Gunmetal Magic: A Novel in the World of Kate Daniels

going to be inconvenienced, but her baby boy would have his vacation, by God.” I laughed. “I’d walked in on her fighting with Valencia. It almost came to blood. I offered to move the vacation. She looked at me like I had grown a Christmas tree on my head.”
    I imitated Aunt B’s voice. “Oh no, dear. You know how hard Raphael works. You two go down there and have a good time.”
    Raphael stared grimly through the windshield, steering around potholes in the magic-pitted pavement with surgical precision.
    No comment, huh?
    “You grew up sheltered and you don’t even know how lucky you are. Your mother loves you more than life itself. She celebrates the fact that you exist.” Considering that both of Raphael’s brothers had gone loup in childhood and B had hadto kill them, I couldn’t hold that against her. “You’re smart, handsome, and respected. You’re a dangerous fighter and you’ve made yourself wealthy—”
    “Comfortable,” he said through clenched teeth.
    “Okay, comfortable. Women throw themselves in your path. I bet when you brought your fiancée to Aunt B, she didn’t even blink an eye, when anybody else would have gotten tossed out of the Bouda House.”
    “Is there a point to you stroking my ego?”
    “It’s not stroking. These are plain facts, darling. Raphael, you are adored. You have everything.”
    “Not everything,” he said.
    “Everything,” I repeated. “If you aren’t spoiled, I don’t know who is. That’s why you can never put yourself in my shoes. All this good fortune gave you blinders. To you, ‘bouda’ means people who think you are a demigod. To me ‘bouda’ means people who break your bones for fun.”
    He turned to me again, his blue eyes dark. “This bouda clan never abused you. This Pack offered to protect you and take you in. You betrayed them.”
    And we were back to square one.
    “We’re here.” Raphael nodded ahead. At the end of the street, a spacious mansion rose against the sky, all carved white stone and gold accents. Beautiful.
    A gated parking lot waited for us, complete with an attendant in a small booth, armed with an arbalest. If we parked in that lot, we would be trapped.
    “Not in the lot,” I murmured.
    “Yeah. Might have to leave fast.” Raphael turned off onto the side street. Good idea. If we had to leave in a hurry, it would be quicker than maneuvering out of a parking lot.
    I pointed at the half-ruined building. “That looks nice and shadowy.”
    He parked behind the ruin and shut off the engine, killing the constant noise that had provided background to our conversation. We sat steeped in the sudden quiet.
    I faced him. “We keep coming back to this again and again, so let’s just do this once and for all, because I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Let’s say the Bouda House got attacked and set on fire, and then some knight of the Ordercalled asking for my help. Your mother forbids you to leave, because she needs you here. Your clan house is in ruins. I want you to come with me to help the Order. Would you?”
    “This is exactly what you don’t understand.” Raphael’s face was resolute. “If my mother put that sort of condition on me, I would’ve told her to fuck herself. Anyone who gives you an ultimatum of ‘pick me’ or ‘save your friend’ isn’t worth your loyalty.”
    He had a point. “You’re right. But my question stands. The Order was everything to me, Raphael. It was my pack, my family. Every day I got up and went to work, I took pride in being me, because I was a knight. I helped people. I wasn’t a pathetic little freak creature that everyone kicked and punched whenever they felt like it. I didn’t want to be that creature. Maybe it was cowardly to reject being a shapeshifter and pretend I was a human. I don’t know. I do know that as long as I was a knight, I wasn’t a victim. I mattered, do you understand that?”
    “Yes,” he said.
    “Do you think it was easy for me? Because it wasn’t. Sometimes no matter what I did, I had shitty choices to make, and I made mine the best I could. So tell me, Raphael, would you have walked away from your mother and your clan to help the Order?”
    “No,” he said. His tone told me he finally understood. He didn’t like it, but he got it. The Order had been my family. It mistreated me, but you don’t abandon your family just because they do something you don’t like. We had finally reached an understanding. Sadly, it was too late for