Page 126 of Golden Eagle

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Given the fugue he’d only just emerged from, Nikita wasn’t convinced that the Wallachian prince walking up to their table wasn’t a hallucination.

It looked like Val, despite the clothes, and despite the fact that he had to pause to let someone pass, and was clearly corporeal, which he’d never been before. And Sasha had shouted “Val!” across the room like a kid who’d just spotted Santa Claus.

He himself had even caught the scent of a vampire – two, actually.

But.

Surely not…

There was no way…

But there he was, drawing to a halt, beaming, laughing. Opening his arms. “Hello, sweetheart. Fancy running into you here.”

Sasha slid out of the booth.

Nikita made a lunging grab for him, but he was still a little untethered, and Sasha had always been quicker. He scrambled after him, tripping, because he couldn’t tear his eyes away from what was unfolding:

“Val, you’re really here!” Sasha said, and stepped into the offered embrace; let Prince Valerian of Wallachia fold arms around him and hug him tightly, almost reverently.

“I’m really here.” Val cupped the back of Sasha’s head, briefly, and in just a low, pained murmur, said, in Russian,“How good it is to see you, my little White Wolf.”

Someone was snarling, and it took Nikita a belated moment to realize it was him.

Val – his face a mask of anguish – opened his eyes, and smiled at Nikita over Sasha’s shoulder. He kissed Sasha’s cheek – Nikita’s snarl deepened – and eased him back, so they at least weren’t touching. “Oh no. I’ve made him jealous. Let your mate touch you, so he knows I’m not trying to steal you away.” He gave Sasha a conspiratorial wink and let his hands fall away.

“Captain,” he addressed Nikita, all courtly charm and grace. His posture and his expression and his voice were at such odds with his clothes as to make the whole picture ludicrous. “You have my deepest congratulations. It’s about fucking time.”

Nikita looped an arm around Sasha’s waist and pulled him in flush; bared all his teeth at the other vampire, fangs threatening to prick his lower lip.

Val laughed, delighted. “Making up for lost time? Really now, hush. I am very much spoken for.” He lifted a hand, palm-up, out to the side in unmistakable invitation. He turned his head, his chin tucked, his expression going soft. “Darling,” he said, in an entirely different sort of voice.

A hand slid into his, and a woman stepped forward – avampire.

Nikita had been so wildly, stupidly territorial that he hadn’t even noticed her. She could have attacked him from the side and gotten the drop on him, and he wouldn’t have even been able to defend himself.

Not that she looked about to do any such thing. She had an athletic build, detectable even beneath a long jacket and jeans, but she held herself uncertainly. Nervous, her eyes a little wide, nostrils flared as she breathed in the tangle of scents around them. Her hair was a darker shade of gold than Val’s, worn in loose waves over her shoulder, spangled with rain drops that glittered in the light.

Val drew her up beside him, and Nikita could smell the way their scents mingled. Lovers. Mates.

“This is Mia,” Val said, transferring her hand to his other hand, and putting a steadying arm around her back. There was no other explanation necessary, not between immortals. She was his, and he was hers, and that was very much that.

It eased some of Nikita’s initial worry…and made him feel like twice the idiot.

“Um,” Trina said from the table, and, great, he’d had an audience for his little display.

Val turned immediately, he and Mia pivoting as a unit. It left Val’s entire right side exposed, vulnerable to an attack from Nikita. One he didn’t expect. One that Nikita, no matter how little he trusted the prince, couldn’t execute in good conscience.

For one thing, it would disappoint Sasha.

And for another, Val was the only reason they’d escaped the Virginia branch unscathed.

He glanced over at Sasha, and found him studying Val with a raw, unguarded wonder. That stung, more than it should have, so he looked instead toward the table.

Trina, Lanny, Alexei, and Jamie had all scrunched in closer together – unconsciously, he would have guessed – and stared up at the prince and his mate with matching looks of shock.

Trina cleared her throat and said, “Val. Hi. What are you – how did you – I mean, last we saw – and then we didn’t see…” She made a face, huffed a breath, and squared her shoulders. “What are you doing here?” She managed to sound almost casual.

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