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He was really glad his Jane was infertile in her hybrid state—not because he wouldn’t have helped during her time, but because the pregnancy stats terrified him.
“Where are you going?” Rhage asked Posie.
“To our grandfather’s new place. That’s where Pete is. I’ll come back right before dawn and double-check they’re okay. But Jack has a phone, and . . . things to protect them with.”
Things = weapons, given the female’s squeamishness.
“Let us know if you or they need anything?” Rhage nodded to the house. “The Jackal’s a good male, and I wish my half-brother all the best.”
V kept his mouth shut because he thought the pair of them were nuts. If the pregnancy took? The Jackal got to enjoy eighteen months of worrying whether the love of his life, the female he’d bonded with, was going to bleed out trying to bring his fragile progeny into the cold, hard world.
“You know how to reach us,” Vishous muttered. Because he didn’t want the depths of his douchebagness to be apparent.
Fine, that apparent.
“Thank you,” the female said.
Relieved to get the hell out of there, V dematerialized off the lawn and traveled north and a little east, knowing Rhage would be right behind him. The needing was not a place for any males to hang around because they couldn’t help but be affected and nobody had time for that drama.
The good news? The whole issue of the Jackal tangling up with finding the prison camp was now a moot point, at least for the foreseeable future. If the couple was doing this the old-fashioned way, the male was going to need a waterpark’s worth of hydration after it was over, and then he’d have to wait to see if things took. He wasn’t going to want to leave his female.
Just as well.
One less cook in the kitchen.
The Audience House was located in Caldwell proper, in a zip code where people had gates across their driveways, access codes to every nook and cranny, and the inflated sense of self-importance that came when you could get whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted it.
As he re-formed around back by the garage, the Federal sprawl was a beaut, even from the rear. Darius, the brother who had built the Brotherhood mansion on the mountain, had constructed this abode as well, and it had been his primary residence—up until he’d been taken out by a car bomb.
After sitting vacant for a little while, the place was now used as a neutral ground for Wrath to meet his civilians to adjudicate disputes, bless matings and young, and generally keep his finger on the pulse of the species.
Opening the back door, V walked into a full-swing kitchen. Uniformed doggen were working to prepare a steady stream of fresh-baked goods for the waiting room and the initial wave of appointments. In a couple of hours, the menu would switch to tea sandwiches and cookies.
Lifting his hand to the staff, he turned them down for coffee, tea, soda, water, muffins, Danish, and homemade cake donuts. All in the space of twelve feet. Rhage, on the other hand, was going to get trapped in the calorie net, and come out the far side with a silver tray full of nosh.
At least the chefs would know their wares were appreciated.
Out in the hallway, V kept going and got a clear shot down to the front entrance. The double doors into the dining room were closed, which meant Wrath was in session, and he was not going to interrupt because the news flash he was here to deliver—hopefully without too much noticeable self-satisfaction—was not an emergency—
“Hey, roomie.”
V backtracked and leaned into the newly redecorated little sitting room. Butch was parked on the sofa facing the TV, the soft murmur of the newscaster oddly soothing even though it was just a human talking about human shit.
Then again maybe that was why it was soothing. Didn’t affect him.
“Check this out.” Butch palmed the remote and turned up the volume. “Isn’t that your target from downtown?”
Coming over and sitting next to the cop, V looked for an ashtray to put his cig out—
Oh, Fritz, you are a gentlemale and a sailor, he thought as he found one right by his elbow.
And then he wasn’t thinking about butlers who anticipated every need before you even knew you had ’em.
To the left of the newscaster’s head, there was a black-and-white photograph of a woman who—yup, looked exactly like the one V had been trailing in the alleys in search of more of that iron-cross-stamped poison. From the short dark hair to the intense eyes that seemed haunted, she was—
“Turn it up a little louder,” he said, even though he could hear shit just fine.
“—to the CPD undercover officer who had been shot, execution-style, and thrown into the Hudson River, there are rumors that another undercover officer has gone missing. Sources tell us that—”
