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Unlike Lydia, the arachnid could do something else.
For Daniel.
The ghostly entity had it correct, and he wanted to hate her for the prescient knowledge—inaddition to the invasion into his privacy: Unfortunately, having had his interior debate revealed, he now could not ignore the dilemma he had been trying to force down into the basement of his consciousness.
As the keeper of the scorpions, he had been witness to how the Princess had used their venom for all kinds of things: Skin toning. Pain control. Pain infliction. Paralysis. She had had a strange obsession with the elixir, as she had called it, and she had had him test it on himself… and on others.
Of whom some had been humans.
The fact that he had ended up doing to those rats without tails what had been done to his sister had seemed like an appropriate karmic payback to the inferior species: There he was, tracking underground labs and destroying them—while he was experimenting on humans himself. That period in his life had not lasted very long, however. Rehvenge had taken out that triple-jointed female and all her sick perversions.
Which was what happened when you thought a male like that was a toy you could play with forever.
In the aftermath? Blade had stayed with the scorpions… and all the knowledge he had gained remained with him. Including that which he had regarded as wholly irrelevant.
Some of those humans had had cancer. That had been… cured.
As vampires andsymphathsdid not get thedisease, there had been no benefit to the discovery—and he never would have believed then that that throwaway would mean something in his life.
Well, potentially mean something. That was devastating.
Picturing Daniel, so weak and ailing, Blade knew that he was running out of time to emerge as the hero he had no interest in being—and not in terms of delivering his cousin’s head on a stick as a show of revenge, which was what Lydia thought she needed from him.
Indeed, the future she wanted so badly with her mate was in his reach, and his alone.
“But what is in it for me?” he whispered to his scorpion. “Nothing.”
No, that wasn’t true.
Suffering. That was what he got in return, and as pain was a destiny through which he was already slogging, he rather held on to the notion that if that man of hers died, Blade might have a chance with the wolven. And God knew, he was more than willing to be patient and wait out her mourning.
A new mission, to replace the one with the labs that he had completed.
He infinitely preferred that future as opposed to living in a world where true love blossomed next to his heart’s gravestone.
“Fuck that,” he said bitterly.
Asymphath’s first interest was always their own,but no male wanted that lonely outcome—and as he shook his head, he knew that he was not going to stray from his course. He had brought his favorite arachnid with him only because, having revealed himself to Kurling’s camera, his personal quarters might be in play, so to speak, and though losing some of the others would be unfortunate, he would not be devastated.
His favorite, however, he could not spare. Nor her court of daughters.
And she and her direct offspring would be safe here, while he assassinated his cousin. And then they would all wait up here on the mountain whilst nature took its course with one Daniel Joseph.
That scorpion was not here to help Lydia’s one true love survive his dreaded fucking disease.
Not at all.
TWENTY-TWO
The King’s Audience House
Caldwell, New York
WRATH, SON OFWrath, sire of Wrath, sat back down in his armchair in front of the fireplace in the Audience House’s main room. As soon as his ass hit the cushioned seat, George let out another big shake, his damp ears flopping on his head with a slapping sound, his tail whipping Wrath’s leathers, his paws doing a stompy-stomp on the carpet.
“That was a good roll outside, huh,” Wrath said softly.
As he put his dagger hand down, the golden bumped his head into his favorite palm, and Wrath stroked the wet locks that hung down like hair off George’s ear. God, he loved everything about the dog, even the old rug smell when things were wet. And though he wanted to spend the next fifteen minutes oochie-poo’ing with his best boy—one, that was not something he did in public, and two, the sooner he got through tonight’s calendar ofaudiences, the faster he could get home to hisshellanand his son.
