Page 119 of Alpha Heat

“It makes you look like a man.”

Father snorted, but otherwise remained quiet.

Xan squeezed Pater’s hand.

“I’ve wanted to see you so badly,” Pater whispered, his eyes filling with tears. “I thought I might never again.”

Father loosed a short, hurt noise, but when Xan glanced his way, he was staring hard at the wallpaper across from the bed with a grim expression.

“You’re going to get well now and we’ll see each other all the time,” Xan murmured.

“I hope so.”

Wanting to provide his pater with even more reason to recover, Xan said, “Caleb has a heat soon. You’ll see your grandchild by next year’s Autumn Feasts with any luck.”

Pater’s soft smile warmed Xan’s heart, and they stared at each other, letting their devotion be felt. Xan curled up with his head against his pater’s chest, listening to his heartbeat and feeling the soothing tug of his fingers in his hair until his father said, “He’s asleep.”

Sitting up, Xan saw that Pater’s eyes had closed. Father touched his forehead and frowned. “Still feverish, but much better than before.” He turned to where Joon stood by the door watching the events unfold. “Stay here with him. If his fever breaks, change his pajamas and the bedclothes. Xan and I have things to discuss in the library.”

Joon swallowed hard and met Xan’s gaze with an anxious eye, but only said, “Of course, sir. It’ll be my pleasure to watch after Mr. Lofton.”

As Xan followed his father toward the staircase, his gut doing somersaults and his knees feeling like water, his father shot a glance toward the nursery wing and said, “Ray is doing better?”

“He’s sleeping well. His fever has broken, and his cough seems to be under control with the elderberry syrup.”

Father nodded curtly and took off down the steps at a rapid pace. Xan, shorter than his father by a good number of inches, had to work to keep up. The library was dark in the middle of the night, but it smelled exactly the same: a hint of old books and leather.

His father snapped on the light. The leather sofas positioned opposite each other next to the fireplace and the big wooden desk Xan had bent over on more than one occasion as a child to receive his father’s belt for poor behavior were all illuminated with memories stretching back through his entire life.

The window with the potted palm next to it was the one he’d broken with a ball when he was seven and Ray was teaching him to hit. The child-sized chairs in the corner, clustered around a low table and surrounded by a mini-library of children’s books, was where his pater had taught him to read.

Xan swallowed hard against a sudden influx of emotion, nostalgia hitting him like a weight on his chest.

“Sit,” his father said, motioning toward the couches. He straightened the collar of his rumpled shirt. It looked as if he hadn’t changed in days. He went to the liquor cabinet and poured only one drink.

Xan tensed at the lack of common courtesy, familiar with the disrespect inherent in it. His father never failed to offer a drink to Ray, or to Janus, or any other man he admired or, at the very least, respected. He stood defiantly.

“You shouldn’t have come,” Father said, turning back to Xan with a tight expression. He took a sip of his drink and crossed to the wall where the belts still hung—the ones used for punishment, the belts he used to make Xan choose between. He fingered them one-by-one and then sighed. “You’re too old by far to take a belt to you now. It’s a shame. It was the only way you ever behaved.”

Xan grit his teeth together, a rush of fear and rage shooting through him. If he’d ever “misbehaved,” it’d only been because he was a child with too much energy and no place to put it, and too many expectations on his shoulders from almost the very beginning.

His father turned to him again. “You’re reckless and selfish and make decisions from your emotions. Pathetic. Useless. At this point, I’d be happy to leave the estate to Janus.”

Xan’s nostrils flared.

His father cocked his head and lifted a brow. “Do you know what Janus and I talked about when he was here?”

“No.”

“He didn’t tell you?”

Xan stared up at his father, the fear that had always underscored his interactions with him hardening into something more like loathing. He opened his mouth to tell him that Janus was sick and had brought the flu to Virona, but he clomped his lips shut again, holding that information for a later time.

“I’m surprised he didn’t choose to gloat. Perhaps he’s growing up after all.”

Xan lifted a brow.

“We talked about a lot of things. But he regretted having to tell me about the quality of the work you’re doing—or rather not doing—on the satellite office there.”