by Amy Lane
And there was no fucking way any of us were letting Green off the hill again. Not that he’d ever shown an inclination to go before, so maybe he was just asserting his… dominance, or whatever, to prove he wasn’t letting me go.
Well, point taken. Panic and terror? Yeah—that’s what it was like when he was stuck in the frickin’ jail surrounded by concrete and metal, where no sidhe should ever be. He’d just… just put his life in my hands, assumed I would be able to take care of whatever happened, and in spite of the fact that everybody did this all the fucking time, having Green do it….
I needed to talk to him one-on-one so bad. So bad. Two years ago, the world would have screeched to a fucking halt while Green and I took care of our personal business, but not now. Now we were expected to be all grown-up and shit, and to put off our personal business until the hill was taken care of. And after fighting so goddamned hard to be a grown-up, I was now going to be the grown-up in the lives of… well, yeah.
Two more things I’d been pushing out of my mind while I tried hard not to feel like a child myself.
So—priorities. I spent those days dealing with my own goddamned priorities, and I was no happier about it several mornings after I’d thrown up on the cross-country track than I had been that particular day.
So I did one of two things that would help me clear my head. Unfortunately it wasn’t knitting, because that would mean I’d picked a project besides socks, and that would mean I’d dealt with….
Yeah. That thing that women usually knit for. The small one. Ones. The small people. So I didn’t go knit.
I went running.
I was circumspect this time—had a bowl of oatmeal and bananas and a nice glass of milk, and waited half an hour for everything to settle. Then I put on my crappy bicycle shorts and my old high school gym T-shirt with the arms ripped off and walked through the kitchen to grab a bottle of Gatorade to clip to my belt.
Bracken was sitting at the kitchen table, looking up the books for the classes we’d be attending together as well as the one he was taking without me—I planned to use that for library time. He glanced up as I passed through and made a face.
“Alone?” he asked tentatively, as though expecting a fight.
“Were you expecting an invite?” I asked. I went through the mental checklist of all the things I’d done just to make sure I could have my own time to go exercise.
“Yes,” he said unequivocally. “Let me—”
I laughed. The alternative was another fight, and I was done with being a child. “Bracken, I’m going running. I’ve done it a thousand times. You sat there and watched me eat a good breakfast. C’mon, baby, how bad could it get?”
Bracken just shook his head. “Go ahead and start,” he said. “Someone will be with you shortly.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not going to be that long a run.”
He looked at me bleakly, and I saw how tired he was. Worrying about me? Well, yeah. That was his primary job—to look after me while Green looked after the rest of the hill.
My mouth twitched in a smile, and I came in two paces to kiss his cheek. “Don’t worry,” I said, bumping his temple with my nose. “I’m tougher than I look.”
His arm wrapped around my waist, strong, heavy, and secure. “I’ve never doubted,” he said, but the wrinkle at his brow told a different story—not that he doubted I was tougher than I looked, but that I could be tough enough to deal.
I kissed his temple again. “I promise not to give whoever it is a bad time,” I said. I was rewarded by a quick smile.
“Good. Because I was going to text Teague.”
His reward was my best smile. “Really? Teague’s all settled in now?” I felt a sudden swift pain from behind, and I turned just in time to see a flash of tawny fur disappear down the inside steps.
“Oh, hell.” How had I offended Renny?
“You could have asked her,” Bracken rebuked gently. “I think she’s wanted you to talk to her for the last few days.”
I let out a groan and buried my face in his shoulder. “Well, it will piss her off if I chase after her now. I’ll come in and knit—that’s usually our thing.” School started in two days. What hadn’t been knitting, running, and sleeping over the last week or so had been open speculation, sending Max to work to glean information, asking the shape-shifters to report anything suspicious, and studying news media for everything else we could gather.
Knitting and running were the best parts, actually. I’d take them.
“What are you knitting?” he asked, his thoughts so on par with mine it was terrifying.
“Socks,” I said, scowling. “Big ones. For you.” Which was nothing but the truth.
“Well, Grace brought out some pattern books for you to look at,” he said practically, and I grimaced.
“Run first. Panic second,” I told him truthfully, then grabbed my Gatorade and trotted out the door and down the stairs.
Teague must have been getting ready for a run of his own, because he was out the door and at my side almost before I’d finished my stretches. Werewolves didn’t need to stretch—something about healing and all that bullshit.
Lucky fucker.
“So,” I asked, settling into my slow, easy lope and praying that this time I wouldn’t get winded too quickly, “how was Monterey?”
I glanced sideways and saw the narrowed, annoyed look in his hazel eyes that said he was probably blushing beneath the mild flush that exercise had brought to his sharp cheekbones. Blushing was cute on Teague—he had dark blond hair and a few leftover freckles. On the face of a leather-tough, snake-mean werewolf hunter, the disappearing freckles were a dear sign of a truly innocent heart.
“Awesome,” he muttered. “Got laid a lot.”
I laughed. This was personal chat for the guy, and that was fine with me. “No time spent running along the beach?” I needled.
He picked up his speed a little, which was just mean, but also pure Teague. “Where’s your bodyguard today?” he asked. “Why’d I get babysitting duty?”
“He’s ordering our books online,” I huffed. God, eight weeks along, and my wind was fucking gone. “Because on top of werewolf-ageddon, we’ve got two more goddamned semesters.”
“That was smart,” he said. For a moment I thought he was speaking sarcastically, and I almost got mad. Then he said, “Conserving your energy, not gassing yourself when shit’s going down. Good idea.”
I half grunted, half gasped. “You make it sound like I wasn’t emotionally blackmailed into it,” I said. This was the part where the track started to rise, and I found I was practically walking as I struggled up it. Oh, hell. How had this happened? I ran this track every other day—when had it gotten too hard?
“Oh, I’m sure you were,” he said, the laughter in his voice evidence that he really did know me. “It’s just smart that you didn’t fight them on it. Save your pissiness for the bad guys, you know?”
“A lesson I put into action at the county jail,” I told him grimly.
I was not at all surprised when he let out sharp bark of laughter.
“That must’ve been something,” he said with admiration. “You just… just crashed a people-ball into the jail. What in the hell?”
Our footsteps echoed on the path, and I said the thing that nobody had said—it bore saying. “Green was in there.”
Teague grunted. “That was stupid.”
Well, nobody else would say it. “He was trying to prove a point, I think.”
“Yeah? What was his point?”
I slowed to walking and gulped air. He kept jogging—not losing any wind at all, the stupid asshole—but he didn’t leave me behind.
“That it sucks to worry about the person you love,” I said, hating to voice it. “But we all knew that.”
“Then why prove it now?”
I glared at him and started back up the hill at a sorry jog trot, uncomfortably aware of the sweat pouring down my body as though it was ninety degrees on th
e hill instead of a temperate seventy-five. “Isn’t it obvious?” I wheezed. “I’m already having trouble running, and I sleep like a baby instead of like a woman who’s having two of them!”
I stumbled, going to one knee but coming back up without the help he was about to offer me. The scrape on my knee stung, and there was probably some blood involved, but I was too irritated to want to give a shit.
“Well, you both know danger’s not bullshit,” Teague said matter-of-factly. “And yanno, he’s got….” His hands flailed even while he continued his graceful jog at my side.
“Got what?” I asked, trying hard to find my rhythm again.
“You know… you’re not his first party. Who knows how the other parties ended, right?”
I stumbled again, this time going heavily to my hands and knees. “What in the fuck?” I swore, mostly to myself. This time Teague did stop to help me up, and uncharacteristically he fussed over my boo-boos a little.
“I’ll text Bracken,” he promised, going for his phone, which he carried on a clip at his belt.
“Don’t you dare,” I snapped. “If he wanted my blood, he should have come with us!” I stood up, dusted my stinging hands off on the back of my shorts, and made one more effort to use those pain endorphins so I could run. “You’re the one person I can trust to not treat me like I’m made of fucking glass and wishes, you know?”
Teague stopped on the path and glared at me. “No, I don’t know,” he snapped. “And don’t play coy. You’re not my lover, you’re my queen, and I’ve been looking my entire life to serve someone like you. Someone kind, someone who sees me as a person of worth. You mean that to every fucking person on the fucking hill, and you’re going to have babies? It’s a big fucking deal, Cory. You are made of glass and wishes as far as we’re concerned. Take this seriously, dammit—you can’t afford to dick around anymore. You have officially stopped being a kid!”
I stopped and stared at him. “Is this about Redding?” I asked, taking a shot in the dark.
“You’re goddamned right it is—because you can’t do that anymore. Don’t you get it? It’s not your body right now. Your heart, your spirit, but your body belongs to those children—and those children belong to us. Katy has been”—he waved his hands—“doing that embroidery thing for you. Jack signed up for early child-care classes. Green shouldn’t have been in that fucking jail, but if he made his point, it was worth it. Green isn’t just Green—he’s the whole goddamned hill. And those children are our entire goddamned world.”
I stared at him, shocked, because nobody had said this to me yet.
Why did I need to hear these things to believe them?
I nodded as though I was going to agree with him, then broke into tears.
Thank Goddess Teague wasn’t a cuddler. He stood there shifting from one foot to the other until I managed to get myself to hiccups and snot. When I could breathe again, I wiped my eyes on my shirt.
He waited until I was done. “You, uh, gonna do that some more, or would you like to maybe run up this hill?”
“You’re not going to stop me from running?” I sniffled.
“That’s not the kind of danger that scares me shitless,” he confessed.
“Then we can run,” I told him.
He palmed the back of my head and gave me a brotherly kiss on the temple.
“We’ll take care of you,” he said near my ear. “Just let us do our jobs. Listen to us. You’re doing your job just caring for yourself and them.”
“There’s a werewolf army crawling up the fucking hill,” I told him with dignity. “I can’t stand back and let everybody fight my battles for me.”
He grimaced and shook his head at me. “Cory, that’s exactly what you’re going to have to do. What the hell have I been doing here for the last ten months, if it hasn’t been training to be your captain?”
Oh Goddess. He’d been so broken when he’d gotten here. Green and I, we’d known what was inside him, and this summer in Redding, we’d seen even more of that fineness. I’d almost died to save his life—but it wasn’t until right now, as he chewed my ass for just being the leader I’d tried so hard to be, that I understood why.
“Okay,” I said, plodding around a rock in my path. “Yeah. You’re my captain.”
“Damned straight,” he proclaimed. “And I wouldn’t have let Green go into the field, you know that? Jesus, and you people say I’m dumb.”
Go, Teague. I guess if we could raise him from the self-hatred, pain, and fear that had surrounded him when he’d come to the hill, maybe we could raise these already beloved children with love, kindness, and care.
“Not anymore,” I said, trying not to get all tear-wobbly again. Jesus, I hadn’t cried this much in two years. “You’ve totally graduated to arrogant and irritating. Well the fuck done.”
Teague chuckled meanly. “I’ll tell Jacky—he’ll be so goddamned proud.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m pretty sure he already knows.”
Again, that evil chuckle.
Asshole.
Captain.
Friend.
Bracken: The Care and Feeding of a Growing Worry
GREEN HELD a formal dinner the night after she went running with Teague, and I was relieved. A formal dinner meant everyone with information would be reporting to the head table and we would finally learn the shape of our enemy—the colors, flaws, and texture of the thing we were up against.
It was not enough to have killed several of them—I needed to know the taste of their blood.
My job—my only job—in the hill was to protect my wife. Given how many times she’d almost died, it was a bigger job than it sounded like. I was not the smartest person on the hill—although I wasn’t thick or self-obsessed, either—which made me a good bet for this line of work.
It also made my stomach churn in worry.
Green hadn’t been there when she’d sliced her own throat in order to stop Teague Sullivan from plummeting to his death.
Dangerous and foolish and brave and admirable—I was not equipped for that tangle. The only thread I’d been able to find at first had been fury.
And the night she conceived our children, I found acceptance.
Acceptance was a strange thing—one would expect it to indicate resignation. But I was anything but resigned to my beloved being in danger. I’d come to accept that she might put herself in danger, and to accept that her fighting heart might never be content to seek shelter behind me. That acceptance was fine. I didn’t want her behind me. I wanted to be at her side, wreaking war on our enemies and protecting our friends.
There was no resignation in how I felt. There was the burning desire to fight for what we needed.
To fight to keep her safe, to keep Green safe, to keep our children safe.
These were the things that our hill needed.
They could be found in the simplest of things—making her eat right, making sure she slept, keeping Green happy, making sure his heart was well.
Since we’d told Cory of her burden, Green’s heart had not been well.
Nicky had noticed also.
“He said anything yet?” Nicky said to me under the general babble at the table.
I looked around and nodded to the next person who stood ready to talk to me, indicating she should wait. “No,” I told him softly. “But she did talk with Teague this morning. She seems a little more at peace.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Nicky snarked. “I cannot tell you how excited I am to be going off to school with someone else out to get us. I mean, these assholes infiltrated a fucking jail.”
“Yes.” I was as worried as he was, but not as jittery. It was Nicky’s nature to be nervous—even the most majestic of birds knew when to take flight. Nicky was a large bird, but his nature was more like a city falcon than a California condor. He was good at darting and diving, and in a fight he was surprisingly effective.
But he did not intimidate, and he did not contemplate.
&n
bsp; He was less of a leader than I, and the moment he’d acknowledged where he sat in the order of things had been the moment we’d been able to become friends.
“That’s all you got?” Nicky asked unhappily. “‘Yes’? Because I’m telling you—”
“I’m telling you two clowns to shut up,” Teague said frankly from Nicky’s other side. He looked casually at Cory, who was in deep conversation with one of the pixies. My mother usually reported to me personally, but the moment babies had come into the picture, she’d started to flutter about the hill without any focus at all. I couldn’t blame her, really. Pixies adored children, and given that her own child had been born a sidhe—who bore few if any progeny—she’d been resigned to never having another baby to fuss over.
My mother was very good at fussing. The fact that Cory allowed Blissa to fuss over her was one more reason in the list of them to love her.
Blissa’s excitement meant that Cory had only one more report to take, and Teague was right—she wasn’t going to remain distracted for long.
I nodded at the goblin waiting for my attention, and tried not to grimace as she twisted her limbs into grotesque shapes out of sheer nervousness. It was wonderful that Cory seemed to accept all the fey with such wholehearted welcome. Personally, some of my brethren made even my eyes widen, and I’d been born and raised around them.
“Cowslip?” I confirmed—this was not a creature I’d spoken with often. “You had something you felt we should know?”
Cowslip nodded and popped her shoulder out of joint, forcing her three skinny green breasts to achieve an even odder appearance. “The water,” she hissed through a forked tongue. “The water, not the ground water, the water in the pipessssss….”
I swallowed, my mind drawn to every frightening human movie that Cory, Green, Nicky, and Teague had ever forced us to watch.
