Total pages in book: 192
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
“Never,” Mrs. Truelock whispered. “And those shoes are lovely with that outfit, sweetheart. You always have the perfect eye.”
Geez, Mrs. Truelock was the best.
“Thanks, Mrs. Truelock,” I replied.
“No heartfelt speech for your blood family?” Timothee sniped.
“Did it occur to you that, after what happened, we’d be up most the night and therefore would need to rest this morning?” Aleksei clapped back. “But no matter when we woke, it wouldn’t erase the fact that someone nearly killed Laura last night, I was put in the position of having to take his life, so maybe we didn’t want a living room full of bodies Laura feels like she has to curtsy to in what will be, and now is acting as, her own fucking home?”
Oh yeah.
Way more dysfunction than I expected.
I put my hand on his back.
Aleksei seared his angry gaze from his brother to Germaine.
“And for the three years I’ve lived in this penthouse, I took pains…pains, Germaine, to keep my city address private. And you guided every fucking citizen right to my fucking door. Even the cops took steps to keep that on the downlow.”
Oh boy.
I forgot about that.
And now such a big crowd had gathered, they’d had to close down the street.
“I know you hate it, Lex, but this situation is PR gold,” she replied. “We can’t miss the opportunity it affords us.”
“The opportunity it affords who?” Aleksei inquired dangerously.
“The royal family. Your family,” she replied.
“Considering the statement you made thoroughly explains my beast’s actions of last night, and the crowd gathered in the street right this very moment is indicative of the joy the realm is apparently experiencing because of it, what opportunity now needs an even bigger statement that includes most of my family appearing before the public in front of my home to make it?” he pushed.
“No opportunity this good should be squandered, your highness.”
Dang.
She was hedging.
And Aleksei knew it.
“What’d they do? Or alternately, which one did something?” Aleksei demanded.
Germaine’s expression turned openly cagey.
“What’d they do?” he pressed.
She cast her eyes toward the queen.
Queen Calisa sighed delicately before she spoke.
“It’s unsurprising he figured it out. He’s far from dim. Therefore, admit it, Timothee.”
Oh dear.
This was my first time in her presence. I didn’t realize how tense and angry she was.
But regardless of that delicate sigh, I wasn’t missing it now.
“I’m not a child,” Timothee bit back.
“Lilith, even though he’s been on this earth thirty-one years, grant me the day when that’s actually true,” the queen prayed.
“Quiet, Caly, you’re too hard on him,” the king, who’d seated himself again, murmured.
“And you, sir, are not hard enough,” she rejoined.
“We have company,” the king retorted.
“As I understand, they’re not that, but instead, they’re Laura’s family, and she is now ours,” the queen returned.
His chest puffed out. “But they are not mine, nor are they Tim’s. He doesn’t have to confess in front of strangers just because of some masculine peccadillo he got up to. He’s a male! He’s a prince! He’s young. Males have oats to sew.”
“If I hear one more metaphor that absolutely does not in any way excuse bad behavior, but instead, is an indictment of it, because a male who is a male should know better, I’ll scream,” the queen declared.
“Bloody hell, enough!” Aleksei clipped loudly. “What the fuck did he do?”
It was Errol who told on his brother, and he did this gleefully.
“He got a human female pregnant, and when she refused to get rid of it, he doused her drink.” He grinned slyly. “And that sure did the trick. But it made her sick. She hit a clinic. They ran tests. And she knows what he did.”
The entire room grew preternaturally still.
For my part, I thought it would be me who got sick at hearing Aleksei’s brother was capable of this level of vileness.
“Get out.”
The skin all over my body got cold at the terrifyingly murderous tone of Aleksei’s voice.
And this was aimed at Timothee.
I shifted closer to him and started to stroke his back, hopefully soothingly. But at the feel of how tense his muscles were, I knew I was doomed at offering any solace.
Then again, regrettably, I was seeing where he was coming from when it came to his brothers.
And it was a very dark place.
I was also seeing why the queen had been so anti-male last night.
So seeing it.
“Lex—” Germaine started.
He swung his fury at her.
“Do not ‘Lex,’ me, Maine. And mark this. Laura, nor I, are available for you to trot out to cover for his juvenile, and now criminal bullshit.”
“Says the male who murdered another male last night,” Timothee said under his breath.
Aleksei swung back to Timothee.
“The PR60s those assholes were carrying were modified. If he’d hit me with the beam, even with me as my creature, there’s a very good chance he would have stopped my heart.”
I gasped.
That was news too!