“Dent was responsible for the pain and suffering of at least a dozen omegas, probably more, not to mention multiple deaths. For their torture, their physical agony, their emotional damage. The mutilation of their voices. Conspiracy to commit multiple counts of rape. Dent and Udall should have been hanged, not put in private cells to live out the rest of their lives, and sure as fuck not the chance for Dent to escape!”
Tarius hadn’t even noticed the shower had turned off, not until he spotted Jeuel standing in the room wearing a white bathrobe, staring at Tarius like he presented a clear and present danger.
“Please, don’t fight,” Jeuel said in a breathy, broken voice. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, this isn’t your fault.” Branson gave Tarius as wide a berth as possible as he circled the bed to Jeuel. “We’re disagreeing on something, and it has nothing to do with you. Do you feel better after your shower?”
Jeuel nodded but kept his head low, shoulders hunched.
Damn it, I don’t want him scared of me.
Branson shifted, obscuring Jeuel’s face from Tarius’s view. “We’re having a grownup disagreement, that’s all. We’re all upset and stressed out, and sometimes we say silly things we don’t mean in the heat of the moment.”
Tarius bristled, but he didn’t contradict Branson’s words. He hated it when someone else spoke for him, and Branson reducing his thoughts to “silly things” chafed beyond reason. But the death penalty argument could wait until they were home. He shouldn’t have brought it up, not when everyone’s emotions were running high, their self-censor buttons were on the fritz, and he felt physically worse with each passing minute.
“Okay,” Jeuel whispered. He pulled clothing out of his suitcase, then disappeared into the bathroom again.
Branson spun neatly on his heel. “Dent’s escape from custody was a once-in-a-lifetime fluke accident,” he growled softly. “He should have been brought to justice for those crimes by the constabulary, but someone decided on vigilante justice, instead. We have laws for a reason, Tarius.”
“Yes, we do, and sometimes the law fucks up. You can’t stand there and tell me that if you’d had the chance to see the doctors who kidnapped Emory for five months? Who tortured him and impregnated him against his will? If you’d had the chance to plead your case for their execution in front of a judge and jury, that you wouldn’t have jumped at the chance?”
Branson’s emerald eyes glowed with a kind of fury Tarius had never seen before. And maybe bringing Emory’s ordeal into the mix was unfair, considering Emory was alive, mated, and had three healthy, happy toddlers to keep him busy. But they both knew how it felt to sit idly by while a brother they loved suffered, and the person who hurt them wasn’t punished the way you wanted to see them punished.
“Four of the five alphas who experimented on Emory are dead,” Branson snapped.
“Yes, they are. Another case of vigilante justice doing what the courts couldn’t. Or do you only like that kind of justice when it’syoursibling being avenged?”
Branson opened his mouth then shut it again when the bathroom door opened. Jeuel crept to one of the beds and sat, head down, trying to stay as small and unobtrusive as possible, and that broke Tarius’s heart. Jeuel needed freedom to express himself and work through his grief, not guard himself to avoid being yelled at by the upset adults in the room.
Tarius grabbed his orange juice and duffel bag, and then strode toward the nearly-shut connecting door. “I’m going tohang out with Corinth for a while. You two talk. You need each other.” Slightly sick to his stomach, and hating that he and Branson hadn’t resolved their first real fight, Tarius shut the door behind him.
It took Branson almost twenty minutes to convince Jeuel that Tarius wasn’t angry with him, and that Jeuel had done nothing wrong. After getting Jeuel settled on one bed with a soda, snacks, and a pay-per-view movie, Branson stepped out onto the small balcony with his mobile to think.
The interior rooms of the square building faced a small courtyard decorated with a few benches and a swing set, over what looked like a filled-in pool, flanked by the same tall, thick-trunked trees with shaggy green tops that were popular in this province. Jeuel called them windmill palms. Branson thought they looked kind of silly, but he was also used to the fat, leafy foliage of Sansbury, and the mountains surrounding it on three sides. It was so damn flat here…
And hot. The midday sun glared down at him, and he longed for a pair of sunglasses to protect his eyes, but it also felt good on his face. He didn’t spend nearly enough time outside anymore.
Such a silly stray thought, though, when the rest of his brain was full of his strange fight with Tarius. The death penalty was something they’d never talked about; there had never been a reason to bring it up when they became real friends, and later boyfriends. Branson had simply assumed Tarius was against it, considering both Papa and Morris were staunchly against it—and not only because they were defense attorneys. They did not believe man had the right to take another man’s life, not for any reason.
Papa and Dad had also had one of their first major disagreements of Branson’s life when the triplets were less than a month old. Dad had disappeared for an entire day and, two days later, the four alphas who’d experimented on Emory were found dead. Branson knew that those men had been detained by members of a remote sanctuary town, so it hadn’t been a stretch to assume the residents of that town had killed them.
Branson had long suspected that sanctuary towns existed in the wilds, the undeveloped land in between provincial borders that were not subject to any provincial or territory laws. The wilds were also unprotected, rumored to be peopled with criminals seeking to avoid justice, but Branson had grown up hearing folk tales of towns where alphas, omegas and betas lived in peace, as equals. He hadn’t known they were more than folk tales until the day Branson asked Dad point-blank about the four dead alpha scientists.
And Branson had been horrified to know his amazing, generous, loving omegin had purposely traveled to this sanctuary town, without the protection of his mate, and watched four men die.
Dad had fought to abolish the death penalty his entire career as an omega advocate, and it had been part of his Progressive platform when he ran for mayor a lifetime ago. Despite everything he’d suffered at the hands of abusive men, despite the horrors he’d survived at the hands of his first mate, Dad always said he’d never wanted any of those men dead, not even Krause Iverson. Dad told him that he didn’t have a say in the fates of those four alpha doctors; their fates had been decided by the mayors of the sanctuary town.
“I needed to be there, Branson, so I could see it with my own eyes. So, I could come home and confidently tell Emory, tell you all, that Em and his boys are no longer in danger. Can you understand that?”
He’d tried. He didn’t want his image of his omegin to change, to ever think the man was bloodthirsty or vengeful. He believed Dad wanted to know for sure that his family was safe. But had he truly needed to travel so far and witness four executions? Branson didn’t know, and he’d been sworn to secrecy over the entire thing.
So, when Tarius brought up the notion of vigilante justice being okay when it was Branson’s siblings…Branson had worked to hold his tongue. The constabulary had been given just enough information to identify the four men and link them to both Emory and another kidnapped (and now deceased) omega named Tehra, so the department could close the case. All the general public knew was the scientists linked to the illegal genetic experiments were dead, and Tarius had no clue that the same community responsible for their executions was likely responsible for killing Esom Dent.
And it wasn’t Branson’s place to tell him. Goddess, he hated keeping secrets from his husband, from the man he treasured and adored. But telling Tarius anything risked the safety of the sanctuary town and its sovereignty.
He also understood that Tarius thought he was a hypocrite by disagreeing with the death penalty, but not railing against the extra-judicial executions of four alpha scientists. In some ways, Tarius wasn’t wrong. Branson wasn’t sorry those men were dead, and a small, vengeful part of his heart that abhorred seeing his family suffer, had rejoiced in their deaths.
Dad’s voice squawked a surprised greeting in his ear before Branson was aware he’d called the man. “Are you at the hospital?” Dad asked. “How are you?”
