Born of Shadows by Sherrilyn Kenyon

before we find out about it, it’s legal. You sure you don’t want me to slip and accidentally plunge my knife into him a few dozen times?”
    “While I admire your planned accident, son, I’d rather interrogate him.”
    Caillen heard a muffled pop two seconds before the assassin started convulsing. “Shit!” He shot to his feet and grabbed his father, then pulled him out of the room.
    “What’s going on?”
    Holding his breath, Caillen didn’t answer until they were outside and the door was shut tight. “Suicide cap. I don’t know if it’s airborne or strictly ingested. Either way, he’s dead and we don’t need to inhale it until someone not us does a hazmat analysis.”
    Security guards came running down the hall, but Caillen stopped them from entering. “You need a hazmat expert to go in there. The perp just offed himself with a cap.”
    The captain nodded before he pulled his people back and notified his superior. Then the captain met his father’s gaze. “Do I need to call for a medic for you, Your Majesty?”
    “I’m fine.” His father clapped Caillen on the back. “Thanks to my son. How did you know I was being attacked?”
    He didn’t answer what to him was a rhetoricuestion. “My question to you is why didn’t your security know about it?”
    His father straightened his robes with an imperial tug. “For an obvious reason, I don’t have cameras in my bedroom. It’s the only dark area of the palace.”
    Flaky excuse in his book. Better a porn video for the guards than a dark area that left his father open to assassination. But what did he know? “Shouldn’t they have seen him in the hallway?”
    His father offered him an indulgent smile. “Of all people, I think you know how easy things like this happen. Those who want in will find a way.”
    Caillen ground his teeth at his father’s lackadaisical tone. “You’re awfully ambivalent over it.”
    “Hazard of my business. Since the moment I took the throne, I’ve had attempt after attempt on my life. You get used to it after a while.”
    He would argue that, but in his life and business it was so common that like his father he only found it odd when someone wasn’t trying to kill him.
    His father met his gaze. “You were incredible, by the way. Where did you learn to fight like that?”
    “Three older sisters who kept wanting to put dresses on me and paint my nails. Since I couldn’t outrun them, I had to learn to outfight them and unfortunately for me, they don’t hit like girls. If that’s not bad enough, they all fight dirty too.”
    His father laughed. “Thank you.”
    He shrugged the gratitude away. “You saved my life, it’s only fair I save yours.”
    Evzen fell silent at those words that cut him deep inside. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear from his son. He wanted to hear Caillen say that he’d saved him because he loved him.
    Just once.
    He’s a man and a tough one at that. Men like Caillen didn’t admit to tender feelings for anyone. He understood that, but the father in him who remembered holding his son as a newborn was desperate to have his son accept him.
    It’s a fool’s dream. He knew it and yet he couldn’t stop the ache inside that yearned for a relationship he feared would never happen. If he could only lay hands on the ones who’d deprived him of seeing his son grow up. Of being there when Caillen had needed him.
    He wanted blood over the gulf that separated them.
    Caillen still didn’t accept him as family. Not really. His sisters were the only ones he admitted to. Damn you bastards for taking him from me.
    But at least he had his son now. Though it wasn’t the close, tight relationship he desired, Caillen was still here. For the time being, he wasn’t running for the door and so he would accept that and hope for a time when Caillen felt like this was his home too.
    And that he his father, not a Dagan smuggler.
    Darling and Maris came rushing up to them.
    “What happened?” Darling asked as soon