Crimson Covenant (Onyx Assassins 1)

“If I’d mated, you’d know,” I growled. The whole fucking immortal world would know if I’d found the one female fated for me. After over four hundred years of wondering if she’d show up, I’d made my peace with the possibility that she never would. Fate was an unforgiving bitch when it came to the losses our species had suffered during my reign.

Not that I’d condemn any female to the torture of living at my side.

“She’s getting bolder,” Ransom noted with a whistle as we approached the steel door to the residence. The Domum may be every inch a palace, but the residence was a fortress by my father’s design. I’d simply kept the security updated with modern technology.

“She’s a pain in my ass,” I snapped as the door opened before us.

“My king, Hawthorne awaits you in the chamber, as well as your meal,” Serge announced with a bow of his head.

“Weren’t you just in the foyer?” Ransom asked as we swept by.

“I was told you were headed this way,” he answered with a slight curve to his lips.

“Fast fucker,” Ransom muttered.

Speed was the only gift given to the talem, and Serge had mastered it.

We passed through the entry, and my senses told me there was no one upstairs. Good. Only invited guests and the four warriors in the Order were allowed unescorted entrance here.

“Do we really have to put up with all the nobles until equinox?” Lachlan asked as we made our way to the back of the house, passing my office, the dining room, the sitting room, a commercial-sized kitchen, and the den, which Hawke had outfitted with an eighty-five-inch television and surround sound. He claimed it was for watching football.

Personally, I thought he liked to hear the bones break.

“It’s tradition,” Benedict said over his shoulder as he descended the stone staircase first, his hand on his hip holster. I didn’t bother telling him that Hawke was the only other male in this house—it was good for him to be alert.

Complacency was our number one enemy.

Complacency had killed my parents.

“Don’t tell me you aren’t enjoying having those sweet, doe-eyed females warm your bed,” Ransom shot from behind us.

“I have no problem taking a lass to her bed. I’ll be damned if one sets a toe in mine. You let a woman sleep in your bed, and you may as well unpack her suitcase into your closet,” Lachlan said as we reached the riveted steel door at the bottom of the staircase.

My senses stretched along the tunnels that ran in both directions and found them empty. Given the party, our soldiers weren’t training in the compound as usual, giving us a moment of relative quiet.

Benedict placed his palm on the biometric scanner, and a dozen steel bolts unlocked before the heavy door opened.

“It’s about fucking time,” Hawke snarled.

“There’s a party going on, if you hadn’t noticed,” Benedict countered as we entered the chamber.

The space was cavernous, large enough to fit at least fifty warriors, but tailored only to the five of us. A black, onyx table rested in the center space, accompanied by five heavy chairs. A wall of monitors consumed the right-hand wall, with a few other notable computer stations spaced out along the back. To the left was a well-equipped kitchen, stocked with enough food and blood to last the five of us an unpleasant year in case of emergencies. A bathroom lay beyond that, and in the corner was a collection of couches and bookshelves with a television to keep us occupied if we ever needed that year.

My parents hadn’t made it to the safety of this room two hundred years ago.

“So the fuck what?” Hawk fired back at Benedict from where he sat sprawled at the table in one of the massive chairs, flipping one of his daggers end-over-end.

The door shut behind us, and we each took a seat at the table. It wasn’t round. I wasn’t King Arthur. Fuck that. I was in charge, and everyone in this room knew it.

“Has the wolf been dealt with?” I asked Hawke.

“Justice has been served,” he confirmed with a wicked grin and dead eyes. For the rest of us, dispensing the justice of the immortal world was a sworn, sacred duty. For Hawke…well, he got off on it.

“I’ll let Luka know.” The king of the lycans had agreed with my judgment against his subject, which definitely took the awkwardness out of the impending call.

Death was the penalty for any crime against a female or a child. Period. There was no excuse for the abuse of the fairer sex, and children were far too precious—too rare to ever suffer.

“That leaves the demon issue for tonight if you want this month’s sentences carried out before Avianna gets home tomorrow. You also have a request from the Witch Queen for a private audience,” Benedict said, filling the monitors with the faces of the lower-level demons who had been sentenced to torture for slander against their king. Sedition was still a punishable offense under their law.