to get through meeting Boone’s aristocratic almost-shellan. But she would do it just to prove to herself that she could stand on her own two feet.
She was all about independence, she reminded herself.
Time to put her money where her mouth was.
“And listen,” Boone said, “I just want you to know. I don’t have to go to your apartment, you know, after these fourteen nights are up. I figure I’ll get some of my stuff now and keep it with me. Marquist is not going to lock me out again, not after the smackdown Wrath put on him. But you never know how things are going to go, and I might as well start the migration earlier rather than later.”
Helania pictured him moving in with her, his male clothes in her closet, his big boots taken off just inside the door on her mat, two coffee cups in the sink after First Meal instead of only one.
“You’re welcome to stay with me.”
As Butch got a load of Wrath stalking down the training center’s corridor, he had to admit the King was still the kind of thing that could make a grown male’s ass pucker. Especially given the pissed-off cloud of aggression that floated around him like an evil aura. Vishous was on one side of him, Tohr on the other, Xcor riding the six—and oh, shit.
Wrath had left the golden retriever behind.
So he was getting ready to yell a lot.
Butch straightened from his lean against the concrete wall. “What’s doin’.”
“Where is he?” Wrath demanded.
“Over here.”
Butch led the procession of doom to the patient room they’d been keeping Syn in, like the Bastard was a wild animal with a communicable disease. Knocking on the door, Vishous popped things wide open before there was an answer.
As Wrath crashed through the bodies between him and the room, it was clear that blindness wasn’t completely dispositive when it came to his spatial orientation. But there were limits.
“Someone point me in the Bastard’s direction,” he barked.
Tohr stepped up and pivoted the King without saying a word. And then he backed the fuck off like he didn’t want to be knocked out by shrapnel.
Syn, who had been vacillating between not-giving-a-shit and fucking-everyone-and-his-mother-off, straightened on the bed and for once didn’t pull the smirk routine. Not that Wrath technically would have noticed—although, given the King’s ability to scent things, he might well have picked up on any disrespect. And in his current frame of mind, he was clearly inclined to bitch-slap the stoopid right out of anybody.
“Talk to me, Butch,” the King snapped as he glared down at the Bastard.
Butch had been preparing for this ever since he’d pulled the trigger on getting the King down here. The case was bizarrely stalled; there weren’t many more rocks to look under when it came to the Bastard, and they couldn’t keep the guy down here forever if there wasn’t a valid reason for the lock-and-key routine.
Syn deserved to be released or rifled in the skull. Or at least given some kind of idea as to when either of those two eventualities were going to fall on his head. It was only fair—and the kind of call only Wrath could make.
Clearing his throat, Butch kept shit efficient: Helania’s accusation and ID. Syn’s confession. The shit about the laundry. The count of the leathers. The fact that, contrary to what he’d assumed would be the case, the locker Syn used down here in the training center not holding anything relevant to the case. The failure to ejaculate.
The last thing that he spelled out was Balthazar’s report on the past, minus the Tiny Tim details about the family situation and the traumatic brain injury.
Now, technically, that last part, about the other killings in the Old Country, as well as the brutal one three nights ago of a human assailant, were prejudicial. Evidence of previous crimes was never admissible in human courts. But this was the vampire world, so the rules were different and Wrath was so much more levelheaded than human juries—
“So did you fucking do it or not,” the King snapped.
Okay. Fine. Maybe “levelheaded” wasn’t exactly the right word.
“You heard Butch,” Syn said.
Wrath leaned down to the Bastard, his long hair falling off his heavy shoulder and swinging loose like a shroud. “Well, I want to hear you say it.”
Syn shrugged. “No reason to duplicate efforts. And he did such a good job—”
As something rushed forward, Butch caught the movement out of the corner of his eye—and had to quickly hell-no