Not only did we have no idea if that book really was a Blood Tome, a priceless record of vampire activities, but we didn’t know if we could get it translated or if anything relevant would be in there even if we met this supposed linguistic scholar and he had no trouble reading the whole thing as quick as a computer download.
It wasn’t only the nothing we’d done that still made me feel sick all the way home on the bike with Isaac, going roughly thirty miles per hour over the speed limit. What we’d really done was worse than nothing. At least nothing was passive—no trespassing, grave-robbing, stealing, lying, placing all our lives in danger, imposing on foreign hosts, or spending the pack’s money to look after us.
Nothing would have been a blessing compared to this.
Of course, we’d known all along Dieter was unreliable. He was a vampire for one. Also, our dealings before had been messy, leaving something to be desired when it came to clear communication.
Yet … something. I’d thought we’d get something after everything we’d gone through. Turns out, the universe doesn’t always offer fair trades.
All I wanted when we got home was a shower—to drown myself. Then, failing death, I wanted to follow it up with forty-eight hours of sleep.
They were settling their bikes in designated parking at home before I remembered I didn’t exactly have a bed and shower to call my own. That was the other thing I’d missed today: my move-in.
“Andrew?” I approached him after I climbed from behind Isaac and pulled off the helmet. “Do you have my bag? Did they bring it?”
“Delivered as promised.” Andrew twirled his keys on his finger and turned to me from his bike.
“I suppose I better come to get it from you.” The prospect of clean clothes should have been a delight. Instead … I didn’t care. I wouldn’t have cared right then if he’d said he’d burned the stuff.
“Already waiting for you, darling.” He cocked his head a little. I couldn’t see much of his expression in the dark motorcycle shelter but he wasn’t smiling. “Your bag’s in your new room at Atarah’s. She knew you’d be out tonight. Expecting you, but not waiting up. No one locks doors here. Even these days.”
“Thank you for bringing that in. Both of you for…” I stopped, throat tight, startled that my voice had almost broken.
I was surprised even more when Andrew gave me a quick hug. “Get some sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow and keep moving forward.” He stepped back. “In the meantime, one dead end isn’t your fault. It’s bound to happen. Moon guides us not only through good hunting, but through bad.”
I nodded, his tone and actions—like Zar, not like Andrew—distracting me a little from my own misery.
All dispersed to our separate corners more or less quietly. The whole park smelled of stewing bone broth—which was not at all a chicken soup smell, more like roasting meat crossed with a tannery. I’d forgotten about Jason’s Saturday morning queue for a new marrow bone. Merab was cooking overnight.
Zar thanked me for today. Isaac kissed me goodnight while I pulled away, feeling as if I wore a layer of sweat and rot an inch thick. I walked home with Kage and Jason to shower and gather my things before heading to Atarah’s. I needed my other bag—underwear, pajamas, the majority of my toiletry kit, forget just having more regular day clothes. But I also felt weird again with the idea of letting myself into a stranger’s home in the middle of the night and making myself comfortable.
At least shower, the noisy bit, at Kage and Jason’s. Pull on my nasty jeans and the T-shirt of Jason’s I’d been wearing at night, creep in at Atarah’s, get out my real pajama bottoms and the soft tank I slept in for traveling, bed, and done. Forty-eight hours done.
I stayed under the water for a long, long time. Warm, wash, then cooler, wash again, blowing my nose over and over. Still, I could smell the place. Colder water, and still colder, gradually creeping the temperature lower until it was shocking, even with the slow decline. Washing away the death sauna.
Out with the T-shirt and jeans back on while I struggled not to really touch them, teeth brushed, ready for bed, I could not stop shivering.
I gathered the last few things in my bag, then met Kage emerging from the bedroom to walk me to Atarah’s. I was grateful for this since I wasn’t sure I could find her door in the rows of homes in the dark. Walking in on someone else certainly wouldn’t help my feelings of being a better guest.
Kage wasn’t dressed for the occasion: ready for bed in boxers and barefoot while I pushed my own feet into my new walking shoes.
Jason, dressed like Kage, appeared in the bedroom doorway, hand on the frame. His eyes were anxious. I had wondered if he’d hold that morning against me—the way I’d broken up his happy game. But I remembered him doing the vow with Kage, and he’d seemed perfectly normal to me this evening.
“We’re really going to miss you, Cassia. I’m sorry about tonight. But glad you’re back…” Jason bit his lip, his brows drawn in. “Are you all right?”
“Good night. Thank you for having me. And … sorry about … cleaning up.”
“It’s fine. It just takes getting used to. A lot easier to move in here, at least. The pups love it. You’re shivering.”
Kage was frowning at me by then also. “Want something else to put on?”
“I’m going straight to bed anyway.” I rubbed my arm covered in goosebumps. “I just let the water get too cold.”
As I rested my hand on the knob, Kage took my other on the bag handle, feeling my icy fingers. Frowning even more, he stepped closer to hug me. His chest was as warm as befitted the summer night, wrapping me in an embrace that was part comforting electric blanket and part brick wall.
He just stood there while I shivered, then pressed my shoulder, pulling me with him as he stepped back.
“Come sit down for a minute, princess,” he murmured and kissed my hair.
The tone, the look in his eyes, that sort of kiss, the gentleness, were all so unlike him—how Andrew had been unlike himself—I wanted to cry. He finally had his timing right for what I needed from him, yet it would have been easier to take emotionally if he’d been an ass again.
I dropped the bag at the doorway and sat on the edge of the bed with him, my arms folded against his chest with my face for the warmth while he held me. Jason sat on my other side to put his arms around us both.
He didn’t say things were okay, or weren’t my fault. He said, “It’s horrible down there. I don’t know how you do it at all. I couldn’t go back in there at gunpoint.”
Jason must have been down when I wasn’t with them. I hadn’t known he knew. Of course he hadn’t experienced Dieter in there. Even so, knowing someone else knows how you feel, even partway, to be validated… A game-changer no matter what you’re upset about.
Then Kage said, “Sorry, Cassia. We love you.”
“Neä amaus Vinu,” Jason said—a real sentence of Lucannis I knew, after hearing it so much between them in the past couple of nights.
Liar!
I hadn’t understood it, hadn’t believed the vampire. Of course I wanted to find out who was killing the wolves. My whole purpose here.
But that wasn’t why I was here now. Why I’d turned around. Why I’d come back. A helpful instinct and compassion for these unique people had not consumed me at Heathrow Airport and before. And after.
Why are you here?
Amaus.
Tears seeped from under my lashes onto Kage’s chest while I trembled between them, silent and overwhelmed, not by failings, or vampires, but by the two of them and my own feelings.
Chapter 29
I woke from distorted images of cackling vampires, glittering faie with their weeping eyes, and the welcoming manor house by night, and I met loss: someone moving away, a great blanket of comfort detaching from my back.
He kissed the back of my neck through my hair, light as the feel of cobwebs, then crept from the bed.
“Jason?” I murmured into warm skin, still half gone.
Lips brushed my temple. “Go back to sleep, princess. He’s off to get his bone.”
Saturday morning: beef broth, Jason and the wolf pack waiting in line for a bone that had been simmered for twenty-four hours.
I had wanted to see that. But … it didn’t really matter. I was already out, hardly hearing the front door open.
I’d had trouble falling asleep the night before. Mind racing even once I’d curled down in bed with them, myself in the middle, finally warm. Too much coffee too late in the day. Too much horror and too much to think about.
There had been kissing, as I recalled. Trying to teach me some Lucannis. Touching that was not just cuddling for the warmth. More…?
All of us falling asleep. Couch make-out session kind of touching, but slow, Jason at my back and Kage in front, kissing me and each other, holding on, warming me. Hands to breasts and thighs, maybe, but I’d been touching them also. By then it had been two days since any of us had slept. Passed out before more.
Even so…
I started back awake.
“Kage—” Voice groggy. “I said I’d get an extra bone for him. I have to go see Merab also.”
“Nonsense.” Kage held onto me. “You’re sleeping in. Nothing you need to do that can’t wait.”
That only reminded me of my bag, Atarah, Gabriel, talking with Zar and Andrew about going back, faie, translators, emails … Goddess. I did need to get up.
I pulled away from his chest, rubbing my eyes to clear them.
“Really, princess, he’s fine. He goes every morning he can that she’s cooking. That’s his thing. If he had an extra bone he’d go through it today also and make himself sick. That marrow’s rich stuff.” Kage passed me the cold bit of tea in the mug from the bedside table that I’d had the night before.
“It’s daylight. I should get up anyway. There’s a lot to do.” I rinsed out my mouth and spat into the mug.
“None that’s going to run away in an hour.” Kage looked far more perky than I felt. Creatures enjoying both dawn and dusk, they didn’t seem to have as much trouble with these endless nights as I did. “Give yourself a few minutes’ break. Get up when you feel like it and we’ll go to Atarah’s den.” He returned the mug to the bedside table.
“Can I do laundry now that I’ll have something new on?”
“I’ll show you everything. Laundry room, stores, kitchens, library.”
“You have your own library?” I settled back with my head on the pillow, Kage facing me.
“Just odds and ends in there and a couple of old desktops. You can get on email, or anything you want if you need more than your phone. Probably all quaint by your standards, but it works for us. Hardly anyone has a personal computer around here. Only a smattering of smartphones.”
“So I’ve noticed.” But what made me chuckle was Kage using the word “quaint.”
Which made me think of words.
“What’s your favorite word in Lucannis?” I asked as I stretched. I turned onto my back to stretch more, the first one was so delightful.
“Lunae, cataja.” Kage watched my breasts below the cotton shirt, leaning over to press his nose to the jumble of wheat-colored hair on the pillow. “Poulsotor, gemä.”
“I know those first two. What are they all together?”
“Moon, leader, mate, mother.” He kissed my hair, slowly inhaling.
“Thank you,” I said, rolling toward him, which pulled my hair away and left our faces close.
He met my eyes but said nothing.
“For being kind last night,” I said.
His eyes rolled as if searching for a thought hidden in his own periphery. “That sounds unfinished. But you’re welcome. ‘Kind’ is my middle name. Right after ‘compassionate,’ ‘mature,’ ‘sexy beast,’ and…”
I laughed, ducking my head. “I owe you a lesson. Are you already familiar with the concepts of middle, lower, and upper worlds?” I looked up.
He leaned in.
I pulled back. “You’re not listening to me.”
“What?”
I had to chuckle more at that. “No lessons if you can’t listen. You tell me when you have clear brain space and you want to talk magic.”
“I’m perfectly clear-headed. You never really answered me. About turn-ons.”
“How was it with Jason yesterday? I was afraid he’d be upset with me for rushing him.”
“Oh…” Kage’s expression changed, the air once more sagging out of his sails. “He respects you a hell of a lot more than he does me. But I…” He sort of shrugged with his upturned left shoulder and stopped.
“What happened? Didn’t you feel empowered to keep to your own schedule? Even if you did end up having to leave late with Peter?”
He winced. “I felt like a bloody great lout.”
“What?”
“Well…” Squirming, no longer meeting my eyes.
“He guilt-tripped you?” I asked. “Because you didn’t have sex and didn’t fix his broth before he had to go to work?”
“Uh…”
“Kage, really. Balance. Everything can’t always be his way. With everyone else, including me most of the time, you’re so … forward. If we go from the perspective of your public face I would go so far as to say ‘obnoxious.’ You’re upfront about your opinions. Why do you roll on your back at every whim of Jason’s? What did you call it? Letting him hold your nose? Did you ever think your bending to his will is the reason he doesn’t respect you as much as he might otherwise?”
“I want what he wants. I only … also want him to be on time.”
“Set an earlier alarm. Take the time you want with him in the morning. Once that time’s up, be firm and go to fix the broth while you both get ready. It’s that simple. If you are firm about the time.”
He nodded. “See? You’re a good teacher.” Though he was distracted looking at my breasts again, trailing one fingertip down my upper arm.
I twisted my head on the pillow. “Do you have a middle name? I don’t think I’ve ever heard one of your surnames. You must have them?”
“Yeah…” He let out a regretful breath, withdrew his hand, then yawned, turning his face into the pillow. “No middle. We usually have a given name and a family name. And our regional family names are limited. Mine is Whitesheaf. Jason’s is Incallio, which means cliff-dweller. His family traces back to the coastal cliff areas in the South of England for many generations. My family is mixed, a bit like Andrew. A little German and Scandinavian, though it’s been about five generations here, and all wolf. Zar and Jed and Jason are the pure Sables.”
“But you’re Zar and Jed’s cousin?”
“I have some of the old Sable blood also. It’s my mum’s side that’s from the east. My dad is little brother to their mum. We pass down family names on the female line—the gemä side—and always consider pups of the same mother pure siblings, no matter if they have different fathers. All one Moon, all one mother, they say.”
“That must have been hard on your family also when they were going through that with Zar and Jed’s dad.”
Kage gave a noncommittal jerk of his shoulder, reaching to touch my arm again as if unaware he was doing it. “Gabriel Senior always had problems. My dad hated him. He’s a worm servant in Hove. Working on a big commercial build there.”
“He is? Couldn’t he get you a job?”
“I wouldn’t want it.” Kage scowled at my shoulder as his finger slid below the short sleeve. “We don’t get along particularly well. He’s all right, but we’ve never been close. I’m tighter with my mum and my orataj. Some of the worm servants get detached. A bit like being a stranger, but the other way around. I understand being a stranger. But all the time he spends with humans, not so much with the pack or in fur … I don’t know.”
“Hard to wrap your head around?”
“Yeah…” Kage leaned suddenly back, smirking at me. “Odd questions for someone who only returned here for a mercy-driven business transaction.�
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“I never said ‘only.’ Of course I came back because I love you. But, since time is not a luxury that—”
He kissed me, moving fast, out of nowhere, making the physical shock even stronger. Or, really, would it have mattered? Those millions of exploding nerves buzzing straight to my toes didn’t give a damn if he’d leaned in fast or slow.
“Just being friendly,” he assured me as he caught himself. “How about you? You won’t answer my questions. You never talk about yourself.”
“Sure I do.” Although … I’d talked a lot about myself to Isaac. A bit to Jason. Maybe not much to the others. Surely I was not breathless from a two-second kiss. “I’m just a girl from a cornfield with dreams of being a big city teacher. Not that big a story.”
“And a witch.”
Not only breathless but that tingling settled in my ears. Kage had kissed me before—for longer, greater intensity—and every time had left me wishing for more. What I needed to be doing was checking the clock. I had to get up, no matter what he said.
When I didn’t answer, Kage added, “Don’t toss that out.” A whisper, looking into my eyes. While I had no idea what he was talking about.
Why are you here? Liar!
Don’t toss us out? This time? This morning? This Moon? Our futures?
No … don’t toss out being a witch.
“You’re too powerful to do that, Cassia. It’d be like a strong silver saying she didn’t want to be a wolf anymore. It’s more than just you.”
“I’m not… You’ve happened to see me at my best when it comes to magic. First of all, I’m usually a run of the mill scry and not much more. Second, and more important, I’m not talking about this right now. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Thinking of your lists.” Grinning.
“I don’t know why you’ve been saying that. I’m not always making lists.”
“First of all, you do. Second, I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”
“Very funny.” I was just recovering myself through the distraction of his teasing when he kissed me again. Stupid because I lay there and kissed him back like this was totally fine and normal, and better than fine…
Moonlight Heart: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 4) Page 18
