In truth, Joe wasn’t sure he wanted to find their mate. Or more accurately for her to discover them. He’d lived a long time with just his brothers. They bore his personality quirks with, well . . . patience wasn’t the word he’d use, but they were used to him. Or perhaps they just put up with him.
Over the years, he’d probably become a bit stuck in his ways. But when you lived as long as he did, routine was something that became ingrained. Besides, it wasn’t like the two of them weren’t without their own quirks.
And that was putting it nicely.
“She’ll only cramp it if she’s a complete bore.”
Joseph’s temper stirred. When it came to work, he was cool and calm. But when it came to his life outside business, his control over his temper became a little more frayed.
“You’d break your vows? You would attempt to cheat on our mate?”
He said attempt because he didn’t know if it was possible to cheat on a mate. As far as he knew it had never been done.
Garret’s eyes widened. Then his face darkened. He didn’t have much of a temper, but when he did lose it, it was a hell of a sight to see.
“Of course, I won’t cheat on her. I’d never sleep with someone else. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have some fun. If I had the urge to let loose in town, I’d take her with me.”
“You would not!” Joseph roared.
Before he knew it, he had Garret by his neck, pinned to the slick marble walls. “You will treat our mate with respect. You will not take her off on one of your adventures. You will not expose her to danger in any sort of way. You will care for her as though she were the most delicate, fragile creature on the planet.”
Garret, whose face was starting to turn a little blue, shoved his arms against Joseph’s chest. He stepped back, letting his brother drop, not that he fell far. Garret always landed on his feet.
Garret sucked in a few deep breaths. “Jesus, chill.”
“Our mate will be protected and cared for as is her due.”
“What the hell did you think I would drag her into? I wouldn’t take her anywhere dangerous.”
“The whole of Oldstown is dangerous!” Joe was incredulous.
“It’s not that bad. And besides she’d be with me.” Garret grinned, seemingly unperturbed his brother had been trying to choke him to death just minutes earlier.
“She will not. She will be here. Safely behind the castle walls and the safeguards we’ve laid out.” Where no one would ever touch her except them.
Garret narrowed his eyes. “What do you expect? For her to just sit around and sip tea all day?”
Of course, he didn’t. She’d be far too busy to sip tea. Joe hadn’t had anything but his own hand for company in the last hundred or so years, he would have plenty of ideas to keep their mate occupied for at least a century anyway.
“You’re not going to go looking for her. Even if you do, you won’t find her. The legend has never failed. You will wait. Be patient.”
* * *
Okay, so the inside of the castle was nothing like she’d been expecting. She felt disappointed.
She’d kind of assumed the austere outside was just camouflage. That inside she’d find rich carpets, luxurious drapes, and gold-framed portraits on the walls. That she’d have to tiptoe around gorgeous antiques and test out a few thrones.
But the inside was as dark and cold as the outside. Most of the floors were slate. The drapes looked like they might have been luxurious at some point, but now they just looked dusty and old.
The walls were filled with paintings, but not portraits of richly-dressed ancestors. Well, not unless those ancestors had been bears. She snorted. Someone had a real obsession with big grizzlies. There were statues of bears, paintings of bears, she’d half-expected to walk into a room and find a bear skin on the floor or a stuffed bear head over the mantle.
This place might be a bust. Maybe these guys were never seen in Oldstown because they were dead, or they’d run their fortune into the ground and escaped this dusty mausoleum years ago. She continued to wander on, but her hopes of finding a pile of gold were fast dwindling.
Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and it was now approaching dusk. It had taken her longer than she’d anticipated to climb the wall surrounding this place. Honestly, would it have hurt them to make it a few feet shorter? There had been several times she’d slipped and thought she was going to fall to her death before she’d caught herself.
Thankfully, it was old and worn and had plenty of crevices in the stone to grab hold of, or she’d could have ended up in a worse state than Humpty Dumpty. She should head home before someone noticed she was gone. Of course, that could take a while. She sighed. When it came down to it, she had a roof over her head, food to eat, and a family–if you could call a group of criminals family–who kind of cared about her.
Maybe she’d just grab a little something to snack on during her trip home. She could return another day. It was going to take her longer than an hour to search this place. Probably all the gold was held in a vault in the basement.