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“What was the result?” he asked, panicked. “V…what did you find out? What was—”

Everyone around him took a deep breath and someone muttered, Thank God he’s really back.

At that moment, two steel-toed shitkickers approached from the right. Butch’s eyes latched on to them, then rose higher, taking in a pair of leather-clad legs, then a huge body.

Wrath towered over them all.

The king reached up and removed his wraparounds, revealing brilliant, gleaming, pale green eyes. As they didn’t appear to have pupils, the stare was like getting hit with a pair of klieg lights.

Wrath smiled broadly, his fangs so very white. “What’s doing…cousin.”

Butch frowned. “What…?”

“You’ve got some of me in you, cop.” Wrath’s smile stuck around as he slid his glasses back on. “’Course, I always knew you were a royal. Just didn’t think it went past the pain-in-the-ass part, is all.”

“Are you…serious?”

Wrath nodded. “You’re of my line, Butch. One of mine.”

As Butch’s chest got tight, he braced himself for another seizure. And so did everyone else: Rhage took the lollipop out and reached for the belt. Marissa and V tensed up.

But what came out of him was a rush of laughter. A ridiculous, belly-rolling, tear-up, stupid-idiot wave of happy hysteria.

Butch laughed and laughed and kissed Marissa’s hand. Then laughed some more.

Marissa felt the satisfaction and the excitement humming through Butch’s body as he let loose. But when he beamed up at her, she couldn’t share his joy.

He lost his smile. “Baby, it’s going to be all right.”

Vishous got to his feet. “Why don’t we give you guys a minute alone?”

“Thank you,” she said.

After the Brothers left, Butch sat up. “This is our chance—”

“If I asked, would you not do the transition?”

He froze. As if she’d slapped him again. “Marissa—”

“Would you?”

“Why don’t you want me with you?”

“I do. And I would choose the future we have now over a hypothetical cast of centuries any day. Can’t you understand that?”

He blew out a long breath, his jaw tightening. “Christ, I love you.”

Okay, so clearly he didn’t find her logic appealing. “Butch, if I asked you, would you not do it?”

When he didn’t reply, she covered her eyes, though she had no tears left in her.

“I love you,” he repeated. “So, yeah…if you asked me not to, I wouldn’t.”

She lowered her hand, her breath catching. “Swear to this. Here and now.”

“On my mother.”

“Thank you…” She pulled him into her arms. “Oh, God…thank you. And we can work through the…feeding issue. Mary and Rhage have. I just…Butch, we can have a good future.”

They were silent for a time, just sitting on the floor. Then from out of the blue, he said gruffly, “I have three brothers and a sister.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve never talked to you about my family. I have three brothers and one sister. Well, there had been two girls, but then we lost one.”

“Oh.” She sat back, thinking his tone was very odd.

And his hollow voice gave her the total creeps as he said, “My earliest memory is of my sister Joyce coming home from the hospital as an infant. I wanted to check her out, and I ran to her crib, but my father shoved me back so my older brother and sister could look at her. As I bounced off the wall, dad picked up my brother and lifted him so he could touch her. I’ll never forget my father’s voice…” Butch’s accent changed, the vowels flattening out. “This here’s your sistah, Teddy. Yah gonna love’ah and take care’ahah. I thought, what about me? I would like to love her and take care of her. I said, Pa, I wanna help, too. He didn’t even look at me.”

Marissa realized she was squeezing Butch’s hand so hard she must be bruising his bones, but he didn’t seem to notice. And she couldn’t loosen the hold.

“After that,” he went on, “I started watching my father and my mom, watching how they were different with the other kids. Main thing was on Friday and Saturday nights. My father liked to drink, and I was the one he went for when he needed to knock something around.” When Marissa gasped,