“I did not mean to cause such disarray,” Asher said, and used his hair to hide the scars again, so that he was all golden hair and angelic face peeking out. The pale blue shirt made his eyes seem even bluer, like a startling sky that could look back at you. The shirt left a small V of his chest bare, and was bigger than it needed to be so the color complemented, but the size left him looking lost in it, like he’d borrowed the shirt, though I knew better. The black vinyl pants with their slashes of matching blue, on the other hand, were like all good vinyl and looked like a second skin. The black boots barely came over his ankles so they left his long legs looking even longer. The shirt looked careless, almost sloppy, but I knew how hard it was to get into vinyl; he hadn’t done that casually. He’d been Jean-Claude’s lover for hundreds of years, which meant he knew what the other man liked to see him in, and though it didn’t make sense to me, Jean-Claude watched him in the clothes. He held on to his anger, but even wrapped in Richard’s arms he watched Asher in that way he did sometimes—hell, the way I did, and Nathaniel did sometimes, and the way Dev almost always watched him.

I squeezed Sin’s hand and told him, “Sit with Micah and Nathaniel.”

He kissed me, light and chaste, and did what I asked. I went to Jean-Claude, which meant going to Richard, too, but the days when I went to him for anything but occasional rough sex were long past. He was still handsome, and great in bed, but that wasn’t enough to get me past the temper tantrums. Asher and he had taken turns making Jean-Claude and me miserable.

I ended up having to sit in front of Jean-Claude so that the three of us were sitting spooned in each other’s laps on one end of the couch. Jean-Claude wrapped his arms around me and I put my hands around his arms like he’d been sitting with Richard before I sat down. Then Richard’s long, tanned arms came around on either side of us and held us, and his legs settled more firmly on either side of us. It was another reminder of just what a big guy he was, in every way. He’d sacrificed some of his weight-lifting time to hit fight practice more seriously. I’d seen what the length of his arms and legs could do when he sparred; now they made a nest for the two of us. There’d been a time when I’d have given almost anything for this closeness to be as real as what we were advertising, but my reality was sitting on the other side of the room.

“Anita didn’t mean that Narcissus has lost power, Asher, she meant that you had,” Richard said.

“I don’t understand what you mean; nothing has changed for me. I can still call and command the hyenas.”

“If you had made Narcissus your animal to call, then you could have commanded the werehyenas, but now you have Kane, just Kane,” Richard said.

“You underestimate my abilities with my animal to call, Richard. Because Jean-Claude is so gentle with you and your wolves, you think that is the only choice.”

“Narcissus didn’t want to fight your control of him before, Asher, so you thought you were more powerful with your animal to call than Jean-Claude, because I was able to fight his control, but Narcissus couldn’t. He’ll want to fight now.”

“He can try to fight me, but I am still his master.”

“No,” Jean-Claude said, “no, you are not. Do you not understand yet that if Narcissus fights you he can keep most of his people free of your call? He is more powerful than he has let you see; like a woman who hides how strong she is so as to stroke her man’s ego, so Narcissus has been with you.”

Asher shook his head.

“Did you, do you still think that you can have control of Narcissus against his full will?” Micah asked.

“He will fight you, mon ami, and he is more powerful than Richard, because he is not conflicted about his ties to his group, or his own leadership; he revels in it. He will keep you out of himself and thus out of everyone else. One on one, you may be able to force your will on them, but as a group you must go through the head to gain the body, and you have insulted and discarded the head. You have forced me to lock him up. Do you think he will forget, or forgive that?”

“I am sorry, Jean-Claude, truly sorry if my decision made things difficult.”

“Difficult?” I said. “He bargained my body and my hyena to call to Narcissus, so he wouldn’t kill Kane, at least Kane. He wanted to kill both of you.”

Jean-Claude hugged me tighter, either willing me to be nicer or for comfort. I could have opened my shields and known what he was feeling, but not if he wanted to keep me out, and I was betting that he didn’t want me in his head that far right now. Some things need to be private, and how he actually felt about Asher was probably one of them. Richard was stroking a hand over each of our arms, soothing us both, I think.

“If you had made him your beast, he wouldn’t be imprisoned,” Asher said.

“The werehyenas are almost not the largest group in St. Louis anymore,” Micah said, “but combine the rats, wolves, leopards, and lions, and they aren’t even close to having the most soldiers.”

“It is unnatural for different kinds of wereanimal to work together like this,” Kane said.

“You say that as if there’s anything natural about us in the first place,” Micah said.

“One last time, why the fuck are you here for this talk, cat?” Asher said, and almost snarled it at him, flashing fangs, which he almost never did.

“He’s my other fiancé, and one of the two men who may be joining me in a commitment ceremony with Jean-Claude.”