Page 73 of Heir

“I need to check on Gemma,” she said, almost robotically, standing up and heading toward her friend’s bedroom door. “I . . .” she sighed and glanced back at all of us. “Thank you for . . . saving us. For taking care of this.” Then she knocked on Gemma’s door and entered, closing us out.

“So, do we look for a new demon advisor for her?” I asked, standing up and going back to the kitchen where I’d dropped my kebabs. “She needs help harnessing her powers.”

Maxar opened the sliding glass door and dumped the demon’s ashes over the side of the balcony, allowing it to get swept up in the wind.

“Leave the door open,” I said, when he returned into the apartment. “It smells like burning flesh in here.”

“I don’t mind the smell,” he said with a shrug.

“I already have King Howar searching for a replacement advisor,” Drak said, still texting on his phone. “There aren’t very many demons in the city. Mostly vampires and mages.”

“Demons like it hot,” Maxar said. “There are lots in the desert and tropical areas. Not so many in the temperate, coastal, and rainforesty places.” He glanced at one of my kebabs on the coffee table. “Can I have one?”

I glared at him, then growled, shaking my head. Bears did not share food. Unless it was with our mate or cubs.

He held up his hands in surrender. “Jesus, never mind. Grumpy fucker.” He went to the fridge and pulled out some of the leftover Indian food from dinner, then began gnawing on a samosa.

“She needs to meet with the Council,” Drak said. “They’re unwilling to reschedule again.”

“Was the Council this pushy with King Donovar?” Maxar asked. “Or are they trying to dominate the new, naïve queen from the get-go? Make her think she has less power than she really does? Because it seems to me that they’re giving her absolutely no room to figure things out, grieve her dead aunt, her old life, or come to terms with the fact that our world exists.”

Drak and I exchanged looks. He was King Howar’s head guard and enforcer, and I was the shifter Prince. If anybody knew how the High Council operated, it would be us.

It pained me to admit it, but Maxar was right. The High Council was pushing Omaera and trying to manipulate her. And I didn’t fucking like it.

“I take it from your silence that I’ve hit the nail on the head,” Maxar said bitterly, his top lip curling up in disdain. Fuck this stupid mage. He was unhinged for sure, and useful when it came to some of the things he could do with fire, but he was also really fucking annoying with how accurate he was about certain things.

Even though my father was the shifter King, I was now loyal to one person and one person only.

My mate.

Her best interest was my one and only priority.

I would kill my father for her.

But rather than resort immediately to patricide, I figured a phone call would be better. Maybe I could talk some sense into him. Perhaps if he knew that the new queen was his daughter-in-law, he might not be so pushy. He might give her time and space to figure out her new role and responsibility to the Realm.

A quick glance at Drak told me he wasn’t having the same kind of thoughts about King Howar as I was about my father. He believed that pushing Omaera was what was best for the Realm.

Well, fuck him.

I was going to put Omaera first, no matter what.

Even if it meant killing my own father to do it.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Zandren

I waited until morning before I called my father.

He lived in Oregon, so we were in the same time zone, and calling him in the middle of the night would yield the worst possible outcome.

Vampires needed little sleep and kept weird fucking hours. So it was no surprise that King Howar was up when Drak was texting him.

King Ryden was a different story and needed to be handled with caution. Cub paws were the best way to deal with the grumpy, nearly-six-hundred-year-old grizzly. He was best approached after he was well-rested, had had his coffee and breakfast, his morning nap, and was sitting on his porch watching the birds in the birdbath.

When I tried calling him before, I reached his clerk—Fellwin. Fellwin could be trusted implicitly. My father was away dealing with some wolf shifter drama north of Vancouver, Canada, and unable to answer his phone. But Fellwin, of course, had his ear to the ground and knew everything that went on in the Realm. He also handled my father’s calendar because the old grizzly couldn’t be bothered to do it himself. I asked Fellwin to keep the specifics of Omaera from my father, as I wanted to be the one to break the news. Not only did I now have a mate, but she was half demon and Queen of the Realm. Yeah, that kind of info deserved to come from me, and me alone.

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