8. Remy

8

REMY

“What are you planning?” Silas asks after giving Ben and Stella access to our records for the Leonid territory and leading them from the room so we could start our morning meeting.

I’m on board with being open with the information we have, but I’d rather have the ability to choose what Ben hears when it comes to what we discover.

Stella had locked eyes with me before leaving, the look on her face announcing loud and clear that this is the last morning meeting she’s going to miss. I’m surprised. In all my strategy, I did not think that Stella would have an interest in being involved with the running of the territory.

I’m continually miscalculating around her. I would be more troubled by it if I didn’t have a plan to deal with that.

“I’m securing assets,” I say. Both of my seconds sit on the other side of the table. Silas is next to the projector we use for debriefing, his fingers steeple in front of him while Francesca has one leg slung across the arm of her favorite chair, defying the expectations of one wearing a suit.

They have very different personalities in how they approach problems, and it makes for the best sort of collaborations. I collect the people around me with care.

“You think that Ben Barnes will leave Kalos and give Stella his sole loyalty?” Francesca asks.

“Not in such a clean way as that,” I say. By all accounts, Kalos is practically a father to Barnes. The demon will not abandon him just to join with Stella.

But can Kalos afford to keep Barnes in such a rarefied position if he’s emotionally invested outside of his territory?

All fledglings must leave the nest one day, even if they must be kicked from it.

“You expressed concerns about him last night,” Silas says.

“That was before I considered other options,” I muse. There’s a tension in that demon. I sense it as clearly as Stella’s wish to submit. He needs release. And I’ll happily give it if he does what I want. “His presence serves a purpose.”

“I hope that purpose is you actually consummating your mating,” Francesca says.

I focus on her, but she’s unimpressed with my glare.

“She doesn’t carry your scent,” she says with a flourish of her hand. “Not in the way she would if you had been inside her. Any shifter who gets close enough will realize that.”

I tap my nails on the table. “That’s a temporary problem.”

Silas leans back in his seat. “If she lets you get close enough after you left her exposed…”

“It was the most expedient way to get the Council out of our business.” Regret is a bitter flavor on my tongue, but I can’t quite track from what. I did what must be done. She’s mine. “The terms of my mating are of no concern?—”

“Incorrect,” Silas interrupts at the same time as Francesca guffaws.

“The strength of your mating is what’s going to make this territory stable in the long term,” she says. Silas nods to the echo of what he said last night.

“I haven’t lost a territory yet. We will not begin with this one.” But perhaps I…suffered a misstep last night. My inability to control my reaction to Stella had me going too far. I’d needed to claim her and set the expectation of what our relationship would be, but my actions were sloppy. I’d exposed too many of my hungry parts.

I’d forgotten to play nice.

That error brought Barnes into the picture. A castigation and opportunity all at once.

“If you didn’t want your mating to matter, then you should have courted her without promises of territory grabs,” Silas adds.

I flash my fangs at them. “This subject is off the table.”

I know the mistakes I’ve made, and I will remedy them.

“For now,” Francesca says and responds to my glare. “You don’t trust in our counsel because we keep our mouths shut.”

She is correct, but I change topics. “What do you have for me?”

“A couple of Stella’s cousins are the ones who are responsible for the luggage mishap last night.” Silas turns on the projector showing two gangly young men. Identical twins. “Complicating things.”

I almost groan out loud when I see their age, nineteen. Teenagers .

Francesca winces. “They are adults by shifter law.”

“Barely,” I growl. “Do we know if they were directed by anyone who we can actually strike at?”

No one responds well to children being punished. It doesn’t matter if they are legal age or not.

Silas sighs. “Andrew and Caleb Leonid are the sons of Frank Leonid. Though they didn’t live with him even before he fled the territory.”

Stella’s uncle.

“Do they live with an adult?”

“Their aunt, Ariel Leonid. Who, by the way, is requesting an audience with the new lady of the territory,” Silas says.

I frown at the photo and accompanying details of the familiar blonde woman he projects on the screen. “She was the interruption.”

“For the Council?” Silas asks before rapidly typing the details into his laptop.

“I should have told you.” It’s uncharacteristic of me to gloss over such a detail as who the Council chose to be their spy. More reason to reorder my priorities when it comes to my wife.

“Stella’s aunt is who burst in on her wedding night?” Francesca asks. “That seems cold. Though, some shifters still have traditions of public consummation of political matings…”

Silas shrugs. “She is old school, but publicly she’s in support of Stella, and by extension, you, leading the territory. Our sources say that she didn’t like her brother at all.”

“So we have no reason to think she sent the boys to remove our belongings.” I bite my lip before sighing. “Bring them in.”

“Remy—” Silas starts.

“Even if it’s a prank, we will put the fear of the gods in them. They are old enough to start some real problems.”

I was only a couple of years older than they are when I took over my first territory. Not that anyone knows that.

“We won’t hurt them, but we can threaten them with exile and see if they throw anyone under the bus,” I say.

The library doors are flung open, and a lithe woman with a high ponytail waltzes in. Her dress barely covers her ass, and though she is shorter than her sister, she’s all legs.

“Good of you to join us,” Silas growls. Fiona always brings out a different side of him. One steeped in annoyance.

“Hello to you too,” Fiona says with a saccharine tone.

“I thought you’d still be out,” Francesca says.

“I wanted to debrief before catching some sleep.” Fiona throws herself into a chair, crossing her legs and sinking into the cushions.

“You’ll still be submitting a formal report of your actions,” Silas says as if he can’t help it.

“Whatever you say, Daddy.” She bats her lashes at the lizardman.

The sound of the pencil breaking in Silas’s grip has me clearing my throat to stifle my laugh. The tension between these two gets worse and worse every year and has only escalated now that Fiona is doing more work for us.

“Stop playing with your food and report,” Francesca chastises. Ignoring the thundercloud of Silas’s expression.

The teasing expression drops from Fiona’s face, and she becomes serious.

“We’ve missed something big.”

Once the meeting disperses, I go looking for my wife. The revelations of what Fiona brought to the table will keep us all busy for the foreseeable future.

It was all at once an avalanche of a discovery and not enough.

Silas and Francesca are out the door within a breath to get a jump on the intel, and Fiona slinks away to her and Francesca’s rooms. The energy she’d teased Silas with is gone now that he isn’t here to needle.

I don’t have to look far. Stella sits in the living room, her brow furrowed in concentration while swiping through a tablet that Silas provided her. Barnes is on the other side of the long couch tapping through his own tablet. The space between them is a cautious chasm that won’t do.

The game that I’d been looking forward to is heavier now. Any seductive plans I have will be delayed with this new problem, but the tension in my chest eases at the soft light hitting her from the window. Her hair and makeup are precise, but the warmth traces her delicate skin and lights up the small flyaway hairs like hot gold hinting at her inner liveliness.

Whether she is in business dress or a slouchy hoodie with her hair piled haphazardly on her head, the brimming energy shows through.

And now she’s here. Mine .

The demon notices my presence before she does. His posture impossibly stiffens, and I stop his movement to stand with a gesture. I don’t have long before I start questing for the information we need, but there are things that must be handled.

I settle on the armchair placed perpendicular to the couch.

“You seem displeased.” I observe. And focused. I wouldn’t be surprised if she still hadn’t taken note of my presence. Perhaps having a bodyguard is the best course of action with her tendency to be sucked into tasks. I’d assumed that only applied to when she crafted charms.

“There’s just—” Stella breaks off, realizing I’m the one addressing her. She jumps, and her eyes widen. Yes, a permanent bodyguard would be wise.

“There’s just what?” I ask. She’s looking for something in the records. Foreboding prickles over my skin.

Stella hesitates. She doesn’t want to confide in me. Which is fair. I wanted to possess her, not be an ear for her problems, but this is specific to the territory.

I reach to stroke where she clutches the tablet, and she flinches at my touch. Which is what I wanted, I remind myself.

Her words give way in the face of my attention. “I’ve been hearing rumors about something troubling. But there’s no evidence of it in your records.” She frowns. “It must be just gossip.”

“Something like people going missing?” I ask. The coincidence is too much to ignore.

The peach of her skin pales. “It’s true?”

Barnes adjusts in his seat with a frown, reminding me that I’m exposing this to Kalos through him, but this is too important to keep under wraps.

“It’s something we just uncovered. What have you heard?” I ask.

“Just whispers.” She wets her lower lip, and I focus on her words rather than the pink curve of her mouth. “Of people vanishing. Whole families gone in a night. I have a distributor who works between the territories who mentioned it in passing a few months ago, and I shrugged it off. But the number of protective charms he sells here have risen.”

The community knows. People are afraid, and this is the first any of my people have heard of it. The territory did not expect the Leonid family to solve whatever this is. Which indicates a good deal about what sort of protection they’re used to.

“We’ve heard the same,” I bite out. “We won’t know how pervasive this is until we look into it more. Give me your distributor’s details. It’ll be a good place to start.”

Stella’s gaze is on me, expectant, but wary. “You’ll investigate?”

“It’s all-hands-on-deck for this. We take these situations seriously.” Hierarchy and politics aside, the role of a territory leader is to provide safety and peace to those who reside in their domain. It’s possible that it’s a couple of people who innocently moved away from the territory, alarming their neighbors, but for this sort of widespread fear? The less innocent options aren’t good.

“What can I do?” she asks after I put my number into her phone, and she forwards me the distributor’s information.

The question takes me off guard, and I frown, glancing at Barnes who acts like he can’t hear the discussion happening right in front of him.

“I can talk to people too,” Stella says, and it takes effort not to snarl at the thought of her walking around this territory with people disappearing and asking questions. She continues, “I should be meeting the people who reside in the territory.” She winces. “Especially the Leonids. The longer we put that off, the more wiggle room they’ll assume they have.”

She’s correct there.

“Your aunt has asked for an audience with you,” I say.

“My aunt?”

“Have you met any Leonids?”

Stella’s eyes fall to the tablet in her lap as she picks off an imaginary piece of lint from her dress. “Never in a setting where I’d be introduced. I’ve traded messages with my brother, Noah, who travels. The first time I met my father was when Kalos barbecued him.”

I shrug. “He was rather obnoxious. You didn’t miss much.”

That gets a tiny smile from her, but it doesn’t change the fact that she has a whole other side of family members who rejected her existence. Who now will be under her in status.

“I will think on what you can do,” I say. A task that isn’t her wandering around an unsecured territory. “I didn’t anticipate your cooperation in this.”

“It seems that you didn’t expect much from this marriage.” That you didn’t expect much from me. The sentiment would be cutting if I wasn’t already hardened to what needed to be. Softness is for others.

“I expected many things but find that you make a fool of my strategies,” I say.

She blinks like she can’t quite understand my words. Which is good. They were too honest, but we are trading truths.

There’s something else I must do.

“I’m sorry for last night,” I say.

“Which part?” she asks. She tries to cover the hurt with anger, but my actions wounded her. I can tell myself that it’s better this way, but I didn’t handle it cleanly. Even now, her presence, eager to care for the territory she never expected to lead, blurs the shape I expected her to fill here.

Barnes’s lips purse like he’d rather walk away and not hear any of this, but Stella sits still, her usual frenetic energy halted for my response.

I tilt my head. “The parts you didn’t enjoy.”

Her brows rise. “Oh, all of it?”

Vixen.

“I should have laid out what you should expect from our relationship rather than skipping to claiming you,” I allow.

She enjoyed submitting to me. She may not like the memories of it because of how the rest of my actions hurt her, but she’d given over her trust guilelessly.

She won’t give so freely again. I sacrificed that to keep her hopes for me low.

I could have done that better. “It was a poor way to begin a business partnership.”

Stella leans back into the couch with an air of disbelief. “A business partnership where we sleep in the same bed and presumably fuck?”

“Ideally, yes. I’m told it will put people in the territory at ease.”

Her eyes narrow even as her cheeks pinken. “You’re only apologizing because we didn’t consummate. Francesca probably told you as much since she’s so concerned about the sensitive noses of shifters.”

Is that a sizzle of pride in my chest? Stella is excelling in anticipating my moves already. It’s inconvenient.

“You didn’t consummate?” Barnes’s eyes widen and face reddens when we both look at him. “I’m sorry, I’ll give you privacy.”

“No, stay,” I say, standing. “I need to start my investigation.”

I address my wife. “Accept my apology or don’t. It doesn’t change what we must do.”

That is a bit of bluffing on my part. Stella could continue to bar me from our bed. She is the one who has a blood right to this territory. I do not.

But I think I can work this in a way that will be satisfying for both of us. At that thought, I turn to the demon currently clenching his fists in his lap. His emotions lie so close to the surface when it comes to this firefly.

“Barnes, will you stay until I return?”

“I don’t answer to you,” he snaps at me.

My lips twitch. He’s as prickly as my wife. The challenge of breaking him will be just as sweet.

“I was clear in the email I sent that you wouldn’t. It was a question, not an order.”

His glare has me loosening my wings. I want to show this demon exactly how much he’d enjoy receiving orders from me, but that is something that must wait.

“Of course,” he says.

I turn to go but pause to correct her.

“You assume that I don’t expect much, but you’re wrong. Your wishes have just been different from what I anticipated. Silas mentioned that he didn’t get a chance to show you your workshop. It’s the room to the right of our bedroom.”

Stella’s mouth opens in bewildered surprise. “Workshop?”

My smile is victorious. “Until later, wife.”