"I beg your finest pardon?!" Mirelle's voice screeched through the phone.
Liam pulled the phone a fraction away from his ear.
Not far enough to be rude.
Far enough to preserve what remained of his hearing.
"Yes," he said. "Your outrage has been noted and, unfortunately, confirmed."
"Liam."
Mirelle's voice dropped at once, which was worse. Much worse. Mirelle loud was theater. Mirelle quiet was premeditation.
"He hit you?"
"Twice."
There was a silence on the line so complete Liam could almost hear her reorganizing her afternoon around violence, litigation, and social extermination.
"Who was in the room?"
"All of them."
Another pause.
Then, with perfect aristocratic disgust, "Of course your father was there. God forbid he ever miss an opportunity to be historically useless."
Despite himself, Liam felt the corner of his mouth pull again. It hurt badly enough to remind him not to do it twice.
"He didn't intervene," Liam said.
"No," Mirelle replied. "I had gathered that from the continued existence of your injuries."
He started walking again, faster now, down the black stone path toward the lower drive. "One was for my clothes. Apparently I offended the bloodline by looking as though I'd done actual work today."
"And the second?"
"My audacity."
Mirelle inhaled sharply through her nose.
"How vague of him."
"That is the family brand."
"Not ours," Mirelle said.
For a moment, there was only silence on the line, the kind that meant she was already moving pieces across a board Liam could not yet see.
Then she came back, cool and decisive.
"I've sent the driver for you. Come here. If Enia sees you like this before I get my hands on her, she'll burn that house down, and while I would admire the commitment, I'd prefer to schedule the destruction properly."
—
Two hours later, Liam had been stripped of engine grease, dignity, and any illusion that he would be allowed to manage his own injuries in peace.
Mirelle's house had received him with the smoothness of a private military operation disguised as taste. The driver had delivered him straight to the side entrance. A physician had checked his jaw, his lip, his pupils, and the swelling along both cheekbones with the calm of a man clearly accustomed to wealthy families pretending violence was an accident until paperwork forced them to become more original. An aesthetician - because, of course, Mirelle had one on call, because apparently vengeance was more effective with proper skin recovery - had then applied so many creams, compresses, cooling masks, and restorative serums to Liam's face that by the end of it he felt less like a person and more like an aggressively moisturized crime scene.
Now he was seated in one of Mirelle's dining room chairs, clean, fed, and faintly furious about all three.
The room around him was elegant in the way old money became when it had taste and no need to shout. Dark wood. Cream walls. Long windows looking out over a terrace garden washed in the last gold of evening. Every line perfect, and every object was expensive without trying to get attention. It was the sort of room Felix would have hated on instinct, because nothing in it looked eager to impress him.
Liam sat at the far end of the table in a soft charcoal shirt that belonged, unfortunately, to one of Mirelle's sons and fit him just well enough to be annoying. A plate that had once held actual food sat in front of him in the aftermath of his surrender. Mirelle had insisted he eat first, speak second, and attempt dramatic self-destruction only after dessert.
In front of him now, like a woman chairing a board meeting on war crimes, Mirelle held a glass of wine in one hand and watched him with the narrowed, appraising gaze of a general checking whether the cavalry had enough blood left to remain useful.
Liam rested his elbow on the table and propped his temple carefully against two fingers, avoiding the side that still hurt more.
"I would like the record to show," he said, "that I have now had at least four separate substances rubbed into my face by a woman named Colette who looked one insult away from billing Felix personally."
Mirelle took a measured sip of wine.
"Colette has standards."
"Colette has opinions."
"Yes," Mirelle said. "That is why I keep her."
Liam looked at her over the rim of his water glass.
"You're enjoying this."
Mirelle's mouth curved faintly.
"I am enjoying that you are in my house, under competent supervision, with anti-inflammatory treatment on your face and actual food in your stomach instead of pride and bad decisions." She tilted her head. "The rest, I admit, has some charm."
Liam snorted, then regretted it immediately when the movement tugged at the swelling.
"Careful," Mirelle said.
"You sound alarmingly pleased every time I suffer."
"No," she corrected. "I sound pleased every time you remember you are not alone."
That quieted him for a beat.
He looked down at the plate, then back at her.
There was no softness in Mirelle, not in the obvious sense. No sentimental fussing, no cooed endearments, no performance of maternal comfort. What she offered instead was something Liam had trusted far earlier and far more completely: competence sharpened by loyalty. She did not need to sound warm to be safe.
And she was safe.
That, more than the shower, the clean clothes, or the cold creams, was what had finally brought his pulse down from its earlier, murderous register.
Mirelle set the wine glass down.
"Now," she said, "tell me everything Felix said, and do not summarize merely because your face hurts."
Liam sighed.
"I wasn't planning to summarize because my face hurts. I was planning to summarize because reliving it sounds exhausting."
"You come by that honestly."
He gave her a flat look.
"Fine."
So he did.
He told her again, properly this time. The order in which the room had been arranged. Ray behind the desk. Cain by the window. Felix seated already, as though waiting for a performance to begin. The summons. The commands. The slaps. The reception. Agaron's Crown Prince. The deliberate ether restrictions placed on the diplomatic corps until usage was reduced to almost nothing for days at a time. The three other dominant omegas Felix had 'prepared.' The line about observing how real dominant omegas behaved. The promise that the prince would be handled by others more suited to his preference. The assurance that Liam would have his own part in the night.
Mirelle interrupted only three times.
Once to refill her wine.
Once to ask exactly which cheek Felix had struck first.
And once, after Liam repeated the sentence about real dominant omegas, to say, very calmly, "I am going to have to work very hard not to bury that man under his own estate."
When he finished, the room fell quiet.
Outside, the garden lights had come on. The windows reflected them back in clean, soft lines.
Mirelle folded one hand over the stem of her glass and looked at him for a long moment.
"He wants a demonstration," she said at last.
Liam frowned. "Of what?"
"Control. Breeding. hierarchy. Perhaps all three. Felix never stages bodies in a room unless he intends someone else to read them." Her expression thinned. "You are not there to seduce the Crown Prince. You would be useless for that purpose, and Felix knows it."
Liam raised a brow.
"Thank you."
"I was complimenting your temperament, not your looks. Try to keep up."
"How generous."
Mirelle ignored him.
"Your mother escaped that house only because we know who Ray's real father is. If it ever became public that Felix were involved with King George while the previous queen were still alive, visible, and had legitimate children of her own, the city would erupt. The public despises George, but they adore Felix. To them, he is still the man who saved Wrohan nearly a century ago."
Liam opened his mouth, but Mirelle cut across him before he could speak.
"The Crown Prince of Agaron is Arik Oberon Lyon."