Page 52 of Grand Romantic Delusions and the Madness of Mirth, Part Two

R IAN

Mirth leaves. She gathers the kids to her like they need protection from me and just leaves me behind. Me and all the stupid shit coming out of my mouth that I don’t even remotely mean. She leaves me facing off with the four others who are supposed to be part of my soul-bonded group.

I’ve never been so fucking jealous in my life. I’m not actually certain I’ve even experienced that emotion before, because this heavy weight all across my chest, threatening to suffocate me, is unmistakable.

I’m okay with the idea, the understanding, that Mirth needs a bond group. Our connection is too intense to ignore. Even if I wanted to.

It’s the bear shifter, the duke, who breaks the silence. “No one is forcing you, Rian.”

Christoph’s not gentle about it, but he’s not pissed. Nowhere near as pissed as Sully is at me. Though the blue-haired mage is currently watching the screen over my head as if I don’t exist.

“I know,” I rasp. “That’s not … rationally, I know.”

“All of us are having our moments,” Elias says mildly as he steps over to fix himself a tea.

Even this little slice of Mirth’s everyday life is overwhelming. The china, the silverware, all the piles of pretty food on the sideboard. And I’ve been in these boxes before. Just not this particular one. I know my reaction to it all is ridiculous. Yet I’m still doing it.

“What we don’t do,” Sully says, still not looking at me, “is take it out on Mirth.”

I open my mouth to dispute that charge, but nothing comes out.

“Well …” Sully amends, “except for Bolan.”

“Asshole,” my newly discovered half-brother mutters around a mouthful of something. “And I never … my devotion to Mirth has never wavered, not for one minute. I’m only unintentionally an asshole in her vicinity.”

“That should be the title of your next song,” Sully says scathingly. “ ‘Unintentionally an Asshole.’ ”

Bolan actually laughs. “Maybe, asshole. Maybe it will be. And Mirth will fucking love listening to me bagging on myself and trampling on my own heart for her entertainment.”

The roar of the crowd, even muffled by the thick glass windows, draws all of our attention. The first race has started. Muted or not, maybe that’s what Sully finds so much more entertaining on the screen behind me than looking at any of us. Than looking at me.

What the fuck is wrong with me? I’ve gotten all of this twisted up in my head, in my chest —

“If you give us time, Rian,” Elias says, all smooth and cultured, “we’ll figure out how we all fit together.”

“It’s not just about fucking,” Sully says.

I flinch as if he’s knifed me.

Bolan eyes the suddenly irate mage. “What the fuck, Sully? Are you off your meds?”

Sully closes his eyes, visibly restraining himself.

Elias steps in. “Bolan. While many may appreciate it when you pretend to be dimwitted, perhaps as a way to amuse yourself, that is not helping this situation.”

Bolan flashes a charming grin at the earl. “Just antsy, Eli. Sully can handle it.”

“We’re all uncomfortable,” Christoph says. “Talking it out, plainly, is the only way to get through it. Mirth is hurting.”

Sully sighs. Then he’s briefly startled to discover Elias standing so close to him, like he’s actually tuned that far out. The earl offers the blue-haired mage a twist of a smile, along with the cup and saucer he’s holding.

Elias wasn’t making tea for himself.

Sully blinks down at the proffered teacup. There’s a biscuit perched on the edge of the saucer as well.

“You prefer the chocolate-dipped shortbread, yes?” Elias asks, ever so politely.

Moving slowly, as if no one has ever handed him a tea and a biscuit before, Sully takes the offering. “Thank you, Elias,” he murmurs. His shoulders visibly relax.

Both Bolan and Christoph have stilled, watching this simple interaction. Engaged, focused … present.

That’s … that’s what this is … what it’s supposed to be …

This is why Sully came to me in London. This is what I inadvertently rejected when I didn’t properly claim him in front of my mother.

Elias steps back to the sideboard and makes another cup of tea.

Some sort of pain cracks through my heart, adding more and more weight to the shit I’m already carrying. “I’ve fucked up,” I gasp. “I’m fucking up.”

“It’s a lot all at once,” Elias says mildly, as if it’s nothing. Nothing that can’t be easily fixed, anyway.

“Say it all now.” Christoph settles against the wall.

“Here, with us. Everything you have to sort through, everything you think we might need to hear. Then you can go to Mirth and see … tell her what she needs to hear to trust that you’ll place her first in your heart the next time you hit a rough patch.

” He takes a breath. “No one is telling you there won’t be rough patches. That’s fucking life, isn’t it?”

“So,” I say shakily, “you’re the psychologist of the group?”

“Yeah, damn, Chris,” Bolan exclaims. “That’s the most I’ve ever heard you say. Like, even if I put everything you’ve ever said together.”

Sully smirks. “Daddy.”

“No,” Christoph says perfectly mildly. But with a boundary made perfectly clear.

Sully just nibbles on his biscuit, chuckling quietly.

The energy in the room shifts. Lightening, yes. But also somehow twisting around the four of them just a touch tighter.

With me still on the outside.

Because not making a choice is a choice in and of itself. And earlier that morning, I sat there on the edge of my fucking bed, and I watched my phone ring when Mirth called —

I press my fist against my chest. Moving way too quickly for his size, shifter or not, Christoph’s hand comes down on my shoulder. His grip is tight, heavy.

He holds me in that moment until the pain of my own fucking betrayal eases just a bit.

“Apparently, I’m not the only fucking dramatic one in the group now,” Bolan drawls. “Must run in the blood. Which is good, actually, for the rest of you assholes. Because maybe it means I didn’t inherit my mother’s brand of crazy.”

Sully chuckles again, but doubtfully this time.

Bolan angles his bright-blue gaze on me, not quite looking me in the eye. That’s polite, shifter to shifter, but not really necessary. Because however dominant I am, I already know his wolf is more so.

“I thought …” I just start blurting it all out.

“The night we met was … I’d never had that kind of reaction to another person before.

I wanted to burrow under Mirth’s skin. To be buried deep within her, yeah, of course.

But I also wanted … needed … to ease the burden she carried, carries, within her. ”

“Soul bound.” Christoph releases his grip on my shoulder slowly, as if worried I might fall over without him holding me.

Another cheer runs through the crowd in the stadium seats. The first race is over.

“That first morning, I lay there, watching her sleep,” I whisper.

“I only managed to leave at all because Armin’s other horses arrived.

I needed an actual excuse. That’s … too fast. And Mirth knew it, because she had no problem walking away, she …

I was the one who reached out, maintained contact …

and when the invitation came to the fucked-up matchmaking thing … I almost accepted it.”

“Why didn’t you?” Elias asks.

Lost in my own recollections, I blink at him. “Mirth didn’t want me dragged into all of that.” I glance at Bolan, then Sully. A hopeless sort of jealousy twists through my words. “She didn’t spare you.”

“Mirth didn’t know we’d been invited,” Bolan says. “Tried to kick me to the curb the moment she saw me, even with that perfect-princess mask firmly in place.”

“She practically begged me to stay,” Sully says with an affected shrug.

“That’s because you weren’t a threat,” Bolan lashes back. “You’re safe, Sully.”

Sully just smiles at that, perfectly content. Because he knows Mirth loves him. He’s known she’s loved him for a very long time.

“I didn’t know it would be you,” I say, drawing all the attention back to me. “All of you …”

“Mirth must have explained,” Elias says. “That she needed a bond group. That she couldn’t choose just one of us, even if she wanted to.”

“Of course she fucking explained,” I say, so, so angry at myself.

“But I just wanted her. I wanted everything she could spare me. Every look, every touch … I understood that she had to have a bond group. An established bond group. For, like, political reasons or …” I glance at them all, feeling utterly stupid.

Childish. “That it would just be … like a … contract. Only on paper. I thought it would be the Mertons.”

“You know the Mertons?” Christoph asks.

I can hear a lot I don’t understand loaded into the question. “No. They bid for my contract, but they’re … trophy collectors. Not serious about their horses.”

The four of them glance between themselves, sharing information that I don’t have access to, but it’s my own words I hear as they echo through my mind.

Trophy collectors. I knew it within minutes of sitting down with Archie to discuss my heading their then-nonexistent breeding program.

My stomach sinks. Mirth isn’t a trophy.

Oh, fuck. I’ve been looking at this all wrong.

“So,” Elias says coolly, “just so I understand your objections to the idea of being soul bound to us, through Mirth. Is it who we are? Our titles and positions? Or is it that you’re worried that we’re going to want to fuck you?”

Bolan’s head whips toward the earl. “Um, excuse me?”

“Way to woo, Earl,” Sully says sarcastically.

“We’re beyond wooing,” Elias says. “We have been since the moment Rian stopped answering Mirth’s calls.”

“Not even twelve hours’ grace?” Sully eyes the earl as if he’s seeing him differently. “Does that go for all of us?”

“You know it does,” Elias snaps.

“Just checking.”