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Soren narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth, but Brentley rushed into the room after me, quite winded. “What’s this I hear about a trial for Urban? Right now? Seriously, Caulder.” He hurried past me and up the steps to stand beside Allera. “You didn’t even tell me about this first.”
“Because you’re not his top adviser,” Soren sneered, only to turn back to me and demand, “I’m serious. If you go near her, I’ll have you hanged from the highest—”
“You know what,” Allera spoke over him, stepping into his path so he would lose eye contact with me. “You are so welcome that he saved your wife’s life only hours ago… After you killed her with that huge child you put in her.”
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that! I’m—”
“Enough!” Caulder roared, lifting a single hand and causing the room to fall silent. “The fact of the matter remains that you lied to us, Prince Urban.” He looked directly at me. “You kept something like this a secret.”
“Because I asked him to,” Allera cut in. “We’re here to make peace between our two nations and form an alliance. He had no idea he would discover his one true love was here when he arrived or that she’d already be married. And he’s remained respectful of that, keeping his distance, not interfering with her life at all. We didn’t want to cause a scene like this very one that’s taking place right now when there was no reason for it. So I asked him to keep this to himself.”
“It wasn’t an irrational worry, Caulder,” Brentley said, nodding. “Since we’re behaving exactly the same way she feared we would.”
Soren glanced at Caulder. “How would you react if he’d put his mouth on your wife?”
Caulder started to reply only for Allera to whirl toward Soren. “Why are you so mad? Really? He brought her back from the dead? From the dead, sir! But from the way you’re going on about it, it sounds as if you’d rather she hadn’t survived at all.”
“Watch your mouth, woman. You know not what you say.”
Her smirk was pure evil. “Oh but don’t I? I may have only been here a few weeks, but it didn’t take long to catch up. You got your valuable first heir of the great Mandalay-Donnelly family line. What more do you need of a wife you so obviously don’t appreciate?”
Cracking off a sharp laugh, Soren lifted his hands and addressed the room at large. “Would someone shut this bitch up already?”
“Watch it, dickhead,” I warned, pointing at him.
Allera chuckled in Soren’s face. “Oh, I’m so sorry; is my truth too offensive for you, Sir Soren?”
He spun to her and took two steps forward to snarl right in her fac
e. “Females are meant to open their legs, not their mouths. If that’s too difficult of a concept for you to understand, I’ll gladly demonstrate your true role in this world.”
Red clouded my vision. “Fucker, you don’t speak to my sister that way.” I started up the dais toward the bastard who’d just threatened to rape Allera if she didn’t stop back talking him.
Someone was going to lose their life tonight. I could taste it.
But I didn’t get a chance to exact any vengeance, because Brentley swung out with his fist and cracked Soren right across the jaw before I could reach him.
Stumbling to a halt, I gaped at my sister’s betrothed, frankly startled he’d had it in him.
Pointing a finger in Soren’s face, he growled, “She is to be my wife, Cousin. So you will never speak that way to her or of her again. Is that understood?”
When Soren merely glared at him and wiped a trickle of blood from his nose, Brentley roared, “Is it?”
I lifted my eyebrows, impressed.
But Soren didn’t know when to back down. “She’s leading you around by the cock. That’s what I understand.”
“Wrong answer,” I murmured and started forward again to blacken his other eye, but Allera stepped in front of me, catching two hands full of my shirt.
“No,” she breathed, shaking her head insistently. “You’re already in enough hot water right now. Let Brentley handle this one.” When I merely narrowed my eyes at Soren over her shoulder, she hissed, “Urban! Look at me. Do not engage.”
I flashed my teeth at her for such a demand, but then I whispered, “I have a very bad feeling I’m going to kill that man before my life is over.”
She only grinned. “No, you’re not.”
I snorted. “And how do you think to stop me?”
She lifted a single eyebrow. “Because I’m going to kill him first.”
