Chapter 6
After Arvandus took his hand, Skeleton Lord Albrecht Ruarc-Daray followed Brynnius, Victor, and Cassius into the grocery store. The list was tucked into the pocket of Albrecht’s cloak, and he’d insisted it be in Brynnius’s careful handwriting. He loved Victor, but the shifter’s scribbles weren’t always easy to read when he jotted things in haste, and he always seemed to remember things he “just had to have” minutes before he scurried out the door.
“I’ve got the cart,” Cassius said as he yanked one out of the long line of them and glared at Arvandus.
“Dude, relax. My choice is to either hold Apple’s hand or push the cart. Which one do you think I’m going to pick?”
“It’s not like we haven’t fought over cart duty,” Cassius reminded him.
“That’s usually when we get halfway through the list, and you start getting antsy and speeding down the aisles. It’s easy to forget shit that way.”
“You do get impatient,” Brynnius told Cassius.
“And I just know I’m forgetting something that I didn’t put on the list, so we need to take our time. Maybe it’ll snap into my brain,” Victor said as Cassius guided them out of the alcove and into the main part of the grocery store.
“We can easily return to the store if we fail to get everything we need,” Albrecht reminded the shifter.
“I know, but I’m trying to be sentinel-like for this event and plan my attack beforehand.”
“You should always be yourself, Victor,” Brynnius told him.
“Except when you forget to wear pants at night,” Cassius remarked as he stopped at the start of the produce section.
“When you guys are all standing at my bedside moments before the last breath escapes my body, I want you to know right now that my last words are going to be that it’s a damn nightshirt,” Victor said. A wave of sadness flooded Albrecht at the idea of losing the only member of their family who Fate hadn’t granted immortality. How would the puzzle pieces of the Darays fit together without Victor in the picture? Albrecht was not ready to know the answer to that question.
“That was a pretty dramatic statement,” Arvandus teased, though Albrecht could hear the flatness in his tone, and when he glanced up into his blue eyes, he found the sadness he was feeling reflected in them.
“If you forget to say that, you can just remind us after Chand resurrects you,” Cassius stated emphatically.
Victor’s laugh was light. “I think the Arch Lich is going to use his magic for much more worthwhile purposes.”
“Don’t you want to get resurrected, so you can stay with us?” Brynnius asked.
There was surprise in the green depths of Victor’s eyes. “I don’t suppose I ever thought about it. I’m young and don’t really think about all the centuries that have to pass until I get to that point.”
“Maybe we’re worrying for no reason,” Arvandus suggested with a shrug. “Fate might’ve picked an immortal mate for you.”
Just to be sure it wasn’t overlooked, Albrecht was going to bring up the subject with Chander the moment he could get him alone, because Fate wasn’t perfect. While most in the extended D’Vaire family chose to use the example of Royal Duke-mate Niko Draconis and the disastrous matches he’d had the first time around, Albrecht always thought to his own experience. He’d had Arvandus for less than a handful of months before his bitch of a necromancer and her mate decapitated him. His people—already imprisoned—were subjected to a spell that robbed them of memory, stripping Arvandus from him completely for two thousand years. It was only with the birth of Chander that a man being permanently resurrected was possible, and who else could Albrecht blame for those misfortunes but the goddess who governed them?
“Maybe you’ll be paired with a sentinel,” Cassius said.
“While I certainly wouldn’t mind that, I’ve met all eight thousand four hundred and four of you guys by now. I go to every big sentinel event,” Victor pointed out.
“Chand can resurrect new ones,” Albrecht argued. “He is waiting for the green light from Alaric when he sees the need for it.”
“Which might not be that long from now. We have our jobs cut out for us just prowling around the Consilium Veneficus to make sure they’re not up to any new trouble,” Cassius remarked.
Victor grinned. “Maybe I can convince him to cast a resurrection spell that specifies that he has to be my mate too.”
“That’s funny,” Arvandus replied. “Good luck convincing him to do that. He’s not going to take the chance that he’d piss off Fate. It might’ve been his tactic when he resurrected Mortis’s mate, but that was a pretty specific case, and there aren’t any other sentinel wolves.” Rebirthed when his spirit refused to leave High King Rafe D’Vairedraconis while he was near death in a hospital, Mortis now happily protected the dragon. Chander had tied a second wolf to Aleksander’s soul to give Mortis his other half, but there were zero plans to ever add new wolf sentinels, so making the request of Fate was deemed necessary by the Arch Lich.
“I’ll just think it really hard at the exact moment he’s casting the spell, how’s that?”
“It might work,” Brynnius, ever the optimist and the sentinel with the biggest heart, replied.
“I just have one question,” Arvandus stated.
“Spill it,” Victor demanded.
