He had Lazar’s venom running in his veins. He knew that. Mitya knew it. They both shared a legacy of brutality and cruelty. There was no denying Sevastyan had borne the brunt of the hatred and ire of both Rolan and Lazar. He had aided Rolan in outsmarting Lazar only to have Lazar gleefully spew his secret truth—that Sevastyan was Lazar’s son, not Rolan’s. At the same time, there was no denying that, as Lazar’s son, Mitya lived in hell every minute of the day.
“Yes, I took over running the lair, although completely behind the scenes,” Sevastyan admitted. “Rolan was a good fighter, but he wasn’t good at planning battles and worse at business. I could see the bigger picture. Once Lazar told him the truth, that I was his son, not Rolan’s, Rolan despised me. He took every opportunity to find ways to hurt me. He needed me, but he hated me. He threatened to kill you all the time. He hated you almost more than he hated me. He thought you mattered to Lazar. He knew I didn’t. Hell, even Rolan used to worry that Lazar was too ugly to you, too hard on you, but it never bothered him when Lazar kicked the crap out of me or my leopard. It wasn’t like I mattered to any of them. Not Rolan. Not Lazar. And certainly not to you.”
Mitya’s eyebrow shot up. “You’re changing history, Sevastyan, and I’m not sure why. You might have the right to ask questions, but think back. Who stood in front of you? Who took beatings for you? Later, when you were a teen, you watched my back, that’s true, but we did it for each other.”
Sevastyan shoved both hands through his hair in agitation. Over the years, he’d come to accept that his role was always to be in the background. He found he preferred it that way, but the rage in him built and built. The more the others heaped their cruel brutal beatings and forced him to fight, the more his leopard learned in the battles to protect his human. Sevastyan learned to fight as well, to become proficient in all weapons until he was a killing machine just as his leopard was. He was exactly what Rolan and Lazar had shaped him into.
“I tried to counter what they did to you, but I was in a different lair, Sevastyan, not around you as much as I would have liked,” Mitya pointed out. “You often heard things before I did. More than once you took my back, and I thought it was because of our relationship, that you knew, like I did, that we only had each other.”
Sevastyan didn’t think that deserved an answer. “You had plenty of opportunities to acknowledge the relationship, but you didn’t. Not once. In fact, you avoided me for the most part. You seemed to have an aversion to me unless you needed someone to fight with you or go out on a drug raid.”
Mitya shrugged. “You were the best. The fastest. The deadliest. You still are. I don’t know another shifter capable of taking you down. In a battle, I’m going to choose to have the best with me every time. That made perfect sense and no one would question my choice or my reason for choosing to have you with me. And I didn’t want you left behind alone in either lair.”
“What does that mean?”
“What do you think it means?” Mitya sounded annoyed, the way he often did. “No one could be better than Lazar. You were a kid, Sevastyan. A big kid, maybe, all muscle, but you were still a kid. Already you had a reputation, and it was growing too fast. How do you think he was going to react to hearing about some kid being the best? The deadliest? The fastest? You were already getting a reputation as someone the women liked being with. They didn’t run screaming from you. They smiled and flirted with you. That was going to get you killed in a very ugly way. And if he ever found out you were the one running Rolan’s lair, his business, besting Lazar, he would have emptied a gun in your belly and then let his leopard devour you.”
Sevastyan knew that was all the truth. Lazar had an ego that wouldn’t stop. Sevastyan hadn’t helped Rolan succeed in running the lair so efficiently to please Rolan or make money; it was to