“You still stink,” he said with a roguish smirk, kissing the tip of my nose.
“Yeah well…” There was no obvious comeback, so I went for an old classic. “Your face still stinks.”
“Real smooth.”
“Shut up.”
I finished the blood and went to the bedroom to get dressed. This time I didn’t bother with college-girl chic. I was going to talk to Mayhew as the real me, and if I needed to get rough to get answers, I wanted to be dressed for it. My outfit consisted of leather pants, one of Desmond’s Yankees shirts that was loose enough to hide the knife tucked into the waistband of my pants, and Dominick’s leather jacket to conceal the SIG and its holster.
Some people wore camouflage to go on a hunt. I wore leather and my boyfriend’s T-shirt.
Desmond gave me a once-over when I sat on the couch to pull my boots on.
“So that’s why all my shirts smell like you. I was starting to think I was going crazy.”
“You are going crazy. Every day you stay with me proves it.”
There was a brief pause as he sipped his water and digested the hard truth of my words. In the end he gave a half shrug and smiled at me. “Then I guess I’m crazy.”
I don’t think my heart had jumped as hard when he’d told me he loved me. Since the situation with Lucas had taken a southerly dive this week, I’d been holding my breath for the moment Desmond decided he was fed up with being one point in a ridiculously scalene love triangle and bailed for good. I’d been sure the time had come when he walked out, yet here he was in my apartment, looking like he was always going to be with me.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
“I don’t deserve you,” I admitted, both to myself and to him.
He crossed the room and cupped the back of my head, tilting it back slightly so I was looking at him. “We all deserve exactly what we get. Good or bad. My dad used to tell me that.”
“You never talk about him.”
“I do when it matters.”
“What happened to him?”
Desmond dropped his hand and sat on the arm of the loveseat. “He died.” He was looking at his hands instead of at me. I didn’t push him further, hoping he’d offer the rest of the story on his own. When I thought he was about to change the subject, he said, “You already know he was Jeremiah’s second, right?”
“The Desmond to his Lucas, so to speak.”
“Yeah. They were a lot like us, and in some ways a lot different. Dad met Jeremiah later in life. He grew up in a Southern wolf pack, actually, on the edge of the western territories. He moved east in his late teens, and his family had to appeal to the king for their right to come into the territory. At the time, Lucas’s grandfather Gerald was the Eastern pack king. He was grooming his son for the crown, so Jeremiah was there for the appeal. There wasn’t a bond between them, not like with me and Lucas, but they liked each other instantly.
“In spite of my father being the son of Mexican immigrants, the Rain family never deterred the friendship. It was ultimately obvious their friendship had formed a fierce loyalty, and my father became the apparent choice to serve as Jeremiah’s second when he came into power.”
Desmond was so immersed in the story it was like he was telling it from within a trance. I feared anything I said might break the spell, and I’d never know what had become of the two men. I stared at him in rapt silence and waited for him to continue.
“In Jeremiah’s thirty-five years as king, the Eastern pack functioned like a well-oiled machine. There were no territorial disputes, almost no internal conflict. People were happy. Alphas were treated as their own leaders and given enough power to feel important, but enough leash to not overstep their bounds. If there was ever a Pax Lupo—a peaceful time for the wolves—that was it.”
No wonder Lucas was struggling so much to maintain his position as the king. Not only was he young, but the shadow of his father’s legacy stretched far into the Eastern pack empire. There were old Alphas who would reject change and would resent Lucas for not maintaining the status quo established by his father.
Supernatural politics could teach the White House a thing or two about being convoluted.
“With how relaxed everything was, no one was expecting the invasion. We guard ourselves against internal upset, but these guys were a rogue wolf pack out of Germany. They didn’t go for the outlying territories either, which is what any smart usurper would do.”
Notably not what Marcus Sullivan had done.
“They came to the city and rounded up as many wolves as they could. I don’t mean these wolves joined forces with them. I mean they kidnapped them and held them hostage. This was six years ago, and it was summer. Lucas and I were doing a semester abroad in France. We didn’t find out about any of it until the dust settled.
“Jeremiah invited the Alpha of the German pack for a summit. They met at one of the old Rain warehouses in New Jersey, and right from the start it all went wrong. I only know what I know from the one wolf who survived, the Alpha of Philadelphia. Apparently the Germans went in with one agenda—to kill everyone in power and set their own leaders up in place. It never would have worked. The individual packs would have revolted.” He shook his head over how one misguided plan had co
st him the head of his family.