“How was it?” Andrea asked.
“It wasn’t bad, actually. They live in this place on the hill in Ukraine. There were orchards and woods everywhere. Villages. We’d go to town every Saturday and go through the market. Radomil would always buy me something. He is a nice guy.” Desandra leaned forward. “Really good in bed. I mean really, really good. I didn’t go out much. We were busy. You know.”
Yes, yes, we got it. You had lots of nookie. “And his family?”
“They are okay. His sister, Ivanna, is nice, and she and his brother are pretty much the brains. Radomil . . . He isn’t stupid. He’s just . . . He thinks in simple ways. He doesn’t worry himself about politics. I pretty much knew after a month that he would never be in charge.”
“What’s his beast?” I asked.
“He’s a lynx. Their whole family is.”
“What happened to their parents?” Andrea asked.
“Dead.” Desandra shrugged. “Killed a few years ago when they were fighting for their territory. It’s Radomil, his two brothers, and two sisters. Oh and their grandfather. He’s really old. He walks with a cane and half of the time doesn’t know where he is. I liked living there. They didn’t really involve me much, but I was so young, I didn’t care.”
“So why did you break up?” I prompted.
“My father canceled my marriage. I only lived with Radomil for five months. Kral came and got me.”
“Didn’t Radomil fight for you?” Andrea asked. I could see it in her face. If someone tried to take Raphael away from her, she would kill anything that stood in her way to keep him.
Desandra shook her head. “He didn’t want me to leave, but his brother talked him out of it. Three years later I married Gerardo. I was with him for two years.”
“Did you like him?”
Desandra was looking at her hands, her face tired. “Yes. I liked him. But it doesn’t matter now.”
“I know it sucks, but if you tell me, it might help me understand what’s going on better.”
Another sigh. “Isabella and her husband rule the Belve Ravennati. Gerardo and Ignazio have some power but not really enough to do anything major without their parents signing off on a dotted line. Isabella never liked me. With Radomil’s family it was laid-back, but with the Belve Ravennati it’s always very serious. Everything is important and it’s all about duty and looking after the family’s interests.”
Desandra stuck a finger in her mouth and imitated retching. Charming.
“I was a beta’s mate. I was supposed to have responsibilities. They wouldn’t let me do anything. I was trying to learn some Italian and I walked in on their meeting once, and his mother told Gerardo that I was just a temporary arrangement. So Isabella, Gerardo, and I were at the trade summit in Budapest. They had their big meeting. I could’ve gone in but I sat outside with the betas.”
“Why?” Andrea asked.
“Because they don’t know how to keep their mouths shut,” Desandra said. “They get bored and blab. If you listen carefully, you can find things out.”
Okay. She wasn’t nearly as dumb as she pretended to be.
“After the meeting, my father found me and told me to pack. I told him I wouldn’t do it. I went to find Gerardo. He was mad out of his mind. Those four guys that follow my father around? They are killers. Two wolves, a rat, and a bear. They do whatever he tells them to. They have no . . . consciousness.”
“Conscience?” I guessed.
“Yes. That. They’d been by and told him they would be taking me. Gerardo said the only way we could win this would be to fight my father.” Desandra looked at me. “You have no idea how bad my father is. I’ve seen . . .” She bit her lip. “I’ve seen people die in ways you can’t even imagine.”
Her nostrils flared. She hunched over slightly, hugging herself. Green rolled over her irises, emerald against the black of dilated pupils. She seemed to unconsciously shrink away from me, putting more space around herself. I’d seen this emotion enough to recognize it. Desandra was scared. She was remembering something and the memory petrified her.
“I used to like this cute computer guy. He had glasses. He worked for our pack. He did something—I don’t even know what—and my father stuck his head on a pike. I could see it from my bedroom window. I had to move my bed so the dead head of the cute guy I’d kissed wouldn’t be staring at me in my sleep.”
If I had a chance to kill Jarek Kral, I would take it. I didn’t even need proof to know she was telling the truth. One could fake fear, but not the body’s involuntary responses to it.
“I told Gerardo it was suicide. He wasn’t good enough to take on my father with me or without me. He said I was weak and if I wasn’t willing to fight with him, I should just go back. And then he picked up my clothes and threw them in the hallway.”
Everyone this woman knew treated her like garbage. She made no effort to fight or to take off. She simply accepted it and tortured herself and others in revenge.
Desandra shrugged. “I couldn’t believe it. We’d just had sex that morning. I thought he loved me, but instead he threw me out. I had to get out of there. We were staying in this huge hotel, so I hid on a balcony. I just wanted to cry. Radomil found me. I felt really alone and he was nice to me. He held me and he told me that it would all work out. I wanted to stick it to Gerardo, too, so we did it right there on that balcony. There you have it. The whole ugly story.”
Raphael walked through the door.
Desandra sat up straighter and put one leg over another. “Hey there, handsome.”
Every time I managed to scrape up a shred of sympathy for her, she did something to set it on fire.
Raphael glanced at her. “Not interested.”
“It’s the stomach, isn’t it?”
“No,” Andrea said. “It’s me. What’s up, honey?”
“We’re going on a hunt.”
“What?” I asked.
“A hunt,” he said. “On horses.”
What the hell . . . ? “Are we going to joust next? Maybe arrange our tables in a circle?”
Raphael shrugged. “If we do, I’m not wearing armor. We’re all invited to the hunt and I’m pretty sure it’s mandatory.”
“Great!” Desandra jumped off the bed. “Anything to get out of here.”
I pointed my finger at her. “Hush. The entire castle is going?”
Raphael nodded. “Everybody is going.”
If we stayed behind, we could be ambushed, and with the castle empty, nobody would know or care. Hugh was up to something. “They do know that she’s eight months pregnant?”
“It seems so. Apparently there is a prize if you win.”
Going hunting in the middle of the mountains or staying in an abandoned castle with a hysterical Desandra and no assistance in case of an imminent attack? Choices, choices. “Hunt it is.”
The road curved in front of me, following a shore of a sea-foam-green lake to our left. It lay placid, licking gently at the bottom of the mountain protruding into it. Tall Mediterranean cypresses lined the road, each perfectly straight, like a conical candle, and between them laurel trees spread their branches. On the right, grapevines lined the slope of the mountain in long, gently curving rows.
My horse was a bay, sturdy and wide-bodied, with short shoulders and a clean head. She stepped with calm surety, picking her way up the old paved road, untroubled by smells of shapeshifters on all sides. I had a feeling I could ride her straight into the lake and she wouldn’t twitch an ear.
Shapeshifters walked and rode all around me. Desandra had her own horse. At first she wanted to walk, so I argued against her walking, and then I argued against the horse, but she dug her heels in at any suggestion of a cart. She would not be riding in a cart, and she was the daughter of an alpha, and if she didn’t get her way, she would rip out some throats. I ended up going through all of the horses available to us and picking the oldest, most docile creature I could find. Now I had a heavily pregnant woman on a horse that kept flaring her nostrils. Clearly the mare had a serious suspicion that the human riding her was really a wolf and was considering bolting for her life. Werewolf wombs had to be made of steel, because not only did Desandra not show any signs of distress, but she looked fresh as a daisy.