Fur and Honor (Steel Bonds)

Chapter 7

The telephone on the other end of the line rang. And rang. And rang. Hal glared at the half-empty glass of brandy on the desk of his home office, then drained it anyway.

What good was this new ability to reach someone in another city if that person didn’t answer the damned phone? Especially after he’d already braved the cold to swing by his office to get Rob’s number. At least his timing there had been fortuitous. Though, fuck—he should have waited for Miles outside Bradford’s office. He’d fled back to his apartment instead, not wanting either man to notice he was already halfway to drunk by midmorning.

Finally, the line clicked. “Wallace speaking.” The connection carried his friend’s deep voice over two hundred miles with almost no distortion. The wonders of modern technology.

Hal sagged into the comfortable clutches of his chair. “Answering the telephone yourself these days, my friend?”

Rob chuckled. “And you made this call yourself, so it appears we’re both slumming it this holiday season.”

So many of their fellow noblemen would have meant that far too literally. Rob, however, was Hal’s peer in more ways than one. Earl Robert Wallace had already taken on the mantle of his family’s vast estate and fortune, though his powerful realm involved technology rather than transportation. They also shared reputations for prioritizing what was right over what was traditional or politically expedient.

For example, he was the only peer Hal knew who had not married another werewolf.

“You’ve caught me out.” Hal eyed the decanter on the sideboard across the room.

“It’s good to hear from you. Is this a season’s greeting, or…?”

Rob was right to question Hal’s motives. Voice communication between cities had only become possible in the past few years and remained exorbitantly expensive. Last year, and the year before, Hal had spent this day drinking and missing his little sister. He’d assumed today would go much the same, but less than two drinks in, he found his thoughts occupied by an entirely different person. Hal was slowly drowning, and he didn’t see a way out of the tangled mess created by the clash between his head and his heart. And like telephones, what good were friends when you didn’t reach for their help?

“How did you manage it?” Hal asked. “You and Zhinu, I mean? How did you know she was the one for you? I know you two eloped—everyone knows that insane story—but how did you make a love match work afterward, in our pretentious society so obsessed with blood lines and image?”

The other end of the line was silent for long enough that Hal wondered whether he’d lost the connection. Then, after a beat of blown out air, Rob responded, “Well, for starters, it wasn’t a love match.”

Hal sat up so fast his head spun. Or perhaps that was the booze. “You married a fucking dragon, and you didn’t even love her?”

“Watch it, that’s my wife you’re talking about.” Instead of a growl, however, humor laced Rob’s words. “It’s certainly a love match now. You know I worship the ground that woman walks on. But, no… At the time, attraction played a role, but love was the farthest thing from either of our minds.”

“You didn’t just…know she was the one for you?”

“What, like some sort of mates-at-first-sight nonsense? She may have been the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, but I was more concerned at the time about fucking up the most important diplomatic mission of the century.” Which had almost gone to shit, reigniting the longstanding conflict between the British and Qin Empires. Until one of the highest-ranking scions of werewolf nobility ran away with a weredragon princess and forced both sides to the treaty table. Rob scoffed. “Honestly, the only way it all worked was spreading the love story angle. Once we got the people on our side, the other lords didn’t dare dispute my pack claim.”

Going on two decades later, the obvious love and partnership between Rob and Zhinu was only overshadowed in Hal’s mind by the indelible bond shared by his parents. He’d been spoiled, and maybe a little na?ve, all his life by holding any potential relationship to the same standards. Following such an antiquated notion of pack may have been possible when the Delacour line had been secure through his sister, but Rob’s glib rewriting of history barred yet another path Hal may have followed toward his own happily ever after. However, Rob and Zhinu could not produce natural heirs. Grasping at straws, Hal asked, “What about children?”

“We have…a plan. Or at least a plan for a plan,” Rob said. “But that issue is further in the future than your current problem, it sounds like.”

“You could say that.”

“Does the revelation about my history with Zhinu mean I can no longer help with your current problem?”

“Well, you haven’t given me an easy answer.” Miles was human. A local working-class guy. Not some foreign heir to capture the heart of the British people.

“Does this problem have a name?” Rob asked.

“Miles.”

“Your new PA? Ohhh.” Rob drew out the word, as if suddenly all made sense.

Hal dragged a hand over his face. “The gossip has spread that far, then?”

“You truly want this man?”

Hal’s wolf did. And, to be honest, so did the rest of him. Now that he’d spent time with Miles and saw all the ways they worked so well together. And caught hints of the same desire reflected toward him. “Yes.”

The acknowledgement should have lifted his spirits, not made him feel worse. But now he had no explanation for why his wolf had fixated on Miles from the first moment, because surely that had been the same impetus for the connection between Rob and his dragon.

“People will have opinions no matter who you decided to mate. Or marry,” Rob said, startling Hal out of another spiral.

“They definitely have opinions about Miles.” Bradford’s warning about the ways Hal had already been treating Miles as pack surfaced once again.

“Then fuck what anyone else thinks. Make the man yours.”

“It’s that simple?”

“It won’t be.” Rob sighed on the other end of the line. “I had it easier because Zhinu was all in for her own reasons. But we knew there was no backing out. You have my full support no matter what you decide, but you’d better be sure about this man. Because I don’t think there will be any backing out for you either.”

His friend probably meant the words as a warning. Hal’s wolf pounced, then presented them as a trophy, as if saying See? He’s meant to be ours.

Okay, you furry idiot. You win.

“I don’t think backing out has been an option since the first time I laid eyes on him.” Miles thought he’d been saving Hal’s life. Turned out he’d come to be even more important.

“Good. Happy New Year, friend.”

“Hopefully it will be.” They exchanged further pleasantries, with Hal conveying his love to Zhinu, before he hung up the phone.

As much as Hal missed his sister, he didn’t betray her memory by putting his focus elsewhere today. She’d have been right by his side, helping him work the problem. But before his wolf could howl in triumph, he had to somehow convince Miles he was meant to be more than merely Hal’s personal assistant.