"You deserve?" The question hissed from between Yakut's lips. "Please, Alexei...tell me just what it is you feel that you deserve."
Lex remained silent.
"Nothing to add, son?" Yakut cocked his head at an exaggerated angle, his mouth pulled into a tight sneer. "A similar charge was hurled at me some years ago from the lips of a stupid female who thought she could appeal to my sense of obligation. My mercy, perhaps." He chuckled, turning his attention back to the fire to stab again at the incinerating logs. "No doubt you recall what that got her."
"I recall," Lex answered carefully, surprised by the dry catch in his throat as he spoke.
Memories swirled out of the undulating flames in the fireplace.
Northern Russia , the dead of winter. Lex was a boy, barely ten years old, but the man of his meager household for as long as he could remember. His mother was all he had. The only one who knew him for what he truly was, and loved him regardless. He'd worried the night she told him she was taking him to meet his father for the first time. She said Lex had been a secret she'd been keeping - her little treasure. But the winter had been hard, and they were poor. The country was in turmoil, unsafe for a woman raising a child like Lex on her own. They needed shelter, someone to protect them. She prayed Lex's father would provide for them. She promised that he would open his arms to them in welcome once he met his son.
Sergei Yakut had welcomed them with cold fury and a terrible, unthinkable ultimatum.
Lex remembered his mother's pleas for Yakut to take them in...completely ignored. He remembered the proud, beautiful woman getting down on her knees before Yakut, begging that if he would not care for them both that he look to Alexei alone instead.
The words rang in Lex's ears, even now: He is your son! Isn't he worth anything to you? Doesn't he deserve something more?
How quickly the scene had spun out of control.
How easy it was for Sergei Yakut to draw his sword and slice that blade cleanly through the neck of Lex 's defenseless mother.
How brutal his words, that he had room only for soldiers in his domain, and that Lex had a choice to make in that moment: serve his mother's killer, or die along with her.
How weak Lex's answer had been, hiccuped through his sobs.
I will serve you, he'd said, and felt a bit of his soul desert him as he stared down in horror at his mother's broken, bleeding body. I will serve you, Father.
How cold the silence that followed.
As cold as a grave.
"I am your servant," Lex said aloud now, bowing his head more from the weight of old memories than out of deference to the tyrant who sired him. "My allegiance has always been to you, Father. I serve at your pleasure only."
A sudden heat, so intense it felt like open flame, pressed to the underside of Lex's chin. Startled, he lifted his head, flinching away from the pain with a hissed cry. He saw smoke curl up in front of his eyes, smelled the sweet, sickly stink of seared flesh - his own.
Sergei Yakut stood before him, holding the long iron poker in his hand. The glowing tip of the metal rod smoldered, red-hot except for the spot of ashy white skin that clung to it from where it had torn away from Lex's face.
Yakut grinned, baring the points of his fangs. "Yes, Alexei, you serve at my pleasure only. Remember that. Just because my blood happens to run in your veins doesn't mean I am opposed to spilling it."
"Of course not," Lex murmured, jaw clenched for the blistering agony of his burns. Hatred seethed in him for the insult he could only swallow and for his own impotence when it came to the Breed male daring him with his glower to make a move against him now.
Yakut backed off at last. He dragged a brown linen tunic from off a chair and shrugged into it. His eyes were still lit with blood hunger and lust. He let his tongue skate across his teeth and fangs. "As you are so eager to serve me, go and fetch Renata. I have need of her now."
Lex gritted his teeth so hard they should have shattered in his mouth. Wordlessly he walked out of the room with his spine held rigid, his own eyes flashing with the amber light of his outrage. He didn't miss the confused look of the guard on post at the door, the uneasy drift of the other vampire's eyes as he took in the odor of scorched flesh and the likely heat of Lex's roiling fury. His burn would heal - in fact, it already was, his accelerated Breed metabolism mending the seared skin as Lex's feet carried him into the main area of the lodge. Renata was just coming in from outside. She saw Lex and paused, turning around as if she meant to avoid him. Not fucking likely.
"He wants you," Lex barked from across the lodge, not caring how many other guards heard him. All of them knew she was Yakut's whore, so there was no reason to pretend otherwise. "He told me to send you in. He's waiting for you to service him." Cold jade-green eyes leveled on him. "I've been training outdoors. I need to wash off the dirt and sweat."
"He said now, Renata." A clipped command, one he knew would be obeyed. There was more than a little satisfaction in that small, rare triumph.
"Very well." She shrugged, padded over on bare feet.>Renata ignored the question, certain it was the last thing she needed to know right now. She struggled hard underneath the heavy muscular slab of his body weight, but he held her down with damn little effort. Bastard. "Get off me."
"Ask me again, Renata. What did I see?"
"I said, get off me," she snarled, feeling panic rise within her chest. She took a calming breath, knowing she had to keep her head. She had to get the situation under control, and fast. The last thing she needed was Sergei Yakut coming out and finding her pinned and powerless beneath this other male. "Let me up now."
"What are you afraid of?"
"Nothing, goddamn you!"