“Look again.” Insistent, Arit pushed the phone forward. “Look more closely.”
Ignoring the notifications constantly scrolling across the top of Arit’s phone, Nick squinted at the screen. The people shouted, raised their fists, many outfitted in capitol finery and fashions that would do little to shield them from harm… Nick narrowed his eyes. He grabbed the phone from his mate and lifted it higher, blinking away the sting of smoke and grit, but no, his vision hadn’t blurred. The rough wool coats, worn denim, and plain serviceable boots common outside the cities dotted the mob in abundance.
He stiffened, spine snapping straight. “Is that Lydia?” he gasped, but he knew. His best friend stood in the back of a Jeep leading the crowd. Someone had given her a bullhorn, and she yelled into it, fist raised, while she goaded and encouraged the protestors. Ice abruptly filled his veins, nausea churning his stomach. “Where’s Rolan?”
Wherever Lydia was, his brother would not be far.
He scanned the jumpy video one of the marchers was streaming live, but no matter how intensely Nick searched the mob, Nick could not find a familiar face, nor the mottle gray mane topping Rolan’s head. “Where is he?”
When Nick wrenched his stare from the streaming video, his mate smiled at him. “Answer your phone.”
Arresting the minority cabal of elders who had tipped off extremists and aimed them at the crown prince like a loaded gun turned out easier than getting Nick out of the transept. Shelling had leveled the southern wing, but the Hall of Kings had also taken heavy damage as well as parts of the northern wing and the nave—reporters, security, cathedral staff, and several elders were killed in the barrage, with many others injured as aging architecture that hadn’t been maintained as it should’ve been critically failed.
When Arit had left his mate to wriggle past the cabinet blocking the chapel to which they’d escaped, he’d discovered a mountain of rubble cutting off their exit.
They couldn’t leave.
The people marched on the cathedral, surrounding the partially collapsed building. Lydia led the protesters at first but was soon joined by Benjic, wearing a sling on his left shoulder and bandages over one side of his head where falling masonry had struck him. The crowd’s chanted slogans and cheering applause at impromptu speeches reverberated in the shelter of Arit’s and Nick’s dusty, forgotten chapel in what remained of the north wing. Benjic had organized the protesters into a bucket brigade, removing debris to dig their emperor from the ruins one chunk of shattered timber or slab of fractured marble at a time, but the rescue hadn’t gained significant inroads into the debris until Rolan arrived with reinforcements.
Experienced in tunneling through frequent landslides in the rocky, highest peaks of the Ural Mountains where they lived as nomad smugglers, what remained of Rolan’s birth family assessed the jagged wreckage and immediately identified the stained-glass window of Nick’s chapel as the best avenue of escape. When Nick had refused to destroy this piece of the tribes’ cultural heritage, the smugglers had simply set another explosion, smaller and precisely targeted, to blow a hole through the north wing’s exterior wall.
Arit at his side, Nick emerged from the dust and smoke to the crowd’s thunderous acclimation.
“My cousin, Geffen Drago.” With an elaborate flourish, Rolan presented a scruffy shifter still wearing the furs characteristic of Ural nomads.
“I apologize for our delay in reaching the capitol, Your Majesty.” The man stooped to a stiff bow. “Our pack is accustomed to travel but not through the interior where many of us face arrest and imprisonment for insurgency.”
“The Dragos never gave up their support of the imperial family,” Lydia said, hand clasped in Rolan’s. “When Benjic contacted us about rumors threatening assassination, they all insisted on racing into the heart of the territories to protect you—men, women, children.”
“Benjic?” Eyes widening, Arit started. “My sire? That Benjic.”
“Now he recognizes my claim as his sire.” Chuckling, the elder joined them at the crumbling hole punched into the cathedral. He clapped Arit on the back. “Did I have any hope of winning my son if I didn’t employ each of the considerable resources at my disposal to defend his mate? I think not. When I heard vague rumblings about an attempt on Nick’s life, I ordered satellites realigned, got a text through to the Urals.”
Nick grasped his adopted brother by his biceps and pulled Rolan into a fierce hug. He dragged Rolan’s newly discovered cousin into the embrace, too. “Thank you,” he told them.
“Some of the peoples never forgot you.” Rolan nodded. “My family didn’t.”
Blood staining his bandages, Benjic stooped to bow at Nick next. “Your Majesty.”
Annoyed, Arit pressed his lips into a line. “He hasn’t been crowned yet.”
“A failure we can speedily rectify.” His sire removed the Founder’s Diadem from hiding within the folds of his sling. “We won’t be able to safely dig the ancestral crowns of the empire from the debris filling the Hall of Kings for some time. I took the liberty of sending a runner to bring this from your things at the hotel.” Benjic held the piece high, offering the heavy chain mail glittering with sapphires to Arit. “The emperor’s mate traditionally does the honors.”
Hands still clasped, Nick squeezed Arit’s fingers, and Arit ping ponged his attention from his flummoxed mate to the diadem then back to Nick again. Arit bit his lip. “The Council—”
“—won’t dare oppose the will of the people.” He cocked his head to one side, smiling at the shouting, cheering rumble of protestors impatiently waiting to see their emperor freed from the rubble. “As long as the constitutional amendments and other changes we agreed upon are respected…?”
When Arit gawped at Nick, his mate nodded. “I am a man of my word.”
“I’m counting on it.” Benjic crudely shoved the diadem into Arit’s free hand. “Let us greet your people and see it done.”
Rolan and Lydia shared a grin. “Let’s.”
Bewildered, Arit stared at the Founder’s Diadem with rounded eyes and hefted it in his grip, surprised at the heavy weight. Rolan, Lydia, and the Ural insurgents of Rolan’s bloodline escorted them around the debris and to the front of the cathedral, where the crowd’s roar was loudest.
“You planned this?” he asked Nick, dumbfounded.
“‘Plan’ is a strong word.” His mate arched a sardonic eyebrow. “One does not plan to be shelled in the imperial cathedral, and no ruler worthy of the designation would countenance the wanton murders and injuries incurred in such an attack.”
“Not even to regain a throne?”