by Amy Lane
She left him then, and he’d been able to sleep, at least, but he’d awakened with the first sounds of Jacky and Katy making love.
There should have been something torturous about it, since he couldn’t be there, but there wasn’t. In fact it had been… soothing. He knew those sounds. He could picture what they were doing as they made those sounds. His cock wasn’t in the mood to play, but his brain… his brain could imagine it, could imagine his mates naked, their bodies lunging in the dim dawn light, and it made him feel…
Relieved. He didn’t have to be there. They would be fine without him.
It should have been a lonely feeling, a moment of uselessness in the life of a man who had striven so hard to be useful, but it wasn’t. He loved them. He loved them with everything he had. The pain that still echoed through his body with every heartbeat was worth it—for them. Stripping himself emotionally naked this last winter, just so he could learn to trust them to cloak him in the cold, had been worth it—for them. Dying in the service of his queen to prove his value would be worth it—for them.
But if he was living a life that might lead to its ending sooner than later, he was relieved they would survive if that happened. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t if it were the other way around.
So when they emerged from their room smelling like herbal soap and looking fresh and awake, he didn’t have to fake the tired smile that twitched at his mouth. They really were the best and most beautiful thing about a painful morning.
Jack all but leaped for the bed, jostling it softly as he put his hands on the rails. “You’re awake!” he said excitedly, and Teague twitched his grin up a notch.
“Half the county’s awake—and horny. Next time hire a skywriter, Jacky. That way only people outside will know.”
Jack rolled his eyes and darted glances around the big, echoing, wood-paneled house. “It would help if this thing didn’t have acoustics like a concert hall,” he said grimly. “But it’s so damned beautiful, I don’t think I can argue.”
Teague tried to take in his surroundings—besides the dark wood, he had the impression of a lot of furniture with long, uncovered legs in the same color and dark blue or red tapestry cushions. While he was doing this, Jack took his hand and started to study him in the same way. Except with Jack, there was a lot more intensity.
“You look like shit. I’d say you were as pale as a sheet, but someone changed yours and now they’re blue. What happened?”
Teague grimaced. “Got hot,” he lied. He was starting to sweat again, and it was as cool in the house as it looked outside.
“It’s seventy degrees in here,” Jack snapped. From behind them they heard some rustling in what sounded like a kitchen, and then Katy said, “Sandwiches! Jacky, steak sandwiches! Someone loves us!” And Teague smiled a little.
“Bring ’em in here, Katy, darlin’,” he said. “Come check out this view while you eat.”
“The only view she wants to check out is you. Were you bleeding?”
Teague snapped his attention back to Jack and moved when he did it. Then grimaced when he moved. “No. No blood. No worries.”
“Then why?”
“Why what?”
Jack scowled. “Goddammit, Teague! You’re a werewolf in a body cast. Don’t blow this off like it’s no big deal. I got attacked by a wolf, and I was ready to fuck in less than twelve hours. What happened to you was bad. Big fucking bad. You’re stuck here in a hospital bed and you look like shit and….”
Jack’s voice was getting… wonky. Creaky. Sad.
Teague grasped the hand holding his a little tighter. “Shhh… shh. It’s okay, Jacky. I’m fine.”
Jack hooked a really expensive-looking chair behind him and sank down on it, kissing Teague’s hand in a way that Teague would have shaken off if he’d been feeling better. Katy came in behind him, a big tray of sandwiches and cookies and chocolate milk in front of her, and Teague had to work hard to make eye contact as she set that down on the coffee table in front of the couch.
“Katy, darlin’, come here, would you?”
“Yeah, sure. Let me just set this down. You hungry? There’s steak. That’s got to be a good thing for you, healing and all. And chocolate milk. I know you like that. Here, let me just…”
“Katy, stop!” There. He’d made her look up at him, and sure enough, her eyes were red. “Aww, damn it! You two are acting like I’m dead. I’m not. I’m here, and I’m just as much a pain in the ass as I’ve always been.”
“You don’t get to act like this is nothing,” Katy snapped, her voice raw. “You don’t get to just lay here and look like shit—”
“Really, do you both have to keep saying that?”
“It’s true. And I hear you and Jacky talking. You still not give us straight answers.” Uh-oh, Katy’s English was slipping badly. Usually she had a little lilt, or some inverted syntax, but it only got really, really mangled when she was really, really upset.
Teague felt his face twist up into something truly unpleasant. He had flinched from her words, and there went all that pain Cinnamon had warned him about. Oh shit. Cinnamon.
“You guys, I’m fine. Look, why don’t you just ask Cinnamon—”
“Who?” They both looked at him with big eyes, and he peered back.
“The nice elf woman who runs the place? You’ve seen her. Long red hair? Hippy glasses? Flower-child clothes?”
Jack and Katy both looked at him as though he was completely deluded, and he, being the complete dumbshit he was, tried to prop himself up on his elbows to look them in the eyes and convince them he was not.
The sound that wrenched out of his throat was not entirely human, and it would have frightened most wolves.
“Fuck…,” he panted. His vision went white, then red, then black with white spots, then sort of a greenish gray, and he fought against the urge to vomit. When he’d conquered that, Cinnamon was there, and Jack and Katy were looking at her as though she’d just sprung up out of the floor.
“Now, really,” the woman snapped. “I thought we’d come to an agreement.”
“Sorry…,” he hissed.
“Sure you’re sorry! You’re sorry because you were forced to call my name, weren’t you?”
“I was just… ah… shit. Oh Christ. I’m sorry.”
Jack had never let go of his hand. “Is there anything you can do for the pain?”
Not even Teague missed the impatient look she sent him. “We could start by making him admit he has any! Great Sheba’s cat, werewolf, what’s it going to take for you start asking for a little bit of help?”
“An act of the Goddess,” Jack snarled. “But I’m asking now. Can you help him?”
Her hand on his brow felt so good that Teague actually sighed. “She is, princess. Just back offfff….” He sighed, feeling exhausted and sweat-ridden now that the pain was gone. “Back off,” he managed dreamily, “and let her work, ’kay?”
“I’ve worked,” Cinnamon said dryly. “And I think you should let your woman feed you. That’s part of my work done, right there.”
Teague grunted and tried to look like food wasn’t going to make him hurl. If it would take the panicked, miserable look off Katy’s face, he’d brave an entire refrigerator full of food, but Katy was looking at Cinnamon doubtfully, so he figured a sandwich would do it.
“C’mere, Katy,” he said. “Gonna need your help.” Raising his hand from his waist to his mouth seemed so out of the question right now.
Katy was there, wiggling past the other woman with an unfriendly glance. Cinnamon returned the glare with only a lifting of rust-colored eyebrows and sighed, shaking her head.
“You three are going to kill me. I need a joint, and I need to talk to Green.”
With that, she stalked off in a swirl of paisley skirts, leaving the three of them staring at each other in honest surprise.
“Did she say what I thought she said?” Jack sounded stunned.
Teague finally knew better than to try to shr
ug. “Sure sounded like it.”
Katy wrinkled her nose even as she gave Teague a bite of sandwich. To his surprise it didn’t taste half-bad. “I didn’t think we did that. No high, no reason to smoke that shit.”
“Arturo smokes,” Jack said, seemingly out of the blue, and Teague had to work very carefully at not jerking his head to look at Jacky.
“I think I knew that,” Teague mused. He seemed to recall seeing the big South American sidhe leaning on the porch railing at the hill, smoking quietly on a summer’s evening. “Maybe it’s the same reason some humans do,” he said thoughtfully. “The motion, the taste… it’s just soothing.”
At that thought a half laugh shook him, but not enough to hurt. “Nice to know we unsettle her that much.” Then he laughed. “Must be you two having sex like monkeys, you think?”
“You sound jealous,” Katy said, giving him a drink of chocolate milk. He noticed her hands were shaking and suddenly wished he could take them into his own. “We were thinking of you the whole time.”
Teague grunted. “I hope not. I’d rather you were having some fun.”
Jack’s attention, which for a while had been focused down the corridor where the elf woman had disappeared, was suddenly 100 percent laser-beamed on Teague.
“Not funny. And I noticed you got out of telling us anything useful at all.”
Gods. Teague let out a sound like an old dog getting kicked in the ribs. “Jacky, it hurts, okay?” And so did the admission, but then, they all knew that. “It hurt enough to wake me up last night in a sweat. That’s why the sheets are different. It hurts enough to make me glad you guys got busy this morning and to make me wish you’d go outside or something after this. I’m just going to lie here and be miserable and fucking hurt for two days, and I’d just as soon you not have to see that, okay?”
His voice was breaking, and he would have taken a moment to wonder at that—because it must have been a combination of pain and exhaustion and maybe, just maybe, learning to finally trust his mates with his heart the same way he’d asked them to trust him with their lives. Before he could finish the thought, though, Jack had gently taken his hand again and sat down in the neglected chair, pushing a kiss into his palm.
“No,” he said softly. Katy shoved another bite into Teague’s mouth before he could ask “No, what?”
“Nnn mmmmt?” he tried instead, then forced the sandwich down with a glare at Katy, who raised her eyebrows in return.
“We’re not leaving you,” she said, wiping the corner of his mouth. “Even if all we do here is piss you off, we’re not going. You think we’re gonna go out and be all happy skippy walking on the beach when you can’t even stare out after us without looking like you sucked lemons? No, you’re stuck with us. That’s what the whole wedding thing in February was all about. You think that ‘sickness and health’ stuff was bullshit?”
Teague tried to glare at her, but he never could be mad at Katy. “It wasn’t a traditional ceremony,” he said with dignity. Jack smirked against his rough palm.
“Wasn’t a traditional honeymoon.”
He smiled tiredly and suddenly was too weary to even be brave. “It hurts,” he confessed again and swallowed. “Hurts like a sonuvabitch. I don’t want you guys here for that. It… I can’t….” He was scrunching up his face and trying to stay stoic, but Katy’s hands were suddenly cupping his cheeks and Jack had brought Teague’s hand up to smooth against Jacky’s stubble and lips.
“It’s okay,” Katy whispered. “You think it hurts? I think nothing hurts worse than watching you fall out of the sky and—” Her voice caught. “—and not know if I’ll ever see you again. So you go ahead and hurt, ’kay?”
Teague closed his eyes tightly and felt tears slip out the corners. “I was pretty fucking scared,” he admitted.
“Oh thank God,” Jack choked against his hand. “I was wondering if you had any sense at all.”
The tears seemed to keep slipping, and there was nothing Teague could do to stop them. He remembered the terrible, painful sobs that had shaken him so very badly when he’d thought he’d lost Jacky and decided that maybe, right now, when he felt like six- to ten-grade horseshit, letting a little weakness slide by was the way to go.
CINNAMON CAME back in an hour and talked them through a sponge bath. It was fair to partly humiliating to lie there while his mates tended to him, and he tried not to snap their heads off when they jostled him.
Finally he was fed, clean, and ready for a little kindergarten nappy-poo. They had settled down with him, and he hated that they had to deal with just… just sitting with him, and that was how he managed to convince them to go outside.
“Look, guys, it’s gorgeous here. It’s beautiful. I told Green I’d never seen the ocean, and he sent us here. Go out and enjoy it for a little.” His eyelids drooped. He felt himself falling asleep and resorted to his only weapon. “Please?” he asked quietly. “It would mean a lot if I could look out there and see you two on the beach. Please?”
Katy looked up from where she was doing needlepoint on the couch, and Jack set down his book. Jack was still holding Teague’s hand as he read, and Teague hated to admit that the physical contact would be missed.
“That’s playing dirty,” she accused. Jack rolled his eyes.
“I think that’s the point, field mouse,” Jack told her. He looked back at Teague and seemed to come to a compromise. “I’ll tell you what, beloved. You let us sit here and bask in the peace of knowing you’re not gonna go tits up—”
“Who talks like that?” Teague snapped.
“Cory. And now me. Now let me finish. You let us sit here until you fall asleep. I see you nodding off, so you just let it happen, and then when you’re asleep, we’ll go out and walk. How’s that?”
Teague chuffed some air. “Fair enough.” He wasn’t going to last long anyway; he knew it. “But you guys take the car to town too. Go… go forget about being afraid and about me being hurt. I want to smell the ocean on you when you come back. Deal?”
Their eyes met, and he almost knew what they were saying.
“Deal,” they came back, and he sighed gratefully.
Then he gave them something for their consideration.
“I love you,” he said softly. “You’re both so worth it, okay? Don’t ever doubt that.”
Jack kissed his hand again. “You neither.”
They lapsed into quiet again, and he fell asleep to the sound of their breathing and the muted roar of the ocean.
WHEN HE woke up, a couple of hours into the afternoon, judging by the sun, they were gone. He was in enough pain to call for Cinnamon, now that there was no one to be stoic for, and she relieved his pain and brought him some lunch. Then, when that was done, she did him a solid he’d never forget.
She brought him the phone. Cory’s cell number was already on speed dial.
Repenting
TEAGUE SOUNDED like he’d just broken every bone in his body.
Lambent had assured me that he had—most of them in more than one place.
“So you’re going to be okay?” I asked for what was probably the gazillionth time, and repetition must have worked, because finally I got a little honesty.
“It doesn’t feel like it, but that’s what Cinnamon keeps telling me.”
“Green promised me you’d have a healer. Is that her?”
“How’d you know it was a girl?”
“I like Neil Young. So she says you’re going to be okay? Does it hurt?”
He made a negative grunt, and I called bullshit. “Bullshit.”
“Fine. Does the whole world need to know it hurts?”
“Yes,” I said, pulling my knees up to my chest and setting my knitting down on the coffee table. It was hard to knit and talk on the phone anyway, and I wondered where my hands-free was. I would have asked Bracken, but he was in a dark-hearted snit, and I didn’t want to poke it with a stick. Of course, with Bracken right now, just sitting in the same room and breathing amount
ed to poking his snit with a stick—and stirring up shit, ha ha ha help.
“Why?” Teague demanded, and I sighed.
“Because you scared the shit out of me, for one—”
“I know what I’m doing when I go out with you—”
“—and it was my fault you were in that position, for another—”
“I just told you—”
“—and I feel like shit because you got hurt and I should have stopped it!” I finished, raising my voice over his. Teague didn’t yell a lot, and I did. And I was sort of his leader. It gave me an unfair advantage, but there you go.
“You did stop it!” he yelled. I was surprised. He must really be hurting, and that didn’t make me feel any better either.
“Not in time,” I reminded him. “Man, I’m so sorry. I got clear of that guy, and one second I had you, and you were slowing down, and the next second….” I trailed off.
Teague grunted. “Yeah… what happened?” he asked.
I closed my eyes. “Nobody told you?”
I could imagine Teague shaking his head. It was a characteristic gesture, and if his dark blond hair was long enough, it would fall in his eyes when he did it. Then I heard him wince, and then I winced, because apparently even shaking his head hurt.
“Well, I sort of got hurt getting away from the guy,” I said. My fingers went up to the spanking new scar I had at my throat and pressed against the thick tissue. I’d asked Grace if she could maybe help me macramé a choker or something to hide it, but she’d been so mad at me that she said if she was speaking to me by the time I went back to school, then she’d do it.
Another classic Teague grunt. “That was your blood,” he reasoned. “I thought so. Jesus, Cory, what in the fuck did you do?”
I sighed. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said honestly—but Teague was one of the few people on earth who wouldn’t take that.
