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Page 2 of Night’s Fall (The Four Realms #1)

“So you got us into the Black Room to make a thing of it, and then your dad got the credit notice,” Gayle deduced.

Oh dang.

Part of Mr . Truelock’s displeasure was manifesting in him tightening the reins on Cat’s spending. He’d already decreased her allowance. Now it looked like he was aiming at her credit line.

“Did you tell him you were taking Laura out?” Gayle asked.

At the question, abruptly, Cat lost it.

“You know, I shouldn’t have to explain myself,” she bit off. “ That money, Truelock money, our money, he didn’t toil and break his back to earn it. We’re a First Family , for the gods’ sakes. Yes , Dad works, but the vast majority of Truelock wealth was inherited. It’s always inherited.”

She was not wrong.

She was also not done ranting.

“And he didn’t have to rush out and make a connection.

He has a penis. Therefore , he could decide when he’d find his mate and he could wait until he was a hundred and twenty if he felt like it.

I mean, he didn’t even get married to Mom until he was forty-two .

” She shook her head and those coppery locks I envied slid gloriously against the pale skin I also envied.

“ This whole thing is bullshit. Demon patriarchal bullshit . I mean, it’s not like we’re driving around in cars anymore.

We’ve progressed! At least the humans, fae and shifters have. But oh no. Not us demons.”

Gayliliel and I exchanged a glance, because we both agreed this was very true.

Shifters had their patriarchal bullshit as well, and it could get extreme, even more extreme than the demon kind.

But fortunately, they didn’t push a female to wed before her thirties like she couldn’t get on with her life without a mate attached to her. And more fortune (at least for me), I’d cut ties with my patriarch, so I didn’t have to worry about it.

Fae and humans, they tended not to get mired in all of that crap.

“You know what?” Cat asked, and she didn’t wait for our answer.

She told us what. “ Screw it. Dad adores Laura . If he knew what tonight was about, he wouldn’t have jumped my shit about it.

So I’ll tell him and he’ll back off. And then I’ll tell him I’ll find my mate when I find my mate and he can just live with it. ”

Gayle gasped at this proclamation.

Knowing Mr . Truelock , I got worried and instantly reached forward to grab Cat’s hand. “ Don’t do anything rash,” I advised.

“He’ll totally cut you off,” Gayle put in.

He totally would.

Cat pulled her hand from mine and waved it in front of her face angrily. “ Screw that too. If he does, he does. I have a job. I’ll get by.”

“You can’t even afford your flat without his?—”

I kicked the side of Gayle’s foot with my own, and she shut up.

Cat turned to gaze out the window again, muttering, “ Rena’s a mess.”

Oh boy.

It was all coming out now.

Rena was Cat’s cousin. Rena married less than a year ago. Rena’s husband was a dick. And Rena had gotten the same strongarm tactics from her father to find a connection as Cat was now getting.

Cat continued muttering. “ She pretty much hates Dagon .”

We all pretty much hated Dagon , though I knew between the three of us, “pretty much” wasn’t part of what we felt for him. He was arrogant, self-absorbed and condescending.

Though, he was gorgeous.

Their wedding had been an exercise in awkwardness with liberal mix-ins of embarrassment and moments of pure outrage.

The traditional wedding cake at a demon wedding had black frosting over a blood red cake.

And during the cutting, Dagon rubbed his slice all over Rena’s face, neck, chest, and even got some in her hair.

When he was done, she looked like she got in a bar fight while the bar was burning down around her. And she lost.

Enough said.

“The seal is broken now,” I remarked. “ So I’m all in to be your wingman to help you find your connection. A good one.”

I wasn’t. I didn’t even want to be out tonight.

But I was sure Cat didn’t want to sleep on my couch for the week after I got home from the hospital following my attack.

Only for her to go home for a week when Gayle took over.

Then Cat came back. They did this for six weeks, and probably would still be doing it if I hadn’t put my foot down that they had to get on with their lives, and I did too.

They got on with their lives.

I returned to work (much of which I could do at home, at least when we weren’t on set, so that wasn’t a big deal) but didn’t really get on with mine.

Hence, our night out.

Although, even before, I was more of a homebody. That said, Cat had been right when she insisted it was time to leave my couch. I was in danger of becoming my couch, I was spending so much time on it.

“Me too,” Gayle put in. “ Though , I can’t be hitting the Black Room every Saturday .”

“You don’t have to,” Cat said in a small voice that broke my heart. “ We’ll figure it out so Dad will lay off and it won’t cost a fortune for us to go out. And just to say, you guys are the best.”

“You’re better than the best,” I replied. “ So tell your dad that I’m over it.” I wasn’t, but fake it ’til you make it, right? “ And now that I am, we are so totally on the case.”

“We so totally are,” Gayle agreed.

For a second, it looked like Cat might start crying, something that freaked me out. Demons rarely cried, and for the vast majority of halves, the demon was dominant.

Though humans did.

Of course, she got a lock on it, and she managed this by sweeping me from my pink high-heeled sandals that had straps that crisscrossed up my calves to my frothy, girlie-pink, short cocktail dress.

“Shut up,” I said before she could give me stick for wearing pink.

“You shut up,” she returned, her lips tipping up.

“Dudes like pink,” Gayliliel chimed in. “ It’s all feminine and girlish and goofy and makes you seem vulnerable, like someone they need to protect. They get into that shit.”

“It’s not goofy,” I declared.

Gayle ignored me and advised Cat , “ You should try wearing it. Maybe you’ll run into an alpha demon whose protection gene activates seeing you all pink and defenseless.”

Cat instantly looked nauseous.

I burst out laughing, not at Cat’s expression (okay, maybe a little at her expression), but at the idea of her wearing pink.

One could definitely say pink was not a demon color (case in point, she was wearing a slinky black number right now).

Fae, definitely. It was just that Gayle was not a pink kind of female (case for that point, Gayle was in a barely-there, deep violet number).

I totally was all about pink.

In fact, my beast had been…

“Gods, no. My skin would catch fire,” Cat decreed, horror dripping from each word, fortunately taking me from my train of thought.

That was when Gayle started laughing, and I felt relief.

Drama averted; we were back.

Again, Cat’s attention turned out the window. “ Do you think the prince will be there?”

I felt my heart skip at the possibility.

This was one of the reasons why the Black Room was so expensive and exclusive. The True Heir of Night’s Fall , Prince Aleksei , went there on occasion. In fact, it was rumored he owned the Pink and Black Club , among many of his other financial ventures.

If he was there and I got one shot at looking at him, live and in person, I’d take a second job to pay Cat back for the opportunity.

“I think he’s probably lying low,” Gayle said. “ You know, after that whole Princess Anna debacle.”

“Their engagement was totally ludicrous,” I groused, and my grousing was only part to do with my lifelong crush on the handsome heir apparent of the Starknight Dynasty , and how devastated I was when it was announced Aleksei was to wed the glorious Anna , Princess Royal of Dawn’s Break .

I was this regardless of how preposterous it was that I’d feel that devasted, since I had no shot and never would.

It was mostly due to my affront that he was a shifter, and she was not.

It wasn’t like shifters didn’t mingle breeds, we did. Even the royal family had non-shifters in their lineage.

It was the fact that I was a shifter, or I had been ( I was one in ancestry only now), and that made me feel somehow connected to him. It felt almost like a personal affront when they got engaged. And yeah, I know, that was ridiculous too.

Nevertheless, that was how I felt.

The only bright light in the months since my attack was when it was announced the engagement was off.

I wasn’t the only one who celebrated this event. It was a surprise a spontaneous parade didn’t happen, so many females in Night’s Fall were beyond delighted the prince was a free agent again. Even if none of us had that first chance in any ever after.

“I wonder what happened with those two,” Cat mused. “ Everyone says she’s all that and a bag of chips.”

“Did you just say ‘all that and a bag of chips?’” Gayle teased.

“Well, how would you put it?’ Cat asked.

“She’s sweetness and light and peace and ethereality, and on top of that, painfully beautiful, so, yeah. It’s a real mystery why that didn’t work.”

“Hardly,” Cat scoffed. “ Can you imagine how boring she’d be?”

Gayle snorted. “ I hear you. That has to be it. She was fine to look at, but have a couple of dinners with her floating around being an earthbound angel and constantly exuding utter perfection, and it’d be an endless snoozefest. A shifter needs some fire. A shifter like Aleksei needs an inferno.”

And with that, not that I ever had a chance, I was out.

I was quiet. In certain situations, I could be shy.

I was mostly an introvert, unless I was around people I knew, but even then, I was more of a listener than a talker.

I didn’t like attention. And I preferred cooking at home, snuggling in to watch some display, reading a book or taking a hot bath and drinking a glass of wine to being out on the town or off on an adventure.