The Shadows(181)
“What the hell, iAm?” he demanded. “Like I don’t have enough problems?”
“You need to back off. I went there because I wanted to see if there was any record of the Arrest in the healing journals. It was just a trip in and out—”
“How. Who did you make a deal with.”
“Myself.”
“Bullshit.”
“Trez, no offense, but why are you wasting time with this? I got out—”
“Was it s’Ex? Did you use s’Ex?” When iAm didn’t reply, he threw up his hands. “Oh, come on! Are you kidding—”
“Calm down—”
“Calm down! You don’t think that it might be seriously fucking nuts for you to turn yourself over to the Queen’s executioner? Who I’ve spent the last nine months buying off with a supply of prostitutes? That doesn’t strike you as irresponsible, considering they want me to go back there?”
“You know what? I’m not doing this with you. I’m not—”
“The fuck you’re not! You exposed us both going there! They could have used you as leverage—”
“They didn’t—”
“—to get me back there to service that fucking Princess! You told me I had ’til the end of the mourning period—that’s only three days and I’ve got shit I need to deal with here! I don’t need you wild-carding—”
“Trez, I know you’re caught up with Selena. I get it. But you’re outta line here—”
“Out of line? What if they’d kept you? What if AnsLai had come to me and been all like, ‘I got your brother, time for your mating’? Did you think for even a second what kind of position that would put me in? Either you and a life of imprisoned fucking for me—or not being here for Selena at the end of her life! What the fuck—”
For some reason, iAm’s abrupt change in affect registered: The male had frozen in place and was staring over Trez’s shoulder, his expression instantly going blank.
Trez clamped his mouth shut and closed his lids. Even before he turned around, he knew what he was going to find in the doorway to the bedroom.
Yup. Selena had opened the way in and was standing between the jambs, pale as a ghost.
“You’re to be mated?” she said in a thin voice. “In three days?”
iAm cursed under his breath. Just exactly how this didn’t need to come out.
And worse, as Selena came forward, her gait was off, like her knees or maybe her hips were giving her bother.
“What are you…” She stopped in front of Trez. “Are you going to mate that female in three days?”
Time to go, iAm thought. This was definitely something the two of them—
“No,” Selena said as he went to head by her. “Stay.”
Like she wanted him available to fill things in if she felt her male wasn’t being straight with her.
“What’s going on?” she demanded.
Even though Trez had been rip-shit only moments before, the guy looked as composed as an inanimate object: “It’s not important.”
“That’s not what I just heard. And before you accuse me of eavesdropping, the two of you were yelling so loudly, I could hear it next door.”
Trez rubbed his short-cropped hair and walked around. “Selena—”
“Are you going to be mated?”
“This doesn’t affect us.”
“It most certainly does.”
When there was a tight silence, iAm decided, Fuck it. “He was sold by our parents when we were infants to the Queen of the Territory—as a mate for the heir to the throne. It was decreed by his astrological chart. He’s done everything possible to escape from it, and the reason he’s pissed at me is because I’m his Achilles’s heel. He’s just freaking out at a close call, probably because the real thing he’s worried about is you and he can’t do anything about that.”
As they both looked at him, he shrugged. “Whatever. I’ve been watching Dr. Phil with Lass downstairs when I can’t sleep.”
“Is this true?” Selena asked.
“Yeah.” Trez went over and sat on the bed. “I didn’t talk to you about it because, honestly, like he said, no matter what they do in three days, I’m not going to mate some female I don’t know and don’t care about and give her the second in line for the throne. It’s just not going to happen—and that’s true whether or not you’re in my life, and whether or not you live a hundred more days or a thousand more years.”
He clapped his hands together as if he were closing a door. “And that’s that.”