Page 10 of The Omega Thief

Attiker gazed at the prince in confusion. “And what has that to do with me?”

“I have a carriage outside. Perhaps you would accompany me back to the palace, and I will explain?” The prince put out an arm, and suddenly, Attiker was aware of a muffled cough and looked around at all the people gawking at them. Maybe it was better if they took it outside? He wasn’t going anywhere with the prince, but he could tell him that when they were away from their audience. He clasped the prince’s arm and practically dragged him outside, gaping at the huge carriage and pair of black horses that pulled it. The liveried driver and the four guards were all watching the street. At the same time, he recognized Thakeray had come into the inn with the prince but stood silently waiting. He couldn’t do this with an audience.

The prince held his hand out to assist Attiker to climb inside, but Attiker pulled him to the entrance of the alley that ran alongside the inn. “Look,” he hissed. “I think you must have me mixed up with someone else. Jeremiah Grape cheated me, not the other way around, and I never touched the purse, no matter what anyone says.”

The prince tilted his head and looked a little bemused. “Did you think I wanted to talk about that?”

Attiker opened his mouth, closed it again, and gazed at the handsome face in front of him. “Your Highness, I know we shared a brief…” A brief what? Whatever it was, it had been so good that Attiker couldn’t even remember it.

The prince grinned. “It was too brief, but something I’m about to resolve if you would be so good as to get into the carriage.”

“Sire, aren’t you a little busy this weekend?” Attiker’s eyes narrowed as he tried to understand why the prince seemed so happy. He didn’t know the prince, obviously, but hadn’t heard any rumors he might be a simpleton. He was sure there’d been some strange tales about an uncle, but royalty were all strange as far as Attiker was concerned.

“Your Highness?” Thakeray stepped forward and looked around with some concern. This end of the merchant district was too close to the docks for people with fat purses to want to be about after dark. He doubted Bartholomew would even let Jenny out the back at this time and with so many strangers in the city.

“You really should go,” Attiker urged, turning his back to the guards.

“Not without you.”

The second Attiker realized he’d pulled the prince nearly around the corner so the crowd at the inn couldn’t watch them from the window, he caught the smell of stale liquor and the aftertaste of fever white. Attiker shuddered. The smell hadn’t ever been so strong he could taste it even when his ma was using. He saw the prince wrinkle his nose in disgust at the same time as he heard a blade drawn.

Attiker barely had a second to register danger as a strong arm came around his neck, and he felt the nick of steel against his throat. “Well, well, Lynch, who’s your friend?”

The prince took a step forward, but the blade pressed into Attiker’s throat, and two others raised knives threateningly at the prince. Attiker felt movement to his left and saw Thakeray and the guards equally as surrounded. There must have been about ten men, but the one who had hold of his throat he knew.

“You said tomorrow, Gilbertson,” Attiker managed to choke out with the knife pressed against his throat. The prince took a second step, and Davey, one of Gilbertson’s henchmen, lifted his blade. The prince didn’t seem to take any notice.

“What seems to be the problem?”

“Nothing,” Attiker said, then clamped his lips closed as Gilbertson’s arm tightened in warning.

“Why? You offering to pay his debt?” Gilbertson sneered.

“Of course,” the prince said smoothly, and Davey shot a gleeful look at Gilbertson.

“He owes me ten marks,” Gilbertson crowed.

“You lie—” This time, Attiker smelled his own blood as the knife pressed in.

“It doesn’t matter,” the prince assured him. “I have the coin.”

“I don’t see a purse.” Gilbertson’s hand eased slightly as he peered at the prince.

“My guard has it.” The prince tipped his chin at Thakeray.

Gilbertson nodded to the man with the knife at Thakeray, and the man lifted the purse from Thakeray’s inner pocket and threw it to Gilbertson.

It was just—it seemed—the moment the prince had been waiting for, and faster than Attiker could blink, the prince tripped the one holding the knife on him and had freed Attiker, shoving Gilbertson’s arm so far up his back Gilbertson howled with the pain. Thakeray must have been waiting for his prince to move because the distraction was enough that the guards quickly overpowered all but two, who scarpered as soon as they saw Gilbertson caught.

“Call for a cage,” the prince ordered just about the second Attiker realized it was over. Some of the carriages were fitted with steel cages designed to imprison a wolf if needed. Gilbertson wasn’t a shifter, but the prince clearly wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

“When I don’t come back, your mother will be the first to get it,” Gilbertson snapped.

Attiker leaped forward toward Gilbertson, the cry coming from his throat with so much anger it barely sounded like him. Gilbertson had held this threat over him for three damn years, and he nearly had his hands around Gilbertson’s throat when arms suddenly wrapped around him and held him fast. He breathed in a scent that slowed the mad gallop of his heart. He took another breath, and his body relaxed. The prince let him go and stepped into Gilbertson’s line of sight.

And growled.

Gilbertson would have leaped back himself if Thakeray hadn’t had him in a viselike grip because he recognized the sound. The sound of warning from a non-human throat. It was a sound that told everyone things were rapidly going downhill faster than a carriage with a broken axle.

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