28. Max
MAX
N oise and music slammed into us from the Broken Drum before we reached the club.
The shifter guards fanned out. Two peeled ahead to sweep the entrance. The rest fell into a loose perimeter behind us.
Bryn walked on my left, eyes wide, trying to look casual and failing.
The large ground floor had been converted from a warehouse with exposed timber beams. The ceiling rose high enough that Stormglass lanterns hung on chains like low stars. The bar ran the full length of the west wall. Four bartenders worked at combat speed.
Soldiers and cadets packed every inch. They drank at long wooden tables.
Leaned against support pillars. Played cards in gambling corners where coins and chips changed hands with every round.
Two pool tables sat at the far end, cues clacking over the din.
Smoke from hand-rolled cigarettes drifted in blue layers.
The air tasted of cheap liquor, fried food, and sweat .
The crowd sensed the predator among them the moment Caspian strolled inside, his arm still draped over my shoulders.
You and him both , the demon chimed. Your power makes the lesser beings uneasy. It draws the powerful toward us.
Heads turned. Every eye locked onto us. Conversations stuttered. Soldiers straightened. Others edged back, creating a path without being told.
Caspian led us toward the stairs. I kept my spine straight, eyes ahead, face blank. As if in marching formation, not walking into a bar with a prince’s arm around me.
If anyone who didn’t know us looked our way, they’d probably think I was Caspian’s big sister. Not only was I a couple inches taller, but I looked rougher around the edges. Miner upbringing versus a prince.
We settled in the VIP section on the second-floor balcony, an open mezzanine.
Leather seats, low tables, better liquor.
Servers bowed and brought bottles. Caspian ignored them.
His aides handled the orders, the logistics, the stream of people wanting a word with the prince.
He waved them all off and dropped into the seat beside me with the boneless ease of a man who owned the room and couldn’t be bothered to prove it.
I slouched and kept my head down, ignoring the gazes piling on me from every direction. I’d caused enough unwanted attention since the heirs carried me into their fortress.
Caspian laughed and joked, riding an incredible high. I fought not to laugh back. Not to flirt back, which was harder than it should have been. The shifter prince could probably make the dead crack a smile.
Then I felt it. One glare, heavier and more potent than all the others combined.
Drakken strode into the VIP section. He sat at a table a few feet from ours. And he wasn’t alone.
A blue-eyed, willowy blonde was with him.
She wore his dragon’s color, a fitted black-and-gold dress that left little to the imagination.
She sat beside him, legs crossed, her posture angled toward Drakken like a compass pointing north.
She was taller than average, but compared to me, the top of her head would barely reach my chin.
She put up a good fight reclaiming him. Vying for his attention with every tool she had: touching his arm, leaning into his space, her lips moving close to his ear. I caught her hand sliding along his thigh, fingers migrating toward his groin with practiced confidence.
A sudden rage beat through my blood like a war drum. My shoulders locked tight.
I turned away. Forced my gaze forward.
Who the dragon prince fucked was not my business. Not even slightly.
But whenever I lifted my head, I looked. I couldn’t stop.
And there he was—glaring at Caspian and me as if we’d both done him wrong. His gray eyes burned deeper than anger. He mostly ignored the blonde, and she’d noticed. She followed his gaze to me. Her expression curdled into venom.
Just great. I was a hatred magnet .
Caspian deliberately didn’t acknowledge Drakken. Not a nod. Not a glance. The two princes occupied the same balcony like rival kingdoms sharing a border—aware of each other, armed, pretending the other didn’t exist. Their people mirrored them.
Drakken’s officers sat in rigid formation around their prince, backs straight, drinks untouched or nursed slowly.
They spoke in low voices. No one laughed.
The dragon prince’s table radiated the same energy as a command briefing.
His men respected him. Feared him, even.
But they didn’t relax around him. Then again, I didn’t think Drakken would invite relaxation.
He sat with his back to the wall, his frame taking up more space than the chair offered, his jaw set, surveying the club the way he’d survey a battlefield.
Caspian’s table was a different story. His shifters leaned back, drinks in hand, interrupting each other with stories that got louder with every round.
The prince sat among them, not above them, laughing with them.
He was respected, too, and loved. His people breathed easy around him. The wolf led and ran with his pack.
Caspian drank rounds with us and cracked jokes nonstop. Some of them were actually funny. I fought to keep my face straight, especially with Drakken’s glare boring into my skull from ten feet away.
“So,” Caspian started, leaning back with a glass of ember whisky in hand.
“Tavern joke. Older than the Rupture. A wife comes home to find her husband packing his bags. She asks where he’s going.
He says, ‘I heard that in the southern kingdom, they pay men fifty coins every time they sleep with a woman.’ The wife starts packing her bags too.
He says, ‘Where are you going?’ She says, ‘Same place. I want to see how you survive on fifty coins a year.’”
The table erupted. Bryn doubled over, tears of laughter in her eyes.
It was also an insider joke because The Saint ruled the southern kingdom.
“Another one,” Caspian said, holding up a finger.
“A vampire, a shifter, and a dragon walk into a bar. The bartender asks what they’ll have.
The vampire says, ‘A glass of the finest blood.’ The shifter says, ‘The biggest steak, rare.’ The dragon says, ‘I’ll have a small salad.
’ The other two stare at him. He shrugs and says, ‘My nutritionist says I need to watch my temper.’”
Drakken, from across the space, wasn’t amused, but our table lost it. Before I knew what had happened, a laugh rolled out of me. Like something I’d been holding back for a decade.
Caspian’s green eyes lit like they’d been plugged into a Stormglass battery. His grin turned dazzling. He’d been aiming the whole performance at me. Every joke was a siege engine pointed at my poise.
A few more drinks, and I loosened up further. Laughed more. Let my guard slip an inch, then two.
Each time I did, Drakken’s glare intensified. As if every sound of amusement that left my mouth was a personal offense.
What the fuck was his problem? He wouldn’t even let me laugh at a joke?
She’s here! She’s here! Our heir!
Shit.
The Stormglass lanterns hummed above us as the sentient metal sensed my presence. Coldiron had infiltrated this establishment too. But it mistook me for an heir. The only heirs here were Caspian and Drakken.
Let’s see how long you can keep running from the truth, Max, the demon chimed in. They say it’s a marathon, not a sprint. I disagree. Everything is a sprint. Powers shift. Things change fast.
I pretended not to hear it. Digging deeper would question the foundation of who I truly was—or what . I didn’t need the pain of unveiling that the parents I loved so much fed me lies the whole time, then took them to their grave.
I was here to drink. To blow off steam after enduring dragon fire, ambush, and bloody violence. I was here to celebrate that I survived it all. For my sister. For myself.
I drank to the bottom of my glass. Then another.
The shifters were surprised and pleased to discover I could keep up with them and keep the liquor down. They’d expected this miner to fold after two rounds. I was on my fifth and still sitting upright.
During my week in the barracks, I’d learned the basics of supernatural biology.
Alcohol didn’t hit supernaturals the way it hit humans.
They could hold the poison. Among the species, only Fae and witches would get drunk.
Before the Rupture, Fae drank only their own brand of wine made from homegrown fruits.
They didn’t have that luxury anymore after their home was destroyed .
We can swallow fire , the demon tsked. What can a few bottles of booze do to us?
My evening would be considerably better without it monitoring my every sip, enjoying it too, and taunting me between rounds.
But damn. The liquor burned my throat all the way down to the pit of my stomach.
Even with fire in my gut and a haze in my head, I kept my guard in place.
No way would I let the creature out to play.
But the more I drank, the more I loosened up. Before long, I was giggling.
Caspian drank in the sight of me as if I alone could intoxicate him. He cracked more jokes.
“I’ve never seen this side of you, Max,” he said, his whole face animated. He was happy, like a man watching something he liked and not hiding it. “This is nice. Really nice.”
“You haven’t known me long.” I giggled. “But I haven’t seen this side of me myself. Cheers.”
I emptied another shot into my stomach and asked for more.
“You should probably slow down a little.”
He threaded his fingers through mine. I gazed at him, smiling like a fool.
He was a shameless flirt. But he was probably the only person who could make me this relaxed.
He pulled me closer. If I let him, he’d have dragged me into his lap.
I’d have liked that, and that was the problem.
In the haze of my mind, I dredged up enough will to resist. My fingers curled around his but added pressure.
A squeeze that said this far, and no further .