Their Reign (The Rite Trilogy 3)

18

JUDGE

I’m on my way home when my phone chimes with a text. At a traffic light, I check it. It’s Solana sending some idiotic message I don’t understand.

Solana: Dun dun da dun…

Me: Can you forget my number?

Solana: I hear wedding bells.

Me: What?

Solana: Didn’t you hear? A certain eligible Sovereign Son has asked for Mercedes’s hand in marriage. He was very romantic about it too…

When I pull a U-turn in the middle of the intersection, cars honk their horns, sending traffic screeching around me. My cell phone drops to the floor as I press the gas pedal and race to the apothecary. I double park outside, fuming as I stalk into the shop. Solana is with a customer, and that crack Madame Dubois is filing her nails from her table, wearing a sly smile on her face.

“I’ll be right with you,” Solana says with a shit-eating grin. “Why don’t you look at our selection of mood-enhancing elixirs over there.”

I grit my teeth and consider shaking her when I hear Kali bark. Shit. I forgot about her, and I don’t need her pissing in my car.

“I will be right back!” I tell Solana and go back outside, the bell over the door irritating now. Opening the hatch, I lift Kali out. I should put her down in case she needs to piss, but instead, I grin and walk back inside the shop, forcing myself to smile at the customer leaving with her purchase, then set Kali down.

“Aw!” Solana’s face breaks into the biggest smile as she comes rushing to the puppy. “Oh my goodness, aren’t you the cutest thing ever! Georgie is going to love you!” She picks the puppy up, hugs her tight, and Kali licks her face, and it fucking pisses me off.

“What was your text about?”

She straightens, holding on to Kali. “Judge, you do not strike me as a puppy-loving kind of guy honestly. Don’t take that the wrong way.”

Does she hear the rattle in my chest? If so, she clearly has a poor sense of danger. Because she just smiles wider.

“What the fuck did you mean?”

“Let me take the puppy outside. I think she needs to use the facilities,” Madame Dubois says, slinking over to take the dog. These people are going to fucking kill me.

“You should get some sleep, Judge. You really look like hell,” Solana says once we’re alone and she’s moved behind the counter to put some things away in the display case. “I do have something for that.”

I inhale deeply. “You are testing me.”

“What?”

“What. Was. Your. Fucking. Text. About?”

She shrugs her shoulders. “What I said. I thought it was pretty self-explanatory.”

I grip the counter and count to ten. “Do a better job of explaining.”

“Clifton Phillips is an old flame of hers, am I right?”

“Clifton fucking Phillips? A flame? I don’t think so.”

“I mean, he’s cute, I guess,” she wavers. “If you like that type. Although I guess you worked the brooding, domineering asshole type out of her system.”

“When did you meet him? Was he invited to one of your little events the three of you have?”

There’s that grin again. “No, I met him here. He tracked Mercedes down. Romantic, am I right?”

I feel my brain rattle against my skull.

“And then he proposed to her! Right here in my shop!” She sighs with a big smile on her face, but something is off.

“He did what?”