Page 23 of Anorthic Anarchy

Strauss

“Sir, Dilan would like to know what you want done with the girl.” The door slave’s annoying high-pitched voice breaks my morning gaze out of my study window. It’s my moment of peace without women around. So many women. All the time causing issues and backbiting, complaining. Divisive and gossiping.

Not to mention how easily manipulated they are. Trying to stand up for whom they feel is downtrodden at the moment. Causing riots and throwing a weak person under the bus, then all ganging up on that same one like hyenas. Or they themselves claim victimhood for some sort of attention until they copy each other.

They need a master. Someone to tame them. A guide so they don’t kill each other.

And theylikeit.

Outwardly claiming to want a man on his knees for them, groveling. Women desperately, but secretly, desire to be ruled and claimed.

It’s why none of mine have run away. They know it’s worse on the outside. Born to service, their willingness to please and nurture is ingrained in their genetic code.

And like the cock of a vast hen house, I guard them with my life.

“She’s to be taken to the adjacent bedroom and allowed access to the shared parlor for her own use. Tell one of the guards to bring up the cross and place it near my bed.”

The girl bows her head and shuffles from the room just as Sev enters with a small figure hooded with a brown cloak. She’s disguising herself from Halcyon’s and Lark’s prying eyes, but I know it to be Tuttle. With a nod, I dismiss my guard, and he closes the door.

Tuttle tosses off her hood, allowing her long black braids to fall over her shoulder before plopping into a leather chair across from my desk and propping up her dirty boots.

I slide into my seat across from her, arching an eyebrow at her continued insubordination. “If you’d only stay, I could discipline you just the way you like, pet.”

The deep scars she carries on both cheeks flex as she smiles. “I’m too old for you.”

With a sneer, I raise my lip. “You heard about my wife, then?”

“At nearly twenty-three, I’m well past your preference.”

Folding my fingers together, I imagine hanging her from an attic rafter. I’m sure flogging her senseless would flush her skin with beautiful red marks. “Speak,” I tell her.

“Slyvious says they are disappointed you were unable to stop the funds from the Freidenberg gun trade that now flow freely into Clavius and Herodius’s hands. The bear has no idea, an ignorant passenger in this parade. Of course, the West and South’s income is also still being diverted to the other societies.”

Swallowing, I stare at the photograph behind her head of me, aged eighteen, on the grandstand covered in my father’s blood,taking my oath as consort. Just after I was escorted off the riser, a man in a tuxedo approached and explained in very plain terms that my life was now to serve Clavius and Herodius. If I did not agree, then my life would end.

I considered accepting my doom. For what was the point in living any longer…

Except revenge.

Every day for fifteen years, I only survived on raw rage and searching out my path for vengeance.

Against my father. Against their factions. Against the future that was robbed from me.

I don’t care about their trades, but the money ismine. It’s the city’s. And I’ve worked to thwart their efforts in any way I can while keeping my head.

I lived as consort in name only until five years ago when this child was sent to me as a supposed slave, but was in fact an agent of an unknown faction. And despite her brutal attitude, she was the way I could gain retribution.

Standing, I face the window and cross my arms while gazing out on the gray forests to the east. “I attempted to keep the bears apart as much as I could. Even paid my old healer to inform Livia Von Dovish of supposed infertility.” If Livia and Maximillian were never wed, I would have had the opportunity to create an heir with her and keep the societies off my back for longer. It would have prevented her from aiding Freidenberg in establishing his businesses.

The two of them combining only gave Clavius and Herodiusmorearms and funds, everything the East worked so hard for was diverted directly to their enemy. If I could have, Freidenberg would never have gotten his car washes back. Ignorant fool had no idea that his weapons were stolen out from under his nose by Wyatt Steele, ending up directly in the hands of the people who enslave us all.

When I face her again, I shrug and open my palms. “But I had no choice other than to grant the business licenses to Freidenberg when Clavius had explicitly instructed me to do so.”

The dim light from the winter afternoon streams in to catch her inky hair as she shakes her head. “None of that matters now that you have the last Barrington. They’ll do whatever is in their power to grab her before you can produce an heir. Let’s just hope it’s a boy.”

“If I could just meet with your people and explain?—”

“You can’t and you won’t. Tiny in number compared to the other organizations, you only have a few willing allies. And they won’t reveal themselves. May as well chain me in your dungeon and torture me for the information before you’d get it.” She sits back in the chair and relaxes her arms on the padded sides.

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