Carmen snorted. “Never heard anyone describe you as cute before, Maddox. Or speak to you so very condescendingly.”
“It surprises me that you allow it,” a voice further down the table commented, its tone hard and clipped.
Carmen exhaled heavily. “It’s called banter, Euan.”
Fisting his hands around his cutlery, Euan stared at Maddox. “I can’t believe you’ve brought an outsider to stay here. This is our home. What’s next? Are you going to bring her into our lair? Are you going to welcome her family into it if they insist on following her?”
Sipping at his coffee again, Maddox leaned back in his chair. “What’s your real issue, Euan?” he asked, cool and calm. “It isn’t that Raini’s here. It isn’t that I want her to join our lair. It’s something else. Tell me what’s really eating at you.”
Euan clamped his lips shut, his nostrils flaring.
“It’s that she makes me stronger, isn’t it?” Maddox went on. “You stopped with your whispers, but you held out hope that the lair would eventually reject me as their Prime; that they would never accept Raini; that my keeping her in my life would weaken my standing here. Instead, she can not only prevent me from turning rogue or going through a haze, she can spare the lair any more future hazes. Maybe one or two demons in this hall aren’t happy that she’s here,” he added, flicking Marcella a brief look. “But the others have accepted her, and you don’t like it.”
Stiff, Euan cleared his throat. “On the contrary, I find it a positive thing that the lair has accepted your anchor, since she will be a big part of your life and—as you said—she makes you stronger. I want that for you. I simply don’t like that we weren’t given a say on whether or not she could stay here. It is our home. We should have been consulted as a measure of common courtesy.”
“It was wrong of me to assume that my own demons would want my anchor protected?”
Euan spluttered. “I didn’t say we wouldn’t want to help protect her.”
“Why do you keep using the word ‘we’? Do you feel that you are a voice for the lair as a whole?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m a voice for them, but I do believe I am merely saying what everybody here is thinking.”
“I see. Look around you, Euan.”
The demon did so. His jaw hardened when he saw that the majority of the people present were either glaring at him or shaking their heads in disgust. A few others, Marcella included, were averting their gazes.
Maddox raised a brow. “Do you still believe everyone here thinks as you do, Euan?”
The man licked the edges of his teeth. “Perhaps they simply fear speaking up.”
“I don’t see why they would. I don’t punish people for having an opinion. Yours is clearly that I should have spoken to you before inviting my anchor to stay in the place where she’d be safest; where I could better protect her from the beings who are only targeting her because of me. It is my responsibility and my honor to keep her safe, so I do not see why anyone would begrudge her being here. My demons are better than that. But, for the sake of your delicate feelings, I will ask you … Euan, do you have an issue with Raini staying here?”
Euan opened and closed his mouth. “No.”
Hector looked at his mate. “Then why the fuck did I spend part of my morning listening to that pointless conversation, babe?”
Carmen patted his back. “You know Euan, Hector. He needs to feel important. But he knows he’s not, so he does dumb shit that he thinks make him look and sound good. It never quite works out, so I don’t know why he hasn’t quit acting this way.”
“I don’t think it’s dumb to want your opinion to be noted,” said Raini. “Thank you, Euan, for not asking that I leave even though you’re not tremendously comfortable with my being here.”
Looking somewhat lost for words, Euan curtly inclined his head and then pushed out of his chair. He muttered something to the people he’d been eating with and then left the hall.
Maddox looked down at his anchor. “You were so good, I almost bought that.”
Raini frowned. “You don’t think I’m truly grateful to him?”
“No.”
“Okay, fine, so I would have preferred to rip the weak prick another asshole,” she admitted. “But he was hoping for that. He wanted me to be a bitch to him right here in his own home so he could look like a victim of the big, bad succubus and probably make out like I think I can take liberties because I’m your anchor. I don’t know if anyone would have fallen for it, but it was what he was hoping for.”
Hector’s brow creased. “You’re right, he was. I didn’t see it until you pointed it out, though.”