Page 123 of Craved

“It would’ve been worse if Zoe hadn’t busted me out of there,” he told his father.

Karoly turned to me. The warmth cooled, but his nod was grateful. “Princess Zoe. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for saving my son, and welcome to my city.”

I inclined my head. “Thank you, Primus Kral.”

Rafe pressed my fingers. “He’s okay with this,” he said out of the side of his mouth. “He knows you’re an asset to us.”

“I’m listening,” his father said dryly.

Rafe grinned. “I know.”

A Kral asset? I blinked.

But of course, that was how he’d see it. The Tremblay Princess, defecting to the Kral Syndicate.

Holy bat shit, what had I gotten myself into?

“Shall we go?” Karoly asked and withdrew deeper into the limo’s interior.

I took a deep breath and took the seat across from him. Rafe sat next to me, showing by his body language that he was on my side now. And in case his father hadn’t gotten the message, he took my hand and interlaced his fingers through mine.

The Kral soldier shut the door and got into the front seat with the chauffeur.

The three of us exchanged a few minutes of small talk, then the men got down to business. Rafe filled his father in on the details of what had happened in Paris.

“You understand what this means?” Rafe finished. “Tomas isn’t going to stop with me, Zaq and Gabriel. He’s going to go after you. He gave me some crap about doing it for you, but I think he wants to be primus himself.”

His father’s mouth pressed into a bleak line. “Tomas is a dead man. I have people looking for him in both Paris and New York.”

“Just be careful, all right?” Rafe said. “He knows too much about us. About you.”

His father inclined his head. “I know.”

The conversation shifted to what Rafe had missed in the two weeks since he’d left for Montreal. His oldest brother Gabriel had narrowly missed being staked by first someone in the Kral Syndicate, and then by a slayer embedded in his own staff. More proof that all three Kral brothers had been targeted by Slayers, Inc.

Rafe told his father something I hadn’t heard yet—that Tomas had arranged things so it would look like Gabriel had betrayed Karoly.

“Ah.” His father tented his long fingers and touched them to his lips. “That, I didn’t know. I’ll get someone on it right away.”

But there was happy news, too. Gabriel had mated with a human named Camila Vittore and taken the risk of turning her into a dhampir. I knew about Camila, of course. The Tremblays maintained files on all the major players in the Kral Syndicate. Gabriel had dated the human for a couple of years, but after she’d left him, we’d stopped keeping tabs on her.

Rafe was thrilled for his brother. “They’re mates?” he asked his father.

“Yes. He insisted on taking her as a mate before she went through the transition.” Karoly leaned back in his seat. “My sons are hard-headed like that,” he told me with a narrow-eyed look at Rafe.

I smiled tentatively, not sure if he was joking.

His youngest son made a scoffing sound. “Like anyone could’ve talked you out of mating with Mom.”

Karoly’s cheek creased ever so slightly. “That was different.”

“Mom was the best thing that ever happened to him,” Rafe said to me, “and he knows it.”

His father inclined his head. “She was—and is.”

My smile widened, became more genuine. There was love in this family I’d mated into. Maybe, just maybe, some of it would spill over onto me.

Rafe leaned forward in his seat. “Did Mila make it through the transition?”

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