Page 61 of Grand Romantic Delusions and the Madness of Mirth, Part One

“It’s usually …” Bolan swallows. “It’s usually not a choice, right? In bond groups, all children are … our children. That, ah, that’s something that would go in a contract. We’re discussing that, right? An actual fucking contract between us?”

“Yes,” I say.

“And what do you bring to it?” Sully asks Bolan directly. The question is pointed, but doesn’t feel nasty.

“I …” Bolan runs his hands through his hair roughly, then scrubs his face.

“I’ll have to be bought out of my current contract.

I assume that’s the sort of thing that can be considered a liability in these sorts of situations.

I might have enough money to do it myself, but I …

I’ll need someone to sort that out for me. ”

We all just stare at the rock star until he blows out a breath. “And … Mirth and I … Mirth and I …”

“You’re soul bound,” Christoph says.

“What!?” Sully cries.

“But you … broke that bond?” the duke asks, just as mildly as he seems to address anything. Even things as potentially explosive as the topic of already being soul bound to a princess who’s participating in a matchmaking event at her father’s behest.

“Not … not exactly.”

Christoph is grabbing Sully around the shoulders and cradling him back against his chest— moving so fast that I only belatedly realize the mage has lunged for Bolan.

“I knew it, you fucker!” Sully shouts.

“She didn’t tell you?” Bolan asks dejectedly.

“You fucked your way through school!” Sully leans into Christoph’s hold, agony streaking tautly through his face. “You’ve got a different fucking groupie hanging off you every —”

“So do you! And you fucked Armin!”

“Explain,” I interject. “If you and Mirth are soul bonded, then why —”

“I don’t … I didn’t really know.” Bolan squares his shoulders. “I’m not fucking discussing this with you until I discuss it with her. That and … and something else … but you wanted everything on the table, and that’s my baggage.”

“Let me go,” Sully mutters to Christoph.

The bear shifter releases him, and the fabricator mage steps away to pull on a T-shirt, then a sweater, still with the towel hanging low off his hips.

“I’ve got more money than I even know,” Sully says steadily.

Then he looks at Christoph, utterly resolute.

“I can pay off your debts, invest in whatever you need, and not even touch the capital. ”

Christoph starts to shake his head.

Sully looks to me then. “That’s how this is supposed to work, right?

In sickness and health? You want Bastian to have nothing he can whisper in Mirth’s ear.

No reason for him to reject us. So I’ll claim my fucking title formally.

We get Bolan out of his contract. We pay off Christoph’s debts.

And … Mirth decides when and who she wants to fuck and breed with. Fair?”

Sully glances at all of us. No one says anything. Then with a viciously bright grin, he adds, “And Eli doesn’t get to watch over any other deathbeds in case he gets all ‘helpful’ again.”

“Fucking brat,” I say before I can mitigate my reaction.

Christoph throws back his head, booming laughter filling the night around us. Even Bolan chuckles quietly.

“It will take me at least a couple of days to get a solid draft together,” I say, feeling a little lightheaded.

“Then even after we all sign, it will take weeks for all the paperwork to clear.” It’s one thing to mull a problem over in my head and quite another to decide to bond myself to three others in a matter of minutes. Four others if Mirth accepts us.

“We have an agreement,” Christoph rumbles, holding his hand out, palm down. “That’s a good start. We four will court Mirth as a bond group, and separately … if that’s what she wants.”

“Mirth can’t wait weeks,” Sully says, stepping up and placing his hand over Christoph’s.

“We should be united,” I say, stepping up to place my hand over Sully’s. “Before approaching her … courting her … we should make a schedule, and —”

“Just a little caveat.” Bolan interrupts as he swaggers a few steps closer, eyeing our joined hands belligerently. “It’s five, not four.”

“What?”

“The stable boy,” Bolan says sourly. “Mirth is fucking the stable boy. Who is also apparently my half-brother.”

We all stare at him for a beat.

“You might have fucking brought that up!” Sully snaps.

Bolan shrugs belligerently.

“Why?” Christoph asks rhetorically. “Mirth chooses who she wishes to be intimate with. The stable boy is a —”

I huff. “He’s not a stable boy. It’s Rian Callaghan. He’s young, yes, but he’s also a rising star in horse breeding. He’s under contract with Bastian right now. We’d have to buy him out of it. Do you think he’ll want to join us?”

“Yes.” Bolan grimaces. “Unfortunately. Their connection is … obviously not just infatuation.”

Sully shakes his head at me. “Does nothing shock you?”

“Well,” I answer honestly, “I didn’t know Rian and Bolan were related.”

“Yeah,” the rock star says sulkily. “I’ll be having a long conversation with my mother right after we conclude this bonding session.”

“In person might be better,” Christoph says.

Bolan nods.

I might normally be shocked at the rock star’s easy agreement, his deferment to the bear shifter.

But I can actually feel the energy shifting between us now.

None of us are awry in nature, but we’re all essence-wielders of some power.

This agreement will only need to be inked on paper for legal purposes, because we’re fortifying it — and the dynamics of our bond group — just standing under starlight with our hands loosely linked.

“Mirth isn’t waiting for any of our family or financial drama to conclude,” Sully says. “She’s clearly upset …”

“Something about a list,” Bolan interjects.

“And all of us being connected to Armin. ”

“That should be a good thing?” I intend it as a statement, but it comes out a question.

“Don’t worry.” Sully throws an offhand smirk my way. “Mirth isn’t going to care that you want me to suck your dick, Lord Hereford. Or that you sucked Armin’s.”

“I didn’t —”

“Or that Christoph doesn’t really like fucking anyone,” Sully continues, narrowing his eyes on the bear shifter. “Am I right?”

Christoph doesn’t even bat an eyelash in response.

“My point being,” Sully purrs, “this is not about sex. There’s something else going on in Mirth’s head, and I’m not leaving her alone with it.”

“We can’t overwhelm her,” I say hastily.

“She’s not some delicate flower,” Bolan snarks. “As pretty and sweet as she may seem with that prim little tone that makes me want to bend her over and spank her, then fucking worship her with my mouth.”

“Fuck …” Sully moans. “You too?”

Me three, I think. I fucking love that cool, perfect-princess thing Mirth wields like a weapon of mass destruction. But before I can either shut down the inappropriate tangent or add my own agreement to it, Sully looks pointedly at Bolan, then at our clasped hands.

“Ready to step up, rock star?”

Bolan takes a deep breath. Then he murmurs, “I think Mirth might hate me right now. I might be a liability.”

“None of us are children of a bond group,” I say, measuring my words carefully. “But … can any of us deny the energy that shifts between us and Mirth? Or that we’ve been drawn together ourselves multiple times these past two days?”

No one offers any argument .

I nod. “That might just be Mirth … how her awry nature exerts itself.”

“It isn’t,” Sully says quietly. “Mirth goes out of her way to not draw people to her. She used Armin as a shield for most of her life. She’s … exposed without him.”

“And he was never as balanced as when he was with her,” Bolan adds.

“It was more than them being a complete unit. Armin literally couldn’t sleep if he wasn’t in the same room as Mirth.

Wherever they were, he’d climb in through the window after she was asleep, sprawl out on a bare floor with a single pillow, then slip out before dawn.

He never had other long-term relationships. Neither did Mirth.”

“Except you,” Sully says. “You and me.”

“Soul bound,” Christoph murmurs.

Bolan swallows harshly. Then he nods stiffly. “I thought it was Armin. At first. Not sexually, but …”

“Me too,” Sully murmurs. “Though I did give sucking Armin’s cock a solid attempt.”

Bolan meets each of our gazes in turn. Then he clasps his hand firmly over ours.

Unseen energy shifts around us, tugging at our hands, wrists, and forearms, then settling gently into our skin.

An essence-enforced agreement. A bond that should grow and mature over time.

I’m grinning like it’s the first time I’ve experienced wielding my power. But seeing a similar reaction on three other faces, I don’t bother to quash the expression.

Then Anne unlocks the door leading into Mirth’s rooms and steps out onto the balcony.

We drop our hands, turning to her as one.

She looks … concerned and upset. But just for the moment it takes for her to sweep us all with her gaze.

Then she pulls on that mask of civility that we all craft for ourselves at a young age.

“Gentlemen, I’ve been looking for yo u. The rest of our …

event has been cancelled. You’re welcome to stay here tonight, of course. And we will serve breakfast, but —”

“Where’s Mirth?” Sully interrupts. “What’s happened?”

Anne doesn’t chastise him. In fact, she looks at him with … sympathy. “Mirth has gone to meet with her father.”

“She’s … made a choice,” Bolan says hollowly. “It’s not us.”

Anne clears her throat, clearly weighing her next words. “Not yet.” Then she smiles tightly at each of us in turn. “But I suggest that if you have any plans, you don’t hesitate implementing them. Good night.”

She retreats with that shifter swiftness before we can interrogate her further.

All eyes turn to me.

“I’ll have a draft of the basic contract by morning,” I say, my voice sounding just as hollow as Bolan’s did. “I’ll need particulars —”

“Just email a list,” Sully says, already striding for the door. “And someone needs to talk me through claiming a fucking title and shit.”

“I can do that,” Christoph says. “I just went through it myself.”

“Good. I’ll have my estate lawyers contact yours.” The fabricator mage pauses for a moment. “We’ll need a name … right? We have to pick a bond group name, yes? Does it have to be … Savoy?”

“Let Mirth decide,” Bolan says.

“We have to form the base without Mirth,” I say. “That’s … that’s how her father set this all up. Even if … even if she’s our crux. She is our crux, yes?”

The others all murmur in agreement, and relief rushes through me. I’m not going insane, dreaming of some mythical connection. Or at the very least, we’re all going insane at the same rate. Though admittedly Bolan and even Sully are farther down that path.

“Savoy,” Christoph says. “It has the least … baggage because the title hasn’t been claimed in years.”

“Over a century and a half,” I murmur.

“The Savoy pack,” Bolan says.

“Bond group,” I say. “The Savoy bond group. Only two of you are shifters.”

“Three,” Bolan says with a grim undertone. “The long-lost half-brother is a wolf as well.”

“But is he as pretty as you?” Sully bats his eyelashes at Bolan sarcastically.

Bolan doesn’t rise to the bait. “Prettier. With a much more firmly cemented bond.”

“One step at a time,” I say— even though I feel like rushing after Mirth and falling at her feet myself. That’s just the aftermath of the formulation of the bond between us, I tell myself. Not any sort of … love sickness.

“Savoy,” Sully says. “The Savoy bond group. Fine. If it helps us woo Mirth and convince her bastard of a father to accept us, then fine.”

He takes off through Mirth’s rooms. Either Anne didn’t lock the door behind her, or the fabricator mage doesn’t yield to common locks.

“Don’t overwhelm her all at once!” Christoph barks after him.

“Give me your contact details.” I shove my phone into Bolan’s hands. I already have Christoph’s, of course. And I’ll wrangle Sully before I lock myself in my own rooms and work out the basic contract.

“Go home,” Christoph says gently to Bolan. “Talk to your mother.”

“I’ll need you in Zurich to sign the contract,” I say. “ From my offices, I can file it directly and in person, expedite all that. Give me … three days.”

Bolan just nods, passes my phone back to me, then shoves his hands in his pockets and saunters after Sully.

Christoph clasps my shoulder. The touch of his hand is jarring, but the weight is oddly comforting. Grounding. “They’ll give you whatever you need.”

“Or you’ll keep them in line,” I add, almost playfully.

He chuckles. “Yes. I hope we … please Mirth. For a moment tonight, I …”

“I felt it too,” I murmur.

We had all felt whole for the few moments we’d gathered together tonight with Mirth, even with Bolan being a complete ass. We’d felt like a family. A chosen family in the truest sense.

“Mirth might unify us,” Christoph says. “But we need to be everything else she needs.”

I nod. I’m already making notes on my phone for the first draft of the contract. Christoph laughs quietly under his breath, then releases my shoulder and nudges me back toward our rooms.