Vampire King Chapter 34

How Did He Escape?
How Dis
*Kane*
He Escape?
Vampires don’t get fatigued. At least, we don’t usually get fatigued. Not from simple tasks like the one I am doing now, but as I lean over the desk and stare at the map in front of me, my eyes start to blur out of focus, and everything begins to fade slightly.
I’ve been looking at this f**ng map for far too long, and it’s time to just make a decision.
“You could just position them all here,” Rainer says, pointing at the border between my lands and King Peter’s. “If they never cross into our lands then we wont have to worry about them attacking.”
“Yes, but Alpha King Peter is not that s**id,” I remind him. “The chances of him actually sending all of his forces in from that direction is very unlikely. I think there’s a better chance that he’ll send in a diversion from that direction and use a different path to come at us.”
I look at our other borders. Our lands share most of our northern border with Scarlett Thunder, Opal’s home pack. To the east, we have several smaller neighbors, but on the southeast, rolling around a bit to our eastern border lies the large lands controlled by Vampire King Myenas, who is a royal f**k-off and someone who very well may be in cahoots with King Peter. I can see the two of them working together to try and bend me over, so I can’t leave that border unwatched.
To the very south are two fairly unthreatening wolf packs, but wrapping around to our west, we run into some enemies.
First, there are a few packs that are still angry that I aided Moonraker pack in funding the war Alpha Bernard used to attack them. He wasn’t successful, but it still likely cost them both money and men to defend their borders.
Then, there are the Moonraker pack lands themselves. Alpha Bernard is in absolutely no shape whatsoever to attack me, and I honestly don’t see him as a threat even if he does. His lands are vast, even though he is out of money and warriors to defend them with. Eventually, other packs will grow the balls to start taking them from him, but for now, I really don’t see much of a threat to my immediate west except for the ones mad at me for giving Bernard money. I doubt they will attack me unless they can get organized, but it isn’t impossible.
Finally, along the northwest border is a large city primarily inhabited by humans. We have a pact with them that involves feeders for freedom, and a little bit of money exchanges hands as well. They wouldn’t want to p** us off, so I have a feeling they will leave us be.
My debate at this point is how many troops to put w**re, and I am growing remarkably cross-eyed just staring at this d**n map.
“You can’t split them evenly. Leave the borders as they are, add an extra ten thousand here and here, and you’ll be good,” Rainer suggests, moving little figures around the map as if to show me what he’s talking about, which normally would irritate me, but I’m so cross-eyed at this point, it actually helps.
I’m about to give the order when the sound of fancy dress shoes clicking off of the stone floor tells me someone has barged into my war room, and I don’t have to look up from the map to know who it is.
1
“Oh, Lex. You’re back from your adventure, and you’re not dead. How… unappealing.” I narrow my eyes at my brother who dared to go and pay a visit to our enemy without asking me first, a mission that was both
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How Did He Escape?
dangerous and s**id. The devil only knows what he may have said to Alpha King Peter. He will try to tell me, but I won’t believe a word he says.
I do want to know how he managed to drive right across the border of a clan territory that is on the verge of waging war on us, enter the castle there, request and be granted an audience with the king, speak his mind, refuse to trade the prince of that kingdom that we are currently holding hostage after torturing him, and then come back here. All without being dead.
1 am back, brother,” he begins, keeping his distance from Rainer who has been cursing his name ever since we discovered his absence, and standing near the far end of the table with his hands folded behind his back. “Did you think I’d be incapable of removing myself from the situation with Alpha King Peter? Really? You think so little of me?”
I snickered. “Yes,” I said. He glared at me. “What in heaven’s name made you think it would be permissible for you to go to Scarlett Thunder without speaking to me first?” I demand, standing up straight which causes my back to pop after all of this time of staring at the map.
His
eyes widen. “Whatever do you mean? Why would I need your permission to go there? You told me yourself that Opal is carrying my child. Did you think that would have no bearing on what I did next?”
I do have to give my brother a little credit. He is quite good at twisting a situation so that it appears to favor him. I narrow my eyes even further at him. “Don’t be ridiculous, Lex. Of course, I didn’t-think you’d leave the safety of the castle to go into enemy territory to check on your unborn child and a woman neither one of us can stand.”
He purses his lips together and continues to let his eyes bulge from his head. “Well, I never!” he finally says. “First of all, I don’t believe that Scarlett Thunder has actually declared war, have they? And have
we?”
I don’t even bother to answer the question as he already knows the answer.
He also is smart enough to know that it doesn’t matter. The chances of him getting out of Alpha King Peter’s territory alive were less than my chances of walking outside right now and stepping on a magical leprechaun-slim to none. The fact that he wasn’t currently broken and bleeding in a cell below the castle in Scarlett Thunder was mind-blowing to me, especially considering Jacob was still in my dungeon, his leg twisted and his arm missing.
It just didn’t make any sense.
And in my experience, when something doesn’t make sense, one should question it-completely.
“How did you earn your freedom?” Rainer asks. “I seriously doubt your girlfriend threw herself at her father’s mercy and begged for you to be released.”
“My girlfriend?” Lex asks, an amused expression on his pretty face as he says, “This from someone who insists I am only interested in boys.”
“I don’t believe I ever used the word ‘only,” Rainer replies, in his defense, but I am uninterested in a history lesson or one involving semantics.
“How are you here, Lex?” I ask the question in a demanding tone, one that has his head whipping back around to face me.
“Simple enough, my brother, the king, I am smarter than you ever give me credit for, and I was able to trick
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How Did He Escape?
Alpha King Peter into releasing me. While I was on my way home, I did a bit of scouting, and I’m afraid you’ve got his positions wrong, though not completely. May 1?”
He gestures at my map, and I decide to let him mess with it just to amuse myself. Lex has never been one for paying much attention when it comes to war.
He comes around the table to my right, opposite Rainer, and moves a few pieces that are clearly representing Scarlett Thunder troops, moving some of them further to our northwestern border but moving still more down to the east.
“How do you know they’re down there?” Rainer asks. “You wouldn’t have come home that way truly do have a death wish.”
Lex chuckles. “I used some of my skills with the generals as I was leading to find out.”
“You mean you sucked their d**ks?” Rainer asks bluntly.
unless you
“No. I mean I had a conversation with them, a**ole. But I’d much rather suck their d**ks than yours.” It’s meant to be an insult, but Rainer doesn’t quite take it that way.
“I’d be too much for you to handle,” he says with a glimmer of mirth in his eyes.
I only shake my head, praying they’ll stop. Lex laughs, and I wonder if my brother ever thinks about Rainer that way, but I decide I don’t want to know. What Lex does in the bedroom only concerns me when it produces unwanted heirs.
“Thank you, Lex. That will be all,” I tell my brother, ready to discuss this disclosure with Rainer in Lex’s
absence.
“But… don’t you even want to know how I got out of there?” he asks me.
already asked you, and your response was vague. What would make me think you’d be more forthright with your answer now?”
“True,” he says. “All right then. It shall remain a mystery-like how Rainer manages to walk in an upright position when clearly his d**k weighs ten thousand pounds.”
On an ordinary day, I don’t find Lex’s sense of humor amusing, and I certainly don’t now. “I’ll talk to you later, Luther,” I tell him, and he heads for the door.
The moment he is gone, I ask Rainer, “Do you trust that information?”
“***k no,” he says. “Why should we? I don’t trust your brother one d**n bit. How the hell do you think he got out of there? He has something up his sleeve. Or up his a** as the case may be.”
I think Rainer might be right, but there’s only one way to test this theory. “We should give him some misinformation and see if it makes its way back to Alpha King Peter.”
My second-in-command nods. “That sounds like a reasonable idea. Do you have an idea of what to tell him?”
I think for a moment, my eyes grazing over the map, but that’s not what I’m thinking about. Finally, something comes to mind. “Yes, I think I have it.”
A smile crosses Rainer’s face, “Well, then, Alpha King, let’s hear it.”
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How Did He Escape?
I lean in close to tell him my plan, and when I’ve explained it all in great detail to him, I ask, “Do you think it will work?”
Immediately, he says, “Hell yeah, I think it will work. But there’s only one way to find out. Let’s put it in
action.”
I give him a nod of approval. “Hop to it.”