Page 146 of Golden Eagle

“We’ll need several bedrooms,” Val said. “The wolves will live with us, I assume.”

“Of course,” Dante said.

“Though they may take their own place if they wish. Perhaps neighboring flats?”

“It might be possible.”

Alexei looked down at his plate, and took a few measured breaths. He supposed he was stupid, naïve, or both to have assumed that Val would want to play vampire politics here in the twenty-first century.

~*~

Val and Dante carried the majority of the conversation for the rest of the meal, Val asking about the finer points of apartment rentals – and inquiring about places to buy furniture with which to fill an apartment – in a back and forth that was pleasantly empty of any real meaning.

If Sasha had been concerned about Alexei before, now he was actively worried. Everything from the tension in his clenched jaw, to his lack of appetite, to his probing questions directed toward Val proved that he’d intended this to be a business meeting of sorts. He wasn’t just asking, but inviting Val to challenge the hierarchy of New York vampires – and it was an unestablished, piecemeal hierarchy at that.

Though he’d been human royalty, and doubtless some immortals knew who he was, Alexei held no special place among the vampires of New York. There was a furtiveness here, in this New World city, built on Greco-Roman governance, and not the monarchies of old. Nikita had earned himself a reputation, but he wasn’t any kind of leader; his isolationist tendencies saw to that, just as surely as his birth and his former occupation. Dominance was an individual thing here: vampires met, and they parsed out who was stronger between them. The weaker vampire either gave sway or wasmadeto give sway.

But Alexei, it seemed, wanted a leader to rise. Unquestioned, all powerful,royal.

How much, Sasha wondered, was that want about anything besides besting Nikita somehow?

“Is he always like this?” Val asked, out on the sidewalk, as he, and Mia, and Sasha stood and watched Alexei and Dante retreat around the corner, heads tucked against the wind. “Or have I happened along in the middle of a pack squabble?”

“He’s been weird lately,” Sasha said, and felt bad for reducing the situation like that. He wanted to care more, really he did…but he was tired, too. “I don’t know why.”

Val shrugged. “Princes are weird,” he said, simply, and then turned a smile on Sasha. “You don’t fancy playing tour guide, do you?”

He smiled in return. He felt a momentary twinge of guilt – a sense that he’d been away from Nikita too long, and that he should go home. But the sun was shining, and Val was smiling at him, and he’d never set aside his worries and enjoyed himself like this before. It sounded wonderful.

“I’d love to.”

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