Yet where else would filth like him sleep? He felt no more at home inside the keep than he did here.
In truth, he’d never felt wanted anywhere.
Except in Ariel’s bed.
Growling at himself in frustration, Valteri draped his arm over his eyes in an effort to forget it all, and listened to the sounds of distant thunder.
But still his thoughts churned on against his will to quiet them.
Go to her.…
I’m not that big of a bastard.
No matter how much he might want to rise from his pallet and seek out his wife, he wouldn’t do it.
He’d done her enough harm. She deserved better. Closing his eyes, he forced himself to remember the dour, unaccepting faces of his people. They would forever ridicule his union, and eventually that ridicule would spill onto his precious wife.
He’d be damned before he’d ever cause her that type of pain.
“Well, what a strange place to find a bridal groom.”
Fury flared inside him as Valteri shot to his feet. With a sneer on his face, Belial stood at the entrance of the stall, leaning against one post. He set the lantern in his hand down before him. “I would have thought after the eagerness with which you took Ariel’s virginity that you’d be on her this night like a wolf to a deer.”
“Don’t you dare say such to me!” Valteri was disgusted. “She’s a lady and my wife, and I’ll not have her name bandied about as if she were a trollop.”
Belial laughed, a bitter, unholy sound.
There was something insidious about this beast. Deep-rooted and foul.
“’Tis a pity you don’t defend yourself with the same vigor.”
Valteri arched a brow at the bastard’s audacity.
And his stupidity.
Valteri raked him with a less-than-impressed grimace. “I assure you that I can fend for myself well enough.”
“Can you now?”
For just the tiny beat of a heart, Valteri swore ’twas Brother Jerome’s voice he’d heard.
Not Belial’s.
But when he spoke again, the tone and malice were all his and they set fire to Valteri’s temper. “I don’t see a fierce warrior before me, but rather ascared little boy who allows a drunken fool to mock him before the whole of his people. A little boy who cowers from his own wife. What? Afraid she’ll mock you as well? Or are you just incapable of pleasuring her?”
Growling with rage, Valteri charged his tormentor, catching Belial about the waist. They stumbled back against the stable wall.
“So the cat does have claws.” Belial let out a sinister laugh. “Come, Valteri the Godless, son of Lucifer, kill me and claim your true right. Even now your wife waits, her loins hungry for your body. Would you deny her your seed?”
Valteri reached for Belial’s throat, determined to squeeze the life out of his repugnant body. But as his hands closed around the slender neck, Belial’s eyes darkened to a deep, vibrant red.
Shocked by that sight, Valteri let go instinctively, and Belial’s eyes immediately turned blue again.
What the hell?
Literally.
Belial broke his grip and moved away. “Nay, you’re no coward. You have fought long and hard to get what you want.… Or have you?”
