Raphael entered the room and imdiately sensed the tension radiating from the three Alphas seated in front of him. It was palpable, thick enough to choke on....territorial aggression mixed with barely contained hostility and sothing that felt suspiciously like jealousy.
He looked at them with eyes that clearly showed his amusent at the situation.
Damian sat behind his massive desk, his posture deceptively relaxed but his gray eyes hard as stone. Damon stood near the window, arms crossed, practically vibrating with restrained aggression. And Silas occupied the chair nearest the door, his dark eyes tracking Raphael’s every movent with predatory focus.
Damian looked at Raphael’s sinfully handso face and felt the nearly overwhelming urge to punch a hole in it. To mar that perfect skin, to break that aristocratic nose, to wipe away the knowing smile that suggested Raphael found their territorial posturing amusing.
But he held back. Forced himself to smile instead.....a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, that probably looked more like a baring of teeth.
He couldn’t fool Raphael.
The incubus....who literally fed on emotions, who could read feelings like others read books....saw right through the false hospitality to the territorial fury beneath. And he couldn’t help but smile wider, because they were behaving like a bunch of obsessive children fighting over a toy.
But he chose to keep quiet. He wanted to know why they’d summoned him to their office instead of taking him directly to Eve, who he knew should be awake by now. Unless they were trying to keep him away from her.
Which, given their barely contained hostility, seed likely.
Damian spoke first, his voice laced with false hospitality that dripped like honey over poison. "Well, good morning. I hope the room prepared was to your liking?"
Raphael nodded, though he was well aware they’d placed him in the farthest possible quarters from the master bedroom. Either to keep him away from Eve, or because they genuinely believed distance would sohow diminish his connection to his niece.
It wouldn’t. But let them have their illusions.
Damian continued, his voice taking on an edge despite the pleasant words. "Eve is awake, and she asked about you this morning. We told her you were in your room resting. You’ll be eting up with her very soon, but we wanted to make sure you were well settled and... satisfied... before you et her."
The way Damian emphasized the word ’satisfied’ made Raphael’s eyes narrow slightly. There was subtext there. An implication he didn’t quite understand yet but suspected he wouldn’t like.
After a mont of loaded silence, Raphael spoke, looking directly at Damian. "Do you feel threatened by my presence here?"
Damon didn’t even let him finish the question before responding with explosive force. "THREATENED? As if we could ever feel threatened by you!"
Raphael’s gaze shifted to the middle brother, one eyebrow rising in polite inquiry. "Then what is the problem? Because ever since I arrived, you have been looking at as if you can’t wait to tear my head off my shoulders." He paused, letting his gaze move between all three of them. "Let guess.....is this because of my niece?"
"Goddamn yes," Damian said bluntly, all pretense of hospitality evaporating. "Because how do you expect to treat a man as handso as sin itself who shows up at my door claiming to be my mate’s uncle?"
He scoffed, the sound sharp and bitter. "Uncle. As if! How sure am I that you’re really her uncle when you don’t even look the part? You could literally pass off as her brother. Hell, you could pass as her potential lover with how beautiful you are. And your kind apparently forgot to draw the line between relatives imprinting on each other."
The accusation hung in the air, ugly and explicit.
Raphael looked at the two Alphas in front of him and felt a surge of irritation so strong he briefly considered just draining them both dry of life force. The sheer stupidity of what they were suggesting.....the thinking level they’d been reduced to just because they perceived him as a potential threat to their mate.....was almost impressive in its absurdity.
His expression hardened, all traces of amusent vanishing. When he spoke, he emphasized each word with deliberate precision, his voice dropping to a tone that carried centuries of authority.
"She is my niece. My brother’s blood. My very last relative." His amber eyes.....so like Eve’s.....blazed with barely controlled fury. "How could you even think of such a thing? How dare you imply that I would look at Azrael’s daughter....my own flesh and blood.....with anything other than familial devotion?"
The temperature in the room seed to drop several degrees. Power radiated from Raphael in waves.....not sexual energy now, but sothing older, more dangerous. The kind of power that ca from surviving two centuries of supernatural politics, from watching everyone he loved die, from spending decades protecting the last remnant of his family.
Silas, sensing the situation about to spiral into violence, intervened quickly. "Let’s all calm down."
He looked at Raphael, his voice reasonable and calm.....the voice of a diator trying to prevent bloodshed. "Raphael, you should understand why we feel this way. Eve is our mate. She just transford into a being we know nothing about. And then you show up offering solutions we don’t have for our own mate."
He gestured slightly toward Raphael. "And looking the way you do. Radiating the sa energy she does. Don’t you think we are very justified to feel... concerned?"
Raphael looked at Silas.....the only one of them who looked and sounded sensible.....and felt so of his fury ebb. He shook his head, not in denial but in reluctant understanding.
"Okay," he said finally. "I get it. I understand that you guys still feel that I am a threat to Eve....."
"Damn right you are," Damon interjected imdiately.
".....but I want you to know that Eve is my blood," Raphael continued, speaking over the interruption. "My responsibility. My family."
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