Page 33

K eegan was in a terrific mood. It was Friday, and at the end of the workday, he’d have the entire weekend to spend with his mates. Although Keegan and Phillip worked from home in the mornings, on Fridays they teleported over to attend a task force meeting. The task force had been formed many years ago to investigate a terrorist group that had struck the Council multiple times. Despite the sentinels, fallen knights, and reapers dedicated to pursuing the group, they’d made little progress.

It was not for lack of trying. Their most recent move was a couple of years ago when they’d added listening devices to the private residences of the Giles Tribunal, who ruled the rival government of the Consilium Veneficus in Europe. They’d learned that at least one member was connected to the still-unnamed group, but little else. It was as if they knew they were being spied on—even though each device was concealed with a sophisticated invisibility spell thanks to enchanter Amaury Gennevios.

Amaury was one of the rare people in the Council with two mates, and one of them was sentinel Shadow Lord Gerard Treily. Like Keegan, Gerard was on the task force and part of the extensive D’Vaire clan. To date, Phillip and Gerard were the only two sentinels with triple matebonds. Keegan had no doubt that any future sentinels who found themselves with more than one mate would also be successful. It was not in the nature of any sentinel to fail.

Unless technology was involved.

That thought in mind, Keegan kissed Phillip and left him to head to the special conference room reserved for the task force on his own. Keegan waved to Evergreen and Dudley but didn’t stop to chat with the pair since they’d get caught up on everything at lunch. Instead, he took the open staircase to the top floor of the Sentinel Brotherhood two steps at a time and charged down the hallway to Cassius’s office. Like the other sentinels, Cassius regularly worked with his door open. Keegan rapped on the glass decorated with a replica of Cassius’s dagger and went inside.

The Skeleton Lord glanced up. Sentinels were notorious for keeping their faces expressionless. But Keegan was mated to one, and Cassius was family. There was no fooling Keegan, and the guilt that crept into those ancient brown eyes didn’t surprise the Cinder Lord.

“Good morning, Cass.”

“Hello, Keegan. I thought you’d be at your task force meeting right now.”

Keegan leaned against the doorframe. “I thought we should have a chat first.”

“What about?”

“Oh, nothing major. Just the choices you’ve made since leaving the breakfast table this morning.”

“I really liked those pancakes Victor made,” Cassius said. “I wasn’t sure I would like dark chocolate chips in them, but I enjoyed them very much. Dark chocolate is okay, but I usually prefer sweeter stuff.”

“Not surprising you liked them; I think you ate twelve.”

Cassius sank into his chair. “I left plenty for everyone else.”

“I’m happy Victor found a way to give everyone chocolate for breakfast without irritating Chand. It’s a little frightening to think about you guys acting so bad after eating sugar that candy was ruthlessly outlawed for everyone in the condo.”

“Tev sneaks it in. He keeps it hidden from me, though, so I don’t have to tell anyone that he breaks the rules, but I know he does it.”

Amused, Keegan smiled. “That doesn’t surprise me; your mate marches to his own beat. I like that about him.”

“Me too. I like your mates too.”

“Are you ready to talk about what brought me up here yet?” Keegan asked.

“No, not really, but I suppose you’ll be late for your meeting if I keep stalling.”

“Punctuality is important.”

“Keegan, I thought the changes I made would be fine,” Cassius said with a frown.

The map project software confounded every sentinel who interacted with it, so Keegan knew the frustration and confusion were genuine—not that any sentinel had the ability to lie. But they could disguise their reactions. Keegan was happy they were comfortable enough around him not to, but mostly he wished they would ask questions before they made big messes for him to clean up.

“What happened?”

The grooves between Cassius’s eyebrows grew deeper. “I don’t know. The manual was open in front of me. I was doing what it told me to. Then, there was an error message. I tried to fix the mistake, but things got worse. I would have figured it out, but it kicked me out of the system.”

“It kicked everyone out of the system,” Keegan told the frustrated Skeleton Lord. “You crashed the server. I’m not rebooting it until I have time to figure out what you broke and fix it.”

“If I did what was in the manual, how did it break?”

If Keegan could answer that question, he’d probably be able to figure out why the sentinels were to technology what Evergreen was to plants. But he refused to get angry or yell at anyone—which was probably why the sentinels were so eager to hand the project to him. The reapers had lost their tempers with the sentinels on multiple occasions, according to Evergreen and Dudley.

“I’m not sure, Cass,” Keegan answered. “Give me your list of changes. I’ll add them today once I fix things.”

“You don’t have to do that; I can add them.”

The truth was, the entire thing would be far easier if the sentinels would hand the changes to Keegan to enter himself, but they refused. They wanted to complete the task themselves despite the number of times they fucked things up. But it was Friday, and Keegan didn’t want to work late or bang his head on his desk this close to a weekend, so he did the one thing sentinels could not. He carefully twisted the truth so his lie couldn’t be sniffed out by the perceptive Skeleton Lord.

“I need to try to replicate your error with the data you entered,” Keegan said, though his attempts would be few. “That way, I can ensure no one has the same issue in the future.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Cassius replied. He thankfully handed Keegan his list of changes he’d gathered either from his own travels to Europe or ones given to him by the sentinels whose assignments were to travel across the globe to accurately map it. The mission was to find every tiny population and mark their race and current home. None of that information was shared with the Council.

It was up to the Sentinel Brotherhood to defend and protect the people of the Council, but they refused to hound any population to join the government. In fact, most of the populations added to the map had no clue that they’d been found by a sentinel since the elite assassins preferred to stay in the shadows as they went about their work.

Breathing a sigh of relief as he took the information from Cassius and left the Skeleton Lord’s office, Keegan reversed his steps and went downstairs.

“I didn’t hear any yelling,” Evergreen sang as Keegan passed the massive desk where he and Dudley ran the management of the offices.

“I’m not going to yell at them,” Keegan replied in the same syrupy tone.

“Yes, you will. Eventually,” Evergreen said with a snarky grin.

“I have bet him you will stay calm,” Dudley confided. “I have faith in you, Keegan. Unlike the reapers, you are mated to a sentinel. You understand how we function.”

While it was true Keegan had better insight into what made sentinels tick thanks to his fantastically intimate connection with Phillip, he had no fucking clue why they couldn’t read the simple instructions in the manual the reapers had created and enter data without fucking it up.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Keegan told the sentinel, patting the reception desk as he sped past it so he wasn’t any later for the meeting. He stalked into the conference room, and everyone was already waiting for him. “Sorry I’m late, Grymmie.”

“No apology is necessary. You are not late. Is everything okay?” Grymington asked.

“Cass broke the map program. Crashed the server. I’ll reboot it after our meeting.”

Grymington’s mouth grew pinched, and color rose in his cheeks as if he was reliving some past trauma. With the brief experience Keegan had gained since he took on the title of Cinder Lord and the plethora of rumors regarding the sentinels and the program, he didn’t doubt that Grymington had endured much before Keegan took it over.

“I understand,” Grymington said, his voice flat.

“Did you check to make sure he didn’t set the entire server room on fire?” Orpheus asked, his green gaze glittering with remembered irritation.

“I figured Evergreen and Dudley would’ve smelled smoke if he had,” Keegan replied.

“Good call,” Masse commented, crossing his arms. His face was stony with the same level of consternation as the only other two living reapers.

Grymington shook his head slightly as if to ward off the memories, and it barely moved his tangled blond curls. “Okay, do we have any updates of our own to discuss?”

“No,” Gerard answered. “We have nothing new to report. While I am grateful that there have been no further attacks—since the last thing I want is anyone harmed or property destroyed—years have passed since their last move.”

“I’m still surprised nothing happened at the parade commemorating our two hundredth race joining the Council,” FK21 Ridgely Hawthorne-Stone commented. “If there was ever a perfect opportunity to create havoc, that was it.”

“Yeah, nearly every leader was present at some point along the parade route,” added Ridgely’s best friend, FK19 Warner Madison. “Thankfully, VK Valerius erred on the side of caution and put plenty of fallen knights, sentinels, harpies, and dragons in place to counter any threat.”

“Despite the break in attacks, I do not think we should speculate that they are finished creating chaos or hurting people,” Grymington said. “I believe it is only a matter of time until they carry out something new to either damage property or to harm our people. We must be ready.”

“Agreed,” SN25 Cavan Creatlach commented. “Maybe the parade was too obvious and they knew they’d be caught if they tried anything.”

“Good point,” Orpheus remarked. “Thanks to Grant, we had a lot of security, and we practiced beforehand to ensure it went smoothly. Maybe that massive presence kept them from doing something awful.”

“We will have to stick with hoping that Amaury’s listening devices pick up something we can use and that we are able to thwart any future attack,” Grymington said.

“We’ll keep visiting Darryl Martel in prison and hope this is the week he’ll finally tell us about the structure of the group,” FK33 Dominic Coates commented. “It would be nice if we knew more about them.”

Darryl Martel was one of the few people in the terrorist group who had been caught by the Council, and despite a long prison sentence thanks to his bombing his now-ex-girlfriend’s home, he’d spent years keeping silent on his affiliation and everything else about his cohorts.

“Starting with what they call themselves and how many damn people are involved,” Gentry replied.

“I will compile the notes from the sentinels assigned to eavesdrop on the Giles Tribunal this week and send it to everyone this afternoon,” Grymington said. “The quick glance I took at them before our meeting showed nothing of significance, but it doesn’t hurt to familiarize ourselves with everything going on with the Consilium.”

“Sounds good, I hope everyone has a great weekend,” Keegan enthused, resting a hand on Phillip’s shoulder and giving him an affectionate squeeze.

“We don’t have to tell you to have a terrific time; you have two mates,” FK38 Gentry Patterson-Kinsler replied with a grin lighting up his hazel eyes.

“Says the man literally obsessed with his other half,” Ridgely commented.

Gentry cocked his head at his close friend. “You have no room to talk.”

“Stop bragging about your matebonds; some of us haven’t been blessed by Fate yet,” Orpheus complained.

“Yeah, why are you being so insensitive, you jerks?” Warner asked.

“I never thought I’d be so excited to reboot a server, but it beats watching you guys fight,” Keegan said as he stood.

“If things are going to get ugly, you better take it into the lobby so Evergreen can enjoy it,” Dominic drawled.

“Yeah, and hurry because he’ll ask us to recap it if not and our details are never good enough,” Masse pleaded.

With a laugh, Keegan kissed Phillip. “I’ll meet you back at home?”

“Yes, but let me know if I can be of any help.”

Keegan nodded and brushed their lips together again. Although he had little faith in Phillip’s abilities with technology, he’d call Phillip to join him if the task kept him in the office over thirty minutes. Loving Phillip meant honoring what could be a capricious relationship between sentinel and dragon. The last thing Keegan wanted to do was cause any turmoil for Phillip, so he’d call his mate to return to the office to keep him company. And he’d ensure Phillip didn’t put his dragony claws anywhere near the map project or he’d make more work for Keegan.

“I will. Give Victor a kiss for me,” Keegan said.

“Unless he is in the middle of a task; I have no wish to get in his way.”

“Of course not,” Keegan replied, adoring Phillip’s kindness and appreciating the fact that he wouldn’t dare bother Victor during work hours either unless it was an emergency and he literally had no other choice. “Love you, Spicy.”

“I love you too, Sunshine.”

Dashing out of the room before the riff raff could complain that he was showing off his beautiful matebond, Keegan headed for the server with nothing but gratitude for the fantastic life the Arch Lich and Fate had granted him.