Page 30 of Princess For All

“Yeah, I tend to focus so much on how to articulate what I’m thinking and feeling that I don’t feel like I’m listening as well as I should,” Chris agreed.

“I miss writing letters,” Petre muttered. “I feel like that’s why people fell so in love over letters when separated. Before I was sold off to the Darbandi coven, a woman and I wrote letters and I felt I knew her soul from those letters.”

“Why didn’t you run away with her?” I asked.

He stared off in the distance. “I found out that her parents were pressuring her to woo me to raise their standing. She might have really liked me, but her brother made a drunken comment to one of my friends that I was a fool to fall for written words. That was the downfall of letters but if true, they could mean so much.”

“That’s how you let yourself be sold. You were heartbroken,” I mumbled, my heart hurting for him.

He snorted. “My own mother preyed on my broken soul and promised me a way to be fixed knowing she sold me to a house she believed to be the champion of one of Erebus’s children and hell.” He met my gaze. “My own mother.”

I nodded, hearing him loud and clear. A lot of us had fucked up families. It didn’t make what I went through any less horrible, but… I wasn’t alone.

I would thank him later, but right then I wanted to focus on Chris. Maybe this could help him with Ty and they could work through this, but even if not, it was something he deserved to feel like he’d tried his best for.

And that was all we could do in life.

8

James

“Fuck,” I groaned as I stared at where Inez had just been. I rubbed my hand over my face and sighed. “You fucking moron.” I couldn’t even blame the two vampires who snorted in agreement. They weren’t nobles, but super old ones assigned to me.

As my guards.

So no one could fuck with me now that I was officially Inez’s lover, not just her knight, though we all had them now. And it was made clear to them that it wasn’t just their lives on the line if something happened to us but their families. All of them had been interrogated and were talked to regularly to make sure they were on our side.

She took that much care with us and our safety.

And I couldn’t even take a fucking joke with something she clearly put time and effort into.

I should make you pick all of this up and would if you had the manual dexterity.

My leopard mentally nodded and promised to help make it up to her.

“I’m helping because this sun is no joke and I swear I won’t tell anyone ever,” one of my guards said after I got dressed and started on my task.

“Me too,” the other added. “I barely slept. My ears are still ringing from the shit my mom laid into us about.”

That made all of the hairs stand up on my neck and I glanced at him, seeing the other guard looked worried too. I kept my voice neutral and my heart chill. “Be grateful you still have your family. A lot of us don’t.”

He snorted. “Fucking take her, mate. I’m sorry for your loss—I am. But that doesn’t just make everything okay for the rest of us or—don’t demean what I’ve been through either. I deserve my feelings about my fucking asshole family.”

“You do. You’re right,” I quickly said, shooting the other guy a look. I was glad when he gestured to move to the other side of him just in case.

Yeah, smart.

“Ihatethe way covens are and vampires structure.” He snorted. “I guess it’s the same for clans too though. Why do we have to be stuck with our families forever?She’sthe reason we barely did any work and the bare minimum. She buys into all of that court bullshit and was a ‘favorite’ of Safie’s. No, she wasn’t.

“She was Safie’slackey. Safie said fetch, Mom fetched. She was her dog and it warped her and now that so many aren’t getting the perks of court—the ones who really were Safie’s court—she acts like she got a promotion. She named herself a supervisor and embarrassed herself. All of my siblings are embarrassed and want away from her.

“And now that we’re on thin ice, called out specifically, she’s screaming at us at every turn that it’s all our fault. She slapped me several times in public for being a good little bitch to theyoung princesswho murdered her friend. Murdered? Right, the kidnapping victim planned that all out to murder herfriend. It’s all—my mom is fucking insane and I’m over it.”

“Yeah, that’s rough,” I muttered. “But there are people you can tell and—”

“Maybe now that Lloyd’s gone,” he grumbled. “Mom was all up his ass too and there would be issues if people tried to talk to the princess or her husbands without going through him. People are so fucking stupid to listen to him. Like—just move me in with the other groups. For real.”

I shared a look with the other guy who had been part of Kaitlin’s coven. Clearly, the vampires needed to be reinterviewed and sat down with again. Wow.

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