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“There are twenty-five bedrooms, if you don’t include staff rooms,” Gray announced. “I assure you Casey was assigned one, and it would have everything he needed. Tix would have made sure. He’s nervous about Eddie being here. He wants things to run perfectly so you don’t have him remade.”
“Okay, that sounds terrible. I’m not going to remake him.” I looked to my problem children. “Casey, you don’t have to stay with Liv. Lily assures me the collar will do its job, and we’ll assign a guard outside her room.”
“I explained to Tix that I would be staying with my wife,” Casey said.
Suddenly the giant cat thing with drooling pus wasn’t what had my attention. “Wife?”
“You really want to go that way?” Gray whistled when Casey gave him a short nod. “Can you back that claim?”
“In the tradition of my vampire class, I have bonded with the witch known as Olivia Carey.” Casey kept his eyes steady on Gray. “I can taste the food she eats, feel her emotional state when she is not shielding from me. I felt her again for the first time in years this afternoon.”
“He can’t prove that,” Liv said, her face flushing. She looked like my Liv in that moment. Embarrassed to be caught in something so intimate. She’d had a hard time accepting Casey’s love.
“I certainly can,” he replied. “I’ll sequester myself in a room on the other side of the manor, and Liv can have a meal. I’ll have my review of it ready for you.”
“Really?” Gray asked. “After twelve years?”
“It doesn’t work over long distances,” Casey said quietly. “I was surprised myself, but it’s proof that she is not so far gone. She’s still mine, and that means something on the Hell plane. She is the acknowledged wife of a vampire.”
“She’s not a companion.” I knew some academics married non-companions, but I wasn’t up on the laws concerning them.
“That doesn’t matter when it comes to academics,” Gray replied, seeming to think about the situation. “They had rules about their mates written into our laws a long time ago. They’re even tighter than the ones concerning companions, in some ways. I’m sorry, Olivia. As long as we’re here in my kingdom I must comply with the laws we have on the books.”
“You are talking about a contract that expired years ago,” Olivia pointed out.
“We have no new contract with the vampires,” Gray allowed, “and that means we follow the old rules until a new contract binds us or until we’re told we don’t have to. Myrddin completely left vampires out of his contract with us. I’ve been given no instructions to disregard the old laws, so I must follow them. You belong to the academic Casey Lane.”
“What does that mean?” I didn’t like the wording my hubby was using. I mean he belonged to me and I belonged to him and Trent. It was a hot triangle, but this felt more like ownership, and I took offense to that.
“It means as long as we’re here, we follow Hell’s laws and not Donovan’s.” Gray’s horns had receded along with his claws. “It means Casey is the ultimate authority when it comes to Olivia Lane.”
Olivia gasped. “That is not my name.”
Casey shrugged, and there was a smirk on his face I’d never seen before. “It is if I say it is. I think you’ll find the marriage was registered shortly after we came back from Wyoming.”
“You didn’t.” I knew he hadn’t. He would have told me if he’d registered a marriage with the Council. There would have been tons of gossip and talk of a double wedding.
“I think you’ll find all the records are in their proper place. We managed to get a copy of the system out during a raid.” Casey said the words with the smoothness of a man who knew he’d covered his tracks.
Because Casey didn’t fuck up when it came to technology. There would still be a council record, and he was just the vamp to fix them so it looked like he’d registered properly. He’d hacked the system. Or he hadn’t had to because he probably was the one who managed the system. His academic buddies would all back him in public no matter what they thought privately.
“I never agreed to that.” Liv looked genuinely horrified.
“That’s the best part. You don’t have to here,” Casey replied. “I can’t enforce it back in Frelsi. We do follow Donovan’s laws, but we’re here now. I claim all my rights to my bride, and that includes being in charge of her. I’ll decide if and when that collar comes off. Not Kelsey.”
It was my turn to be offended. “I’m Donovan’s sheriff. She’s a prisoner. I assure you I have the authority here.”
“You have the authority there, Kelsey mine,” Gray said quietly. “Here, he does. He’s put me in a corner. If I don’t acknowledge his claim, he can call the demon council against me.”
“He’s a rebel. He wouldn’t do that.” I knew Casey Lane.
“I would. And I might be a rebel when it comes to Myrddin, but officially the Hell plane has taken no real stance,” Casey pointed out. “I assure you if I contact the council, they will take my call, and the law is clear when it comes to my wife. I am in charge of all things concerning her.”
Why was he suddenly being such a massive ass? I moved to Liv’s side. “I’m not going to let you rape her.”
Liv snorted as though that thought was ridiculous.
“I have no intentions of raping my wife. In fact, I’ve already offered her a deal concerning physical intimacy. Though I would dearly love to have sex with my wife again, I won’t touch her until she agrees to it.” Casey was every bit the arrogant academic. The years had given him a gravity he hadn’t had before.
