His voice is guttural, but there’s an odd friction in his tone. An anger. An agenda.
“I am here for another girl,” he threatens. “This is the arrangement I made with your brother, Sergei.”
Sire.
He didn’t get a chance to debrief us. The family was too overwhelmed watching Axel meet his son. The moment felt like a precious gift you didn’t want to risk with questions.
That was two weeks ago, and Sire’s been resting with Wren. She’s very pregnant, and he’s still weak, recovering from a kidney donation that almost killed him.
A transplant that doesn’t look like it worked.
The pallor of Ruslan’s skin is dangerously gray.
The shadow of death lurks in his eyes.
He risked his life to travel here from Moscow; the contrast of his terminal disease is stark against Katya’s glaring youth beside him.
“What arrangement?” I want to hear it from the devil’s mouth, whatever his plan is.
Twisting his chin, he aims his arctic eyes at me before his glare slithers to the ring on Alena’s finger. It gleams on her hand, cupping her pistol.
I clock it. His recognition. His rage.
It’s Maxim’s ring.
Of course, he’d recognize the royal jewel.
“Come closer, Lyov,” he summons as if I’ll listen.
“Fuck you. I was raised to defy you.”
He jeers, “You do not evenrememberme.”
I flinch at the truth.
“So, you do not know.” He sucks his mottled teeth. “If Iwanted you dead, your mother would’ve buried her child’s coffin years ago.”
Her child. Not his. I feel it, pounding in my heart.
“Whatdo you want?” I seethe.
“A deal,” he dictates.
I don’t need memories to know I’m in the presence of pure evil. The scars on my mother’s back. Sire’s chest. Axel’s feet. Grant’s arms. Jace and Nick’s minds.
I’m the only one free.
For years, I felt less than and left out. Like I didn’t belong. Grieving my guilt and ashamed that I escaped him. I survived without a scratch. With only nightmares that my legacy was a lie.
Until now.
I step into it.
Maxim’s legacy.
Nearing him, I growl, “I don’t owe you a goddamn thing. We both know I’m NOT your son.”
He judges me, his glare tracing my distinct face, my towering form, how not even my memories belong to him. They belong to a man who died with honor. A man, even in death, Ruslan couldn’t defeat.
