Lucivar glided toward the courtyard in front of his eyrie, glad to be home. He’d spent the past week visiting the villages in Ebon Rih, meeting with the Queens who ruled the Rihlander Blood villages of Doun and Agio, and talking to the council members who ran the larger landen villages. The non-Blood Rihlanders were afraid of him—with good reason. The Blood might be a minority among any race, but the power that lived within them made them the rulers and guardians of the Realms. For the most part, the Blood ignored the landens and the landens kept away from the Blood. Reminding village council members that they were now answerable to an Ebon-gray Warlord Prince wasn’t going to make them sleep easy for a while.

Hell’s fire. It didn’t make him sleep easy. He’d spent most of his life ignoring or defying anyone’s claim of authority over him. Now he was the authority who was going to draw the line and stand against anyone in his territory who dared step over it.

He wasn’t sure he liked being on that side of the line, but he’d adjust to the formality directed at him from the Queens’ courts in Doun and Agio. At least in Riada, which was the closest village to Ebon Askavi and was also his “home” village, the informal respect the villagers had shown him since he’d arrived in Kaeleer hadn’t changed. Not much, anyway. There was a proprietary interest in him now. What he did affected all of them.

Which made him wonder why Merry had looked so uneasy when he’d stopped by The Tavern to see what she was serving that night that he could take home with him.

“A dinner for two, Prince Yaslana?” Merry had asked.

“Or one hungry man,” he’d replied, grinning.

Why hadn’t she smiled back when she’d prepared the basket of food for him?

As he landed lightly on the flagstone courtyard, he sent a thought out on a psychic spear thread. *Tassle?*

*Yas.*

The wolf sounded sulky, almost edgy.

*What’s wrong?*

A pause. Then, *I don’t like that female. I don’t want to be friends.*

Lucivar felt his temper unsheath as he studied the front door of his home. An Ebon-gray shield formed a finger-length above his skin, an instinctive response to walking into a situation where it was safer to guard against a potential attack. The fact that he was reacting that way before entering his home honed his temper until the slightest push would have him riding the killing edge.

He pushed the door open and stepped inside. The female psychic scent hit him the moment he crossed the threshold. He knew that scent. Loathed the young witch it belonged to.

Roxie.