Page 108 of My Eternal Light

Amelia tried to calm her father. “He doesn’t hurt her.”

Ryuu looked at his charge’s cousin. “He stopped her heart.”

Amelia smiled weakly. “She said that was more of a learning curve trying to speak to one another.”

“The black is fading, she’s coming back,” Cas announced.

Then as if nothing happened, Meryn yawned and reached for her coffee.

“Baby, are you okay?”

She looked up at her mate. “Yup, I’m fine. I keep telling you he’s not that bad.” She turned to her uncle. “Umm…”

Brennus paled. “Oh gods.” He reached for his chair and sat down. “Okay, what did you learn?”

“He wanted to renegotiate, so we did.”

Brennus jumped back up. “What! What did he want?”

Meryn scratched her head. “Nothing really, he wanted to give me the option of killing them myself.”

Brennus stopped pacing. “That’s it.”

“Yup!”

Ryuu placed a hand on her shoulder. “Did you agree?”

She nodded. “We are all owed a pound a flesh. I didn’t think it was fair if I was the only one that got that memory.”

“What were the terms?” the queen asked.

“Just that instead of getting the memory of them dying, he’d arrange it for them to be kinda delivered. He said something about a bow.”

“A bow? What does that mean?” Aiden asked.

She shrugged. “He said to trust him.”

More than one person at the table groaned.

She turned to Thane. “If your Vanguard peeps want in on this to fulfill my dad’s wish, they better get here. He said he’d be done in a day.”

Thane looked to Darian. “Can you help me go pick them up? Knowing Ange, they’re walking around in circles in Boston.”

Darian smiled. “Of course.”

“I want to be one of the ones that goes to this exchange,” Lily said, in a voice that held no room for argument.

Marshall just eyed his mate.

They heard a knock at the door before it swung open and Molvan appeared. His normally kept hair looked like he had been pulling at it and his eyes were dark and had bags underneath.

“Molvan? What is it?” the queen asked.

“We don’t have any room! Anywhere!” he raved, waving his portfolio around. “Our population in the city grew exponentially when everyone was called home. We just don’t have the housing.”

Darian stood and placed both his hands on Molvan’s shoulders. “Take a deep breath. I’m sure we can figure this out.” He plucked the man’s portfolio from his hands. “I’ve been thinking about this. Thanks to Meryn’s suggestion about the warrior estate, I’ve been kicking around some ideas with Rex Lionhart about condo style buildings and family apartments. It allows for us to build up, instead of out.”

Molvan stared. “That could actually work. A few families have donated estates, but those could only house so many. If we asked for permission to build upwards, that could seriously alleviate our growing housing deficit.”

---