Wild Wolf (Darkmore Penitentiary Book 4)

A mansion overlooking the sea. How cliché, Tibsy boy.

My muscles were primed for action as I slinked through the darkened halls of this fancy man’s house, passing by his fancy trinkets and even fancier décor. Oh yes, old Tiberius Rigel liked his finery. I’d have bet he was born with a silver spoon stuffed up his ass, unlike me who had a rusted toothpick shoved in there before I was tossed away like trash in the nearest garbage can. It would probably have fucked up a weaker Fae than me. Done something to their mind, cracked ‘em good and turned them into a real reprobate.

Lucky for me, I could shrug off stuff like that. One good shrug was all you needed to get through a childhood based on a foundation of trauma. Yup, there were no scars left on my mind, baby. I was different, sure. Quirky, definitely. But it was around about the time people started whispering the word ‘crazy’ at me when I got stabby. A perfectly reasonable reaction, actually. It was just that society tended to frown on that kind of thing. But society-rule-makers were just a bunch of Fae in top hats attending balls and haw-he-hawing at pretentious jokes about governmental things that couldn’t interest me even if I was paid big bucks to listen.

Tibs here was one of those Fae, or at least, he had been. Whichever it was, I didn’t much care, but I did have a bit of a bug to bear with him. A jiggy little bug that kept doing a jive in my bear’s ear. Because all in all, I couldn’t say the stars had been particularly gracious to me in life. They tended to favour swanky cocksure rich dicks like Tiberius Rigel from the moment of their conception to this here moment of their death. His demise would include a nice healthy dose of stabby glory in payment for all his good living, but he had done a damn lot of good living. It wasn’t exactly justice in my books.

I wasn’t against wealth exactly; it was the hoity-toity attitude that came with it. The privilege, the bluster and most of all, the entitlement. They took it for granted, all this. Their shiny shoes shimmying along their shiny halls, never suspecting that bad omens would come creeping in their back window. I had a knack for breaking through magical wards and Tibs had had some seriously hard nuts to crack, but I’d cracked them alright. And now here I was, fate-bound to deliver him his end, like I was sent by The Ferryman himself, ready to ship his soul off beyond The Veil.

It didn’t matter who he was or what he’d done, I was on this job because I had a sixth sense when it came to Jerome, one that could feel his rage in the air. He hadn’t taken kindly to my wild girl refusing him and I knew how to settle that matter. The best way to solve all matters. With death and dancing.

I paused where the moonlight fell in a pool over a table facing the window. There were photos lined up on it in gilt frames, family pictures, Tibs beside a teen boy with a mohawk, his arm slung around his shoulders and big ass grins on their faces. So he had a son. And one glance to the left showed him on a boat trip with a girl that just had to be his daughter. My gaze lingered on those happy faces, the memories alive with joy and good feelings.

I hooked up the photograph of him with his son, a frown burrowing into my brow like a hungry mole. Was Tibs a good father? Had he considered tossing either of his kids into the trash? Had he beat them? Belittled them?

My gaze fell on another photo of the teen boy, but he was older now. A man with strength in his eyes. I pursed my lips and placed the photo down, adjusting it back into position while my heart cracked and old, ancient, childish desires poured out. If I’d had a childhood like these kids clearly had, would I be this…different? Would the world want me if I’d been raised in privilege, inviting me to its swanky balls and hailing my name from the hills? Would I be the felon I was today if my mother hadn’t tossed me into the trash?

I headed on, finding a kitchen and coming to a halt by a block of knives. I hadn’t brought my own, and there was something poetic about him dying by a knife that had recently chopped a tomato for his fancy man salad. I picked the largest one and twisted it in my grip, the cool steel kissing my palm in greeting. Darkness swept through me, my demons awakening, urging me on, whispering of blood and chaos. I might need to use magic too, the asshole was one of the strongest Fae in the kingdom after all, but I was one powerful motherfucker myself, and I had a lot of experience in bringing bad men to their knees. Was he bad though? I hadn’t done my research on this one. I usually liked to know their crimes by heart, liked to pick them for those very reasons and whisper the names of their victims in their ear as they died, sometimes accompanied by a lovely little lullaby of my own creation. But this was the first time I found myself out on a job for one reason that went beyond whether the man in this house was a cretin who deserved his death.

I was here for Rosalie. Because she didn’t yet understand the danger my brother posed. She didn’t grasp the lengths to which he would go to get payment from her in light of her refusal. She didn’t know. But I did. I’d watched Jerome pluck a man’s eyes out for less than Rosalie’s refusal, I’d seen him peel skin from the bone with a smile on his face, I’d watched him gut people for less than a hundred auras debt to him. He was beautifully, dangerously monstrous, but I had never before felt the threat of him until my honey pie had painted a refusal upon his door. That threat of him to her had ignited a spark of wild fear in me, and I didn’t subscribe to feelings like that often. But his eyes on my girl with a no sliding from her tongue had set my nerves aflame. So here I was, doing the deed he’d set and not questioning a thing about it, because better Tibs died tonight than my wild girl died tomorrow.

So whether he was a good daddy or not, whether he had lived a supreme life, saving baby kittens and building orphanages with his bare hands, it didn’t matter. Because his number had been called and the king of death was going to hand deliver him his order.

I moved deeper into the house, finding a stairway, climbing up the cream carpeted steps and seeking the floor above for his room. He must have been sleeping. All was quiet and still, no sound of a headboard thumping away while he railed his girlfriend, boyfriend or paid hooker. I’d seen no other Fae in those photographs downstairs, no mother or other father smiling proudly in those pictures. But as I made it to a white door, I paused to take in a portrait beside it of a woman whose beauty had my head cocking. She was regal, her eyes bright, yet oh so dark. Her name was written in calligraphy at the bottom and it was a name which fit her impeccably. Serenity.

You could see the love in the strokes of the brush. Whoever had painted this had adored this Fae and had tried to immortalise her for all to witness. I knew with a strange kind of certainty that Tiberius was the culprit, and it was so clear to me that this was his room before I even opened the door.

My hand fell on the knob, my silencing bubble extending to cover the noise as I twisted it and pushed it wide.

The moonlight shining through the window at my back cast my shadow across his floor, right up to the end of his bed. The shape of him lay beneath his comforter. He was sleeping so soundly, I considered not waking him before I slid my knife into his temple. But that was too easy, no fanfare or splatter. Besides, I liked them looking me in the eyes when they went, so they knew who their maker was in the end.

I took a step forward but a hand snatched me from behind and I whirled on my attacker, bringing the knife up and throwing my weight at them. My knife kissed the bronze skin of a delicate neck and brown eyes narrowed as they met mine.

“Rosa,” I gasped, yanking the blade away from her throat as I pushed my silencing bubble out around her.

“Stop,” she growled, the word a command. “You can’t kill him.”

“Oh yes I can,” I snapped, offended that she thought I was incapable of killing this rich fucker. “In a hundred ways before he wakes.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She gripped my hand and I noticed there was something about her that was off. She was feeling something that I couldn’t place, but I knew it was important.

“What is it, sex pot? Speak quick before he wakes and I have to get knife-happy.”

“It’s just, I…the moon…” She shook her head then her eyes moved past me to land on the painting. “It’s her.” Rosalie moved away from me, ethereal in her movements as she raised a hand and placed it upon the woman in her picture frame.

“You’re kinda giving me the heebies, baby. Are you playing a game? Do let me know the rules so I can play too,” I urged eagerly, following her to the painting and taking in the woman with her flowing black hair and gleaming brown eyes.

“I can hear her,” Rosalie said, goosebumps rising across her skin.

I frowned, listening for some voice coming from the painting, but I heard nothing. “I really should be getting stabby, can we talk to the painting once Tibsy boy is dead?”

“No,” Rosalie growled, all bossy boots again which, honestly, I fucking loved. It normally got me hard, but right now didn’t feel like a good time to get hard. It felt like something important was happening but I was two buns short of a baker’s dozen and no one felt like filling my bread basket.

“Sometimes, when the moon wills it…I can speak with the dead,” Rosalie breathed, her whispery voice setting a chill in my bones.

I swallowed thickly as a net curtain fluttered away from the window at my back and caressed my arm.

“Er, honey bunch?” I said tightly. “What’s happening?”

Rosalie whispered the word ‘yes’ in agreement to something then turned to me suddenly, her eyes as bright as moonlight, glowing at me with a burning silver luminescence. When she spoke, it wasn’t her voice, it was deeper, without an accent, still feminine, but lilting in a way that didn’t belong to Rosalie.

“I’ve waited so long,” she croaked, stepping closer, reaching out and caressing my face. “Beyond The Veil where all answers are given. I was forced to forget you in life, but now I remember. You are my son. Mine and Tiberius’s boy. I loved you so fiercely before you were lost to me – I still love you.”

Something crackled around me and I was vaguely aware of my silencing bubble falling but I couldn’t draw my gaze from Rosalie’s glowing moonlit eyes. I knew in my soul that this was no trick, the moon was allowing this, letting words pass from The Veil through my Rosalie, and the one who spoke was…my mother.

Her fingers tracked my jaw and tears of silver slid down Rosa’s cheeks. I was well used to madness and the twisted way of this world, so this truth wasn’t something I dared deny. I leaned into her touch, wanting so badly to feel this caress, to know what it was to have my mother’s love soaking into my skin. But then I withdrew, clarity punching me in the chest and reminding me that my mother had thrown me away. She had discarded me, and if what she said was true, if she was truly my mother, then the rest of it had to be true too. The tossing, the trash can.

I shook my head, backing up, retreating to the window until my spine was pressed to it and I felt boxed in. I could run. Left, right, dive out the window itself, but those glowing eyes wouldn’t look away. They had me trapped and I suddenly felt like a young boy being scolded by the mistress of the orphanage when all I wanted deep down was to be held, to be told I was loved and it didn’t matter that I liked to do strange things, because my mother would love me anyway. She loved me because of those things. But she didn’t. Never had. She’d been the first to look at me and see something unwantable. She’d been the first rejection but far from the last. I had been so unwanted that they’d tried to hide me away in the belly of Darkmore, tried to pretend I didn’t exist anymore. No one wanted me, least of all her. No one, no one, no one-

“Sin,” Rosalie’s voice broke through over my mother’s, the light in her eyes fading. “Listen to her. Just listen.”

I wanted to refuse, but for her, by the stars, for her, I would do anything.

I nodded, throat thick and limbs heavy as that warm voice came from my girl’s throat once more. “I was so in love with your father, but I wasn’t the one he was destined to marry. He had been betrothed to a woman of pure, Siren blood, of great power and from a family held in great esteem by the Savage King and his father before him. My Tiberius was destined to be bound to another woman in matrimony but his love for me made it impossible for him to give me up or I him, despite his planned union to her. So he kept me despite their upcoming marriage, our love a secret which she knew well – though she despised me for claiming his heart from her. But it wasn’t his heart she truly wanted. It was his power, his prestige, his bloodline which meant that their child would be in line for the throne once they came of age. So she ignored his indiscretions with me right up until I found out that I was pregnant with you.” Her voice cracked and I only stared into those moonlit eyes, drinking in her words even though this story held no happy ending. “I was a fool. I thought…I stupidly believed that she would allow me to take her place and be the one Tiberius married once she realised I was with child. So, without telling another soul about my pregnancy, I went to her and told her that you were growing in my belly. I told her that Tiberius loved me and that I was going to ask him to discard the arrangement between the two of them and marry me instead. I knew he would do so despite the scandal, despite the wrath of the king, because I knew his love for me would win through.”

“So why didn’t it?” I breathed, my words slipping past my lips as little more than an exhale as I held my breath against the answer which would spell out the tattered truth of my beginnings in this world.

“She was a far more powerful Fae than I,” my mother admitted. “And she wasn’t willing to give up her path to the power her wedding could offer. She used her Siren gifts on me, forcing me to feel hatred in place of the love I held for Tiberius. She made me leave a note to him, ending things between us, then hid me away in the basement of her home, concealing my pregnancy while pushing forward with her plans to marry the man I loved. She kept me tethered in the confines of my own mind, a slave to the power of her Siren gifts. I lost all sense of time, of the world, of myself. I don’t even remember giving birth, only that she took you from my arms before I’d ever had a real chance to hold you. When she returned, she forced her way deeper into my mind, her Siren gifts so powerful that I lost all memory of ever having you at all. She kept me captive a few months longer, only releasing me after her marriage to Tiberius when my mind had been moulded and beaten into submission and I had no recollection of any of the time which had passed since the moment I had realised I was with child.”

“Then why was I wrapped up in a blanket with the name Whitney Northfield stitched into it?” I demanded, hot-headed yet softening quickly again, feeling guilty for blaming her when the truth was such a wicked damn thing. “I just need answers.”

“Some part of my mind must have clung to the hope that you could find me if I left a clue, a name… the name I’d wished to give you.”

“I searched that name though, I never found anything,” I growled, frustrated with the stars and most of all furious at the woman who had forced my mother to abandon me.

“Northfield is a common name,” she said mournfully. “And I was no one special.”

“You were to me,” I croaked, then forced out my next words, needing to know it all. “What happened next?”

“She let me go. I was sent back out into the world with only a feeling of yearning left in my soul where you belonged that I could never understand until my death, when all clarity was gifted to me beyond The Veil.”

“But why?” I rasped, knowing I had so many other questions, but that one clawed at me most of all.

“Linda wanted Tiberius for his power and she wouldn’t let anything stand between her and that. She wanted me gone so that she could take him as her own and provide an heir to the throne herself. I’m only glad she didn’t kill you as I fear she’d intended to do. But I suppose even her power-hungry heart couldn’t bear to hurt an innocent babe.”

“So what happened to you after that? If she let you go, then why aren’t you alive?” I rasped, my mind a muddle with all she was telling me, the answers to so many questions flooding my brain to the point of overflowing.

“She had spent the better part of a year messing up my mind with her gifts to make certain I would have no memory of bringing you into the world and had left me with a false memory of a head injury to explain away my forgetfulness. But I don’t think she paid enough attention to blocking out my love for Tiberius and within a few months of my release from her captivity, the hatred she had falsely given me for him fell away, my love for him breaking through once more and filling my heart until I found myself upon his doorstep one morning, begging him to have me back. Tiberius had loved me in all the time I’d been gone and despite his marriage to Linda, he couldn’t deny his heart when we were reunited, and we fast rekindled our romance. He brought me into his household, gave me a job working in his manor to disguise the real reason for my presence and told Linda he would not let me go.”

“You were his dirty piece on the side?” I snarled, hating the idea of that and she shook her head.

“It sounds so much worse when you say it that way, but it wasn’t like that. Tiberius had always made it clear to Linda that his heart was already spoken for and once he got me back, he refused to lose me again. She wasn’t happy, but she had little choice but to endure my presence. I may not have remembered my time with her, but being close to her after that always filled me with a fear I couldn’t explain. I made certain to keep my distance, never once letting her get me on my own. She was focused on placing an Heir in her belly, though I knew that following my return, Tiberius refused to perform his marital duties to give her the chance of one. She got her wish of a child by him eventually, but not before my death and not before I birthed another son. Once I found out about the pregnancy, I had this instinctual urge to tell Tiberius immediately, as if some part of me knew that if I kept the secret, something terrible might happen if I didn’t. He protected me throughout it. Linda was furious when she found out, but Tiberius made it clear that our child would be his Heir. He couldn’t divorce her without causing a huge scandal and the Savage King would have been furious if he alienated Linda’s family, whose political sway was integral to his rule, so Tiberius convinced her to fake a pregnancy, to allow me to remain hidden in the shadows so that once my child was born she might pretend that our child was hers. To give our baby the legitimacy he needed to claim his position as Heir.”

“Why would you agree to that?” I hissed, my mind reeling with the fact that I had a brother, born in blood and kept from me just as every piece of my bloodline had been kept from me until now.

“It wasn’t an easy choice, but I wanted my child to be an Heir, not some scandalous secret. Power is everything to the Fae and I wanted my baby to claim their birthright more than I cared about stepping out of the shadows myself. Behind closed doors, I would have my family. What did I care if Linda pretended they were hers in the open when I could have that?”

I wrinkled my nose at her assessment of the choice she made, but I supposed I would have given anything to be able to claim a family for myself once too.

Serenity went on, still speaking through Rosalie’s lips, my love’s body a vessel for this communion through The Veil. “But after Max’s birth…Linda grew more desperate, not giving up on her lust for power or her desire to place her own, legitimate child on the throne in place of mine. She tried to tempt Tiberius away from me, but our love was too deep for him to ever be swayed, and eventually she saw the only way was to…remove me from the picture.”

“No,” I gasped, seeing where this was heading all too clearly. Like I was standing in oncoming traffic, chained to the ground, knowing my fate before it collided with me.

More tears slipped down Rosalie’s cheeks as Serenity continued. “After Max’s birth, it wasn’t long before I became sick. So sick that there seemed to be no cure. Tiberius did everything he could, had healers from all across the kingdom and beyond come to me to try to save me from the plague in my bones. But…it was not to be. Linda had poisoned me so carefully, so cunningly that no one ever suspected it, and finally, she got her wish and I was taken out of the equation altogether. She managed to provide a potential Heir herself; Ellis, who she threw all of her efforts into in the hopes that she might one day challenge Max for his position and steal his title of Heir.”

“Where is this Linda bitch right now?” I hissed. “Is she in this house? Tell me her location and I will bring a world of vengeance upon her,” I spat, my grip tightening on the knife as emotion sliced through to my core. I didn’t know how to handle it without the outlet of killing. I needed the screams of the woman who had stolen so much from me singing in my ears before dawn came. I would travel any distance, go to any lengths to find her tonight.

“She has been punished well,” Serenity said, a bite to her tone. My mother reached for me again with Rosalie’s hand. “I cannot stay much longer. Please. Let me embrace you, just once. Let me show you how much you are loved.”

I remained still for several seconds before nodding stiffly and she moved forward, her arms winding around me, her hand coming to the back of my head and pulling me into the crook of her neck. I melted, nothing but a boy in the arms of a mother who I had been so sure despised me that it was almost impossible to accept that she adored me after all.

“Tiberius must know the truth,” she whispered.

“He does,” a deep voice cut through the air, and Rosalie pulled back, her eyes blinking and the moonlight evaporating from them at once.

Tiberius stood in the doorway in a red dressing robe, his eyes wide with shock as he stared from Rosalie to me. “I heard it all,” he breathed.

My heart thumped once, twice, three times and then I ran at him, arms wide for a hug, but before I made it, I slammed into a wall of ice he cast to stop me and staggered back.

“You’re Sin Wilder,” he gritted out, a note of fear to his voice that said he truly knew me. Well, at least what the press said about me. And they tended to paint me as one bastard of a criminal.

He looked down at the knife in my hand and I quickly hid it behind my back. “Just a little misunderstanding, Daddykins,” I said, a smile lifting my lips.

“Don’t call me that,” he said warily, his eyes tracking over me. “Is this some trick?”

“You heard her voice,” Rosalie said. “I don’t go channelling dead people every day. So what she said was important enough for the moon to allow it.”

“The moon…” Tiberius tracked a hand down the back of his neck. “Why have you come here?”

“Well, it’s a funny story actually,” I started, but Rosalie cut over me.

“The moon guided us here. Serenity clearly wanted this message unveiled. You know the truth now.” She looked to me, wonder lighting her expression. “Sin is your son.”

“Fuck, full body shivers right there,” I said, looking at my arm as the hairs raised along it. “Do you feel it too?” I looked to Tibsy, but he didn’t seem so excited. He seemed afraid, wary, like a goose about to lay an egg.

“No,” he grunted, stepping back and eyeing me with caution. “You’re not…you can’t be…”

A boat sunk in my chest, holes punctured in its hull while screaming sailors threw themselves overboard in a bid to be saved. But there was no surviving the stormy sea in my heart as I watched this man shrink from me. My so-called father didn’t want me. Of course he didn’t want me. One look and he saw a dangerous felon, a madman, the type of Fae the rest of the world wanted nothing to do with.

“Serenity confirmed it. She and the moon bent the space between life and death to offer you this truth,” Rosalie growled, stepping toward Tiberius in anger. “Your son stands before you and you dare deny he’s yours?”

Tiberius’s throat rose and fell, his gaze moving from Rosalie to fix on me. My face. Taking it in with a scrutiny that left me raw. Yeah, there were similarities alright. But I didn’t need those to know the truth, my girl had already confirmed it. I was an orphan no more. But if he didn’t want me-

He stepped forward, his hand rising to grip my jaw and I froze as he inspected me, looking into my eyes and studying every corner of my face. Something shifted in my chest as the weight of the stars fell upon us, their whispers tickling my ears.

“I guess I found my way home, Dad,” I said, my smile growing, my most mischievous side on show.

I waited for him to reply, my smile not slipping on the outside, but inside it crumpled as I awaited his rejection. Me and all my inner monsters would be too much for old Tibs to accept. But I ached for him to know the true me. This man with his tidy hair and smile lines, I could tuck right into one of those smile lines just fine. Easy peasy. He’d let me though, right? Right??

“I’ve seen so much of life that I thought it impossible for the stars to surprise me any more,” he muttered to himself.

I loved talking to myself too. We had loads in common already.

His hand dropped to rest on my shoulder and my heart lurched and jerked like it was riding a mechanical bull. “I see what we are, boy. There’s no denying it, and I find I do not want to now that the truth has settled within me. You are Serenity’s son. My son,” his voice cracked on the last word, his fingers squeezing my shoulder.

Those words mended something in me that had long been left wrecked in the shadow of my soul. It was pieces of my childhood self, stitching back together and coming to life once more.

I dropped the knife still clasped at my back and flung myself at him, throwing my arms around him and hugging him tight, tight, tight. He gasped in surprise and when we parted, I blurted everything at him. I told him about my childhood, of Jerome, how we used to get into all kinds of trouble, how he would send me on jobs to kill his enemies – but I would always, always check if they were bad guys first – then how Jerome had sent me here and how it was such a funny coincidence.

“Jerome is going to laugh and laugh,” I sighed, looking to Rosalie over his shoulder who was shaking her head frantically at me. Aw look, she was so happy for me that she couldn’t contain it.

“Jerome Novius is a wanted man,” Tiberius growled.

“As am I,” I sang.

Tiberius fell quiet, probably because he was thinking about how great all this was. His fancy man brain needed some time to catch up with it. “I will return shortly. Remain here until I return.” He took off down the hall at a fierce pace and Rosalie lurched forward, grabbing my arm.

“We need to leave.”

“Leave?” I scoffed. “Why would we leave. Tibsy – sorry, my dad – has probably gone to make us cookies. I wanna be right here when he brings them back.”

“He’s not gone to make cookies, idiota, he’s gone to summon the FIB.”

“Psh,” I waved her off, stepping into my dad’s room and switching on the light. I let out a low whistle, taking in his finery. “Wow, am I like, an Heir to the throne now or something?”

“No,” Rosalie gritted out, grabbing my arm again and tugging to try and make me leave. But I wasn’t going to leave. I had cookies with my dad to look forward to. Then maybe we’d all go on a fishing trip together and I’d catch an old boot on my hook and Dad would say ‘well son, at least the fish won’t be able to run as fast now’ and we’d laugh and laugh and-

“Sin.” Rosalie rounded in front of me, slapping a hand to my chest. “Tiberius knows who you are and he’s been on Jerome’s tail for months. Do you really think this news is going to change those facts? You’re wanted for multiple murders. The press are calling you the deadliest Fae in Solaria.”

“Really?” My chest puffed out. “Little ol’ me? Do you think Dad’s going to get me a trophy with those words engraved on it? I don’t have a shelf to put it on though, maybe I could make Hastings carry it around…”

“You’re not hearing me,” Rosalie snarled. “He’s going to arrest us. We’ll be put back in Darkmore.”

I frowned down at her, thinking on that for a sec, then dismissing it. “Naahhhh. He wouldn’t do that. He’s my dad! Oh look he has a painting of a lemon tree!” I ran over to where it was hanging on the wall. “If that’s not fate, I don’t know what is.”

I took out the Atlas I’d stolen from Rosalie, calling Jerome and holding it to my ear.

“I found the location of Roland Vard,” he said. “He’s in the Polar Capital, I’ve just forwarded you the coordinates. Is Tiberius good and dead?” he asked keenly.

“No, but listen, I have even better news! Turns out, Tiberius Rigel is my father.”

“What?”

“Yeah, it was a shock to me too. First I was like woahh, then I was like woahhhhhh, then I was like wowee, then I was like-”

“Sin,” Jerome cut in. “What the fuck is going on?”

I explained in all the detail I could and Jerome fell so quiet on the end of the line that I had to check if he’d hung up. But he hadn’t, he was just playing little baby mouse with me. “It’s okay, bro. I told him everything about you, from your dodgy friends to your many hideouts, to your kill list. He’s a really good listener actually. And don’t worry, he’s my dad, he’ll totally let you off. We’re cool.”

“We are not cool, you fucking moron!” Jerome bellowed.

I hung up, deciding to give him some time to mellow his jello. He’d understand when he realised what a funky fancy man my dad was.

Rosalie started pushing me toward a window across the room while I continued to admire the décor. “What’s on your mind, sex pot?”

“Sin Wilder, if you do not start running for your star-damned life this second, I will knock you out and carry you away from here myself,” she hissed.

“You’re not leaving,” Tiberius’s voice boomed from behind us and we whirled around to look at him.

My arms stretched out for a hug, but he left me hanging, pulling someone into view in the doorway beside him. My eyebrows arched as I took in the man from the photographs with his jet black hair, handsome face and piercing brown eyes. Tiberius’s son. Max.

“Baby brother!” I cried, running toward him, but he cast a whip of water that caught me by the wrist, yanking me back.

“Max,” Rosalie said in a warning tone, something in the way she spoke to him saying she knew him already. “Let us go.”

“Dad said…” Max shook his head, staring at me, then looking to Tiberius. “Some crazy shit, that’s what he said.”

“He is your brother,” Tiberius growled. “And until I work out what to do with him, he will need an escort.”

“Oo la la,” I sang. “What does that mean?”

Tiberius shoved Max toward me, his mouth moving as he murmured some spell and his hands flicked as he cast it quickly. A glowing white cuff appeared around my right wrist and Max’s left and I felt the sudden need to stay with him no matter what.

“You cannot go anywhere without Max,” Tiberius announced. “And Max, you will have to stay with Sin until I summon you.”

“What?” he balked. “You can’t do that.”

“I already have,” Tiberius said firmly, then marched to a desk and yanked a drawer open. He took out a pouch of stardust and tossed it to Rosalie. “Go wherever you need to go. And do not get yourselves caught while I figure out how to handle this.” He twisted his hand again and I felt the anti-stardust wards fall around us, allowing us to leave.

“We won’t come back,” Rosalie swore.

“You might not. But Sin won’t have a choice,” Tiberius said and I smiled big at him. Aw, he missed me already.

“See you soon, Dad,” I purred, then I leapt on Max, kissing his cheek, and he shoved me back in alarm. “You and me are going to be best, best friends by the time he summons us.”