Bücher online kostenlos Kostenlos Online Lesen
Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last

Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last

Titel: Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: J.R. Ward
Vom Netzwerk:
being offered was totally unappetizing.
    “
Blah-blah-blahblahblah
.” Giggle. Hip shake. “
Blah?”
    Dimly, Trez was aware of his head nodding, and then they were moving into a dark corner. With every step he took, another part of him shut down, turned off, went into hibernation. But he couldn’t stop himself. He was the junkie hoping that his next hit would be as good as the first had been—and finally bring that relief he was fucking desperate for.
    Even though he knew that wasn’t going to happen.
    Not tonight. Not with her.
    Not anywhere in his life.
    Probably never, ever.
    But sometimes you just had to do something…or go insane.
    “Tell me that you love me?” the chick said to him, as she pressed herself against his body. “Pleeeeeeeeease.”
    “Yeah,” he said numbly. “Sure. Whatever you want.”
    Whatever.

SEVENTY-EIGHT
    X cor linked his hands and placed them on the glossy tabletop. Beside him, Throe was speaking in low tones; he himself had remained quiet since they had taken the weight off their feet in these matching oxblood armchairs.
    “This certainly seems persuasive.” His soldier flipped over another page in the set of documents that had been proffered. “Very persuasive, indeed.”
    Xcor looked across at their host. The
glymera
solicitor was built like a pamphlet, so thin that one wondered when he lay out flat whether he presented any verticality a’tall. He also spoke with an exhausting thoroughness, his verbal paragraphs of small font and crowded, complicated wording.
    “Tell me, how comprehensive is this brief?” Throe asked.
    Xcor’s eyes went to the bookshelves. They were crammed with leather volumes, and he quite believed that the gentlemale had read each and every one. Mayhap twice.
    The solicitor launched another well thought-out, well-articulated cruise through the English language. “I would not have turned it over to you both without ensuring that all efforts were made to…”
    In other words, yes, Xcor filled in in his head.
    “What I do not see here”—Throe turned more pages—“is any notation of counter-opinion.”
    “That is because I was unable to find any. The term ‘full-blooded’ has been used in only two contexts—that of lineage, as in a full-blooded offspring of a given sire or a dam, and that of racial identity. Over time, there has been some minor dilution of the wider gene pool, some contamination from humans—and yet individuals with distant Homo sapiens blood ties have as yet been construed by law as being full-blooded provided they go through their transitions. Now, of course, that is not the case of the direct offspring of a human and a vampire. That is a true half-breed. And those individuals, even if they survive the change, have historically been held to a different standard by the law, with lesser rights and privileges than other civilians. The concern is thus—if the king’s
shellan
is a half-breed, there is a chance that any male offspring of theirs may not go through the transition.”
    Throe frowned as if considering the implications. “But within twenty-five years, we shall know one way or the other—and the royal couple could always attempt to have multiple young.”
    Xcor interjected dryly, “You assume we will still be on the planet in two and a half decades. At this rate, we are nearing extinction as it is.”
    “Precisely.” The solicitor inclined his head in Xcor’s direction. “From a practical standpoint, being a quarter human could be enough to prevent the transition from occurring—there have been documented incidences of this, and I’m sure Havers could give even more examples. Further, there is among many people of my generation a fear that an offspring with that close a nexus to the human race could in fact prefer a human mate—i.e., go out and seek one unaffiliated with our kind. In which case, we could have a human queen, and that is”—the male shook his head with distaste—“absolutely untenable.”
    “So there are two issues,” Xcor said as he sat back, the chair creaking under his weight. “The legal precedent and the social implications.”
    “Indeed.” The solicitor once again pulled a head bob. “And I believe that the social fears could be properly leveraged to fill in the gray areas around the relevant portion of the law concerning the king’s offspring.”
    “I concur,” Throe murmured as he closed the papers. “The question is how to proceed.”
    As Xcor opened his mouth to

Weitere Kostenlose Bücher