“MARK!” The woman screams out as if there’s a shred of a chance the dead guy might hear her. It is a pathetic and tragic sight. She must be so confused, not to mention terrified.
“What is she doing?” Tusk looks down at her with a thoroughly confused glare.
“She's sad because he was her husband," Lyric explains. “She loved him.”
“He obviously hit her repeatedly. And not in the way one might discipline a female who might have assassinated an innocent ingenue. He was beating her like a dog. And now she calls his name? Humans really are stupid, base animals.”
“Shut up," Lyric hisses, rising to her feet. I have to grab her before she launches herself at him.
“Rath, get your human out of my sight before I do to her what was being done to Margaret.”
I notice he uses the sobbing human’s name. He honors her, even as he attempts to frame her for the most heinous and scandalous crime in recent history.
“Do not threaten my human, Tusk," I growl. “As for Margaret, Tyvian, you take custody of her."
Tusk laughs. “Tyvian? I suppose you want her running loose on the streets of Megaris within the day.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?” Tyvian asks the question with a silky smooth fury.
“I do not trust the dungeons. They have not managed to house a prisoner who did not almost immediately escape in months. More korabi and humans have used the dungeons as entry and exit points than the front gates!”
He has a point. There are colanders with fewer holes than the dungeon.
“Tyvian will take custody of Margaret. Unless, of course, you have some personal connection to the woman you would like to pursue?”
Tusk grunts and shakes his head. I am almost certain he has some affection for this Margaret who is still space-drunkenly sobbing her erstwhile husband’s name at his feet. I am also equally sure that Tyvian is far better placed temperamentally and in every other regard to look after a tragically displaced mourning human from planet Earth.
At my gesture, Tyvian goes to the woman, scoops her up into his arms, and carries her off making soft soothing sounds usually more appropriate for a child.
Tusk makes a great show of not watching her be taken away. I have a distraction for him. He is right, we are at great risk of an uprising from another faction if we cannot restore a semblance of order. Many have died since King Krash’s assassination, but I fear the real bloodshed has only just begun.
“Tusk, we need to discuss strategy. Security needs to be tripled, at the very least.”
“Jax would have been good at this," Lyric mumbles. She is not happy that Jax chose to flee with Krush, but I think we all knew it was inevitable. The human mate bond is one of the strongest forces in the universe.
I sit here as a usurper to the throne, having failed one king and betrayed another. I wonder if I should not have stayed in the Megarithean wilds, but Lyric first insisted on returning for Jax, and then Tusk located us and we had little choice but to become conspirators.
Megaris is a complicated place. It is an impossible city in which to be what Lyric would call a good guy. In Megaris, the good and the evil become wound up together until there is no separating them, either from one another, or within themselves.
“Poor woman,” Lyric says, sliding up to me as Tyvian carries the sobbing lady away, still lamenting her late, diced husband.
“How many women are we going to rescue?” I ask the question indulgently. I already know what her answer will be.
"All of them.”
We say the words together. She slaps my chest lightly and smiles. “We have to get Jax back. Krush is dangerous and unstable.”
“She has chosen him, my dear,” I remind her. “We must respect the choices of women.”
“Yes. We must," she agrees, though in a disgruntled tone. Lyric is a leader, and that makes her feel a certain responsibility to those she feels are weaker, or in need of help. She will not let these matters rest, of that I am certain.
Thirteen
Krush
“What should we call him?”
“Hm?”
Jax looks over at me, confused.
"The baby.”
"We don't know I’m actually having a baby yet. I might just be broken on the inside. Your monster cock might have stopped my cycle.”
I think she is pregnant. Now that she mentioned it, I can see that her hair is glossier, her eye brighter, her skin glowing. Her scent has changed ever so slightly too, as has the consistency of the liquid of her desire. I know this human more intimately than I have ever known anyone. I know her from the flutter of her pulse to the flash of her gaze. And I sense that there is something inside her. A life belonging to the both of us.