Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 92559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
The reassuring words were coming out of Mayhem’s mouth, drifting back over his shoulder on clouds of breath that dissipated in the storm. Yet the syllables fed into Apex’s brain as something he himself had spoken—because he had. At the end, at that bedding platform . . . he had said those exact words, over and over, to Callum as the male lay on his back like a corpse, his bruises and internal injuries healing as his soul and spirit had remained mortally injured—
“Apex’ll get the door. Won’t he. Apex.”
As his name was repeated sharply, he jumped to attention. How the hell had the SUV come up so fast?
“Yeah, I got it.”
Heading over and opening the rear door, he glanced back at the brand-new truck with that nasty old plow on its front grille.
After all these years, he’d thought Callum surely would have died by now. Or disappeared out west. Down south. Anywhere but here, so close to where everything had happened.
Mayhem brushed by him to put the female in one of the captain’s seats. After he belted her in, there was an awkward back-out, and then the guy got in on the other side, next to her.
As Apex shut them in together, he looked at the truck again. It had been left running, and he hadn’t shut the door properly so the interior light was on.
The fact that he could see the driver’s seat so clearly, yet no one was in it, made him think about the way the wolven had been haunting him all these years, a vacancy that was perpetual, every seat, every sofa, all the rooms he had ever walked into and the halls he’d gone down, the yards he’d entered and the cars he’d traveled by . . .
Always empty because Callum wasn’t there.
“Apex?”
At the sound of his name, he jerked to attention and discovered he’d put himself in the SUV. And as he looked up into the rear view mirror, Mayhem was staring at him like the guy was considering whether Apex could remember how to drive.
“I got this,” Apex muttered as he put things in drive.
Bullshit.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Audience House
1075 Cedar Post Road
Caldwell, New York
The Black Dagger Brother Tohrment, son of Hharm, waved his freshly made cherry Danish back and forth. Around his mouthful, he said, “No, no. It’s fine, what can I help with?”
As the commanding officer of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, he was used to people asking him questions. Usually they were about shifts out in the field. Munitions. Assignments for guarding Wrath here at the Audience House.
At least it was no longer about the TV remote when Lassiter made everybody and his uncle watch Growing Pains.
Because, sure, by all means, let’s watch a seventy-year-old sitcom about—
“Sire?”
Tohr came back to attention. “Sorry. Have a seat.”
Saxton, the King’s solicitor, did not join him at the table in the kitchen nook. The dapper male continued standing there against a backdrop of doggen preparing pastries with his perfect, precise posture. Dressed formally as always, tonight he was in a tweed suit with a hunter’s red waistcoat and a coordinating ascot. With his blond hair swooped off his high forehead, he was like something from an earlier century, the Old Country ways and that aristocratic accent the kind of thing that took a brother back.
“I do not wish to intrude on your repast,” he hedged.
“Not at all.” Tohr wiped his mouth with a damask napkin and motioned to the seat across from him. “Come on, talk to me.”
The kitchen was super busy, doggen bustling around between the island in the center of the homey space, and the professional-grade oven that was seeing a raft’s worth of pastries and muffins going in and out of its heat. All the goodies were going to be eaten, too. The Audience House had a full registry tonight, twenty civilians coming in to see the King, with Tohr on sentry duty along with Phury, Zsadist, and Rhage. The registration process of the first three appointments was already started with some of Saxton’s paralegals working the males and females up, and the other brothers were waiting in the King’s room—
Tohr frowned as the solicitor stayed where he was, a file folder of paperwork in his hands, his eyes moving over to the pair of cooks. Who had been in the household for as long as anyone could remember.
But the solicitor looked worried.
Tohr got to his feet. “Hey, let’s go to your office.”
The visible relief on that F. Scott Fitzgerald face was the second red flag, and Tohr wasn’t surprised that there were no words exchanged as they entered the steel-reinforced core of the farmhouse. From this bomb-shelter-worthy hall, there were a number of access points into the rooms that the citizens cycled through as they registered, were presented to the King, and then were assigned follow-ups to their issues or ceremonies as needed. Saxton had been the one to design the workflow, Tohr had drawn up the building design with the Jackal, and this new system, which was an improvement on the way things had been done, had been implemented as they’d begun to use this facility about thirty years ago.