“Shit, you realize we’ll have telepathy and be able to feel each other’s emotions when we bind our blood,” Benton remarked as the full ramifications of being mated to another sentinel began to settle in.
“We should have our mating ceremony then.”
“I would have thought you’d be a little angry about being my other half.”
“As long as you can handle being inferior to me in everything but looks, we are fine.”
“I had no idea you were insane.”
Baxter laughed before he fisted Benton’s T-shirt and yanked him forward. With no warning, he pressed their mouths together and stabbed his tongue through the seam of Benton’s lips. Benton’s dick, which had calmed down after the initial delight of achieving his first erection, came roaring back to life as Baxter thoroughly explored. Not happy merely being a participant, Benton aggressively took over the kiss and stepped closer to him. For several minutes, they continued to make out before Benton pushed Baxter away.
They were both panting as they stared at each other before Baxter broke the silence. “Sex is going to be awesome,” he predicted with a smile.
“You’re sleeping alone tonight.”
“I will agree to that. But negotiations for bedsharing and our matebond ceremony begin tomorrow.”
“After I kick your ass.”
Baxter grinned. “I can’t wait to knock you down a peg or two.”
“Funny, I was thinking the same about you.” Since he wasn’t going to give Baxter the opportunity to continue their asinine conversation, Benton hurried off to his room to try out that masturbation thing and figure out what the hell he was going to do with all the revelations in his life. He wondered how long it would take for everything to make sense again.
Chapter 6
Alaric sat in his office and used his parchment to make some minor changes to the menus. They had a newly assigned sentinel and in this reincarnation, he didn’t like cauliflower. It would never show up on his tray again. The truth was, while Alaric’s body had gone through its usual grueling schedule of visiting the thousands of sentinels in his care, his mind was stuck on Arch Lich Chander Daray.
Though Baxter and Benton had carried back stories of Gavrael and Gedeon, Alaric still struggled to truly understand the word mate. He knew his body was now awakened, though over the time since he’d last seen the Arch Lich, that desire was already beginning to dull. Which was welcome since he could not stop to appease the hunger he had for him. Despair weighed him down. This flaw which did not allow him to rest or find nourishment was not going to allow him to build any relationship with a man who wasn’t a sentinel and who couldn’t visit him in his prison.
As it was, Alaric was impatiently waiting for Baxter to return with the bylaws for the Order of the Fallen Knights. Without them, he could not get started on his petition to have the sentinels become members of the Council of Sorcery and Shifters. If they could not join, then Alaric would never have cause to leave again. He wondered what Chander could be thinking of his behavior and distance.
“Alaric,” Baxter said as he strode into the room. “I have the stuff from the Reverent Knights. They included the form you will need to apply as soon as you complete a set of bylaws for our people.”
“Thank you,” Alaric replied. “You and Benton have been summoned for the first time together. I have not seen either of you at the compound since.”
“Turns out we’re mates.”
“Congratulations.”
Baxter tossed a thick book on his desk. “Thanks. Speaking of mates, here’s the handbook they give to people new to the Council of Sorcery and Shifters.”
“Thank you, I will read it.”
“Good. You’ll note the first chapter is about mates.”
“I hope to find it most instructive though as we have discussed, it does not better the sentinels to learn about matebonds.”
“I’m not talking in generalities here,” Baxter remarked. “You have a mate. One you haven’t seen since you met.”
“I believe that was just a few days ago.”
“It was,” Baxter responded. His tone was becoming more hostile as their conversation continued.
“I sense you are angry.”
“Damn right. You have a mate. One I happen to call family. You’re ignoring him.”
“I lack the ability to visit him,” Alaric insisted.
“Bullshit, you can leave the compound whenever you want. You came for the meeting.”
“I must remain focused on the sentinels.”
“Look, I get that you’re the leader of our people. I respect that and I respect you. But I’m around Council leaders all the time. In fact, I live with one. No matter how important your people are, your mate must come first.”
“My duty is to the sentinels.”
Baxter scowled. “You’re kidding, right?”
Alaric wished he was joking nearly as much as he wished he could visit the Arch Lich but he was stuck, and he couldn’t even explain it. “My sole purpose in life is to see to the sentinels. I must remain focused on seeing to their care, comfort, and bettering their lives in the future.”
“Well, I have to tell you I’m glad I don’t have to come back here,” Baxter stated. “This place is awful and since you’re officially my leader, I shouldn’t say this but you’re really pissing me off right now.”
“It was never my intention to upset you. I do not wish to anger any sentinel.”
“What about a necromancer? Like Chander. Is it okay to anger him?”
“The Arch Lich is the leader of the Order of Necromancia. He has his own people to be concerned with.”
“He’s waited over six and a half centuries for you.”
“Baxter, I’m afraid I must attend the other sentinels,” Alaric explained as he stood up. He had men to see to, and it appeared their conversation had ventured too far away from sentinels to allow him to continue it.
“Unbelievable,” Baxter muttered.
Alaric walked past him and out into the hall. “I will send you a note magically when I have questions regarding this petition.”
“Send one to Chander.”
“Then I will send my inquiries to Chander,” Alaric said as he headed down to visit Gerard. He was apparently restless and needed someone to talk to.
“Not what I meant,” Baxter hollered as the distance between them grew.
Alaric wasn’t happy with his situation, but he had no idea how he could ever fix the problems which plagued him. He would read the book Baxter brought to him; should his petition be successful, there was a great amount of information in there he would need to relay to his men. The bylaws did not seem to be too difficult a task. He knew what his men needed, and surely it could not be too far from the needs of the Order of the Fallen Knights. They were both resurrected races; they likely had many parallels in their lives. Alaric was looking forward to the task of learning more about fallen knights and moving his sentinels one step closer to a richer future.
* * *
Chander woke up midway through tumbling to the ground. He hit the wooden floor with a thump but did manage not to smack his face into it. Rubbing his hip, he discovered he had fallen asleep in his desk chair again. He was also still wearing his suit pants and dress shirt. That was bad; Chander hadn’t been to Council Headquarters since Friday afternoon and he was pretty sure it was Sunday morning. He put a hand to his chest; it was burning. Pain was becoming a real nuisance, he decided. Standing up, he heard a knock on his door.
“You all right?”
“Fell off my chair.”
He could hear Benton’s sigh through the wood. “You said you were going to get some sleep last night.”
“I was,” Chander replied as he opened the door. “But then I started—”
“A new book and lost track of time.”
“Yeah.”
“Want to take a shower? Those clothes are going to become a permanent part of your anatomy soon.”
“I�
��d like to see your anatomy,” Baxter said as he walked up to them.
Chander bit his lip so he wouldn’t laugh. Baxter was like a cat in heat and Benton was determined the pair take their time. “I’m gonna go grab that shower,” he announced as he wandered down the hall toward the bathroom.
“Chand?”
“Yeah?” he asked after turning back to face the pair.
“You gonna bring clothes with you?”
“Forgot,” Chander replied sheepishly as he ducked back into his bedroom. Rifling through his dresser, he was annoyed to find the only thing in there was a charcoal sock. “Fuck, I gotta do some laundry.”
Grabbing miscellaneous articles of clothing, Chander began shoving them into the hamper he only remembered on days when he was forced to do laundry.
“I’ll do it,” Benton offered.
“You aren’t washing my clothes. You’re my sentinel, not my housekeeper.”
“You know with three of us, we could really use someone to clean and maybe even make some homecooked meals,” Baxter said. Chander looked up in time to see him make a grab for Benton’s ass but the other sentinel moved deftly out of the way.
“I don’t like strangers,” Chander stated. Once, he’d been a person perfectly willing to trust new people in his life—then he’d found out the men he was taking to his bed were taking money from the elder council to relay anything he might have said during their encounters. And it had been all arranged by someone he’d thought was a friend. His sex life and his faith in people had died over six centuries ago.
“We could hire someone without telling the elder council,” Benton suggested. Both of his sentinels were aware of everything in his past. “This place is a mess. Dust bunnies are going to rise up and kill us with our own daggers. We could really use someone around here to clean, cook, and do laundry.”
Chander now had an overflowing basket of clothes that Baxter grabbed from him as he strode down the hall toward the washing machine. Racing after him, Chander turned the washer on before his sentinel could and started tossing laundry in. “I’ll think about it.”
“Aren’t you going to sort that?” Benton asked.
“All of your clothes are gray. What do you know about sorting?”
“I watch TV, don’t I?”
“It’ll be fine,” Chander said.
“Your whites will turn pink or gray.”
“First, I’m a necromancer,” Chander began as he stuffed the machine full, “I don’t have anything white except dress shirts, and I send those out. All my shit is dark and even if it wasn’t, who is going to care?”
“Alaric might not like it,” Baxter suggested. Both Chander and Benton glared at him. Baxter grimaced. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought him up.”
“We aren’t going to have one of those subjects we all dance around. I have a mate,” Chander snapped as he slammed the lid down. “He’s at the compound and I’m here. We all need to learn to live with it. Mostly I’m relieved.”
“You deserve better,” Benton stated. Chander disagreed, but he wasn’t going to say that because it would create an argument and he wasn’t in the mood to deal with it. So, he wandered toward the kitchen. He needed coffee and luckily, one of his sentinels had already brewed a full pot. They knew he lived off the stuff.
“Chand, you need to eat something,” Benton said.
“Is there any pizza left from last night?”
“Last night?” Baxter asked.
Chander was pretty sure he’d eaten pizza last night, but looking at his sentinels and their incredulous faces he guessed he was wrong. “I ate pizza.”
“Okay, the last time anyone ordered pizza was two days ago and I did it under duress. I asked you what you wanted last night and you said you would eat later,” Baxter accused. “You didn’t though, did you?”
“I forgot.”
“He’s hopeless,” Benton cried out as he threw his hands up and walked into the adjoining living room.
“Sit down,” Baxter ordered. “I’ll pour you a bowl of cereal.”
“Give him the kind with the extra fiber.”
Chander’s face heated. “Can we leave my colon out of this?”
“If you’d take care of yourself, we could,” Benton said.
“I think I liked it better when you two were each bitching about how the other was a shit sentinel,” Chander muttered as he took a spoon from Baxter. His sentinel then put a bowl of fiber-rich cereal swimming in milk on the table in front of him.
“Shut up, you love having us both here,” Benton replied.
“That’s the second-best part of it for me,” Chander remarked after he took the first bite of his breakfast.
“What’s the first?” Baxter asked.
“We’re mates,” Benton responded correctly.
“Maybe I’d remember if you’d let me sleep in your bed.”
“If I thought you were content to just sleep then I would let you, but we both know you want to have sex.”
Chander drank his coffee and wished he were deaf so he didn’t have to hear their conversation.
“Why can’t we fuck?” Baxter demanded.
“We need to get to know one another first.”
“We’re the same race and have the same interests. We are part of the same family. We do know each other,” Baxter argued.
“That’s idiotic. We have different personalities, and that’s going to determine whether this is going to work.”
“Of course it’s going to work,” Baxter said. “And we could have sex while we’re getting to know one another.”
“You just want to keep arguing over who is going to top first.”
Deciding he really did prefer to finish his meal in peace, Chander grabbed his bowl and his mug and hightailed it out of the kitchen. He could get some more reading done while he waited for his laundry to get finished. Or he could stare at a wall. Either option was better than listening to his sentinels argue over their as yet non-existent sex life.
Chapter 7
Nearly two weeks later, Chander was striding down the hall toward the Order of Necromancia with his sentinels flanking him. They’d just finished lunch and Chander was hoping the afternoon was going to be a productive one. It was a Friday and he wanted to take as little work home with him as possible—he had yet to get any further on his idea for resurrecting the Reverent Knights’ dragons, and he had some new books to digest.
The smoky glass door in front of him was opened by Benton and he walked in to see the normal amount of chaos.
“Chand, here are your messages,” Evergreen said.
“Can you please make him throw out these plants?” Elder Drusa asked. “They are starting to stink.”
“I said I was sorry,” Evergreen replied. “I’ll have my mom come in this weekend and revive them.”
Elder Drusa gave a haughty sniff. “Imagine a necromancer wanting to grow a garden.”
“I’m only half necro,” Evergreen retorted, his gray-green eyes narrowing. “My mother happens to be a druid.”
“I couldn’t care less,” Elder Drusa responded.
Chander ignored them and headed for his private sanctuary. Hopefully he could make it there before—
“Chander,” Elder Sigimund called out. “A word?”
Too late, he thought as he huffed out a breath. “I have a great deal to do, Sigimund. What do you need?” He continued into his office and pulled off his crown and cloak. Then he dropped down into his chair while he rifled through the thick pile of messages Evergreen had handled him.
“Did you speak with the Grand Warlock about our committee?”
“Which committee would that be? I’m on a number of them, and you know the Grand Warlock has many duties which keep him away from Headquarters.”
Sigimund stood a little straighter. “The Grand Warlock should have a greater commitment to this Council.”
“I think the Grand Warlock gets to decide how to handle his responsibilities,” Chander countered
. “We aren’t in the habit of criticizing other Council leaders around here.”
“It’s not as if I don’t know what I’m talking about,” Sigimund responded. “I was Arch Lich myself once.”
“I’m versed in the history of the Order of Necromancia. Is this the part where I’m supposed to apologize for being born with a skull on my chest?”
“Obviously Fate chose you for this purpose, but you do need the guidance of our elder council,” Sigimund replied.
“I needed your guidance when I was a boy,” Chander corrected. “And now I don’t get to stand on my own as Fate intended, do I?”
“Surely you cannot be suggesting we’re no longer necessary,” Sigimund insisted. “All Council leaders should be lucky enough to have the expertise of those wiser and more experienced than they are.”
“Sigimund, what the hell do you want?”
“Did the Grand Warlock agree to join our committee?”
“What damn committee?” Chander asked with irritation.
“The one we spoke of last week,” Sigimund said. “The one for sorcerers.”
“The one for sorcerers?”
“Yes, we discussed this at the elders meeting. We would begin with the original sorcerers who founded the Council and then begin to add others who show interest.”
“For what purpose?” Chander asked. He had no recollection of anything Sigimund was talking about.
“Obviously, sorcerers have unique needs. This would give all of us a chance to discuss those needs and make sure they are being met by the Council. It is run by a shifter after all.”
Now Chander remembered what the hell he was talking about and he liked hearing it the second time even less than he had the first. “Sigimund, this Council belongs to the Emperor. He’s a shifter. You know that. You’re the one who invited him to join and asked him to lead. Remember? You signed my name to your letter. If you didn’t want a shifter to take over my job as leader of the Council, then you should have let it go to Arch Wizard Egidius as it was intended to.” Chander certainly hadn’t wanted to give the Council to Egidius; he had hated the man, but he would have done anything to get Conley’s body back.
Rise of the Lich Sentinel Page 5
