Dominax’s growl cut Alf’s speech off mid-way through. “I do not need lectures from you, old man. I am king, and I take what I will.”
“You are a spoiled child.”
Dominax’s brows flew toward his hair, and his eyes became even darker. “You realize that speaking to me this way is disrespect punishable by death?”
“I realize that I am an old man. I have performed my duties and given my service. But I will no longer serve a crown acting like a spoiled child. You amuse yourself with distractions and you take the spoils of your position without thought for the consequences. That girl you took from the other planet, she is innocent. Or was, before she spent hours being ravaged by you. I heard you beating her, and I had to help her escape. I doubt she is anywhere near where I left her. I doubt she is on this planet. But I don’t know. She went off on her own.”
“So you think taking my disobedient pet and setting her free without any kind of help is kindness, while my discipline of her was cruelty? Do I need to begin to tell you how ridiculous that is?”
“I gave her choice.”
“The last bloody thing she needs is choice. The last thing you should ever have done was taken pity on her. Do you not realize what is happening? I have every lord and dispenser of justice calling for blood because of a pink-clad, one-human-crime-spree taking place in the city. It’s her. I know it’s her. Taking her was one thing, setting her loose, that was a far greater cruelty than my discipline. You can return home, Alf. And you can stay there. Your retirement has come early.”
“Don’t be so hard on the old man.”
Dominax looked up as a new voice landed nearby.
“Not now, Darma,” Dominax snapped at his younger brother, who had chosen to enter the otherwise sealed room by coming down the chimney.
“It’s about the human.”
“Have you found her? Are you going to bring her to me?”
“Well….”
“If you don’t have the human, I don’t want to hear from you,” Dominax snapped, irritated. “How many times have I told you not to fly down the fucking chimneys. They’ll be lit one day and you’ll be burned to cinders.”
“They haven’t been lit since the ocean turned to lava. Anyway, Dominax…”
Dominax wasn’t listening. He could not believe that the human had been on the run from him for all of thirty days. He had been certain that she would be found. The city was large, but she was a helpless female on a planet she did not know. He had imagined she would be begging for help and recapture within a matter of hours.
But she hadn’t.
Dominax was furious. He was certain someone had her. She couldn’t possibly be out there on her own. Someone had to be in possession of his pet.
“Make yourself useful and issue an edict. Anyone found in possession of a human will forfeit their lives,” he growled. “And any information leading to the capture of the human will earn a personal favor from the king.”
“Dominax, did it occur to you that there’s a reason Alf helped her escape? And another reason why she hasn’t been found?”
“What are you getting at?”
“You’re suffering from an outbreak of disloyalty. Or, put another way, at least one Homelander has chosen to help the human rather than obey you. Alf was a good guard.”
“Again. What are you getting at?”
“Having this human has turned you into a monster.”
Dominax shot a dark look at his younger brother. “Go away, Darma.”
“I’m not going to go away. You don’t have anybody to tell you what you need to hear. You’ve been getting more and more out of control. You banned my mate, you’ve alienated your guard, and you managed to make a human who was dependent on you for everything, someone you could have spoiled to the point of worshipping you, want to escape. You need to work on yourself.”
“Or I need to weed out the weak and the ill-disciplined until nobody is left but the obedient.”
“You never choose the obedient. You choose the exceptional. If Alf betrayed you, he did it for a reason. And if the human you picked ran away, she did it for a reason too.”
“Is this your way of trying to get your mate allowed in the palace again, Darma?”
“No. Although. Yes. He should be allowed here. I miss him.”
“You should have thought about that before you disobeyed me.”
“Great, Dominax. You sit there on your fancy throne and you tell yourself everybody is obeying you, while one by one they defect from you, because every decision you make lately is for your happiness, and not theirs. Did you even consider what kind of a life you were giving the human? Did you think to find out if she was happy living here? Or did you just assume you could tell her that she was happy, and she’d just go ahead and be happy?”