Page 77 of Priest and his Anarchist

“You can’t have her. Next request.” It shouldn’t annoy me the way it does, but the fucker had her long enough. “Nice touch on allowing her to dance around the circus all those years though. Kept me from having to fill her mommy and daddies in on what happened.”

He pauses for the second time. Archer Thorn only does this when he’s observing. Never one to waste his own time, if he’sdone with a conversation, then it’s over. There are no pauses. “You’re going to want to give her back, Priest.”

Everything around me caves in, and I slowly push up from the sofa. “You threatening me?”

The line goes dead. I stare back down at the screen, wondering if I imagined the entire conversation. Archer Thorn and I aren’t exactly enemies. We’ve never had any issues. It is why I allowed him to take Luna all those years ago because I knew that they lived by a code that was much tighter than ours.

“What is it?” Vaden comes up behind me, and I turn to everyone at the table. The gavel, the destruction, everything that has happened comes to this point.

“He wants me back, doesn’t he?” Her voice triggers a side of me I didn’t know existed as she brushes up behind me. Any time she’s in the room, my focus switches, like a damn werewolf on a full moon.

Vaden doesn’t move from my side. I feel his anxiety as if it were my own. If I manage to ignite a war with Thornhill the week I’ve taken the gavel, I’ll be everything that everyone said I’d be. Insane. My will to prove them wrong outweighs the chaotic nature of my kill streak.

“What’s going on?” Halen cuts through the tension. “And no offense, but remind me why you’re here, Luna?”

That’d be my sister to put her foot in dog shit because she’s too focused on what is happening around her.

Vaden and I both make our way back to the table, and it’s not until I’ve sat down at the head, the gavel on one side and my bottle of Don Julio on the other, that I decide they need to know everything.

From the beginning.

River clears her throat, pulling out the chair beside her. “Nightmare, sit beside me.”

Halen’s decision to not say another word is smart, but she watches with narrowed eyes at the exchange between River and Luna.

“Luna didn’t go missing after that trip in Aspen. The reason why none of you had seen her—” I pause, looking directly at my sister. “Is because she was with me.”

Halen’s jaw slams shut, and War stills from my left. They’re all smart enough to allow me to finish.

Waiting until Luna is beside River, because if she’s not near me, at least she’s beside the second deadliest person in this room. And I’m not number one. “She was brought to me by Dad. Because we’re the first generation where the Vitiosis line doesn’t include kidnapping young girls and keeping them locked in their castle, and Luna held a particular—” I pause, searching for the right word.

Halen scoffs.

My eyes snap to her. “—set of skills that could be harnessed once trained.” I bare my teeth at my sister in warning, because she’s not going to sit there and judge something she doesn’t understand when she was fucking her way around boys to make my best friend jealous this year. I continue. “The Fathers watched her over the years as she grew, and decided that she needed to be at this table with us, the first of her kind. They weren’t sure how at that time, but that was why she came to me and Vaden. We trained her in the same system, only structured for her. The first year she spent recluse and alone, bleeding out any reliance she may have had on other people.” I find Luna’s lavender eyes. “Which she flourished at.”

“As a fucking Rebellis? Dad himself can’t change traditions as old as fucking time!” Ever the purist, it makes it easier for her to be a bitch. This is why Evie is important for Halen. She tames the feral cat that lives within her.

“No.” My mouth twitches in the corner when my eyes land on my sister. “As a Hayes.”

“Wait—” War lifts his hand, pausing the conversation. “She’s you guy’s sister?”

“—that’d be kinda hot…” Vaden murmurs, leaning into me. “Imagine if you did all the things you did to her and then found out she was your sister.”

Ignoring Vaden’s incestuous obsession, I find Luna again. “As my wife.”

“What the fuck!” Halen flies off her chair, her anger narrowed on me.

“Careful, sis. You know jealousy gives you hives.” Smoke rings veil my chuckle as I roll the trunk of my joint between my fingers.

“How the fuck could you keep something like this from all of us?” Halen’s tongue is about a second away from getting cut out. “So typical of you, huh, Priest. You dance around the truth just like Dad. So, when is the wedding?”

“I knew.” River raises her hand.

Halen’s eyes swing to her.

I clench my jaw. “Halen, sit down.”

“How the fuck could you not tell me!” she continues, ignoring everyone.

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