Vance’s eyes widen. “I’m going to fucking kill you for fifty-three years, you stupid son of a b—” He stops, calming himself, because his grandmomma was a damn fine woman who’d punch him in the nuts for calling her that word…if she knew what it meant.

She always hated dogs. Especially female dogs.

We all have a moment, a small one, where the familiarity and insight makes this moment almost funny. It’s brief, because I really want to put a rusty heap of sword through Zuela’s face.

“No. Put in the glass. But touch her, and I really will make you regret it,” Vance bites out.

Zuela waits too long to respond, before finally exhaling. “I’m not here to have sex with your girlfriend, Vancetto. Don’t pretend as though I’m made of that much ice. Not you. Not after what you allowed today.”

“Are you telling me you read that book and didn’t speak up?” I ask, stepping closer, as Vance holds his hand up for me to stay.

“Of course not. Like all of you probably did, I read it as soon as I left. I thought you’d given her some little House for her to play pretend. That damn book is as thick as the ice on that vampire’s heart, and she knows every word in it. She still took a beating she didn’t have to. Idun forfeited her argument when she broke protocol. Anyway, I came here to tell her I’d give her the damn masterpiece she still wants. She’s acting like it never happened.”

“I’m still reading the book, and Violet is a master of withholding emotion until it’s just simply gone. Don’t be cruel to her,” Vance tells him distractedly, pulling the book away from Emit and flipping the page.

“What was the favor?” Zuela asks like he’s tired and wants to be done with this conversation.

“I was going to ask you to do the masterpiece she wants,” Vance states dryly.

“So all this grief just for you to ask me to do what I’m already doing, and you’ve been hassling me about the shite? This is why you’re intolerable.”

“Agreed,” Emit, Damien, and I all say in unison, drawing an annoyed glare from Vance.

I still want Zuela out of that house until I can be there, though.

“Tell Violet I’ll be expecting her call, since it’s law that the Head of a respective House has to sign off for an alpha offering any sort of service to the sanctuary.”

“That’s low. Even for you,” Zuela says before hanging up, even as Vance smirks and lowers his phone.

“We’re trying to make her life easier, you prat. Not more difficult,” I remind him. “That was the plan, correct? I remember threatening bodily harm to anyone who let us ever make that oversight again.”

He pockets his phone with a diabolical grin on his face. “I just secured my invitation to the sanctuary. You all have until Idun rises to do the same, or I’ll have to punish you so she can’t say we’re not being fair. She can’t go to war with all of us on her own. She needs allies. Let’s ensure we keep this smart.”

I point a finger at Damien. “Ensure Dorian isn’t going to be a problem.”

“You just worry about Emily. She’s been on Idun TV several times now,” he counters.

I leave them all behind when the building doesn’t explode and I feel confident Idun’s been sufficiently frozen for at least a little while.

I don’t stop until I’m exactly one thousand feet in front of Omega U. I prop against the perch of the roof I’m on, hands in my pockets. Then I watch through one of the massive windows, as Violet walks baby Jasper over to show Zuela.

The smile on her face is too free for a girl who was just beaten by Idun not too long ago. The marks are already mostly healed, and she looks freshly showered. Zuela, the man too cold for ice, smiles down at the child like the lad is not of shifter blood, while Violet kisses the babe’s head over and over, as though she just can’t stop.

Then she puts him in his bassinet next to her and leaves her hand lingering on his stomach, as she gives the rest of her attention to Zuela. I should have known she’d never give up the lad’s mother, simply because she’d never fail him.

Another oversight.

“Nothing we can do about it now,” Emit says as though he’s prying into my mind somehow.

Or maybe I’m that bloody transparent.

He joins me at my side and hands me a whiskey bottle.

“Is that why you’re drinking as much as I am?” I ask him.

“I’m drinking this because that girl is far more calculated than I anticipated, and I didn’t realize how very differently her mind works until she put us through that. It makes me rethink my entire approach, because she’ll gut me harder the more I care,” he says on a harsh breath.

“Ah, glad we just moved the party instead of shutting it down. She’d be really pissed that we’re watching Violet TV out here after squandering away our front row seats,” Damien says as he takes a seat on the ground.

Jasper gets fussy, and Ighan takes over with Zuela, showing him so many sketches all at once, while Violet devotes her attention to the little lad.

“The look on my father’s face should be framed by some brave soul,” Vance says as he very quickly sets up a chair and puts down a cooler, his eyes quickly moving to and following Violet.

I arch an eyebrow at him that he pointedly ignores, as he takes a seat and stares inside.