Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 76370 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76370 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
I close the door softly behind me. There’s too much broiling energy inside me for me to sleep, so I stride down the hall to the entrance. It takes exactly two minutes to put on shoes and ride the elevator down to the floor that houses my security team. Sara meets me the second the doors open. They raise their eyebrows but fall into step next to me as I head for their office.
I don’t speak until we’ve closed the door. “Report.”
If anything, their eyebrows rise higher. Sara has the bearing of former military, but they’ve been in private security since graduating college. When I left Sabine Valley, I poached them and brought them with me. Because of that history, because of all our years together, I trust Sara with more than my life. I am good, but even I don’t know everything. An excellent head of security has to be comfortable enough to speak up in order to keep me safe and enact the things I require. Someone easily cowed would have been run out long before now.
Sara props a hip on the desk. “There’s nothing to report. Everything is running as it should. The only new development is upstairs sleeping in your guest room.”
Aside from the landing outside the elevator and the emergency exit leading to stairs down, I don’t have cameras in my private residence. Just like I trust Sara to handle small things that arise without bothering me with it, they trust me to handle anyone I allow into my home. “I have it under control.”
“No one says you don’t.” They consider me. “Did you need to spar?”
Yes. Undoubtedly. The scene didn’t provide the release kink usually brings me. Instead, Aurora’s presence in my building, in my home, is a buzzing beneath my skin. I’ve never been one to waffle about things once I decide on a course, but I can’t settle on a route with this woman. I want to ice her out. I want to drag her by her hair to my bed and make her come so many times, she loses the ability to speak any word beyond my name.
I hold Sara’s gaze. “I’m fine for tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”
They nod. “As always, the offer stands.”
I don’t know what I’m doing down here. I run a hand through my hair. “When’s the last time you slept?”
“Luna is taking over in ten minutes.” It’s not really an answer, which is answer enough.
Neither Sara nor I have ever been that good at getting a full night’s rest. Another thing we share in common. Luna is a Sabine Valley transplant as well, just like the rest of my personal security team. There’s nothing wrong with the people we’ve hired in Carver City, but old habits die hard. No matter how long I’m in this place, the only people I really trust are fellow Amazons. We’re a varied people with different goals and personalities, but the loyalty to our queen—to my sister—is the thread that holds us together.
Maybe that’s what’s bugging me. It’s not Aurora at all. She’s a symptom of the problem, not the issue itself. Yes, that must be it. “I don’t like what happened at Lammas.” While Carver City has Hades and the Underworld to provide neutral territory to handle disputes and small power struggles, Sabine Valley takes a different route. Its roots go back farther, to darker places. Four times a year, during the pagan feasts, all three factions gather and deal with things in a way that’s designed to avoid bloodshed and an all-out war. Lammas is for ritual battle, a time to safely settle disputes and grudges between various people so they don’t fester into true conflict.
The faction leaders, in their arrogance, made a bargain this Lammas that they can’t take back. Now two of my nieces and my youngest brother are trapped in handfasts with men they didn’t choose for themselves, playing a role in revenge for an act my sister committed.
I press my fingers to my eyes. “I should—”
“No.”
Reluctantly, I drop my hands. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
Sara gives me a sympathetic look. “I figure it’s a fifty-fifty chance that you were going to say we should just sneak into Sabine Valley and assassinate the Paine brothers or that we should go back there and whoop your sister’s ass for letting this happen. Neither is an option.”
“Honestly, I was considering doing both.”
They shake their head. “My response stands. The laws are there for a reason. You can’t just ignore them because you don’t like the outcome. Especially since we’ve spent two decades in Carver City. You’ll always be an Amazon, but you’re an outsider now. We all are.”
“I know.” It’s the price I’ve paid for my ambition. I could have stayed in Sabine Valley and taken over as CEO of one of my mother’s many corporations. But I would never lead there, would never be queen—or what passes for it. “It doesn’t mean I like it.”