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Remi’s cheeks flushed. Pretty? His face was pretty? Objectively, he knew that, but… He stopped and cleared his throat. “Wouldn’t it make your life a lot easier if I could defend myself?”
Jeremiah laughed, and it wasn’t very kind. “It would make my life a lot easier if my team could track down who the fucking leak in the castle is. Then we could take this person down, and you could get back to your life.”
“And you can forget all about me,” Remi said. He didn’t mean to, but the words tumbled out of his mouth, and he regretted it almost immediately. He turned, mortified that he’d shown his hand like that, but before he could run, searing hot fingers brushed the back of his neck.
His entire body went stiff, but he moved when Jeremiah urged him to turn, and he looked up when that same fiery touch pressed against the underside of his chin.
“That’s not what I meant,” Jeremiah said, softer than he’d ever spoken to Remi.
His heart felt like it was trying to beat straight out of his chest. “It’s fine, you know. I know I’m pathetic. You’re not wrong about me being a brat. But I’m tired of feeling useless, because I’m not. I get that being half human makes me weaker, but…”
“Being any sort of human doesn’t make you weaker,” Jeremiah said, his voice deep and rich. “I don’t know who the fuck told you that, but I’m willing to bet it wasn’t your parents.”
Remi laughed bitterly. “No. Just everyone else who spent the last twenty-five years protesting my parents’ marriage, then the birth of me, and then the birth of the twins. Tell me you didn’t see the signs when we were on the walkabout.”
Jeremiah blinked, looking a little shocked. “The signs?”
Remi scoffed. “Halfbreed is the most common one. They can’t really get in trouble for telling it like it is. But the shit they say is worse.” He threw up his arms in frustration. “And I don’t even care if they say it to me, but the twins are going to start understanding what that garbage means, and—”
His words cut off when Jeremiah pressed his palm to the side of Remi’s neck. “I understand.”
Remi scoffed. “Yeah, right. A fucking Hellhound—one of the most powerful species on the planet—understands.”
Jeremiah gave him a look he couldn’t quite read, but there was something in his gaze that almost seemed to crawl under Remi’s skin, like an emotion he was being forced to feel. It was grief and loneliness and anger all rolled into one. And it was gone as quickly as it had come.
“You really want to learn how to fight?”
Remi pulled back. “Yeah. I do. I’m not trying to be some problem child here. The other day, with the shooting? That scared the shit out of me. I want to be able to defend myself, but I’m not the only one who’s vulnerable.”
Jeremiah stared at him a long moment, and then his arms dropped to his sides, and he took several steps back. “Fine. But you can’t quit if it gets hard or painful. I don’t do anything half-assed.”
Remi knew he meant that in training alone, but his mind immediately went elsewhere. It went to a deep, dark place of Jeremiah taking him to the very limits of pleasure, and gods…
No, he couldn’t let himself think about that now. Swallowing his pride like this was embarrassing enough. He took a breath, then held his fists up in a fighting stance. “Okay, let’s do this.”
Jeremiah laughed, and before Remi could even blink, he was on his ass.
* * *
“Drop your weight,” Jeremiah growled.
The tone of his voice, how deep it was, pulsed through Remi, and he might have reacted differently if his heart wasn’t racing from exertion and a little bit of fear. There was something wild and primal about a Hellhound pinning his arms behind his back, holding him with a force no one had ever been brave enough to use on the crown prince.
Remi grunted and attempted to drop his weight, but when it didn’t work, he kicked backward, aiming for the Hellhound’s balls. Jeremiah just laughed and shoved Remi’s chest against the wall, hard enough to steal his breath.
“Had enough, princeling?”
“Fuck you,” Remi spat. “Fuck you. I’m not weak.”
“Never said you were,” Jeremiah rumbled against the back of his ear. “You’re untrained, and you don’t know how to use your assets to your benefit. Which means anyone who gets their hands on you will use them against you. You have power. Show me.”
Rage flooded through him, the feeling odd and foreign but strangely good. Remi felt suddenly like he was floating outside of his body, and he managed to bring his hands together, his left fingers tugging at his signet ring. He’d been knocked around all goddamn night and made a fool of, and while it made sense because everything Jeremiah said was true, it pissed him off.
He was tired of being pathetic.
He was tired of being vulnerable.
“Let go.” With his ring gone, the suppression spell was broken, and his Voice purred out of him. He felt Jeremiah’s grip slacken—not enough for Remi to break his guard’s grip, but enough for him to drop his weight so he could slip out of the hold. He laid a sucker punch to Jeremiah’s right kidney, dropping him to his knees, and then he had the Hellhound flat on his back with his bare foot to the larger man’s heaving chest.
