Nyk cleared his throat. “That’s why I’m entrusting her to you, little brother. I’ve seen your psychosis where your children are concerned.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he smirked. “You still putting Vidar down to nap on your chest instead of his crib?”
“Absolutely.” Jullien grinned proudly at something everyone mocked him over. “And to sleep. No way in Tophet I’d trust my infant to rest in his own room. Not after all the shit that I’ve seen and what was done to us. My girls and Vas are lucky I letthemhave their own beds.”
And Vasili was eighteen.
His girls would be starting school in the fall. They’d only graduated to their own beds because Ushara had insisted on it. And had used her unfair wiles against him that he couldn’t resist.
He grew hard just thinking aboutthatparticular fight. It was the only one in his life he’d been happy to lose.
Nykyrian laughed as if he knew where Jullien’s thoughts had gone. “That’s why I know you’re the Tavalian for the job of keeping my girl safe for me.” He held his hand out to Jullien.
The moment he took it, Nyk jerked him closer for a brotherly hug.
Jullien closed his eyes, savoring the novelty of it. Though neither of them would ever say the words, they both regretted the years of bitterness that had driven an awkward wedge between them.
But they were getting better.
Slowly.
While still not brothers per se, they were no longer enemies, and were learning that they could reach out to each other without getting slapped for it.
In time, they both hoped to become the family they’d never been.
Clearing his throat gruffly, Nyk clapped him hard on the back and stepped away. “She’s in her rooms.”
Jullien’s gut clenched involuntarily at those words, as he remembered the vicious slap he’d felt when he’d first learned that Thia had been given his old quarters in the Andarion palace after he’d been ruthlessly disinherited. A palace that had been leveled by their own grandmother in an attempt to kill Nykyrian and his family—after putting a brutal hit out on Jullien’s life.
But for Jullien and his Tavali brethren, the bitch would have succeeded.
Thankfully, they’d all survived, and now his brother had moved his family into their birth father’s palace on Triosa. A palace where Jullien had been made to feel about as welcome as a lethal STD in a whorehouse.
So given that, he well understood Thia’s feelings of isolation and not belonging. Of wanting to escape this hell as fast as possible. But to be fair to Nyk, his brother was a good and decent father.
Unlike theirs.
Yeah, there was nothing here he missed at all. The sooner he could leave and get back to his Gorturnum base, and more importantly the family that loved him, the happier he’d be.
And as they entered the east wing, Jullien saw that Thia’s current rooms were the ones that had belonged to an aunt who’d finally married. Not that he begrudged his niece her place in the royal family. Never would he slight any of his nieces or nephews anything. Rather, he hated his parents for their lack of regard where he was concerned.
Hence his years of teenage rebellion.
But that was another story and the last thing he wanted to think about.
At the end of the hallway, Nyk knocked on the door and waited for Thia’s bored, irritated voice to bid them enter. Rolling his eyes at Jullien, Nykyrian opened the door.
Jullien wasn’t expecting the sudden ear-piercing shriek that greeted them.
“Basha Dagger!” Nykyrian’s twin sons came running so fast, he barely caught them before they leapt against a part of his anatomy that would have rendered him on the ground in agony.
He smiled at his rambunctious nephews, who jumped all over his body in an attempt to tackle and hug him. “Hey, Terry and Tier. How are my boys?”
Laughing, they wrapped their spindly bodies around his and squeezed tight. Now he fully understood Vas’s complaints about his sisters whenever they attempted to scale his body.
After sliding off Jullien’s back, Taryn looked down the hallway behind Jullien. “Did you bring Viv and Mira?”
“Vas?” Tiernan added as he clapped his hands in hopeful excitement and did what would also double as an I-need-to-go-to-the-bathroom-Dad dance.
“Sorry, my glorious Fetchyns. It’s just me this trip.”
