“What, nothing to say?” he asked.
“I’m waiting to see if you’re going to do something or just flash your pretty teeth.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
I gave a mocking sigh. “Oh, I would. But then I would have to bring your battered body to your fiancée and I hate hysterics. Or did you mean the other sort of tempting?”
Raphael laughed. It was a wild laugh that promised all sorts of evil things. Fun evil things.
Something loomed in front of us.
“Bus!” I barked.
He looked at the windshield and swerved, avoiding an overturned bus by a couple of inches.
Tiny needles of adrenaline prickled my skin. I shuddered, trying to shake them off. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Spots ghosted just under my skin, making faint stains on my arms.
“What was the point of bringing up the vacation?” Raphael asked.
“Your mother rescheduled everything. She traded a favor to Curran for a special dispensation so the family could stay for another week in the Pack’s territory. She convinced Valencia to bump her ballet recital—forty students had to change their schedule to match the new date. B schemed and shuffled things around. It didn’t matter how many people were going to be inconvenienced, but her baby boy would have his vacation, by God.” I laughed. “I’d walked in on her fighting with Valencia. It almost came to blood. I offered to move the vacation. She looked at me like I had grown a Christmas tree on my head.”
I imitated Aunt B’s voice. “Oh no, dear. You know how hard Raphael works. You two go down there and have a good time.”
Raphael stared grimly through the windshield, steering around potholes in the magic-pitted pavement with surgical precision.
No comment, huh?
“You grew up sheltered and you don’t even know how lucky you are. Your mother loves you more than life itself. She celebrates the fact that you exist.” Considering that both of Raphael’s brothers had gone loup in childhood and B had had to kill them, I couldn’t hold that against her. “You’re smart, handsome, and respected. You’re a dangerous fighter and you’ve made yourself wealthy—”
“Comfortable,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Okay, comfortable. Women throw themselves in your path. I bet when you brought your fiancée to Aunt B, she didn’t even blink an eye, when anybody else would have gotten tossed out of the Bouda House.”
“Is there a point to you stroking my ego?”
“It’s not stroking. These are plain facts, darling. Raphael, you are adored. You have everything.”
“Not everything,” he said.
“Everything,” I repeated. “If you aren’t spoiled, I don’t know who is. That’s why you can never put yourself in my shoes. All this good fortune gave you blinders. To you, ‘bouda’ means people who think you are a demigod. To me ‘bouda’ means people who break your bones for fun.”
He turned to me again, his blue eyes dark. “This bouda clan never abused you. This Pack offered to protect you and take you in. You betrayed them.”
And we were back to square one.
“We’re here.” Raphael nodded ahead. At the end of the street, a spacious mansion rose against the sky, all carved white stone and gold accents. Beautiful.
A gated parking lot waited for us, complete with an attendant in a small booth, armed with an arbalest. If we parked in that lot, we would be trapped.
“Not in the lot,” I murmured.
“Yeah. Might have to leave fast.” Raphael turned off onto the side street. Good idea. If we had to leave in a hurry, it would be quicker than maneuvering out of a parking lot.
I pointed at the half-ruined building. “That looks nice and shadowy.”
He parked behind the ruin and shut off the engine, killing the constant noise that had provided background to our conversation. We sat steeped in the sudden quiet.
I faced him. “We keep coming back to this again and again, so let’s just do this once and for all, because I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Let’s say the Bouda House got attacked and set on fire, and then some knight of the Order called asking for my help. Your mother forbids you to leave, because she needs you here. Your clan house is in ruins. I want you to come with me to help the Order. Would you?”
“This is exactly what you don’t understand.” Raphael’s face was resolute. “If my mother put that sort of condition on me, I would’ve told her to fuck herself. Anyone who gives you an ultimatum of ‘pick me’ or ‘save your friend’ isn’t worth your loyalty.”
He had a point. “You’re right. But my question stands. The Order was everything to me, Raphael. It was my pack, my family. Every day I got up and went to work, I took pride in being me, because I was a knight. I helped people. I wasn’t a pathetic little freak creature that everyone kicked and punched whenever they felt like it. I didn’t want to be that creature. Maybe it was cowardly to reject being a shapeshifter and pretend I was a human. I don’t know. I do know that as long as I was a knight, I wasn’t a victim. I mattered, do you understand that?”