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It took me a few seconds to notice the silence that had fallen over my mother and sisters. I dragged my smile away from Genny—who had never really smiled back at me, which should have been my first hint about what was going on—and glanced to my mother.
The look Mother wore was one of the hardest sights I’d ever seen. It was filled with shame and disapproval. It was awkward. She didn’t look at Genny. For a moment, she couldn’t even look at me. My sisters seemed embarrassed by the situation too.
Finally, Mother said, “Yes, your brother told us about….”
The silence that followed her inability to finish that sentence was even colder than the one before. They knew about Genny, Sai had told them, and they wouldn’t even look at him.
“We should hurry,” Yulia said in a quiet, flat voice, breaking the silence. “The others are getting ahead of us.”
Mother seemed to snap out of her moment of darkness. “Yes,” she said, brightening again as she looked at me. “We have been working for days to prepare for this meeting. You must be so hungry after such a long journey. I’ve instructed the kitchen staff to make all of your favorites.”
She stepped back to my side and took my left arm in both of hers, pulling me along. She still hadn’t looked directly at Genny, and I had the sick feeling that she wasn’t going to. The way she tugged my arm felt like she was trying to pull me away from him.
I quickly shifted to grip Genny’s hand as though a storm were trying to separate us, and I would be damned if I let go. We all lurched forward, starting to walk at a fast pace, but I took a few moments to communicate to Genny with the force of my look alone that I would never let him go, and I would never forsake him. Even for my family. Genny was my family.
But it was going to hurt like hell to make that point to my mother.
So much of me wanted to wait, to try to avoid the issue in case I had read the situation wrong or my mother’s and sisters’ opinions would change. I couldn’t do that, though. It wouldn’t have been fair to Genny. I had to declare his place from the start.
“I’ve been eager to show Genny Hedeon,” I said, looking from Mother to Genny, wondering if talking about the man I loved would be enough to convince my mother to acknowledge his existence. “I’ve told him all about growing up at the palace and all of my old haunts. Genny has traveled a bit. He was born and raised in Mayskova.”
“I’ve always wanted to go to Mayskova,” Vera said in a quiet voice, peeking past Mother and me to smile hesitantly at Genny.
It was so much more of a relief than I’d expected to have Vera acknowledge Genny.
But two seconds later, the seedling of hope her reaction had given me was trampled on.
“Vera, be quiet,” Mother hissed. She hid the true intent of that scolding by smiling up at me, a little desperately, and saying, “I’m sure Jace wants peace and tranquility, now that he’s home. I’m certain he wants to go back to the way things were.”
My heart sank even deeper into my stomach. I had the uncomfortable feeling Mother thought I’d come back to stay. I thought she knew I was a wolf now, an important part of the Wolf River Kingdom. Sai must have told her. He must have told her everything. Sai had come to accept who I was—and to accept Genny. He wouldn’t have kept that from Mother.
Sai had strode on ahead and now walked in a line with Magnus, Jorgen, and Olympus. Peter and Neil were right behind them, as were Lefric, Hati, his and Jorgen’s two pups, Sebald, and his…pup. Fuck, I would have to find out what was going on there. I’d thought Peter was going to burst a blood vessel at the way Sebald introduced the young man…Avenel? I could absolutely see the appeal, though. Avenel was a tasty morsel. And the way he’d looked at Sebald reminded me very much of the way Genny looked at me.
Which brought me right back around to the horrible problem on my hands.
“Even though I’m part of King Magnus’s entourage, I’ve been given leave to spend as much time with you all as possible,” I said, smiling at my mother and hoping there was a way to make peace with everything. “I think Magnus wants to get started on talks with Sai, Jorgen, Olympus, and all of the other important representatives they have with them, but I just want to spend the day with you all and catch up on all the things I’ve missed.”
“You’ve missed so much,” Vera said, speaking up again in spite of being told to keep quiet. “Everything has changed since you were here last. It’s only been three years, but it feels like three lifetimes.”
I smiled at her. I wondered if Vera knew I’d been there in the winter—specifically, that I’d been a prisoner in our own palace. I wondered if my mother and sisters knew I’d killed Gomez with my own hands.
Then again, after what they’d suffered at Gomez’s hands, they would probably be proud of what I’d done.
Vera was right about the changes, though. I saw them from the moment we passed through the palace gates and headed inside, to the great hall. Everything had changed. It had changed since Peter, Neil, and I were there in the winter.
Gone were the lounge furniture and lurid artwork Gomez had set around the hallways and the great hall. In its place, Mother had put huge vases of flowers, pots with small trees, and a few comfortable chairs where visitors to the palace could sit together in groups for conversations. I wondered if those were specifically because of the meetings ahead of us.
There were more servants in the palace than had been there that winter too. Well, more servants wearing clothing and looking as though they had real work to do. There were more noblemen and important people from the cities waiting for the guests to arrive for breakfast as well.
But I could feel that some of the changes Gomez had wrought were still there. The air was still tense with uncertainty. Like people weren’t certain whether we were about to have a large summit or whether they’d been invaded. No one looked completely content or well-fed either. One of the things Peter had noticed right away when we were dragged into Gomez’s throne room in the winter was that the nobles were dressed shabbily, like their clothes didn’t quite fit. Leave it to Peter to notice fashion first and foremost. But I saw it now, too. Even the most sumptuously dressed people in the room wore clothes that were obviously not new, and the women had no jewelry to speak of.
Actually, some of the people in the old ballroom—which had been transformed into a vast breakfast room, complete with three long tables running down the center and tables laden with food at the sides—were dressed richly and were adorned with jewels. The wolves. Magnus had had us all dress up on purpose, but now that the initial emotion of reuniting with my mother and sisters was over, I noted that Jorgen and Hati were dressed in brocades and fine leather as well. More than that—which almost made me laugh when I noticed it—the two young men with them who were obviously pups were decked out in necklaces and bracelets made of precious stones. One of them even wore what looked like diamond studs in his ears.
I couldn’t help but lean closer to Genny to whisper, “What do you think? Should I pierce your ears and have you wear jeweled studs like that?” I nodded to the pups. “Or better still, what if I pierced those sweet, sensitive nipples of your and had you wear golden hoops with diamond beads on them?”
Genny flushed dark red, and I felt a shudder of arousal pass through him as he studied the two pups.
Unfortunately, Taisiya also heard my seductive murmurs. Unlike Genny, she turned pale and gaped at me like she might be sick. Her reaction immediately dampened my mood.
