Page 86 of The Forsaken Heir
“Ow, shit! That hurt,” Rasp hissed, rubbing his arm.
Delphine glared at him. “Uncouth barbarian.”
Rasp looked back at her with a dumbfounded frown on his face. “What thefuckdoes ‘uncouth’ mean?”
Delphine let out an exasperated sigh, and hugged Elle instead of arguing with Rasp any longer.
“Be careful.Please,” the older woman said as she embraced Elle.
“I will. I promise,” Elle said, releasing her.
“Are we ready to go?” Rasp asked, still rubbing his arm.
“I think so.” I turned to Vince. “You ready, big guy?”
“Yup.” He bolted out the door without bothering to say goodbye to his father.
Benedictus looked at his son’s retreating back with a mixture of disappointment and exasperation.
I took Elle’s hand, and we walked out into the cool fall sunlight, with Rasp trailing along behind us. The convoy of vehicles waited for us. Elle and I would be traveling in the second car. Along the way, we’d swap spots with the other cars. Like a shell game, it would make it hard to know which car was which if anyone was watching. My security team had insisted on it.
My father stood beside the car. “You know what I’m going to say, right?”
“That I shouldn’t go? That it’s not safe? That someone else should do this?” I said.
He shrugged. “Something like that, but as I said before, this is your decision. If you are going to be king one day, then these are the things you have to figure out for yourself.”
“I appreciate that, Dad.”
We looked at each other for several long minutes. He surprised me by yanking me forward, embracing me in a bone-crushing hug. I couldn’t recall the last time he’d held me so tight. Maybe the night Mom died? Probably. It didn’t feel strange though. There was something so familial and fatherly in the embrace that I damn near broke out in tears. I wrapped my arms around him and held him just as tight.
“You better come back to me, boy,” he whispered in my ear, so softly that even the other shifters around us wouldn’t hear it.
“I will,” I promised.
“Good,” he said. When he released me, he was back to being the king. “Be safe on the trip. Okay?”
“Yeah.”
He opened the back door of the SUV. “Ladies first, as always,” he said, smiling at Elle.
“Thank you,” she said as she slid into the SUV.
Instead of rows of seats, it had been fitted with bench seating on each side, so we could look at each other as we made the hours’ long drive to the Laurent territory.
Rasp, Vince, and I took our seats, and then the car was in motion, heading down the driveway. I rolled the window down and gave my father and the other remaining folks a wave. I spotted Delphine standing beside Titus on the steps of the house before we rounded a corner, and they were all lost from sight.
“Well, I’m gladthatdidn’t make it seem like we were all going off to our imminent deaths, right?” Rasp said. “A nice, light send-off. Nothing foreboding about any of that at all.”
“Shut up, Rasp,” I said, though I couldn’t keep the rueful grin off my face. He was right. The whole thing had an air of finality to it that I didn’t like.
Vincent was staring out the window, watching the trees along the drive slip by. His lips moved soundlessly as he counted them and snapped the rubber band on his wrist.
Finally, he grinned, and looked at us all.
“Thirty-seven! That’s a prime number. I never counted the trees before.”
“Real good, buddy,” Rasp said. “Uh, is that important?”
