You bastard. I reached over under the table and touched Curran’s hand. He squeezed my fingers.

“My father has a son who rules the largest pack in the Southeast of the United States,” Curran said. “How big is Budek’s territory? Oh wait. Your son doesn’t have a territory, because you murdered him.”

A string of servants came in, rolling enormous barrels.

“Is that beer in the barrels?”

“They’re called casks, Kate,” Barabas said quietly behind me. “And I believe they’re full of wine.”

Lyc-V, the shapeshifter virus, treated alcohol like poison and tried to get rid of it the moment it hit the bloodstream. But if a shapeshifters drank fast enough and in large volume, they managed to hit a buzzed stage. Besides, there were some humans in the hall. This place already was a pressure cooker: one wrong word and it would explode. Why the hell would anyone want to add alcohol to this mix?

“The only reason you rule at all is because your country is filled with gutless dogs,” Jarek said. “Here you’re not fit to scrape shit off my boots. Come over here and I’ll teach you what a real alpha is.”

He just wouldn’t shut the hell up.

“You’ve been scheming and plotting for thirty years and your territory will fit into mine ten times,” Curran said, his tone slightly bored. “I could give the same amount away and not miss it.”

On the left Gerardo was glaring at Radomil across the table. The wine barrels kept coming in. Could this get any worse?

“You had a chance to join me,” Jarek said. “You spat on it. And you think you can come here and tell me what to do with my daughter?”

“Make way for the lord of the castle,” a man called out. The djigits at the entrance directly opposite us came to attention.

“Your daughter is a grown woman,” Curran said. “She can speak for herself.”

“Until she belongs to another man, she is mine to do with as I please,” Jarek said.

That does it. I leaned forward. “Hey, you. Either put your claws where your mouth is or shut the fuck up. Nobody wants to hear you yip.”

Jarek’s eyes bulged. Green flared in the depths of his irises, an insane hot flame. He opened his mouth but nothing came out.

“Yes, just like that,” I told him. “Less talking, more quiet.”

It dawned on me that Curran was sitting completely still, staring straight ahead with focused intensity.

“Lord Megobari,” a man announced.

I turned. At the far entrance, between two djigits, Hugh d’Ambray strode into the hall.

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 7

This wasn’t happening. This was a hallucination, caused by stress. Hugh d’Ambray, Roland’s warlord, wasn’t here. He was back in the United States serving my biological father. This was his long-lost twin with the same height, build, and hair, who knew nothing about me.