"I truly don't give a shit. In fact, I hope they catch you."
Constantine knocked his hands away from him and stepped back. "Fine, brother. I'll leave you to your solitude."
"You mean exile."
Constantine winced, then paused. He looked back at Varyk over his shoulder. "Mom died last spring. I just thought you should know."
Varyk wanted to be cold and callous. Unfeeling. He wanted that news not to hurt him. Goddamn it, how could it hurt so much after all they'd done to him?
Yet it did. He hated that he'd never had a chance to see his mother one last time.
She'd have only slapped you in the face had you tried.
And right then, he hated himself more for that weakness inside him than he hated them.
"Before I go though," Constantine said, "I have to ask one question."
"That is?"
"How did a wolf-jackal hybrid infused with the powers of an Egyptian goddess end up as the lapdog of a man like Eli Blakemore?"
Varyk gave his "brother" a snide smirk. "Well, I guess they don't call us jack-offs without a reason."
Aimee looked up from her book as she heard a sharp knock on her door. Closing her eyes, she saw her brother Alain in the hallway with a tray of tea and biscuits. Unlike the majority of her brothers, he had short blond hair and a face that reminded her of a cherub. His blue eyes were always bright and warm, and he kept a small, well-trimmed goatee.
She was warmed at his thoughtfulness. "Come in."
He opened the door slowly-he was always wary of entering a female bear's territory without proper invitation. His mate, Tanya, had taught him well. "It's me. You want some tea?"
"Absolutely." She set her book on the bed and went to hold the door while he came in and put his tray down on her dresser.
Closing the door behind him, she moved back to her bed.
Alain poured them both a cup of vanilla Rooibos tea and brought her the porcelain snack plate that was piled high with sugary biscuits.
She couldn't help smiling. "You haven't done this for me in years."
He drizzled honey into his cup . . . a lot of honey-they were bears after all. He held the plastic bear container toward her.
Aimee took it from him and duplicated the gesture as he licked the sweetness from his fingers. "I feel like a cub, waiting for Maman or Papa to come in and yell at us for breaking curfew-you were always so good at getting me into trouble with late-night tea fests."
Alain laughed. "Maman was never the one who scared me as a cub . . . only as an adult do I fear her."
Aimee hesitated at the odd note in his voice. "Why would you say that?"
"For the same reason you would. I love Maman, you know that. But there are times when I sense something about her that makes me nervous."
Aimee agreed as she set the honey aside. "She doesn't like the others staying here with us. I think she's afraid of them discovering our secret . . . or worse, of them turning on us like Josef did." He was the one who'd led the party that had ultimately killed her brothers.
Like Wren, Josef had been taken into their den as a wounded pubescent cub instead of being left out to die as Maman had wanted. As soon as Josef had healed, he'd turned on them for no reason at all. It was almost as if he'd hated and resented them for having a family when he didn't. And for that alone, he'd tried to destroy them.
His betrayal had scarred all of them-one moment of compassion that had turned into a lifetime of regret-but Maman was haunted more than the others. She blamed herself for not being more suspicious of him. Blamed herself for the deaths of Bastien and Gilbert.
That was why Maman was so hard on everyone now. She kept expecting others to turn on her for no reason too.
Alain stirred his tea with a small demi-spoon. "There are many secrets in this house, chere. Sometimes I think too many."
Aimee arched a brow at that. "What are you hiding?"