where she comes from, and she was braver than I was when it really counted. She did us both a favor.”
“You would have mated her, then?” Helania paused. “And listen, if I’m getting too personal—”
“I have nothing to hide from you.”
As Boone felt the bed begin to shake, he looked down his naked body and half expected to find that a dog had snuck in and was wagging its tail against something—but nope. His foot was going back and forth incessantly, sure as if it were attached to someone else’s body.
By force of will, he made the thing stop and then focused on what she’d asked him. “As for my following through on the mating, I guess the way I felt was . . . I knew I didn’t love her, but given how the aristocracy is, if I’d pulled out of the arrangement, the shame falling on her would have been intense and lifelong. She never would have been considered by any other male for a mating, and her family would never have forgiven her for the social embarrassment. It would have ruined her life.”
“Just over a broken arrangement?” When he nodded, she seemed horrified. “That is cruel.”
“True enough. But the good news was, I got her out of it. I told my father, and through my sire, the rest of society, that she didn’t find me worthy. It was the way to keep the fallout from landing on her.”
“But what then happened to you?”
“Well, I’m a male.” He rolled his eyes. “So the rules are different.
Sure, I took some shit—’scuse my French—except it was not anything compared to what Rochelle would have had to deal with. It’s not fair, but there are double standards all over the place in the glymera, and they usually undercut the freedom and roles of females.”
“She must have been very grateful for what you did.”
“I think she was—and still is. But I mean, it was not her fault that we were put together, and it wasn’t mine, either. It was just the situation, and for the reality we were in, I would rather have sacrificed my reputation so she could be free to be with the one she loved than have her condemned to spinsterhood and ridiculed at every turn.”
Helania smiled. “That’s what your friends said about you.”
“What?”
“Paradise and Craeg said you always do the right thing.”
As an image of that human male’s bloodied and sliced-open body came to mind, Boone thought, Not all the time . . .
“But after the arrangement was broken,” Helania prompted, “your father wasn’t pleased, right? You already told me there were issues in your relationship with him and I would assume . . .”
“He was absolutely furious at me. And that’s why I bring up the money thing. In two weeks, I won’t have a place to live and will be pretty close to penniless. My sire cut me out of his will. I just found out.”
Helania lifted her head again, and he had to admire the bright flush on her cheeks. Her high coloring, coupled with her red and blond hair, was so beautiful, he was in awe of her. And the longer he stared at her, the more lust surged under his skin, prowling, looking for a way out.
Meanwhile, all he could think of was . . . males really were pigs, weren’t they.
“I just don’t understand,” she said. “How could a father disinherit his own son over a situation like that.”
“That is the glymera for you. And there were some other things, too.”
Like him maybe, possibly, not having a blood relationship to Altamere. And he would have given that whole sordid story airtime, but he suddenly was tired of talking about his father. It felt as though the male had already taken up way too much space, and besides, with his sire being dead and the will’s amendment being what it was? Boone wasn’t inclined to expend a whole lot of energy on what was now an inthe-past kind of thing.
Helania lifted her head up and looked over at him. “Was that why you went downtown tonight? To clear your head?”
Boone thought about Syn’s red eyes glowing in that alley. As well as what he himself had done to that human.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m still off rotation, but I needed . . . I just had to go out and be by myself for a little while. Walk the streets. Get some cold, clear air. After I left the King’s Audience House, I had