I fired a scowl at Cam.
He smirked and disappeared into the kitchen. Saint followed, but he wasn’t gone long before he reappeared, ushering Orla out.
“You’re lucky I like you.” She allowed him to guide her to the armchair closest to me. “If Rubi manhandled me like this, I’d cut off his dick.”
I eyed the queen as she took her seat, arranging her swollen stomach. “You have been nice to Rubi while you’re pregnant. Will that change when your child is born?”
“Depends how annoying he is. And of course I’m nice to him. He brings me food.”
“Cam brings you food.”
“I’m always nice to Cam.”
She was not, but I let it slide. Orla terrorising Cam saved me the trouble. Besides, I was quite fond of my own cock. “How are you feeling, koroleva?”
“As well as I look.” Orla rubbed her neck. Done with his video calls—for now—Locke noticed and came to stand behind her, doing something with his thumbs that made her eyes flutter closed. “I think I could sink a cruise ship with how heavy my boobs are.”
My eyes did not stray to her chest. Some of the others had struggled with how primally beautiful our pregnant queen had become, but it had not happened to me. “Perhaps you should stay on dry land.”
“While you drink all the vodka?”
“I meant literally, but okay. It is not my fault you are unable to drink it with me.”
Orla grimaced. “I haven’t been sober at Christmas since I was fifteen.”
“You weren’t sober then.” River glanced up from his phone. “You got into Nan’s sherry and puked on the stairs.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Fucking did.”
Orla threw a cushion. Missed and hit Nash, stirring him from his doze, and even I could admit his bemusement was cute.
Not cute enough for me to wonder if it was too early to start drinking. Only Saint stopped me, dropping onto the couch at my side and flicking the TV on, settling on a black-and-white film that immediately sent Nash back to sleep.
Locke’s phone rang again.
River retreated to the kitchen.
If not for Saint, it was an opportunity I might’ve taken to be somewhere else, but he stayed... and so did I.
Hours passed.
Days.
A lifetime of noise and bickering. And that was before the others arrived. Mateo and Embry, the enforcer back to his usual sharp-eyed self. Juana and their children. Ranger and Viktor came next, bearing a gift Ranger’s grandmother had made in her pottery class for Nash, her favourite of Ranger’s Rebel King brothers.
The gift was a pottery tile with a coded message imprinted across it.
Nash frowned at the raised dots. “What does it say?”
“Fucked if I know.” Ranger perched on the arm of Nash’s chair. “Learn Braille and figure it out yourself.”
Very Ranger. Orla threw a cushion at him too, and this time she found her mark.
Ranger threw it back.
Lida jumped, intercepting, and took the cushion to Viktor, laying it at his feet.