“You are efficient, aren’t you.”

The thing waved a little from its tether above the carpet, and one could surmise it was pleased with the praise. Or perhaps not. But what did it matter; his shadow had not denied him when he had ordered it to kill his lover’s mate and had been quite accomplished at the task: The entity had readily taken the dagger Throe had provided, followed him down the hall like a dog after its master, and then when Throe had opened the door and pointed to the old male sitting up against the headboard, the death had come about quicker than the beat of a heart.

Which was something that hellren did not have anymore.

“What have you done!”

As a shriek sounded out behind him, Throe pivoted on his velvet slipper. “Oh, hello, darling. You’re up early.”

Before his lover could respond, Throe lunged forward and caught her around the neck. As he started to squeeze, her eyes popped wide and that talented mouth of hers cranked open in a scream that had no sound.

Dragging her into the bedroom, he kicked the door shut as she clawed at his hands and gaped like a fish.

The entity approached from the side as if in inquiry, and Throe smiled at it again. “Oh, how kind of you. But I’ve got this.”

Switching his grip to her face, he gave a quick jerk and snapped her neck. Then to avoid making a noise, he escorted her gently down to the carpeted floor.

Standing over her, he noted that she was in that baby-doll nightgown he liked, the one with the lace bodice and the flouncy skirt that reached just below her panties.

“Such as shame, really. She was a bit of fun.”

Throe straightened his silk bathrobe. He’d popped free of one of his slippers and rectified that problem by stepping over the cooling body of the female and stuffing his foot back where it belonged.

“Well, this is just fine.” He looked around the very well appointed bedroom suite. “You know, I think I’ll move in here. Once we get rid of that mattress.”

Except then he thought of the doggen in the house. There were at least fourteen of them.

It would take them some time to eliminate that lot, and it rather seemed a waste. Good help was very hard to find.

And then there were matters of security and finance that needed to be addressed. Fortunately, he had set the identity theft in motion weeks ago, getting into the hellren’s computer downstairs, putting tracers on things, gaining access bit by bit to accounts, data, and permissions.

He considered briefly giving the staff the option to stay. But then he looked at the mess on the bed. If his shadow friend could kill like that?

It was a good guess it could work a fucking vacuum.

They were going to need more of them, however. Throe had checked The Book to see if there were some kind of reproduction that could be brought to bear with the shadows, but it appeared that if Throe wanted an army, he was going to have to make them one by one. The hard way.

Very inconvenient. And his hand was still recovering from its puncture wound.

He was going to require more supplies. And time. And …

Alas, it seemed uncharitable, indeed, ungrateful, to despair over aught. He had money. He had a home he liked. And he had a weapon that was better than any gun, knife, or fist.

“My destiny,” he murmured to the silent room, “is within my reach.”

Throe brought up his palms—but as he nearly rubbed them together, he stopped himself. One did not want to turn oneself into a caricature of a villain. It was quite unseemly.

“Come,” he said to his balloon. “I must needs get dressed and you shall help me. And then we need to go out.”

Testing his toy against a lesser was going to be important and there was no reason to wait. The thing had performed admirably just now, but that had been against a nearly incapacitated geriatric. If it was going to face the Brothers and the Omega’s fighters, even the Band of Bastards, it was going to need to perform at a very high level.

Just as Throe stepped out into the corridor, he heard the floor polisher running downstairs. If any of the staff found these bodies, there was going to be pandemonium. And with the King accepting audiences the now, the Brotherhood could descend before he was prepared for them and ruin everything.

Fates, he hated these delays. But a proper strategist recognized that there were necessary sequences to things.

As with chess, it was one move at a time.

“Come on,” he said in a bored voice to the shadow. “We have to clean house first. And I must insist that you do so with a certain reserve this time. I don’t want to ruin any of the art or textiles. Besides, whatever mess you make, you’re going to have to tidy up.”

With that, the pair of them headed off together, toward the stairs and the doggen who was doing his or her job down below.

The pink slip that was about to be delivered unto them was going to hurt.

FIFTY-EIGHT

As the sun set and darkness came over Caldwell, Layla stirred in the bed she and Xcor had put to such glorious use during the day. Against her back, her warrior was nestled in close as her own skin, his body seeking hers even as he slept on.

“Do not think of it, my love,” he murmured.

Turning in his embrace, she stroked his hair. His face. His shoulders. “How do you always know?”

He didn’t reply to that, just kissed her throat. “Tell me something.”

“What?”

“If I had been another male, if my face had been different, if the course of my life had been upon another path, would you …”

“Would I what?”

It was a long while before he answered her. “Would you have mated me properly? And lived under the same roof with me … and borne my young and raised them with me? If I had been a cobbler or a farmer, a horse trainer or a mead maker, would you have stood beside me and been my shellan?”

She touched his upper lip. “I am your shellan now.”

As he exhaled, his eyes closed. “I wish it had all been different. I wish that that one night, so long ago, I had picked another campfire to visit, another forest to walk through.”

“I don’t. For if you hadn’t gone there, wherever it was, we never would have met.”

“Maybe that would have been the better course.”

“No,” she said firmly. “Everything is the way it should be.”

Except for the part that he was leaving her.

“Maybe in the future,” she whispered, “after Lyric and Rhamp are grown and on their own, I might come to find you? After their transitions are over and—”

“They will always need their mahmen. And your life will always be here in the New World.”

Even as she wanted to argue with him, she knew he was right. It was going to be decades before the young were truly independent, and who knew what the state of the war was going to be then? If Rhamp followed in his father’s footsteps and became a Brother, Layla would not rest while he was out in the field even if she were in Caldwell itself. Over an entire ocean? She couldn’t fathom it.

And then what if Lyric wanted to fight? There were females in the training center program. Lyric could well decide to pick up a dagger.

She could have two young out there in the war.

“There is grace in not fighting that which cannot be changed,” he said as he kissed her collarbone. “Let it go. Let me go when the time comes.”

“But maybe there’s another solution.” Although she couldn’t imagine what it might be. “What if …”

“Qhuinn will never accept me around your young. Even if the Brotherhood and your King were to embrace me and my males, the father of your son and daughter will ne’er have me in their presence, and if I am not in your life, things between you and him will ease. Or at least that is my hope and my fervent prayer, that someday he will accept you back into his life.”

But that will never happen, she thought. Qhuinn’s fury knew no bounds nor any time limit. Some things, like ink on parchment, were indelible.

“Make love to me?” she whispered.

With a now-familiar surge of power, Xcor moved on top of her, their bodies so at ease with each other by now that his sex entered hers with no positioning, just a smooth glide.

As he began to thrust inside of her, she thought of the sex they’d had during the daylight hours. Her ehros training had come to the fore in ways that had shocked, titillated, and surprised him—and he had not complained. But that was not to say it had been a happy time. For both of them, the hours had held a desperation, a rush to the touching and kissing and penetrations, much as one would consume quickly that which was on a plate about to be taken away.