17. Chapter 17
Maksym
Bohdan entered the sitting room, all loose shoulders and polished shoes and that dangerous, easy charm he used when the world had become too heavy and someone needed to insult it into breathing again.
He crossed behind the sofa where Nikolay and Maddie had settled together and dropped down beside them with no more ceremony than a man arriving late to a card game.
“So what’d I miss?”
Nikolay turned and slapped the back of his head. It was not hard enough to harm him. It was certainly hard enough to make a point.
Bohdan’s head dipped forward by an inch. He went still, one hand raised delicately as if he had been struck not by his brother but by the collapse of civilized law.
“I have been assaulted,” he said.
“Not nearly as hard as necessary,” Nikolay replied.
Maddie laughed, quick and bright, one boot tucked beneath her on the sofa, eyes alive with wicked satisfaction. “Honey, where I come from, that’s barely a love tap.”
Bohdan looked at her. “Your people frighten me.”
“My people ride bulls for sport and deep-fry things that nobody ever considered they ought to.”
Grace sat across from them, a plate balanced carefully on one knee and her glass of blood wine near her hand. She had been laughing at Maddie a moment before. Not loudly, but genuinely.
I watched her too closely. I knew that. Everyone in the room knew that. My family had the decency, or self-preservation, not to mention it.
Father sat behind Devon, who had taken up residence on the rug near the charcuterie board with the moral certainty of a queen who had decided furniture was optional.
My father’s stillness was absolute. It did not compete with the room; it governed it.
One hand rested loosely on the arm of his chair.
Devon leaned against his leg as if the King of Kings were simply the warmest available tree and she had chosen him for shade.
Grace set her plate down. The shift was small. The room felt it. Her shoulders straightened. Her spine found the shape of a courtroom.
“We’ll need to meet at first dusk,” she said.
Her voice had changed. Still southern. Still soft at the edges. But the softness did not blunt it. “Not late evening. First dusk. I need uninterrupted time with Nikolay and Maddie before anyone starts arguing strategy of overlapping centuries.”
Bohdan’s brows rose. “That sounds directed at us.”
“It is directed at everyone with a pulse, functional or decorative.”
Devon pointed at her with a grape. “I like her.”
“You liked her before,” Lucia said.
“I am capable of liking people more over time. It is called growth.”
My father’s mouth moved by a fraction.
Grace continued, “I need the charge documents, any formal notice from the Council, any correspondence regarding the Alpha’s death, any witness lists if they’ve bothered with procedural fairness, which I doubt, and a complete account from Nikolay and Maddie.
Not the polite, diplomatic version. Not the family version. The ugly version.”
Nikolay inclined his head once. “You shall have it.”
“Good.” Her gaze sharpened. “If anyone knows of anything that could look bad and decides not to tell me because it is embarrassing, incriminating, private, politically delicate, emotionally uncomfortable, or because ancient men enjoy hoarding secrets like dragons with property law degrees, I will find out at the worst possible time and be furious.”
For a beat, silence held.
Then Ryder said, “That is the most lawyer thing I have ever heard.”
“It was beautiful,” Maddie said.
Grace reached for her blood wine, took a measured sip, and set it down again. “We’ll also need to discuss narrative.”
“Narrative?” Nikolay asked.
“Yes. Facts tell the truth. Narrative tells people how to understand the truth before their prejudices get to it first.”
Maddie went still at that.
Not visibly hurt. Not dramatically moved. But some part of her recognized the battlefield being named. Wolf. Vampire. Prince. Mate. Dead Alpha. Council. Every old bias waiting to dress itself as reason.
My father spoke before Grace could continue.
“We have a date for the hearing.”
Grace turned her head. “When?”
“Four days out.”
Grace blinked once. Only once.
Then, under her breath, she said, “Shit.”
Every supernatural being in the room heard her.
Grace seemed to remember her audience half a second later.
“That is ridiculous.”
“Yes,” Kazimir said. “The Council has never been anything but ridiculous where the Kozlovs are concerned.”
Her gaze remained on my father. “What possible justification did they give?”
“Administrative efficiency,” Kazimir said.
Grace stared at him.
Then she gave a laugh without amusement. “Of course they did.”
“Administrative efficiency,” Taras said quietly, “often means they have already decided the outcome they prefer and find the process irritating.”
Grace looked toward him. “Exactly.”
Taras inclined his head. A small acknowledgment. One professional mind recognizing another across the battlefield.
Indignation moved across Grace’s face then, and the sight of it struck me with unexpected force.
The flush at her throat deepened. Her mouth went calm.
Her eyes went colder. There was no hysteria in her, no panic.
Only a clean, precise anger that had once surely made criminals regret underestimating a woman from Appalachia with a Vanderbilt law degree and a memory for patterns.
“Well,” she said, calm and flat, “fuck ‘em. We’ll be ready.”
The silence that followed was not shock. The room rearranged itself around her.
Not as my mate. Not as a rescued victim. Not as a new vampire, still learning what hunger meant. But as counsel. As a weapon. As a woman who had looked at four days where another might have seen impossibility and found only insult.
My chest tightened. The sensation had nothing to do with hunger.
Nikolay turned toward her fully. He had been still before, but now he became something quieter and more open.
My brother, who could negotiate peace between creatures who had inherited hatred before language, did not soften his gaze to flatter her.
He simply met her eyes and placed faith there without decoration.
“I believe you,” he said.
The weight of it entered me.
Grace’s face changed by the smallest degree. Not surprise. Not quite. More as if belief offered plainly was a thing she knew how to receive in theory, but not yet in reflex.
Maddie looked between them, her expression suddenly stripped of teasing.
She watched Grace with open curiosity, yes, but also something like hope.
The wild Texas brightness remained, only gentled.
For the first time since I had seen Maddie laugh beneath Obsidian’s purple light, she looked young in the way pain makes even bold women seem briefly unguarded.
Then she said, softly, “You hear that, Nikki? We got us a shark.”
Nikolay’s mouth moved. “A what?”
“A lawyer shark. A sleek one. Mean in court. Pretty smile. Bites clean through bone.”
Grace looked at her. “I have never been described more accurately.”
Bohdan placed a hand over his heart. “I am beginning to feel underrepresented in this room. No one has compared me to marine life.”
“You are an eel,” Lucia said.
“That was immediate and hurtful.”
“Accurate,” Taras said.
Devon nodded solemnly. “Elegant eel.”
Grace’s laugh came again, quieter this time. It faded quickly, though not painfully. She stood.
The movement pulled me to attention before she spoke.
“I think I’d like to head up now,” she said, “if that is agreeable.”
Several heads turned. Not toward her. Toward one another.
I rose with as much dignity as a man could manage while every relative he possessed pretended not to understand exactly what they understood.
“Of course,” I said.
Grace stood beside me. She did not take my hand this time. Not immediately. Her fingers brushed the side of her dress, and I saw nerves return—not fear of me, I thought, but awareness of leaving the brightness of the room for the quiet beyond it.
I gave the room one brief nod.
“Everyone.”
It was not farewell. It was warning. Gratitude. A request for restraint issued as a royal command because my family was composed of lethal creatures who became twelve years old whenever romance offered them an audience.
Bohdan gave me a beatific smile. “Sleep well, brother.”
Nikolay slapped the back of his head again without looking.
Maddie dissolved into laughter.
Grace glanced at me, mouth curving despite herself.
That curve nearly ruined me.
I placed my hand lightly at her back, not guiding so much as accompanying, and followed her out of the sitting room while warmth, danger, blood, family, and the impossible sound of her laughter remained behind us like firelight.
The corridor outside my wing had a distinct silence from the sitting room. Behind us, family still moved and murmured around firelight and food; ahead, the house narrowed into old wood, low lamps, and the kind of privacy that turned restraint into a living thing.
Grace walked beside me without speaking.
I did not fill the quiet. I had learned, poorly and late, that words were not always gifts.
Her steps were steady, but not effortless. The day had remade her by force. Yet she walked upright. Chin lifted.
At the door to her rooms, we stopped.
I could have opened it. I could have wished her goodnight. I could have asked. I did none of those things. I stood at the threshold with my hands at my sides and waited.
Grace looked at the door first. Then at me. Her fingers worried the hem of her sleeve, twisting the soft fabric once before she caught herself and forced them still.
“This is you.” I told her, indicating this is where I’d leave her.
“Can it be you too?” she asked.
My entire body went still.
Her eyes widened slightly, as if the words had escaped by accident. “I mean—” She drew a breath. “I don’t want to wake anyone up with my screams from nightmares.”
Relief moved through me so quickly it was almost indecent.