Who is now looking at me expectantly like he’d just asked a question.
“Uh…”
Luckily for me, Vel has her wits about her and steps in to supply, “Prince Kiahn and Niska met at Moon’s Rest Station where we had stopped on our way back from our visit to the Queens of Zelixi to discuss trade.” She smiles and clutches her tablet to her chest. My father then does that thing he does so well, which is to say nothing at all, prompting the other person to fill in the silence. “They… they hit it off. Niska and her friends were looking for somewhere new to live, and the prince is now ready for contracts so…”
Niska and her friends start nodding their heads with smiles plastered on their faces, clearly trying to appease my father. He treats them to a patronizing smile of his own - a weak thing that a spring breeze could blow from his face.
The irritating arrogance of the male who sired me has my teeth clenching together.
My father snorts softly from his nose, causing the feather trim by his jaw to move with the gust off his breath. The glowing spots seem to stir too, lighting up in pink, blues and greens. “So this means you will all finally start entertaining contracts with the females I have been suggesting, then?” he asks, looking at me and my brothers, our height meaning that his focus skims right across the heads of the human women like they weren’t even here.
There’s a beat or two of silence, and within that silence, I blanch. I haven’t even gotten Niska her collar yet, and my father is already thinking about lining up the next contract? I open my mouth to protest without really knowing what I was about to say, but Az interrupts with his mumbled; “well, actually… I was kinda thinking…” his hands demurely gesture toward Lois as he talks, but he’s not really looking at her.
“Me?!” Lois yelps, putting a palm to her chest as she looks up at Az like he’d sprouted feathered wings and a tail. “No. That’s not happening. I’m not havinganyone’sbabies, let alone a huge guy like you, so don’t get any funny ideas,” she says, shaking her head.
“But-”
Whatever Az was going to say in protest gets cut off when my father turns to Zann - Zann, who once again seems to be trying to covertly back out of the room and is about three steps away from using the servant’s door again.
“And what about you, Zannador?” my father asks, making my brother freeze on the spot.
“Oh, I don’t think I’m quite ready yet for-”
“But you’re ready enough to visit the capital and mate in the flesh with Senator Glex’s daughter?”
I blink at my father. He’s wearing a calm, nonchalant look on his face, when he is clearly anything but.
“Shit,” Zann mutters quietly, wincing at the accusation - an accusation that must be true for my father to make the journey all the way here himself to ask my brother this very question.
I’m going to fucking kill him.
“Yes,” my father continues, “‘shit,’ indeed.” He walks forward, his hands still clasped behind his back as he circles a now nervous-looking Zann. “Tell me… what‘the fuck’were you thinking, Zannador? Enlighten me. You,of all peopleshould have-”
My father’s bodyguards act so fast, I hardly have time to register they’d even moved until they’re already holding my brother back.
You ‘of all people’…
I growl low in my belly as Idostep in front of my Niska now. Is my father seriously implying that my brother’s conception is what killed our mother? Is he suggesting that Zann is at faultin any way for that? When it was him that kept coming back to her for another contract before he finally sank his fangs into her flesh and bonded her with his venom?
My father says nothing, but he stands there, his chin tipped up, waiting. Waiting for Zann to challenge him, waiting for me to challenge him - waiting for anything to happen that lets him put us in our place.
“Zeelix?”
It had been my Aunt’s voice, the uncertain sound of her using my father’s first name without his title accompanied by the tap of her cane butting against the polished hardwood floor. Aunt Zalora has a complicated relationship with the king. But he never corrects her, not once. I remember overhearing them having blazing rows after he accidentally bonded my mother to him. She was furious - and he allowed her to be. I think she might be the only one in the whole of my father’s territories that he allows to be so familiar with his name.
My father stiffens when he hears her, but as he turns, I can see the challenge in his smile melt. It’s replaced by a softness that I can’t read. “Zalora,” he says, bowing his head in greeting as she stands at the threshold of the doorway, observing the scene before her.
“We were not prior informed of your visit,” she clips, lifting her chin. “This is most irregular.”
There’s a moment where we all know that if my aunt were anyone else, her challenge and demeanor would have been met with the king’s anger. I brace for it,even, readying myself to try and deflect the conversation, distract him away from her. But, the anger doesn’t come. Instead, the corner of his lip lifts ever so slightly as if he’s pleased by her lack of airs and graces.
“Yes, well,” my father chuckles, turning his body toward my aunt now, but glancing back at my brothers and I. “One of my idiot sons has surpassed himself in his idiocy,” he quips, givinga fraction of a nod to his security detail. In turn, they allow Zann to shrug out of their hold. My brother glares at them both while dusting off their touch from his shirtsleeves.
My aunt’s smile is tight. “Well, why don’t you accompany me to her rooms and you can tell me all about it.”
My father nods, his shoulders relaxing as he lets out a breath. “Yes, please, Zalora, that would be most welcome.”
We watch them go, my father offering his arm to my aunt. She takes it, but issues the mother of all warning glares over her shoulder aimed at Zann before they disappear, trailed by his security as they walk to my mother’s old chambers. The rooms have mostly been left alone. We painted over the crazed etchings of her madness - the million drawings of my father’s face, the words he’d told her repeated, and repeated, and repeated in blocks that filled walls. But her things are still there. Her hairbrush. Her night gowns. Her horncaps. They are a much more sanitized version of her chambers now. My aunt visits them when she wants to ‘talk’ to her sister. I have only been there once. They are a stark reminder of what happens when males like me lose control.
