Liam Takes Manhattan (2 page)

Dragos turned to him. “Your mom and I want to apologize.”

Taken aback, he blinked.
“Apologize for what?”

Pia said, “We swore we wouldn’t let this happen, but we got too busy and time slipped away from us. We had come to a decision a few months ago, but with the new pregnancy, and the trips to Washington DC and Los Angeles, and then getting ready for the Masque, and—and Con’s death—” Her voice wobbled then firmed again. “Well, the last few months have been really hectic.”

“I know,” he replied, eyeing both of them cautiously. He had no idea where this conversation was going. “You’ve been more busy than usual. I get it. What’s wrong?”

At that, Dragos and Pia exchanged another, longer look, their expressions too complex for him to read. Pia turned to him and said in a quiet voice, “Nothing new is wrong, my love. A few months ago we decided to let you have a dog, but
we haven’t had time to do anything about it. We want to get you a puppy for Christmas. Would you enjoy that?”

Carefully he set down his fork and repeated, “You want to get me a puppy.”

“You’ve wanted a dog so badly,” Pia said. While her face and voice remained mild, he noticed she hadn’t touched her food either. “But your dad thinks it’s best if you start with a puppy, so that it can get acclimated
to the predator Wyr it would be living with. I compiled a list of breeders that we could visit next week, if you like.”

Liam put his flattened hands on the table, on either side of his plate, and considered them. They were broad across the palm and long-fingered, like his father’s. Then he pushed to his feet, strode into the kitchen and retrieved a wineglass. When he walked back into the dining
room, his parents hadn’t moved, but the atmosphere in the room had grown tense.

They watched in silence as he took the bottle of wine and poured himself a glass. Dragos’s gaze flared into incandescence.

The wine was dark red, densely rich like rubies. Experimentally, he sipped it. It was dry, with the merest hint of blackberry and cherries. Gods, it was delicious. He took a deep swallow and
returned to his seat.

“When you said you wanted to talk to me, do you know what I was expecting?” he said in a conversational tone. He looked at Dragos. “I was expecting either or both of you to try to talk me out of the pact you and I made when Con was killed.”

His father lounged back in his seat, appearing to relax, but Liam knew he could move faster than almost any other Wyr, except for maybe
his mom.

And him.

Dragos said, “I told you I would give you a year to prepare for a trial. Even if it goes against my better judgment, I won’t back out of that.”

“All I can think about is that a few days of that year are already gone,” Liam said. “And you want to give me a puppy.”

While his mom continued to look composed, her shoulders slumped, and he knew he had struck some kind of blow.
It made his stomach hurt, but he couldn’t take the words back. There was an eight-hundred-pound elephant in the room, and his name was Liam. They had to confront it.

He picked up his glass of wine and drank again, noting how both Pia and Dragos tracked his movements and the wariness in their expressions.

“How did you feel when I got myself a glass of wine?” he asked. After waiting a beat for
them to respond, he continued. “It felt wrong to you, didn’t it? You wanted to stop me.”

Pia pushed her plate away and leaned her elbows on the table. “I can’t deny it looked odd,” she replied. As she met his eyes, her own gaze was steady and unwavering. “It’s also odd for me to look up into your face when we’re standing side by side. This last growth spurt you’ve had is the most significant
one yet, and we’re going to have to go through another period of adjustment. Be patient with us—we’ll get there.”

But that was just it—time was trickling away, and he didn’t think he could afford to be very patient.

His father had given him a year to prepare for the trial to become a sentinel. His dragon had flared to meet the challenge, but he needed both education and raw experience. And everywhere
around him were shackles made of love and expectation.

He felt like he was living in a trap. The urge to fly away as fast and as hard as he could swept over him again.

“Thank you for supper,” he said, as he pushed his chair back and stood. “But I’m afraid I’m not very hungry again.”

“Sit down,” Dragos said. “We’re not done talking.”

He gave his father a long, level look. Whatever Dragos saw
in his expression made him stand too, until they stared at each other eye to eye. Dragos’s hard cut features were shuttered, but his eyes blazed with light. Liam wondered if his own gaze blazed with the same fierce light.

Neither one backed down. The air between them boiled with heat.

Liam said in a soft, courteous voice, “I’m done talking for now. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to talk again.”

With that, he pivoted on one heel and walked out. He took the distance to the living room in long strides, but behind him, he could still hear Pia whisper, “Dragos, let him go.”

That was all he had time to hear before he pushed out the door, ran up the stairs to the roof, exploded into his Wyr form and took to the sky.

*     *     *

As soon as
she heard the penthouse door settle behind Liam,
Pia slumped and put her face in her hands.

“I wondered what life would be like when he reached a rebellious stage,” she muttered. “So now I know.”

She just hadn’t expected him to exercise such control. She had thought he would go through a teenage phase of shouting and slamming doors, and if anything that she and Dragos would laugh about it when they were alone.

This was something entirely
different. Almost overnight, it seemed, he’d shot up in height and his shoulders expanded, while his youthful rounded features grew lean and chiseled. Always a handsome boy, he was now indisputably a handsome young man.

They only wanted the best for him. They tried to do whatever they could that would make him feel loved and happy, but tonight the appearance of maturity, along with his quiet
voice, and the clenched effort in his demeanor had turned the whole encounter dark with a sense of desperation.

“This is a mistake,” Dragos growled. “I’m going to withdraw my decision.”

The tension in the room hadn’t dissipated with Liam’s departure. Dragos’s energy was boiling furiously. It felt to Pia like a raw blast of heat.

She lifted her head to look at him. Now that they were alone,
he looked tired, exasperated and more than a little angry.

The events of the last week had been brutal on everyone. Bereavement was hard at any time, but Con’s death had been hardest on Dragos and the sentinels, who had lost a brother and a comrade-in-arms. Her heart ached for the tired slump in Dragos’s shoulders and the shadows under his eyes.

But as long as he was Lord of the Wyr, it was
his job to handle it. And because he had such broad, strong shoulders, she knew that he could.

So she didn’t say anything to make it easier on him. Instead, she said, “Hold on. You made him a promise, and you have to keep it. No matter how hard it might be, we don’t break promises we make to our children. You just told him so, yourself.”

He shook his head. “Normally I would agree with you, but
Liam can’t be a rebellious son and expect to be a sentinel at the same time. I won’t allow it. Sentinels obey orders. They have to, Pia.”

Of course he was right. Sentinels were responsible for carrying out Dragos’s orders, and they were responsible for the safety of the Wyr demesne. It was essential for them to be able to balance following orders with taking independent initiative when necessary.

But Dragos was only right up to a point.

“Well, he isn’t a sentinel,” she said dryly. She wasn’t quite sure how to finish that sentence—Yet? Ever?—so she left it hanging awkwardly in the silence. “I guess that means he gets to be a rebellious son right now.”

He looked at her, gold eyes blazing. “Point taken. Should I go after him?”

Dropping her head back into her hands, she scrubbed at her
scalp with her fingers as she tried to think.

One of the things that made her so happy was the love she witnessed between father and son. But no matter how much love lay between them, Dragos was very much the autocrat, and Liam had already demonstrated he wasn’t responding very well to that at the moment.

Finally she replied, “I think we need to let him be. And trust him. He’s our good, sweet
boy, and I know he will become a good, sweet man. Let’s not make that transition harder on him than it has to be.” Pressing her fingertips to her temples, she added, “I think.”

Dragos dropped a hand onto her shoulder and squeezed lightly. His touch steadied her as it always did, and she reached behind her to cover his fingers with her own.

Then he sat down at the dining table, rubbed his face
and said, “So I guess we eat dinner.”

She nodded. “I guess we do.”

She thought she had lost her appetite, but they had a new son growing inside her, and the demands he made on her body had her rethinking that almost immediately. As Dragos picked up his knife and fork, she drew her plate back to her, and they ate their meal in thoughtful, worried silence.

M
ost people had
no idea who Liam was.

Most of the public, if they had heard of Liam Cuelebre, prince of the Wyr, would think of him as the new addition to the Cuelebre family. They might remember the baby photos that his mom and dad had released to the media not a year ago. If anything, they would expect him to be approaching toddlerhood.

Even most of the Wyr who lived in
Cuelebre Tower didn’t know the tall, broad-shouldered Liam who had emerged over the last two days. After flying all night and turning over the puzzle pieces of his trap, he found an odd sort of comfort standing unrecognized in line at the Starbucks on the ground floor of the Tower.

The dark-haired girl standing in line in front of him was cute. Really cute. She wore a tunic and leggings, and
her gazelle long legs were sheathed in narrow black boots.

Evidently, she thought he was pretty cute too, as she looked over her shoulder and gave him a shy smile. Male interest sparked in his tired mind. As he took a step closer and opened his mouth, someone tapped his shoulder.

When he turned, he found Hugh standing behind him. Instantly, the small pleasure of sharing a smile with a pretty
girl evaporated, and the invisible trap sprang around him again.

“What’s up, sport?” Hugh asked, his plain, bony face creased in a smile.

Hugh had been his babysitter and bodyguard for several months now. Retired from active duty in the Wyr military service, Hugh had a long rangy body, lethal combat skills and a mild, soft-spoken manner, and while Liam loved the gargoyle, the last thing he ever
wanted to ask a girl he’d been about to invite out on a date was if she had met his nanny yet.

He snapped, “What are you doing here? Did Mom or Dad send you?”

Hugh’s smile faded and his hand fell away. “No, I havna talked to them this morning.” His Scottish accent was usually faint, but it sounded more pronounced when he was upset. “I was just getting in line to grab a cup of coffee and saw
you standing here.”

Remorse prickled Liam’s conscience. Giving up on the idea of flirting with the girl in front of him, he rubbed the back of his neck and muttered, “Sorry. I didn’t get any sleep, and I’m short-tempered right now.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Hugh said. “It’s been a tough week for everybody.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Whenever Liam thought of Constantine’s still face on the funeral
pyre, he wanted to cry or fly into a rage. He had cried, in the dark of the night when he had been alone.

Con had been family too. He did not want to see the other male’s death as an opportunity. He did not.

The line moved, and the girl walked away with her drink. Liam placed his order for a cup of black coffee and Hugh did too.

As they collected their drinks, Hugh walked over to the nearby
stand to stir three packets of sugar into his coffee. Liam followed and hovered near Hugh’s elbow, his thoughts and emotions as unsettled as they had been when he had left the penthouse the night before.

Without looking at him, Hugh asked quietly, “Feel like talking? Or do you have some place you’ve got to be?”

He knew his mom would be fretting about him, and probably his dad too, if Dragos
fretted about anything. He needed to check in upstairs, but he wasn’t ready to face them yet. Not until he managed to put himself in some kind of order and had at least some idea of what he needed to say, if not what the end result of the conversation might be.

Blowing out a breath, he replied, “Sure. I mean, if you’ve got the time. You’re supposed to be off this week.”

Hugh’s rare smile appeared
again, lighting up his face. “I always have time for you, sport. Come on.”

Walking out of the Starbucks, Hugh led the way to the large open food court area by an indoor fountain. Several tables were available. As they settled into chairs, Liam gulped at his coffee and looked around. He recognized several of the people at other tables, but nobody glanced at them or appeared to recognize him. By
virtue of the acoustics and the noise of the fountain, the area was as good a place as any to have a private conversation.