Xcor shrugged. “I have no taste for pontificating.”
“Did you even know the definition of that word six months ago?” Throe countered.
“What say the lot of you?” Xcor glanced around with a sense of abiding boredom. “The choice is yours, but know this. Once it is made, like ink in the skin, it is indelible.”
Zypher was the first to get to his feet. “I have but one allegiance.”
With that, he went over to his gear and unsheathed his steel dagger. Slicing his own palm open, he approached Xcor and put out his hand.
Xcor shook what was proffered and found that he had to clear his throat. Balthazar was next, taking the same knife and cutting himself, putting forth his blood—and Syphon moved with equal efficiency, pledging himself.
Syn watched it all with lowered lids, staying still. He was, as always, the wild card—but even he rose and came across to Xcor. Taking the blade, he stabbed his palm and twisted, his upper lip curling up as if he liked the pain.
Xcor accepted the last of his soldiers’ vows and then he looked over at Throe. Bringing his dripping red palm up, he bared his fangs and hissed, biting his own flesh and then licking the combined blood clean.
“As if this would go another way.” He smiled cruelly. “You have never been one of us.”
Throe’s handsome face twisted into a nasty expression. “You forced me to join you. You did this to me.”
“But you shall undo it, is that correct? Fine, I gave you your freedom a year ago. Let your ambition exercise your destiny if you wish, but once you walk out that door, it is a permanent closure. You are dead to us, your deeds your own and no one else’s.”
Throe nodded once. “So be it.”
The male marched across and picked up his holsters and his coat; then went to the door. Pivoting, he addressed the group. “He is wrong about much, but most especially the throne. A war with a thousand fronts? I think not. All that must needs be done is eliminate Wrath. Then the mantle shall be assumed by the strongest hand—and that male is no longer among this group.”
The fighter closed the door behind himself with a clap.
Xcor ground his molars, knowing damn well Throe must have set up a contingency plan before he made his bid to them all—or he wouldn’t have been so nonchalant about leaving with mere minutes before dawn.
Throe had gambled and lost—except only when it came to the lot of them. Where would this take him next? Xcor had no idea.
But Wrath should well be worried.
There was some shuffling around. Throat clearing. And then, of course, commentary.
“So,” Zypher blurted. “You gonna tells us what color her eyes are?”
“’Tis the least you could do,” Balthazar interjected. “Paint us a picture.”
“A Chosen?”
“How in the world did you—”
All at once, the house was back to normal, male voices crowding the air, drinks being summoned and poured, bandages coming out to wrap up those injured fighting hands.
Xcor exhaled in a relief he was shocked to feel—but he wasn’t fooled. Though his fighters had stood by him, he now had a new enemy against whom to fight—and Throe, thanks to Xcor’s very own training of the male, was dangerous indeed.
Taking out his phone, he glanced down … and found that his call had not been returned.
Given the state of Throe’s defection? It was imperative that he get hold of his Chosen—and now he worried that mayhap Throe had gotten to her first and that was why there had been a no-show.
“So?” Zypher said. “Whatever is she like?”
Cue a sudden silence, which seemed to have crashed through the noise.
And he was shocked to find that he wanted to tell them. He had held this in for how long?
With halting words, he said, “She is … the moon in my night sky. And that is the beginning, middle, and end of it. There is no more to be told than that, and never shall I speak of her again.”
As he departed and went o’er to the stairs, he could feel their eyes on him—and they were not regarding him with disdain. No, try as they might to hide it, there was pity flowing from them all—an acknowledgment of the ugliness of his face, and the mismatched nature of a romance for him with any female, much less one of Chosen status.
He paused with his hand on the balustrade. “By sunset tomorrow, have all provisions and property packed up. We must needs leave this location and find another. This house is no longer secure.”
Mounting the stairs, he heard the acquiescence of his fighters. And felt a stinging gratitude that they had picked him to continue to lead them.
In opposition to Throe’s more obvious intelligence, breeding, background … and looks.