by Amy Lane
“But—” She grunted, pushing herself up on one elbow and reaching for the discarded washcloth. I just looked at her. She knew it turned me on and made me proud when she wore me on her skin. “Fine,” she conceded, falling back against me and pillowing her head on my arm. She tried to pull the edge of the sheet down to cover her naked hip, but I wouldn’t let her do that either. Instead, I cupped her abdomen—still flat, but harder underneath the skin and flesh—and stroked her gently with my thumb.
“What would you do?” I asked. She was the one who had Green’s ear in this way.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.” Then she tilted her head so she could kiss my bicep. “He’s… sad. Worried. Trying not to let it affect us. But that thing he did, forcing our hand about letting him participate—that was… rooted in something.” She sighed. “It’s like… like that thing with Mist. There was so much pain there, and we only saw little bits and pieces. Had to put it together ourselves.”
I grunted. Green had been imprisoned for over a hundred years against his will, and then had broken free and come to America. He’d met Adrian on the way over—but the people who’d imprisoned him, used him for his gifts as a sexually healing being, they hadn’t let him alone. Their revenge had cost Adrian his life.
“Yes,” I agreed, my heart suddenly far too sore for a sidhe who had pleasured two people so thoroughly in such a short span of time. “And like Adrian’s heart when he thought about Sezan.”
The man who had ultimately killed Adrian, who had been named for the man Adrian had killed before becoming a vampire. So many long pasts, tainted with bitter memories and threats to our future.
“You don’t have anything deep and dark in your past, do you?” she asked tartly, probably thinking the same thing I was.
I smiled at her, suddenly self-conscious. “I’m very young for a sidhe,” I told her, although she knew already. “My soul is still new.”
She feathered a touch across my cheek. “Of course it is,” she breathed softly. “My brand-new, great braw lover. I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
We’d had too few moments like this, of peace and repletion without conflict. This one fed my soul. I stowed it away carefully, knowing there might be thin times ahead.
Cory: Tightening
“CORY, BABY, you gotta get up.”
“Canwehitsnooze?” I said. I think I said it. I dreamed about saying it.
“Bracken! Dammit! Get in here and help her! We’re gonna be late!”
I sat up as though I’d been shocked, forcing my eyelids open and throwing my body into action before my brain was fully awake. “No! Don’t get Bracken. He’ll be pissed, and I was warm and cozy, and he’ll say, ‘Beloved, we should stay home!’ and I’ll be like, ‘Pregnant women go to school all the time!’ and then he’ll storm off, and I’ll shiver, and then we won’t make up until we get to school, and I’m tired of him being pissed when he’s trying not to be—motherfucker!”
“Cory, are you okay?” Nicky sounded distraught, but I couldn’t care.
“Oh, ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch!” I grabbed my foot and hopped up and down, crashing into the wall behind me and standing there, letting the pain of a stubbed little toe wash over me.
The bedroom door burst open. Green and Bracken crashed in, both of them looking frantic and terrified.
“What! What in the hell! Are you okay?” God—panic in stereo. Fucking awesome.
“No blood,” I said through my nausea. “Stubbed toe. Everyone gets one. No panic. Don’t panic, don’t get mad, just….” I panted as a wave of it washed over me. I’d had my throat slit—still had the scar across my neck—and it hadn’t hurt this bad. “Just….” I swallowed against the ever-present tears. “You know. Crappy morning. Sorry I slept in.”
Green moved next to me and put his hand on the back of my neck. The healing coursed through my body, forcing me to take a breath as the pain—in what had probably been a broken toe—faded, and my nausea went with it.
And then the nausea was coming back.
“Oh, hell. Nicky, cracker me.”
And instead of arguing that “cracker” wasn’t a verb, he smacked the package of saltines that Bracken kept supplied on the bedside table right into my hand.
Augh! Shit on fucking fire, did going back to school suck!
I shoved another cracker in my mouth. “Sorry, everybody,” I mumbled through a full mouth—which seemed to be the only way I talked these days. “I’ll get drethed.”
“We’ll help,” Green said, lowering his head to touch temples with me. I leaned my head against his and closed my eyes, trying not to feel foolish and overwhelmed.
The last two weeks had sucked. Like, there were not words for how tired I’d been. Sometimes, my boobs hurt just from walking barefoot across the carpet. I was eating every minute of every day, and if I forgot to eat, Goddess help us all, because I’d get nauseous and tearful and irrational. I’d thought I was a cranky, bossy bitch when I was a nineteen-year-old gas-station clerk, but I’d been bush-league back then. Cranky is hearing a voice you don’t recognize coming out of your mouth as you tell your husband that if he doesn’t pull over at the gas station and let you pee and get a goddamned cup of coffee and milk, you will rip his hair out by the fucking roots.
I didn’t even like coffee, but my campaign to drink soda in spite of my pregnancy and everyone saying it was bad for me had been brought to a halt by an unfortunate tendency to vomit as soon as I drank it.
Soda was just the beginning. Also off my list were cheese, eggs, chicken, bagels with white flour, Goldfish Crackers, and kiwi fruit. And let me tell you, throwing up kiwi fruit is nothing to sneeze at—that shit burns.
I could eat Asian noodles—plain Asian noodles with just a little bit of spice—for days. And I had. Even after I’d eaten them with broccoli (another no-no) and thrown up noodles out my nose—and don’t you think that would have killed that craving?
I also craved steak and cranberry juice.
And sleep.
That fantastic plan to play dress-up and go be a lawyer to find out what the official charges were for Connor? Yeah. That went up in sleep. Just that easy. Bracken had woken me up that morning with a cup of coffee and some saltines. I sat up in bed, ate them, got out of bed, got into the shower, and got out. I sat down on the toilet to brush my hair, and Bracken found me there, fifteen minutes later, out like a light.
I’d slept all Tuesday, figuring I just hadn’t been ready for the routine, right? That now that I’d had my first day of school, I’d do some homework, go back on Wednesday, and try the fake-lawyer thing again on Thursday, and I’d be business as usual.
That had been two weeks ago. That night I’d sat down to dinner feeling just fine, but in the middle of the war council we’d been having over dessert, I found myself nodding off. Two weeks ago, and I’d been made of fucking sleep ever since.
That was when I started drinking coffee. Apparently the little parasites in my stomach loved that shit. I got no complaints nausea-wise, and it was the only thing that kept me awake past eight o’clock at night.
And no, that long-awaited conversation with Green—the one about the shadow that lay on his heart—that had never fucking happened.
And we hadn’t told him about the douche-nozzles at school either.
Yeah, the bodyguards were doing their jobs, although from what I’d heard from Teague’s shape-shifters—and sometimes Teague himself—the job was pretty boring. The shape-shifters who had infiltrated the jail and tried to attack us over the year hadn’t caught on to the strange little ritual we had in which three out of the four members of the ruling family drove down the hill to the human college multiple times each week. Maybe they didn’t recognize me yet, or maybe the fact that sometimes we put Nicky in the other SUV with the bodyguards threw them off. Either way, it meant they were either not that bright or, more logically, were focusing their efforts on something else.
Besides, well, even Green could ward off an at
tack on a moving vehicle. And a lot of people who had gone up against Bracken and me when we were together had ended up bleeding, broken, or dead.
And I was so bitchy in the mornings that dead was looking more and more like the most reasonable option.
This year, Mario and LaMark, the Avian shifters who’d gone to school with us in the past, were back in the SUV with us again. When I thought of bodyguards, I thought of the two of them, although they ostensibly had classes of their own. I noticed that between classes they met me with a snack and a cup of hot tea (usually that was Mario, who seemed to disapprove of the coffee thing) and a quick check to make sure we hadn’t seen anything untoward.
Honestly?
Unless a rogue funky werewolf walked up and bit me on the ass, I would not know it was there.
I had my own shit to deal with.
The first morning we got to my first class—a poli-sci class, of all things—at 8:32 a.m., walking in quietly to find that there were no seats left. Bracken and I knew the drill, and the desks were so cramped for him anyway that he didn’t mind. We slid to the floor, crossing our legs and balancing our coffees as we pulled out our notebooks and got ready to write down the beginning-of-class drill that every new professor dragged you through.
The professor was already there, and he stared at both of us as we sat down.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he said, and I smiled gaily back. I mean, that first day I’d been happy to return, right?
“Thank you, we will!” I sang. I had my notebook open and looked around waiting for the syllabus to make its way around.
“As I was saying,” the professor exaggerated, “I posted my syllabus online two weeks ago, and I expect you all to have the first week’s homework done for me.”
Crap. Oh crap. I pulled out my laptop and went fishing in the CSUS website, looking for this guy’s name. Oh, there it was, Kerrigan. But Kerrigan wasn’t the name written on the whiteboard. The name on the whiteboard was Professor L. Pritchard—but the same class.
I was going to say it—but thank Goddess, someone from the back of the class spoke up.
“But Professor, you were a last-minute replacement. None of us knew to look for the syllabus online, because it didn’t get put up.”
The man scowled. He looked fortyish, with hair thinning on top but lush around the sides, and he had a deep, permanent line etched between his two black brows.
“Be that as it may—”
“It’s still not up!” I said, keeping a smile on my face. “Look, see? Whatever changes you made in the website, they didn’t go up yet.”
The whole class looked at him and nodded, and he cast me a supremely dirty look.
“Very well, I’ll put your assignment on the board. Have it done by Wednesday, and we’ll have our lecture today.”
He turned to write stuff on the board, and that’s when I realized where I hadn’t stopped between the time we’d parked the car and walked in.
I looked at Bracken apologetically.
“Again?” he whispered.
“Sorry!” I whispered back. While he was writing what looked like half his syllabus on the board, I stood up to leave the room.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked disdainfully. “Afraid to see what I require for a passed class?”
I tried to laugh at his lame joke. “Uhm, actually, I have to use the facilities,” I sang, still hoping we could be friends.
“You couldn’t go before you got here?” he asked.
I grimaced. “We stopped halfway down the hill, but it doesn’t always take. I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to disrupt class. I swear!”
“Well, next time, maybe leave a little earlier,” he said coldly.
“Right,” I said, keeping my smile glued on. “Wednesday, we’ll leave at five thirty. I hear you.”
I walked out before the logic professor could do the math, and after my pee—oh, sweet relief!—I walked back in and found Bracken looming to his full height, his face set in such angry lines his real beauty pulsed through his glamour.
“I dare you to repeat that!” he snarled as I walked in.
The professor must have been stupid. “Don’t get all hot under the collar, ‘dudebro’—I’m on your side. Women, right?”
“Yep,” I said, bustling across the room. “We’re totally irrational, only good in the kitchen, educating us is a waste of resources, hormones make us stupid, barefoot and pregnant or on our backs, judge us by our husbands, here to get our MRS….” I paused, suddenly queasy. I held out my hand to the wall and slid down, treating my body like the delicate machine it was. The class was with me by this time, though, and they laughed as though it was a comic break. I got situated and looked guilelessly up at the professor. “Did I miss anything?” I asked. “Did I forget to mention we always want it even when we say no, or that catcalls are a blessing, or that all the feisty ones need is a good man to keep them in hand?”
Pritchard was blushing and hostile, but Bracken had calmed down enough for his glamour to fall back into place. He looked like a twenty-five-ish redneck, although he’d stopped giving himself a mullet and now went with the straight-from-the-part haircut he had in real life.
“I think you’re a little oversensitive about this—”
Bracken growled. “Cory, I will end him.”
“And hide the body where?” I retorted. Then, to the professor, “Can we start class now, or do you have any other scintillating observations about gender to share?”
It was not an auspicious beginning.
Bracken and I did our homework together. After two weeks in the class, he was getting an A. I was getting a C. I was starting to think of ways to hide that body. And I’d refused to let Bracken tell Hallow or Green about it. I was done with the Lady Cory bullshit, and I was done with the idea that I got special treatment. Twelve lousy fucking units with no day job. How hard could it fucking be?
Words that mocked me now.
Green held my elbow as I put my newly healed foot down, and then wrapped an arm around my shoulder. It felt so good—so good—and for a moment, the strange uneasiness that had set Bracken and me at odds and had caused us to not come to Green with the stupid professor, to not ask him to go play lawyer since I didn’t seem to be able to make it—it all went away. It was Green with his arm around my shoulders, just as it had been almost from the beginning.
Adrian had coaxed me out of my shell, into my womanhood, into someone who felt strong enough to come be part of the hill. I had fallen in love with him gradually, against my better judgment, hopelessly, fighting every moment.
With Green, it had taken one moment of comfort, and I was lost and gone.
Oh Goddess, I missed Adrian. I’d sat out at the top of the hill last night, dreaming of him, waiting, but unlike most of the other times I’d done that, he hadn’t shown.
Bracken had brought me down and undressed me, and I’d slept only a second, a moment, a heartbeat, before Nicky woke me again this morning.
I leaned into Green bonelessly, seeking comfort, needing that easy, open flowing of him and me that had been there from the first. For a precious moment, I got exactly what I needed.
And then… oh hell.
I straightened without looking at him. “I have to pee,” I mumbled, not meeting his eyes. I stumbled to the bathroom, wiping my face. My abdomen hurt, I had to pee so bad—I was as close to wetting my pants as I’d ever been in my adult life, and it was wrecking the one decent moment I’d had in two weeks.
I wiped stupid useless helpless dumbass tears as I went.
I was still on the potty, crying, when Nicky came in with a towel for my shower.
“This is really too comfortable,” I mumbled, wiping my eyes.
“Bracken is in here when you poop,” he said, with just enough playfulness to make me smile.
“It doesn’t even slow him down,” I said, coming out of my funk for a minute. “God, they’re a mind-fuck sometimes.”
“You know w
hat’s a real mind-fuck?” he asked, leaning against the wall. I had to wipe, but I didn’t want to move just yet.
“I can’t remember enough of last night’s war council to know what we’re doing over the weekend?” I said, a little appalled. Armies. Armies of hastily converted werewolves were surrounding our hill, and I couldn’t stay awake through a war council? I had an irrational urge to beat my sexist poli-sci professor to a pulp for the sheer injustice of it.
“It’ll get better,” Nicky said softly. “I mean, not entirely—you’re having twins, and we don’t know yet what they’re doing to your body. But you’ll get a handle on it. I think you should maybe sleep at school when you and Bracken keep trying to do homework. I think you’d be less destroyed during your days off. But don’t worry about the whole ‘there’s a war on’ vibe, because we apparently sent them into hiding underground when we broke into the jail. We’ve got an inkling for where they’re moving, but we don’t know anything concrete, and until we’re ready to go capture someone and have a little chat, it’s all intel and recon and you don’t need to be there.”
I yawned. “I need to be there,” I said when I was done. “It’s only fair—”
“That is a fucked-up idea of fair,” Nicky said, wrinkling his nose. “I mean, we give you shit about being Lady Cory, Queen of Every-fucking-thing, but you’re only one woman. You’ve got to have something to work with before you go superwoman on us. Give yourself a break.”
I leaned my head on my hand, nodded, and tried not to cry harder.
“’Kay,” I said, wanting the conversation to be over so I could fall apart in the shower.
Nicky knew me too well. He took a couple of paces in and kissed my forehead while cupping my cheek. I couldn’t even whine about being on the toilet—I’d been done peeing for a while, and now I was just a half-naked woman squatting.
“The other mind-fuck is that Bracken is reaming the holy fuck out of Green right now,” he said softly. “You shouldn’t have to break your toe to get his attention. If he hasn’t been able to see you drowning, it’s because he’s got his head up his own ass.”
