Chapter 10 Weight of Exhaustion #3
“Delicately?” I snorted. “Aw, hell, no! We’re guns-up on this one all the way! I want that Sicilian witch’s head preserved so I can hang it on our front door every Halloween!”
“Arabesque is Brazilian, not Sicilian, loser.” Ko flicked a jalapeno at me. “Otherwise, yeah. It’s game on for Project: Witch Head Hunters.”
“For the last time, we’re not calling it—”
“How about Mission: Dad-possible?” I cut in, grinning as Cas’ left eye started twitching. “Come on, bro. Dial the old man before I start beatboxing your ringtone.”
Scowling, Cas stabbed at his phone, spiderwebbing the whole screen now. Damn! Big bro needed some serious chill in his life.
Two rings, then the silken poison of our father’s voice oozed through.
“To what do I owe the pleasure, Casimir?”
“Do you have our bride’s photo?”
A pause, then all our phones chimed.
An image filled my screen. Obviously covert to go by the angle. Golden curls in a riot. Face half buried in familiar wolf fur. Gray eyes wide with enough fear to choke an elephant.
My ribs caved in.
“When was it taken?” Cas asked.
“Earlier today. She had an audience with King Julian.”
Cas and I exchanged a confused look. How was the werewolf king involved in this?
“Eyes are the same.” The tip of Ko’s forefinger brushed his phone screen, gentle as a feather, and I knew he didn’t mean the color.
“So she has arrived,” Lucian purred. “Good. I’ll send an officiant tomorrow—”
“Our bride’s our beloved.” I tossed my phone on the counter. “Cas, send him the pic I know you took.”
His glare should have slit my throat, but his thumb bounced across his busted-up screen.
A beat later, and frost crackled through the line.
“So Arabesque sends a warning and a challenge,” Lucian murmured.
“Did you plant a spy in the Harrow household yet?” Koa barked before Cas or I could reply.
“You know I can’t.”
“But we need to find out if Arabesque uses Prime for torture devices or makes them herself,” I fake-whined.
“The terms of the truce—”
“We’ll take care of it ourselves.” Cas cut his eyes at me, and I gave him a nod back. I knew the perfect man for the job. “And hold off on the officiant until our beloved can stand on her own without falling over.”
“Understood. If there’s anything I can do—”
The call died under Cas’ thumb. His breathing changed into tiny, wounded noises he’d deny making if I mentioned them.
I wouldn’t, of course, but only because my heart was making the same sounds.
A warning and a challenge, Lucian had said, the first rip in his velvet composure. For a guy who usually treated emotions like a tax audit, he’d sounded almost human.
“Pops is angry,” I announced to the nachos. “No doubt he’s shredding paperwork right now. His version of screaming.”
“Anger is appropriate.” Cas’ pacing kicked up again, a metronome set to existential crisis tempo. “Rage is more appropriate. Did you see how she flinched? Did you see the pure fear? Did you see—”
“Of course we did!” Ko roared as he stood and started slamming cupboards. Glass clinked like nervous laughter. Then, after a moment, he rumbled, “Soup. She needs chicken soup. Better than broth out of a can. Electrolytes, too. Hmm. Maybe a cheeseburger?”
“Ah, yes, the four food groups of trauma recovery: Protein, minerals, grease, and denial,” I agreed as I finished up the nachos.
Ignoring me, Ko unearthed a stock pot big enough to bathe a toddler in, then tossed me a package of organic chicken thighs.
I laid it on the kitchen island and raised my eyebrows at Cas.
Still scowling, he grabbed the cutting board, pulled a knife from the block, and began chopping the poultry into perfect one-inch cubes.
I watched them orbit each other, Koa slopping over with love and vegetables and Cas controlling his panic with control.
“Next season of this shitshow’s gonna be wild.” Receiving no applause for my effort to distract, I tried again. “Betcha twenty she’s got a tragic backstory involving at least one evil step-relative.”
“We’re not casting a Brothers Grimm film here,” Cas growled.
“Aren’t we? Let me see. Royal intrigue? Check. Animal companion? Check. Beautiful princess? Check. Three dashing suitors? Check. Directed by Michael Bay, of course.”
“You’re not dashing.” Ko snorted, dumping diced onions into the pot. “You’re barely housebroken.”
The soup began simmering, filling the air with sage and worry.
“We should establish shifts,” Cas muttered. “Someone to watch her until she’s conscious.”
“Rock, Paper, Scissors for the first watch?” I suggested.
“You’ll cheat,” they said in unison, which, fair.
As they debated guard rotations like over-caffeinated Secret Service agents, I drifted to the window. Moonbeams lacquered the apple orchard silver and burned white on the lake in the distance. On my tongue, the irony tasted more bitter than one of Koa’s herbal teas.
All those years dodging politics, refusing to play Lucian’s games, only to get sucker-punched by fate’s idea of a meet-cute. This was not how our escape from the vampire court was supposed to go.
And yet, a woman who smelled like infection and iron deficiency slept upstairs and in our hearts.
I wanted nothing more in life than to be lying next to her, counting her eyelashes and caressing her curves, but knew she wasn’t there yet. Wasn’t even at the hand-holding stage, let alone any of the funner marital activities, and most likely wouldn’t be for a while.
Didn’t matter, though. I just wanted to see her. Smell her. Touch her hand every once in a while to make sure she was real.
“Stop brooding. That’s my role.” Ko nudged me with a steaming mug. “Drink this.”
I sniffed the concoction.
“What am I, a dung beetle? This smells like shit.”
“Valerian and passion flower in green tea. For the shock.”
Across the room, Cas began rearranging spice jars by color. Could the man leave nothing unorganized? Shaking my head, I let him get his jollies where he found them.
“Um, just so I’m clear because I got lost a few times in this convo. We’re good with sharing her, right? Like, even if she has political cooties, she’s ours?” I stared into my tea, my smirk fading. “Because I— I don’t think I can breathe without her now.”
“She’s ours.” Koa’s smile was bright as the sun. “All of ours.”
“Ours.” Cas didn’t look up from his rainbow. “Until we take our last breaths.”
And there it was, the unshakable core beneath the chaos. However this twisted fairy tale unfolded, we’d face it the same way we did everything: messily, recklessly, together.
“To forced matrimony, unexpected instalove, and probable treason.”
I raised my mug. They raised theirs. We clinked.
Cas and I immediately spat ours out while Ko chugged his.