Ah, Wrath. Fingers in everyone’s pie—and that was a good thing, Assail was coming to believe.

“Allow me to show my friend into the study,” Naasha said. “And then we shall have our meeting in the library. My doggen will take you there the now and accept your orders for refreshment. Throe shall be joining us as an adviser of mine.”

Assail was careful to take formal leave of Saxton, as if the two did not know each other at all. And then he was following Naasha into a room that smelled like potpourri and wood smoke. As she closed them in together, the pair of sliding doors were as ornate as full-cut statues and had as much gold on them as the Bulgari necklace the female had at her throat.

She walked over to him. Sniffling delicately. “Will you relieve me in my mourning?”

“Always.”

He pulled her against him, because she wanted him to. And he kissed her gently so that he didn’t smudge her matte red lipstick—also because she wanted him to.

“My darling,” he said as he passed a light hand over her coiffed and cascading curls. “Do tell me. How did you find out your beloved had passed?”

As she spoke, he memorized every word she said: “I went in to greet him before his First Meal was served. He was lying back in his bed, as peaceful as can be—but he was cold. So very cold. He was gone. In his sleep—which is a blessing.”

“A good death. A fine death for a worthy male.”

She kissed him again, licking into his mouth—and he could taste Throe on her, smell the scent of the other male all over her.

“Be here when I am finished?” she said with a hint of command.

Assail’s inner dominant balked at the order, but his logical side overrode the instinct. “As I said, I shall wait for however long it takes.”

“The will has many provisions.”

“And I have naught else to do than attend upon you.”

She positively glowed at that—and it was all he could do not to roll his eyes. But then she was dancing out of the room, ready to go find out all that she was to inherit.

“Bye for now,” she quipped before sliding the doors back into place.

As the clipping of her high heels on the marble faded, he looked around at the ceiling. No security cameras that he could see, but that was just the most obvious place to put them.

Before he attempted to depart the study, he had to know if anyone was watching.

“Fritz . . . how to describe Fritz . . .”

As Rhage came up to a stoplight, he hit the brakes on the GTO and looked into the rearview. Bitty was in the back and staring forward with a rapt expression, like whatever he was about to say was the single most fascinating thing she was ever going to hear.

For a moment, his heart pounded. He couldn’t believe there was even a possibility that he might get a chance to . . .

Focus, he told himself. There was a long haul ahead before it was time to get sentimental.

But, God, if it happened, he was going to be having a lot of conversations with the little female.

“Rhage?” Mary prompted.

“Sorry, right.” The light turned green, and cued his brain into forward motion along with the car. “Okay, so Fritz looks like that guy from Raiders of the Lost Ark, you know, the one who got his face melted off. Except not that scary—and nothing actually falls away.”

“What is Raiders of the Lost . . . what?”

Rhage sagged in the driver’s seat. “Oh, my God, listen—we’re going to have to work on your education. There’s so much—have you seen Jaws?”

“No?”

He thrashed back against the headrest. “No! Oh, no, the humanity!”

As Bitty started to giggle, Rhage threw out a hand to Mary. “Hold me, I have to ask the big one.”

“I’m here for you, honey.”

Rhage looked into the rearview again. “Do you even know who John McClane is?”

“No?”

“Hans Gruber?”

“Um . . . no?”

“Maaaaaaaaaaaaary, hold me!”

Mary started laughing and shoving him back into position. “Drive the car!”

With the girls laughing, he shook himself and pulled it together. “We’ll work on all that later. Anywho, Fritz is . . . he’s older than God, as the humans say. And he gets flustered if you try to do anything. He won’t let you clean up after yourself, he stresses if you try to fix yourself any food, and he has an obsessive need to vacuum. But.” He held up his forefinger. “He bought me my own ice cream freezer. And I’m telling you, that absolves a multitude of sins.”

Mary turned around. “Fritz is the kindest force on the planet. He runs the staff and takes care of everybody and everything in the house.”

“How many people live there?” Bitty asked.

“Counting doggen?” Mary got quiet for a moment. “Jeez, I’m thinking thirty? Thirty-five? Forty? I don’t really know.”

Rhage cut in. “The most important thing is that—”

“—there’s a lot of love.”

“—there’s a movie theater with its own candy counter.”

As Mary shot him a look, he shrugged. “Do not underestimate the importance of Milk Duds in the dark. Bitty, tell me you’ve had Milk Duds?”

When the girl shook her head with a grin, he threw his hands up. “Man, I got things to teach you, young lady.”

Up ahead, Lucas Square appeared in the distance, the glow of all the shops and neon signs bright as noonday. And talk about hopping. There were pedestrians everywhere on the broad sidewalks, humans strolling arm in arm on dates, families scrambling along, clutches of teenage girls and saunters of teenage boys passing this way and that.

“Is it Friday?” he asked as he pulled into one of the open-air lots.

“I think so—no, wait, it’s Saturday.” Mary took out her phone. “Yup, it’s Saturday.”

“No wonder it’s so busy.”

It took him a while to locate a suitable spot, and he rejected a number of them for either having truck-crowding issues, cockeyed SUV-itis, or minivan creep. Finally, he found a vacant berth that was next to a planting area and docked his baby close to the curb.

“Yes, he’s always this choosy,” Mary said as she got out and popped the seat forward for Bitty.

“Hey, I take care of my females.” As their door was shut, he reached across and locked it manually, then he got out himself and used the key on the driver’s-side handle. “Ain’t no human going to ding my panels.”

They fell in line together, Bitty between them. TGI Friday’s was up ahead on the corner, and as a group of noisy humans came rushing out of its doors, Rhage frowned.

“Hey, Bitty?” he said casually. “So you’ve never been in a restaurant before?”

“No.”

Rhage stopped and put his hand on a shoulder that shocked him because it was so thin and small. But he had another concern at the moment.

“It might be kind of loud, okay? Lot of talking, you might hear babies crying, people laughing in bursts. There are going to be servers running around with big trays of food—lot of different smells and sounds. It can be overwhelming. Here’s what you need to remember. If you have to go to the bathroom, Mary will go with you so you don’t have to worry about getting lost or being alone. And if you find, at any moment, that it’s too much, we leave. I don’t care if we’ve gotten the menus, put in our order, or just picked up our forks. I’ll put a hundy on the table and we’re”—he snapped his fingers—“outta there.”

Bitty stared up at him. And he worried that he’d gone too far or—

The kid hit him with her little body and held on tight. At first, Rhage didn’t know what to do and just held his arms out to the sides and looked at Mary in a panic. But as his shellan put her hand to her mouth and seemed like she was composing herself, he hugged the girl back lightly.

As they stood there together, Rhage found himself closing his eyes.

And saying a silent prayer.