“Don’t get mushy on me, Max.” Conn cleared his throat.
Yeah. Neither one of them was good with the emotional shit.
Max rolled his shoulders. “If I mate Sarah, she’ll be in danger.” Damn. How the hell did that slip out? Now he was sharing his feelings? Not a subject he’d intended to broach.
“Yeah.” Conn stood and stretched his neck. “She’s fragile as a human, though.” He grimaced. “Tough choice to make.”
For the first time, Max almost envied Conn for the surprise mating a century ago. A quick roll in the hay had changed his friend’s life forever. “Would probably be easier having things in place, like you.”
Conn’s laugh lacked humor. “That’s what you think. The second I step foot on Ireland, that woman is going to try and light me on fire. While I’d like to court her ... in order to survive, I’m going to have to tame her.”
Tame a witch? Especially a powerful one like Moira? “You’re screwed.”
“No question about that.” Conn glanced at the closed door. “Will Sarah hold up all right today?
“Yes. The woman has brains and guts. She’ll be fine in court.” Though, what if an evil criminal had sat in the witness chair before her? Max scrubbed his gritty eyes. Having a mate took a lot of thought. “Is there any way we can scrub down the chair first?” Would that even help? He needed to find out more about that gift of hers in order to protect her.
“Maybe. I wish there was another way to get the company stock. Dage wants us under the radar for this one ... too many humans are already working in our labs.”
“They don’t know about us or even what they’re working on. Dage is covered.” Max would immediately take out anyone who threatened his king.
Conn shrugged. “Maybe. But you know our world. Rumors can be as bad as true fact in the Realm. Personally, I’d rather let Sarah’s brother get the stock and torture him until he sells to us. But then we’ll have to kill him. So Dage wanted to go the legal route.”
Torturing the man who’d put Sarah in the insane asylum held certain appeal for Max. The killing didn’t bother him much, either ... though it might upset her. “I don’t like the legal route.”
“Me either. Probably why we’re not king.” Conn stilled, and then tapped his ear communicator. “Okay. Send them up.”
Max lifted an eyebrow.
“Clothes for court today.” Conn stood, casually taking a gun from his waist.
“Who was on the other end of that conversation?” Max aligned himself against the penthouse doorway, between Sarah and any danger.
“Reinforcements. I called them the second I sensed Sarah was a potential mate.” Conn took aim at the closed elevator doors. “When it became apparent she was yours, I doubled the number.”
Max straightened, his gaze on the man who was as close as a brother to him. Warmth and belonging settled hard, somewhere in his solar plexus. “Thank you.”
“No problem.”
The door slid open to reveal a soldier they both knew well carrying bags of clothing. “Delivery,” he muttered.
“Thanks, Chalton.” Max smiled and grabbed several bags from the soldier. “I’ll go awaken ... my mate.”
Sarah smoothed down the silk skirt, shifting uncomfortably on the hard wooden chair. The compact courtroom held a judge’s bench with a witness chair facing two tables separated by a narrow aisle. A jury box sat empty to her right and three rows of benches lined the room behind her. Max loomed on the first one near the aisle, Jase sat at one table with her, and Conn leaned against the wall by the door as they waited for the judge to show.
While no vibrations came from the skirt, a nervous accountant on trial for fraud had last sat in the chair—nervous and guilty as hell.
She took a peek at her brother and his beautiful attorney seated at the other table. Andrew was wearing Armani. The attorney was a blond hottie in a light gray suit and three-inch red Jimmy Choos. Great shoes.
Jase tapped an elegant pen on a legal pad. “Take a deep breath, Sarah. You’ll be fine.”
She forced a grin. “You look the part, Jase, but you didn’t have to cut your hair.”
He’d shaved his scruffy beard and lopped off his long brown hair, though the ends still curled over his collar. The pinstriped gray Caraceni suit he wore fit him perfectly.
He shrugged. “I was ready to cut it. We’ve been training like crazy, and Conn keeps grabbing me by the hair to throw across the field.”
They were brothers, right? “How old are you, anyway?” Probably early twenties.
“Three hundred and ten years.” Jase eyed the opposing attorney, giving her a slight lift of the chin. Color slid under the blonde’s smooth skin.
Sarah coughed. “You’re kidding me.” She pivoted to face Max, who met her gaze with a nod of encouragement.
Showered and dressed in black slacks and a white button-down shirt, he was a bit irritated he couldn’t bring weapons into the courthouse. Darn metal detectors.
“How old is Max?” she whispered.
“Two hundred next month,” Jase said, grinning. “We try to throw him a party every decade, and it irritates as much as confuses him. He didn’t have that as a kid.”
Sadness filtered through Sarah. She was so sorry for the child Max must’ve been. “Yeah, he told me.”
“Really?” Jase started. “Interesting. Perhaps you’ll be at the next party. Janie has been planning it to include a puppy. I think she wants the puppy.”
Sarah frowned, her gaze on Max’s enduring face. They hadn’t had a chance to talk earlier—they’d hurried to make it to court on time. Would he stay in touch? Did he want a relationship? Sure hadn’t felt like a one-night stand.
Max frowned back.
She lifted one eyebrow in what she hoped appeared indifference, pivoting to face the front. “What if we lose, Jase?”
He lost his grin, looking decades older. “We can’t lose. This is the only way we get our hands on the altered protein. If the Kurjans get it first, they’ll use the protein before we can invent countermeasures. We’ll lose mates, including my pregnant sister-in-law and my queen.”
“I still think the minority stockholders will have something to say about lab results being made available to stock owners.”
Jase shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. You own the majority of the stock—you can do what you want, include selling to us. Then we’ll have access, whether the minority stockholders like it or not. Nothing they can do about it.”
A breeze threw pinecones against a high row of windows as sunlight cascaded through. Jase cut a glance at Conn.
“What?” Sarah asked.
“I’m happy the sun is out. No Kurjans today.” Jase scratched his head. “Remember to answer the questions the way we rehearsed on the ride over.”
“I’ll try.” She wouldn’t lie under oath unless she absolutely had to. The idea made her squirm in her pale blue suit. “Thanks again for the clothes.” The spiked heel of the soft pink Manolo Blahniks gave her a sense of strength. Odd, but true. Of course, having tough-assed vampires in the room ready to defend her, well now, that wasn’t bad, either.
A throat cleared, and Andrew stood in front of her table. “Sarah. How are you feeling?”
Surprise pressed her back in the chair, and she plastered on the fakest smile she could create. “Damn pissed at you. We both know what happened, Andrew.”
He tilted his perfectly coiffed head. Cool blue eyes narrowed and he sighed. “Yes, we do. Apparently you’re still confused.”
So. He’d lie to the end. Sorrow at what could’ve been, at the relationship she might’ve had with him, slid through her. She was done feeling sorry for him. He’d chosen evil and was responsible for the decision. “I don’t remember our mother much, but something tells me you’re just like her.”