Three marks, one mate

Nine

Brandon's POV.

Two Days Later,

I glanced at the spreadsheet in front of me but nothing made any sense. I wanted to be so close to Desiree that I couldn't even think about anything else without banging my head against the wall.

My nostrils picked up the scent in front of me.

It was Grayson probably trying to act funny.

News flash he wasn't going to be getting anything from me, unless it was time for me to finally move on.

"I see that you've been holing yourself up inside this place for the longest time."

My gaze remained fixated on him, waiting for him to pop up with his stupidity so that I could rebuff it before it was too late.

"If I didn't know better, I would have thought that you were trying to hide away from every one of your plans, but it's not actually that way, is it? You have just been looking for ways to be a part of something different, and it's not working." He commented

Before the mating disaster, he and I didn't exchange words except when we were trying to actively unalive each other. "I don't care what you want to tell me right now. All I need for you to know is... I'm not going to waste any more time listening to your shenanigans unless you give me reasons to trust you."

Grayson growled. "How are you going to protect her from their eyes. You already know that they are calling for her head. How does that sound to you?"

Underneath his bravado was fear that Desiree was going to be killed when it was time for her to fight for the position but here I was also watching him and waiting for him to come to terms with the fact that panicking was not going to solve the problem instead it was going to compound it and I would rather not entertain any of those weaknesses.

"Find somebody else that's going to listen to your cries and exempt me from it." I snapped at him.

He was basically useless to me, and if not for this stupidity that was going on, I would have never had any reason to sit and discuss with him eye to eye.

"No matter how much you try to push me away, it doesn't change the fact that we have to come to terms with each other and protect her with the last fiber of our being."

Of course, he was going to act crazy. He was going to act as if he did not understand what was going on and that I was just overreacting when he was the one doing exactly the same.

"You know what? It's a complete waste of time arguing with you. I should have known better that you do not understand the ways of these people even till now. You don't get to dictate to them how things are going to go around here. If she says she's going to fight them we cannot stop her." I reminded him.

His sentiments did not matter in the grand scheme of things; the only thing he should have been thinking about was making sure that he cleared all the doubts about his incompetence.

"You are highly incompetent and should be worried about that. As it stands, Zachary is even a better choice than you are." I flung the reality at him.

A sheltered, pampered boy, who had not considered the fact that a lot of people would not like him around, but wanted to feel like he was on top of the world, was not part of my own dealings.

I would have preferred that he just go on his way and allow me to handle things myself, but that would be too much for his ego to take.

Anger appeared in his eyes but I was not the one that he could get angry at. "Do you know, after all this time, you still kind of believe that you have the upper hand around here? Do you want both of us to fight for her affection? I want to see the best man winning."

He was trying to get a rise out of me, but he had failed completely before he even started because that was never going to happen, and I was going to watch film go down the drain as he kept up with his stupidity.

"So you don't think that there's something wrong in the way you keep parading yourself and expecting that she's going to throw herself into your arms?" I laugh at him.

I had seen him moving about, trying to help her out in any way that she wanted, just to prove that he was the better candidate, and it made my day.

"You don't understand do you? Desiree is not a pawn. She needs to be courted with real feelings, not just some command that you sit on that high seat of yours and freaking dish out!" He exploded.

Grayson was a lot of things, but he was not an expressive kind of person, so if he was doing this, it meant that he had dealt with so badly that he couldn't help himself anymore.

"Fine... Do you know what this means right now? It means that we should not have any rights around here. You are looking for the woman to put under your label and make her your own slave, but with me in the picture, I'm sorry it's not going to happen." I made sure that I kicked him in the gut.

He would never have the right to speak to me however he pleased.

Grayson was always beneath me and I was never going to let him forget that.

There was a soft knock on the door and both of us paused. "May I come in?" Desiree poked her head in just after asking the question.

"Are both of you fighting?" She glanced from one person to the other. "I can already feel the tension in the room, do not bother with lying." She grimaced.

I didn't think that I could lie to her face, so I just looked somewhere else, making sure that my guilt had not taken the best part of me.

"What do you want?"

Grayson gave me the stink eye. I wanted to know the ways that I could make this woman comfortable and anything out of that was a complete waste of time.

"Yeah,... I wanted to check with you if it was okay for me to go out, I don't want any complications or anything that makes you start searching for me. I don't think it's going to be a great idea." She whispered.

Desiree had an aura around her that made me just want to protect everything close and beyond. I didn't want anything that was going to sever my relationship with her even if that meant dealing frankly with a man that I refuse to acknowledge as a brother.

"I can take you wherever you want."

Grayson snorted. "As if you want to do anything other than just sit on that throne that makes you feel powerful even if you are not."

My hands clenched around the pen that I held, but I was not going to explode in the presence of a woman who looked like she could bolt any minute now.

She looked like she didn't want to be caught up in any of these things, and I intended to respect that decision of hers, so this bastard was going to have to take a backseat if he wanted a kind of reaction out of me.

"I can take you along with me. I'm very sure he's busy, and he wouldn't want any distractions, or would you? I hear that the elders have been hounding you to produce a better strategy to destroy these rogues. You don't want to be caught moving around when you should be thinking about serious issues do you?" Grayson responded smugly.

One would think that he was really concerned about his people but that was quite the opposite. He just wanted to be closest to his mate and make sure that he eliminated all the chances of us ever getting in the good graces of the only woman who could probably tolerate his excesses.

Desiree shot him a heated look. "I know what you're trying to do, Grayson, and it's not working. I want Brandon to take me along with him."

Glee erupted in my chest!

Take that!

The only fragment of lack of composure was the crack of a smile on my face. "Definitely, I'm ready to do everything you want darling, even at the detriment of some people." I made sure to rub it in his face as I abandoned my letters.

"Do not do anything I wouldn't approve of," Grayson said through grounded teeth, so tight that I hoped they got crushed and he lost his chances of being intimate with her.

Desiree smacked my elbow. "Don't be vindictive." She smiled.