Chapter 13 - Rosalia #2
John’s fury was still palpable, but he was cautious now, his eyes flicking between her and her husband.
“There are refreshments laid out in the pavilion,” she said, gesturing to the far side of the lawn, “please do make yourselves at home. I believe the celebrations will continue well into the night.”
He swallowed, his eyes ablaze, his fists trembling at his sides. But she did not flinch.
She didn’t care if it made him angry. She was done caring.
“Thank you,” he spat out. “That’s very…gracious of you.”
He didn’t wait for her response before striding past her, his alphas in his wake, thundering towards the drinks table.
Rosalia released a breath and turned to Rick, a smile on her face.
“I told you I could handle him.”
Rick did smile back then, a secret, warm smile she’d rarely seen before. To her immense surprise, he tilted her chin up with a crooked finger and pressed a light kiss to her lips. “Apparently so.”
She kissed him again, hands creeping up his chest. “Why don’t we go find Eva together?”
He hummed, lingering at her lips, before pulling back and scanning the crowd. “I believe she’s causing mischief with Thea and the boys.”
Rosalia laughed. “As she should.”
***
They had stayed at the party well after nightfall, laughing and drinking and even dancing.
Well. Rosalia had danced with Cassie and Daisy.
Rick had watched with Nicolas on the sidelines, something fierce and hungry in his eyes that quickly turned to amusement when Dane convinced Felix to try a traditional Russian dance he’d learned from some bear shifters.
Rosalia had spun Eva around, the little girl giggling in delight.
Perhaps she should have been concerned about John. But she wasn’t. She was enjoying herself too much.
By the time they got home, Eva was a sleepy lump in Rosalia’s arms, but still insisted on a story before she went to sleep. Rick had left them to it, claiming he had some work to do, and Rosalia had read a story about a cat that outwitted a fox with the help of a hedgehog and a garden gnome.
Eva was snoring by the last page, and Rosalia tucked the covers tightly around her. Despite the late hour, she found herself still restless, not yet ready for sleep.
So, she gathered her courage and went to Rick’s office.
Her knock on the door was tentative, guilty almost. Rick had, after all, told her that he wasn’t to be disturbed when he was working. But things were different now.
“Come in,” he said, and she pushed open the door to find him sitting behind a magnificent desk, his shirt sleeves rolled up, a pair of glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. “Rosalia. Is there something you need?”
She closed the door behind her softly. “No, I just wanted to…wanted to see you.”
He raised a stern eyebrow, but a smile played on his lips. “Did you now?”
“What are you working on?” she asked, dodging the heat in his voice.
He huffed a laugh. “There’s an Accord meeting coming up in Washington. It’s the perfect opportunity to get the wheels rolling against the Black Claws. Truth be told, I don’t know why they’re taking so long to declare war. But I suspect they’re waiting to gauge support at the meetings.”
“Ah, yes, your secret plan,” she said with a grin, leaning over the desk, “all very exciting.”
“Hardly,” he said. “When the territory charters were drawn up after the first peace talks with the humans a century ago, some idiot made a misprint in the Black Claw transcript. Left out the word ‘automatic.’ A small thing, paltry really, but it means they’re liable for territory dissolution unless they manually renew the charter. Which they haven’t.”
“So you’re preparing the dissolution papers before they even realize the mistake?”
He hummed. “It would be unlikely to stand without a ratifiable claim to the territory in their stead. Fortunately for us, I’ve found a branch of wolves in Germany with blood ties to the Black Claws who would be only too happy to claim the territory if given the chance.”
Rosalia exhaled. “So…that’s it? The Black Claws are just going to be dissolved?”
“If only. No, this will just throw things into chaos. The humans at the Accords take proper litigation very seriously, a precious veneer of control, and won’t allow the Black Claws to simply reclaim the territory without due process.
There’ll be a fight, but the Black Claws will lose a tremendous amount of credibility.
Other packs won’t want to fight on their side if there are fears the humans will step in against them. ”
“The humans are really so powerful?” Rosalia asked.
Rick’s jaw tightened in irritation. “Not so powerful. But negotiations with them are a delicate thing, constantly on the brink of collapse. It would only take one pack ignoring the Accord law to break the peace. And as annoying as that is, it can serve its purpose.”
“My father always said the humans were nothing more than pesky insects,” she said, looking down at her feet.
“I rather get the impression that John Heath thinks most people are nothing more than pesky insects.”
She huffed in amusement, glancing up to find his expression serious.
“Rosalia, I appreciate that this might be a sensitive topic. But your father…”
Her blood froze over. “What about him?”
His jaw worked. “I think you know what.”
She pushed off the desk, turning to look into the fire, her eyes narrowing as she watched the dancing flames.
“It’s what you imagine,” she said, her voice tight. “He was never much of a father to me. My mother died when I was very little, and he raised me to be…well…What I am. And if I wasn’t what he wanted me to be, he made no secret of his displeasure.”
Rick’s voice was hard. “You seem very forgiving about it.”
“I wish he were dead,” she said viciously, before clapping her hands over her mouth in horror, turning to him with wide eyes. “I…I didn’t mean…”
Rick placed his pen down carefully, his expression unchanging from a sort of stern intensity that made her stomach swoop in an unfamiliar sort of way. “I would understand if you did.”
She swallowed, taking a few steadying breaths.
Neither of them spoke for a few seconds, the weight of her words stretching out between them.
He didn’t laugh, didn’t play it off as a joke.
In fact, he didn’t seem disturbed at all.
She might as well have just been expressing an opinion on wine or the weather.
He cocked his head. “Do you want me to?”
She blinked at him. “Do I want you to what?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you want me to kill him?”
Her breath caught in her throat. It was as if the floor had fallen out beneath her, leaving her suspended in thin air, unable to move. To react.
He’d said it so simply. As if it was nothing to him. Because it was nothing to him.
And yet…it was everything to her.
“Don’t ask me that,” she whispered, a tremor in her voice.
He leant back in his chair, regarding her with all the ease of a reclining leopard ready for its next hunt. “Why not?”
“Because…” her fists clenched at her sides as she fought to keep her wolf at bay, fought to keep her emotions dampened down. “Because if you ask me that, then I’ll have to answer. And I…I…I know what my answer would be.”
His eyes glittered.
In the silence, a thousand scenarios played out behind Rosalia’s eyelids as she screwed them shut, pressing the heels of her palms against them to try and calm the roaring tempest.
“I could just do it,” Rick said, leaning back. “I’d like to see him dead. I don’t need your permission.”
Rosalia looked at him, her jaw set. “You won’t.”
He bared his teeth, ever so slightly. “If he threatens you again, I might.”
“Wait,” she said, “promise me you’ll wait.”
He considered her, removing his glasses, his eyes oddly catlike in the low light of the fire. “I’m not a temperate male, Rosalia. Ask Carter.”
She sucked in a breath.
He was right. He didn’t need her permission. He may pretend to be tame when it suited him, but he was a wild animal. Vicious and ruthless and utterly uncompromising.
But lately, she was learning that she was, too.
“If you kill him without my permission,” she said, her voice quiet and sharp, “you’ll be taking away my satisfaction at granting you permission.”
Oh, he liked that.
His chest rumbled in appreciation, and he slowly rose to his feet, his gaze dark and hungry. Her breathing hitched, and she half-thought he would close the distance between them, take her in his arms.
A thrilling anticipation shot down her spine.
“Very well,” he rumbled, hands splayed out on the desk, “I await your permission.”
“Thank you,” she said, unable to keep the haughty satisfaction out of her voice.
His head tilted, “There was a time you used to call me sir when you thanked me.”
“Why should I call you sir when, in this instance, you’re the one agreeing to do my bidding? If anything, you should be calling me my lady.”
“Is that what you want?” he asked, his voice soft and dangerous, “Me on my knees before you?”
There was something so deadly in his voice, something so challenging and dominant, that Rosalia had to fight not to drop her eyes from him and submit. They’d flirted around this, around something darker in their couplings.
It intrigued her. Had woken something inside her.
But it also scared her. And after a conversation about her father…
She wasn’t sure she was ready for the full force of Rick’s darkness. She wasn’t sure she was ready to release her own.
“There was a time I wanted to be the leader of a pack,” she said, with a small huff of laughter, turning back to the fire. “Can you believe it?”
“Yes,” replied Rick without hesitation, “and you’d have made a fantastic leader. Your father is an idiot. All males who buy into human gender norms are idiots.”
She raised an eyebrow, “Like we don’t have our own gender norms? For every female alpha, there are at least ten males.”