by Holley Trent
He shrugged again. “That’s what I remember. I like to think my memory is a little better than most people’s.”
“Does that make you feel better, blaming me for things that you don’t understand?”
“Enlighten me. I wish I could say I’d heard it all before, but you never tell me shit. Everything I know, I had to learn by trial and error.”
“At least you were alive to try. Had I not been meddling, as you like to say, you would have been dead centuries ago. Believe it or not, I wanted that even less than you would have.”
She set the old teakettle onto the stove burner, perhaps a bit too aggressively given the amount of water sloshing out, and whipped around with her fists on her hips.
In that moment, he saw a flash of the angry goddess that everyone else saw, but that he’d taken for granted.
“So much of what I did after you were born was to keep you alive until you could take over the job reasonably enough for yourself. The names they called you, Yaotl. The threats they made.” She scoffed.
“Who?”
She made a dismissive flick of her hand. “Pick any side. You want to know the truth, so I’ll speak it. Your father’s family wanted nothing to do with you, and not just because they feared me. Even if I turned him into a Cougar and forced him to endure his four-legged fate, they still had their hands held out for blessings. They wanted their corn. They wanted their bellies full of fish. I pointed to you, because you were a miracle, but they wanted more than that. You couldn’t give them what they wanted, and they figured that out soon enough.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t have the right kind of magic to give them wealth or luck or protection, and you never would because I didn’t give you that. I gave you the parts of me that had dominion over all the animals I had power to call. Why do you think I can’t make any more Cougars? Why I haven’t tried?”
“What?” He had no idea what she was going on about.
“Beings like me can give away a part of our essences to our children.” She put her hands together, cupping them as if holding some sort of orb inside. “We can mold their magic a little, if we try. We can give them a legacy to pass down. I gave you the cats.”
“Me?”
“You, Yaotl. They’re not mine. Haven’t been since you were born. I’ve been guiding them, anyway, because the magic that flows through them is mine, but I am not their patron. I gave them to you.”
“I don’t understand that. Why would you divest that part of yourself for me?”
“Because in spite of what you might think, I have a conscience. Of course I worry about being too harsh at times. I worry about excess. I worry about hurting people who don’t deserve to be hurt. I gave you something I couldn’t take back because I didn’t want to get too powerful and because I didn’t want anyone to ever overpower you. You were my failsafe. You were my greatest accomplishment. Your father was just … ” She turned her hands over. “A necessary evil. He was a challenge for me to endure along with all the others.”
“Why haven’t you ever told me any of this?”
“Would it have mattered?”
He opened his mouth to tell her yes, but he really didn’t know. He didn’t know anything anymore.
“Yaotl … ” she said softly. She rubbed her thumb against the four fingers of her left hand and stared down at her palm for a long while before flattening her hand. A blade of silvery magic rocked over her lifeline, mesmerizing and somehow familiar, though he didn’t know why.
“I had millennia to cut my teeth and get my grips,” she whispered. “We’re not expected to rise from the mist perfectly formed and with nothing left to learn. I had plenty to learn, but I did it with far fewer surviving witnesses.”
She put her hand down to her side, but the magic hung in the air between them.
His magic that she’d held back.
“You were born with too many enemies, both human and supernatural. I gave you some gifts and saved others for the future. I did what I could to shield you. I acted, at times, without your counsel because I had to. I waited for you to want this, but perhaps you never will.”
“Want what, Ma?”
She gave the blade of suspended magic a nudge and it glided across the space between them, graceful as a cat. Stopping just in front of his chest.
“This is your mantle. It is not my legend the Cougars should know, but yours.”
“My legend? You kidding me? I don’t have shit to give them. There’s nothing I can do for them that you can’t or that Mason can’t.” He gave the magic a tentative poke, and it wrapped around his wrist like a cuff and wouldn’t dislodge even after he shook his arm hard. “Ma—”
“Shh. It’s time to stop running, Yaotl, and it’s time for me to make you. You want your mother? You have her now.”
“Ma … ”
He couldn’t think of any other words to say. He was utterly inarticulate, and confused, and overwhelmed; it was too late to run. The magic seared into his arm, burning flesh and singing the hair. Turning black.
It cut into his skin like a brand through hide, and the sharp sting of purposeful magic jerked through him. It was like a net was being pulled along through him, dragging forward the things that needed culling out and leaving behind the finer pieces, and the culling hurt.
He scratched at his arm, first with human and then with cougar claws, and could find no purchase, or maybe the “gift” hurt too much for him to feel anything else.
As he swayed on his feet and the room spun around him, Ma held his face between her hands and whispered. “My sweet boy. You weren’t born right for this, but maybe that’s good. Maybe different is better.”
He scratched again at the dark stain of magic spiraling around his forearm, but there was no dislodging it. It was in him—a part of him that had simply come home after too long being made to wait outside in the cold.
The dark stain on his arm settled and his head stopped spinning. There was a brand or a tattoo, of a sort—a large wildcat wrapped from the back of his hand up to his elbow, its tongue frighteningly unfurled, black eyes threatening, and his fur was flames.
The cat was the symbol of the destroyer that had to come before renewal. Fires and floods devastated, but they were part of the cycle. They cleared away all the bullshit and made room for new growth.
In the old days, whenever women had seen Ma in her cougar form, they knew to get ready for change. She’d helped them time and time again.
Tito was guilty of forgetting, just like history. There were no temples erected for her or figures carved in her image. She hadn’t asked history to remember her, but he should have remembered. She was his mother.
He dragged his fingertip along the cat’s long tail and closed his hand into a fist as some of that new magic in him woke up.
“Shit.”
He felt out of sorts. His brain was cluttered with knowledge of proximity. There were cats around, and he knew them all. He thought if he concentrated long enough, he could put a name to every nudge. The Delacroixs lived nearby, and the Sullivans. Old, old Cougar blood, like the Foyes had.
“What does this mean?” he whispered.
“That you’re a grown man, and that I won’t interfere unless you ask me to.”
“Just like that?”
“You’ve got to learn to be what you are. For too long, I made the mistake of stopping you.” She entwined her fingers against her belly and raised her chin stubbornly. “Perhaps Necalli’s return is a blessing. Perhaps he was the sign I needed. You have a legacy to guard and I’ll do everything in my power to back you.”
chapter FIFTEEN
December stepped out of the bathroom, holding a towel to squeeze the water out of the ends of her hair, and found Tito lounging on the guest bed. With his fingers laced behind his head and legs crossed at the ankles, he stared straight up at the ceiling. The sight would have been far too winsome for the early hour if it weren’t for the fact he was fully dresse
d and the bedroom door was wide open.
Cruz had shuffled down the hall to her grandmother’s room the moment December had stepped in, saying something about cartoons and a big canopy bed.
She shut the door and tossed the hair towel into the hamper. “Did your mother throw you off the sofa or something?”
“Nah, she threw me off a damn ledge.”
“What?”
He closed his eyes. Shook his head. “Never mind.”
“Did you need something?” She knelt beside the dresser and rooted through her bag for clean clothes. She was running out of options, and briefly pondered making another run to the gift shop for a second, much larger “There’s Magic in Maria!” T-shirt.
“Nah. Just … needed to not be by myself for a little while.”
“I see.”
“I don’t think you do.”
“So tell me. Or not.” She shrugged. “Feels weird telling demigods what to do.”
“I wish someone would.”
“You’re not making any sense, Tito.”
He rolled onto his side and propped his head up on his fist. “I gotta go to work tonight.”
“Okay?” She turned her back and stepped into a pair of panties. The towel knotted over her breasts had seemed so much longer before she’d stepped into the bedroom. Concealing herself seemed silly. He’d seen every inch of her before—up close and in lurid detail.
Maybe closer is easier.
She’d feel less like she was being watched if he didn’t do it from across the room.
“You know, I have to get back to work, too.”
“Dee.”
“What?” She plopped her hands onto her hips and turned on her heel. “Bills have to get paid. I’m not gonna leave my sister in the lurch with the rent.”
“I’ll cover the rent.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Makes things easier. If you don’t feel guilty, you can make decisions more easily. You can take your time.”
“Time isn’t a luxury I have. My life is perpetual motion. I’m like a shark. I gotta keep swimming so I can breathe.”
“Stop for a while. Just for a little while.”
“Why?”
“Please.” He waved her over. A subtle flick of his hand, really, and not an overt invitation, but he’d never been a particularly overt sort. He never had to be. All he had to do was smile, and she went.
He wasn’t smiling, though.
She sat on the bed’s edge and laced her fingers atop her lap.
He rolled onto his back again and sighed at the ceiling. “Hannah’s up.”
“She is? Did she call, or—”
“No.” He swallowed, closed his eyes, and draped a forearm over them. “She’s just up. I can tell. She’s anxious, I guess, and entitled to be.”
“Is that a Cougar thing? Being able to tell what she’s up to, I mean.”
“No, not a Cougar thing. Just … a Tito thing now.”
“What do you mean now?”
He didn’t answer. He rubbed circles at the small of her back, and she let him, watching curiously over his shoulder. The action seemed idle. He’d never been an idle toucher. His touches always had purposes—to incite, to entice, to tease. She didn’t mind, but she worried.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
“You’re rubbing me like I have colic or something. Are you sure you’re not the one who needs the rub?”
“I wouldn’t say no to one.”
“Turn over, then.”
She’d meant the words as a joke, but he’d dropped his hand from his eyes, anyway, and shook his head.
“Nah, I gotta go catch Hannah before she leaves the ranch for the day. I’d rather her stay put.”
“I’ll go with you.”
Before he could shape his lips to tell her the action wasn’t necessary, she put her hand over his mouth and tutted. “Cruz will be fine here with your mother.”
He pried a couple of her fingers apart and said through them, “I don’t doubt that. I guess trying to deter you is pointless.”
“Yeah, so you should stop wasting your energy.”
“Okay.”
“After all, I—” She pinched her lips and furrowed her brow, brought up short by the objection that didn’t come. “What?”
He shrugged. “I’m not gonna stop you. I’d rather that you didn’t get entangled in this mess, but I know better. I know how things work with true mates. They aid and abet and try to give you a heart attack every time. That’s why Floyd Foye started going gray at thirty-five. Mason seems to be following in his footsteps, at least in that regard.”
“A week ago, maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to stick my neck out like that, but I’m not going to sit around twiddling my thumbs. I can’t just wait for other folks to resolve things. I have to do my part, whatever it is.”
“If anything happened to you, I’d—”
She pinched her fingers together again over his mouth and silenced him. She couldn’t bear the sentiment when she was doing so well not crying at the drop of a hat. “So, what’s the plan? We’ll go to the ranch before Hannah tries to come to you, and then we go root out Necalli?”
His scoff was a forceful tickle against her hand.
“So, yes?”
He nodded.
“Well, good.” She patted his head.
She tried to stand, but he hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her back against him. “I thought you were in a hurry. I should put some clothes on. Not sure this is work I should do in a fuzzy yellow towel.”
“I’m gonna let you go in a minute. My reflex is for me to hold you, though. Less anxious that way. Not sure if that’ll pass.”
“If what will?”
“The clinginess. A little bit is normal when we’re around our mates, but I think I’m just extra fucked-up.”
“How is wanting to be around someone you like a little fucked-up?”
He pulled her closer, sending her toppling off-balance enough to make her fall to her side against him.
He drew in a deep breath and sighed against the back of her hair as he molded his body against hers.
He was hard steel and she was putty, and she didn’t want to move, not even when he inched her towel up her leg and draped a hand atop her thigh. Or maybe especially not then.
“Just give me a minute,” he whispered, and he started making those aimless circles again, but atop her hip. Tender, yet arousing. When he touched her like that, schedules didn’t matter. If she’d been concerned about the day’s agenda at all, she would have inched away from the hard protrusion against her rear end. Instead, she was wriggling backward.
“You can’t help it,” he said, seemingly apropos of nothing.
“Hmm?” She moved his hand down her hip, gently urged his fingertips over her belly.
“The touching is instinct for you as much as it is for me, I guess,” he said. “I should be the bigger person and back away.”
“Are you going on about that nonsense again? You think I wouldn’t want you if not for the magic stuff?”
“Hard not to think that way when you’re nearby. I think you shouldn’t like me so much and that this is just Fate doing its job.”
“You’re full of it.” And she wanted to be full of him. If that made her a magic-addled nitwit, she was fine with the assessment.
“I want to think that you would have wanted me anyway even without the magic and the pheromones, but I look at you and I see how pretty you are and how sweet you are, and I wonder when someone’s gonna realize they made a mistake and take you away from me.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” She hooked her foot over his top leg and shifted his wavering hand to her apex.
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. Maybe pheromones have a little something to do with that. Honestly, I’m okay with that.”
“Dee, tell me you’d want me anyway.”
“I think I already did.”
Even in all those years when she’d been cursing his name from afar, she’d wanted him. She’d wanted to wake up to his smile and his warm gaze. She’d wanted to burrow into his comforting, soothing scent. He’d wanted him to make love to her in that thoughtful, passionate way he did, even if he were going to leave come morning, because whenever he did, he’d whisper her name in such a way that made her believe that while she wasn’t the only woman in the world, she was the only woman for him.
She just hadn’t understood until she’d tracked him to Maria. Maybe she didn’t have any magic, but she had power.
“You’re killing me,” he whispered, even as he reached into her panties and strummed at her clit.
She notched her fingertips into his forearm and pulled in a breath.
“Thought you wanted to be touched,” he said.
“I’m not stopping you.” She moved his hand more firmly over her sex and writhed. “I’d just prefer to moan than yelp.”
“I could try to make you moan, but the door’s unlocked.” He slid his fingers into her anyway, and she had to bite down on her own hand to squelch the noise building up in her chest. “Can never just cuddle with you, huh? Gotta get me all hot and bothered?”
He drew tiny circles around her aroused nub and spread his fingers wide inside her as he dipped them in and out.
Beyond curling her toes against his calf and biting down even harder on the fleshy part of her hand, she had no response.
“One thing always leads to another with you,” he said. “I tell myself, ‘this’ll be enough.’ I lie and say that just touching you is enough, but it’s not. Damn near every time you walk into a room, I picture pushing your pants down around your ankles and bending you over.”
Not that she needed any demonstrations of what he wanted to do with her bent over, but he ground against her backside, and then hissed.
“Fuck.”
Please.
She swallowed. “Uh. Door’s unlocked.”
“Yep.” He slid his fingers out of her and rolled away, inviting a cold draft to her back.
“Uh, wait. I wasn’t—”
“Shh.” He padded to the door, turned the lock, and hit the light. He’d always said he didn’t need lights to see her, usually right before he took off his boots.
