His sire’s stare glittered with smug triumph. “You can’t afford to send business away this late in the tourist season.”
Fury clouded his vision red—because his sire was right. Dad would have already laid in provisions for the overflow of customers, and Arit didn’t look forward to telling the extra help he’d kept on at the lodge and the upper camp that they wouldn’t receive the additional pay, either. He tried to keep as many workers as he could busy with maintenance and new building projects during the off-season because the money often meant the difference between warmth and suffering through the frigid winter, but shifters who staffed the lodge especially were ill-equipped for construction or heavy labor. They were maids, cooks and waiters, the tour photographer…most of whom had never wielded an ax or a hammer. The guides he employed stayed on full-time, Arit always found work for them, but he’d been less successful for those working inside the lodge. The days between late autumn and when the snow began to fly was hard for them. Less this year, he’d hoped, thanks to this late season reservation. Damn his sire for putting the economic future of Arit’s people in peril. “I’ll figure something out.”
The crown prince turned to Arit’s sire, a polite smile curving his lips. “Problems?”
“My oldest son owns and operates Shifter Frontiers.” Benjic dipped his head to indicate Arit across the station. “He hates me.”
“Incorrect.” Arit grimaced. “Hate would require mustering the emotional energy to passionately care about you. I don’t,” he lied.
The burly shifter next to Marisek growled. “We didn’t know you had a son outside the capitol.”
“Wait. What?” The human woman rounded her eyes. “He has another kid?”
“Technically, I don’t.” Benjic waved at Arit. “He refuses to let me claim him as of my blood.”
“I already have a dad, a fantastic dad.” Arit shook his head. “You’re just the asshole who knocked him up.”
The woman grabbed the crown prince’s hand and clenched it in hers. “Nick—”
“Perhaps we could continue this conversation inside?” He squeezed the human’s hand. “It’s rather cold for Lydia and rude to her, too, because she can’t hear as sharply as we do and is therefore missing parts of the conversation.”
Benjic gestured to the stairs of the raised platform with a flourish. “Of course, Your Highness.”
Ire rising, Arit pivoted and marched into the train station. He made a beeline past the gift shop and ticket window, to the diner. Before he settled on a stool at the counter, Doria placed a mug of steaming coffee in front of him.
“That him?” she asked, her stare sweeping the customers streaming from the train.
Wrapping his fingers around the mug, Arit let the heated ceramic warm him. “Apparently.”
Doria sniffed. “Doesn’t look like an emperor. You sure that’s him? His hair is a disgrace.”
Normally, Arit would agree. Shifters didn’t cut their hair unless an alpha lost a challenge for leadership or the alpha suffered a significant military loss. Occasionally, shifters crazed with grief shaved their heads after the death of beloved mates, but the trend had increasingly fallen out of fashion as more and more of his generation adopted the aristocratic practice of mating to strengthen regional businesses rather than allowing mating heats to steer them toward appropriate spouses. Goddess forbid the peasantry learn from noble mistakes. Most shifters viewed short hair as a humiliating punishment these days.
Arit’s fingers itched to run through those bright, honeyed curls anyway. “He was raised by humans, remember. He likely adopted many of their customs.” Which made the lust firing his blood that much more disastrous. He sipped his coffee and frowned. “I heard he knits, for fuck’s sake.”
Doria glared at him and whapped him upside the head with the flat of her palm. “I knit.” She sniffed. “Don’t be a jerk.”
He rubbed the sore spot. “Definitely an omega.”
“Why? Because he runs a yarn shop and knits? I manage this diner and I knit, too. Been a beta since I took my first breath and if I was an omega—or he is—that’s no embarrassment or reason for shame.”
Annoyed, Arit wrinkled his nose. “I didn’t say an omega is inferior. An omega just wouldn’t be a good match for me.”
“What?” She blinked, at a nonplus. Then, she widened her eyes. “Oh.” She grinned. “Isn’t that something? All things considered, I mean.” The rag she industriously scrubbed the spotless counter with froze. Her mouth gaped. “Oh my stars, is that your sire?”
Arit glanced over his shoulder and through the glass doors of the diner. Benjic, the human, the shifter who’d ogled her, and several others had gathered into a group to argue in low voices in the lobby of the train station. With the noise from the engine still roaring on the tracks and the diner’s twin doors muffling sound, Arit couldn’t make out what they said, but the wooden smile on the crown prince’s face as he watched the others persuaded Arit he was better off not knowing. “Benjic says he’s my sire. We disagree.”
Doria leaned over the counter to smack him again. “Respect.”
“I’ll respect him when he earns it.” He ducked out of the way when Doria raised her palm to clock him again. “I’m serious. He abandoned us. Not Dad alone. He left me, too. He never sent coin to help raise me, never wrote to find out how I was.” Arit sneered. “I wasn’t politically convenient to him until I became an adult, and now I’m supposed to fall over myself greeting him with open arms?”
“Your sire signed over his ancestral lands to you for your future before he took off. Stop acting like he’s a deadbeat who never provided for you. He did. Your dad was as stubborn and as proud as your sire, too.” Doria narrowed her eyes on him. “You don’t know what your dad was like when you were young, but I remember. Emyn didn’t turn down Benjic’s gift of your family’s territory because, as eldest child, the land is your birthright, but he would have rejected financial help from your sire otherwise. He washed his hands of his mate as soon as Benjic hopped the train to the capitol. Which is probably why your sire didn’t try harder with you.” She shrugged. “No point. Emyn would have smacked him down for his trouble.”
A bubble of laughter caught Arit by surprise. “Dad would not.”
“You think your dad was always sweet?” Doria rolled her eyes. “You come by your temper natural and not from your sire alone.”
Maybe.
And maybe Benjic had deserved the full measure of his dad’s wrath by taking off for the capitol like his ass was on fire, leaving his dad to parent a new baby alone. “Doesn’t matter.” He turned back to his coffee as the group, still squabbling, plodded toward the diner. He grinned, smile full of teeth, when the glass doors whooshed open behind him. “What’s important is, if Benjic believes he can show up and all will be forgiven, he’d best think twice.”
“Nick is giving up the throne, hot shot. No purpose in mating your pansy ass, anyway,” the shifter accompanying the crown prince said with a snarl.