Page 51 of Golden Eagle

“Your phone rang while you were in the shower. You’ve got six missed calls from her.”

Lanny whirled on him. “Did you–”

“I didn’t answer,” Jamie said, holding up his hands and taking a step back. His throat jumped as he swallowed, and the first note of anxiety entered his scent. But he kept his voice steady. “But she’s been trying to get in touch with you, and you look likethat. Maybe you ought to have a way to explain it, huh?”

Lanny growled at him, just one low huff. “What do you even care?”

He opened his mouth, and hesitated, and started again, and hesitated again. He looked hurt. “You guys are all I have,” he said, voice gone quiet and miserable. “The pack. I’m not…” He took a deep breath and glanced away, his expression shuttering. “I guess I don’t like the thought of you and Trina having stupid relationship drama and ruining that. But.” He shrugged, a tight, tense little movement that revealed just how much he wasn’t saying. “I guess that doesn’t matter. Do what you want.” He walked off, back toward the living room.

Lanny stood a moment, hand on the doorframe.

You guys are all I have.

Then he followed.

Alexei sat at the kitchen table, coffee, bagels, and microwaved blood in coffee mugs already set out.

“Making yourself at home?” Lanny asked, dropping down into the chair next to him, surveying the tabletop and its precise spread. Not just bagels, arranged on a platter he hadn’t even known he’d owned with a decorative pile of strawberries, but two kinds of cream cheese, butter, jam, and plates of sausage and hashbrowns. Clear glasses of orange juice, and little pitchers for coffee creamer; a sugar bowl. All of it set in a way that was both practical and pleasing to the eye.

Easy to forget he was a real prince, raised in a palace, but then he’d go and do something like this.

“Here.” Alexei set a loaded plate in front of him, and slid over a steaming mug of blood. “Fighting’s all well and good, but there’s no need to live like animals all the time.”

Lanny picked up the plate and squinted at the delicate blue scrollwork at its edge. “This isn’t mine. Where did you get it?”

“A consignment store.” He cut into his sausage with knife and fork, dipped it into his blood, and then popped it in is mouth.

Lanny swallowed a wave of revulsion and put his own mug to his lips.I’m that, he thought.A thing like him, that drinks blood.

As was Jamie, who pulled out the chair the farthest from them – not very far at all, given the smallness of the table and the room around it – and started loading a plate of his own, mouth set in a line.

You guys are all I have.

There were moments in every day when Lanny forgot he was a vampire. Moments when he relished it. And moments, like this one, when it frightened him; when he felt like a child who’d been told terrible news. When thatforeverNik always talked about stalked round the edge of the bed at night, growling at him. Or laughing.I’m not me anymore, he would think. And Trina would have frowned and insisted otherwise. Different dietary needs, was all.

And forever.

His violence, though, he knew with a sick feeling that had him setting his mug down, had always been there. Lying quietly when he was at school or work. Surging under his skin, a crackling electricity when he was fighting.

Jamie took a bite of bagel, picked his head up, and found himself being watched. His brows popped up with obvious agitation, and with a question.

Lanny shook his head and reached for his food. One thing at a time. He was hungry, and he needed to eat. Forever would crush him if he let it, but he could eat, so he would.

“Do you work today?” Alexei asked, scrolling on his phone with his free hand, distracted.

“I’m on call.”

“Hmm.” More scrolling. “Will you go see Trina after breakfast?”

Lanny looked at Jamie again, but he was hunched over his food, and wouldn’t look back. When he glanced Alexei’s direction, he found the tsarevich watching him with a bored little lift of his brows.

“Fuck this–” Lanny started, and braced his hands on the table, ready to shove to his feet. He didn’t have to sit here and let–

Alexei sighed and motioned him back down. “No, no, not likethat.” A pointed glance toward Jamie – and a deepening of Jamie’s frown in response – brought Lanny up short. “I’m thinking logically. If you plan on seeing Trina today, and you were supposed to go back to her place last night, then you’ll need an alibi for your face.”

“An alibi.”

“Yes, an alibi is an excuse–”

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