starving.”
My heart was hammering at my chest as though I had just run a marathon. Voron’s ghostly voice whispered at me, “Run. You’re not ready.”
If I ran, Hugh would kill our people one by one until I came back. Not only had he trapped me, but he had trapped a handful of hostages with me as well. There would be no running.
The servers began distributing oversized platters heaped with meat and bread. The shapeshifters dug in. A plate was set in front of me: a thick cut of meat, cooked just enough not to be raw, bread, and a pomegranate split open, the red seeds glistening with the color of blood.
Barabas leaned over between Curran and me and cut a small piece from my meat.
Okay.
He ate it, cut a piece of the bread, scooped a couple seeds from the pomegranate, ate them and stood quietly, chewing slowly. Finally he leaned to me and said quietly. “It’s not poisoned.”
“A weremongoose,” Hugh said. “Most prudent of you.”
“We mean no offense,” Barabas said.
Hugh waved at him. “Of course. Would’ve done the same in your place. Can never be too careful.”
Apparently I had acquired my own personal poison tester. I made a note to talk with Barabas once the dinner was over.
Desandra rose. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
Andrea and I stood up. My legs felt wooden. Desandra rolled her eyes and went around the table to the door on the left. We followed her. Behind me Hugh said, “So, Lennart, how was the trip? The Atlantic can be dangerous this time of year.”
We crossed the hall and stepped into the corridor. I sped up and took the point. We’d run the basic two-person detail. In trouble, one of us would secure the body, the other would deal with the threats. The magic was up, and that made me better equipped for countermeasures. During tech, we’d switch.
“Turn right,” Desandra said. “Will the two of you watch me pee, too?”
“Why is your English so American?” Andrea asked, her voice wooden.
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