“This is not about me. You nearlydied.”
“Because you didnottell me. Without communication, I will do as I think best.”
“Tell you? You did notask.” His scent was morphing sharply from fear into anger.
“That’s a sucky excuse,” I said, putting distance between us, sliding across the seat. “This is my HQ. My job.Mine. You will let me do it.”
An inarticulate sound emerged from his throat and rose to a shout. “You could have died!” he shouted, fury in his eyes. Bruiser’s fists balled, and the stink of his emotions grew. “Died!I could havelostyou!”
“Yeah. That sucks. And now we know I’m mortal, unlike Leo, who was immortal and yet who is dead.” And that was the problem, right there. Leo dead. His coffin empty. Bruiser facing the possibility of another loss. Me.
The car had come to a stop. We were at the freebie house, and I hadn’t noticed.
“I keep trying to protect you the way I protected Leo.” He forced his hands to open and placed them on his thighs, breathing through the rage and terror. “But you are not Leo. You cannot fight your enemies as Leo fought his.” Bruiser twisted in the seat, opened the door, and stepped out to the sidewalk. “I could not bear to lose you,” he said. He slammed the door. The armored vehicle actually shook. Bruiser stalked inside the house, rage vibrating through him.
Oddly, seeing him like that made me happy. It was like a normal human man storming into the house. Yet... To myself, I said, “He’s protecting me like he had to protect Leo. This sucks.”
The privacy panel came down. “We’re all protecting you like we protected Leo,” the driver said. “It’s our job. If a vamp comes in and kills you, who do you think suffers? Us humans and our families, who might be put to death by a conqueror just for the hell of it.”
I looked up and saw Shemmy in the rearview. I looked at the control panel and saw that Bruiser hadn’t turned off the speakers. Shemmy had heard the entire thing. “Your families?”
“You’re the only thing standing between us and total annihilation. If an asshole takes over from you, kills you? Bruiser and Eli and Alex will be the first to go. Then all your loyal security people. Your witch friends and allies?Gone in the first tier. Wrassler and his human wife, Jodi? Somewhere at about the second layer of cleansing. You had to know all this. You saw the house that later became your clan home. You know how many died, and that was simply a clan battle. This will be immeasurably worse. This will be like Europe.”
Where a war had raged and the death toll was over a thousand.
Shock rushed through me like an icy wind. Leo had told me that he stood between chaos and anarchy and the safety of his people. My job was even bigger than his had been. The moment I became the Dark Queen, my power placed all of my people in danger. Every single one of them. And it was my job to protect them. I had known that I needed an army and I had worked to create one. But I needed a bigger freaking army.
“And hey, Legs? You wrote our job descriptions. Dumas is just doing his job, and you’re not helping him.”
It was true. I had written the job descriptions, including my own. But when I wrote them, I hadn’t considered that I might not shift if I died. I hadn’t considered that Sabina would be burned and Leo’s body stolen. I had never fully wrapped my head around the knowledge that a conquering vamp would kill my people just for funzies. That sort of head-lopping housecleaning was way beyond my understanding. A very few enemies had been dispatched when I became the Dark Queen, but wholesale killing was a baffling concept. Worse, my muscle memory always said to run toward the fight, no matter what, and Beast... Beast wanted to fight. She lived for it. She goaded me into the fray every single time. I had put everyone in danger trying to do things the old way, not reining in Beast, not thinking first, not staying safe.
“So I’m an ass.”
“Not my words. Your words, My Queen,” Shemmy said.
Okay. Lesson learned.I needed to tell them I had learned it. Show them I had learned it. And I had to apologize to my honeybunch, big time. I blew out a sigh. “Thanks, Shemmy. I needed to hear all that.”
And... Bruiser and I might have just had an actual fight. In front of the chauffeur. In the midst of feeling likean idiot, this made me oddly, weirdly happy, and it took a moment to realize that people who are bound don’t argue. This argument had just proved to me that we were normal. Just a normal couple. Laying out boundaries and figuring out how to make a relationship work, like humans, instead of typical fanghead life.
Well, aside from all the “Kill Jane” and the “Jane is stupid” stuff.
***
The boys were sparring on the third floor. Grunts, thumps, gasps, tiny squeals. It was noisy. I climbed the flights to the attic space, which had been converted into a gym / fighting ring / training room, two vamp sleeping closets, and a tiny bathroom. Along the walls, Koun and Tex stood, arms crossed over their chests, scrutinizing the action. Brute was sitting in the corner, watching avidly, panting with what looked like delight, his tongue lolling. Tex’s dogs were snoozing in the corner.
In the middle of the floor, the focus of all the attention, Eli and Bruiser were sparring. Sparring hard. Not holding back. Bare to the waist, barefoot, fists landed to torsos and abdomens. To the face, finger jabs to the kidneys, kicks to the knees. Blocks effective about half the time. Eli was in loose workout pants. Bruiser was in his dress slacks, which meant he had walked in the door mad, and Eli had taken on his fury.
Eli was the better at hand-to-hand because he was sneaky and never followed rules, but Bruiser was faster. And stronger. And he was totally involved with this fight because he was fighting his anger, his impotence to protect me.
Fun,Beast thought at me.Play with brother and mate?
I had options. I could join the fray. In half-form, full of vamp blood, Beast and I might be able to beat both of them together. Recently healed, that might not be smart. Or I could take the high road. I wasn’t good at taking the high road.
Eli landed a throat punch and danced back. Bruiser gagged, the punch having missed crushing his trachea by a hair.
Into the momentary pause, I yelled, “I’m sorry!”
Both men stopped, dropped their guards. They looked at me, then at each other. “For what?” Bruiser asked.
