Chapter 6
Boon lay in bed thinking about the day he’d spent with Angelle.
He went over every word they shared, every laugh, every question.
And still couldn’t pin down the point at which he’d convinced her to come spend time with him and his family and friends.
But he was glad that he had. She hadn’t even been hesitant when he’d explained that they didn’t have electricity.
She still wanted to come to his house. His smile faded and he sat up in bed.
“She’s coming to my house,” he said aloud. “I gotta talk to Tempest.”
He swung his legs off the side of the bed and quickly pulled on a pair of jeans, then grabbed a shirt and slipped it over his shoulders while leaving it unbuttoned down the front.
He padded barefoot down the hallway and stopped at Maverik’s front door only long enough to put on his boots, then quietly let himself out of the door.
He was careful to make his footsteps almost silent on the front deck, but as soon as his boots hit the ground, he broke into a relaxed run.
He didn’t slow down until he reached the highway, and then it was only long enough to stand silently and listen for any oncoming vehicles or people who might have been on foot.
When there was no evidence of either, he hurried across the highway, then jogged into the woods and angled toward the road that ran through the community on that side.
No one stopped him. No one even knew he was there. Or so he thought.
When he arrived at Tempest’s home, he stood at the base of the steps looking up toward the house.
He wasn’t sure what time it was, but knew from the position of the moon, and from the amount of dew on the grass and the dampness in the air, that it was well past midnight.
He quietly made his way up the steps and took a seat in one of the chairs on the porch, overlooking the river.
He smiled to himself as he admired the night view, and realized the irony of Tempest living in a mostly wooded area, on the banks of a cove of a river, despite the fact that she’d left home to move to the city and get away from the swamp.
He chuckled quietly and propped his feet up on the railing around the porch.
It wasn’t long before he began to hear movement inside.
Then he saw the glow of a light bulb as someone inside flipped it on above the sink in the kitchen.
He stood up and faced the window, knowing that whoever it was, Brandt or Tempest, would look out of the window and see him standing there.
Sure enough, it was only a minute or so before Tempest was looking back at him through the window.
Rather than be startled, she canted her head slightly before she pressed her lips together and shook her head at him.
She finished washing her hands, then stepped away from the window.
He heard Tempest unlocking the door, then she stepped out onto the porch with Elijah in her arms. “What are you doing out here?” she asked.
“I came to ask for your help,” Boon said.
“You know I’ll always help, but what did you do to already be here asking for help?” Tempest asked. “You’ve barely been here a whole day.”
Boon wasn’t fully listening. He was watching her holding her son.
“Boon?” Tempest asked.
“Oh! Sorry, I just love watching you with your baby. It still surprises me to see you holding him. I kind of forget that you’re a mom until I see it.”
“It’s surprising to me sometimes, too. But I never had any idea that this kind of joy existed. You’ll see when you have yours.”
“If she’ll stay,” Boon said.
“What? Why wouldn’t she?”
“We spent the whole day together. From breakfast to after dark. And it was wonderful. She even said that she wants to come to Whispers to meet all our family and our friends and see the way we do things there.”
“That’s great!” Tempest said. “Angelle was born to live in Whispers. She’s always been nature oriented, at least since I’ve known her. And she loves to be outside and doing all the things.”
“She’ll be staying with me,” Boon said.
“Okay,” Tempest said, trying to figure out what the problem was.
“With me!” Boon said, putting emphasis on the word ‘me’.
“And? Ohhh!” Tempest exclaimed.
“Yeah. Oh. Can you help me change it?”
“I tried years and years ago. You said if you didn’t build it yourself, you didn’t want it,” Tempest said.
“One room, two windows and a seperate outhouse is fine for me. But not for my Angelle. I need a place like Lily’s. Maybe not exactly. But, similar.”
“You should have let me do it before,” Tempest grumbled.
“I didn’t need it before, and I thought I had time to do it myself.
I didn’t get around to it, and now I need a nice place for my mate.
I can’t expect her to live like I do. She deserves better.
So, I want to make it nice before she gets there.
I don’t think she’d ask for anything better than I have, but I definitely want to give her better. ”
“What exactly do you want? Like my mom’s?”
“Not that big or extravagant. Just… nicer, warmer, more comfortable, safer.”
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Tempest said, smiling at her uncle.
He was not delicate or charming in any way.
He was no nonsense, blunt, and so direct it was often considered offensive — though that wasn’t his intention.
And here he was, doing his best to convince his mate — his human mate — that he was the right one for her.
He was almost little boy like in his innocence in how that could best be done.
But in a way, that was almost better. She’d never be able to say she was misled in any way.
He was the epitome of ‘what you see is what you get’.
“Just… I don’t know. Something safe, and comfortable.”
“You said that,” Tempest said with a soft chuckle.
“Help me. Please”
“Come on in the house. Let me wake Brandt up to take care of Elijah and we’ll pop home and see what we can do real quick,” Tempest said.
“You sure you don’t mind?”
“You know I don’t!” Tempest said. “Maybe I’ll stay and have breakfast with Mom and Dad, too.”
~~~
Tempest and Boon stood right outside his hut, as he called it, right on the banks of the bayou where he’d grown up fishing with his dad, Carnage. Tempest looked critically at the small structure, then at the ground she stood on. “You can’t have possibly been comfortable here.”
“I was always comfortable here,” Boon said with a shrug of his shoulders. “Pretty much.”
“Okay, here’s what I see. It’s a freaking peninsula.
The bayou turns right here, and your hut is right on the edge of it.
There’s reeds and grass so tall on the edges that it’s up to my knees.
It’s only three feet from your door here in the front, but two hundred feet on each side.
With your house sitting right where it does, if it rains and the bayou swells, it’s going to go inside the building. ”
Boon nodded. “It’s happened.”
“Then you can’t build right here.”
“I like it here!” he exclaimed.
“Do you want my help or not?”
“I do, but I like it here. You can still get in and out from the back. The land lies higher in that direction.”
“Has anyone built in that area?”
“No, it’s just me for about a mile in that direction.”
“So, all this is still yours?”
“Yep. Enthrall made sure that nobody could build close to me, or on my island, as he calls it.”
“It’s a peninsula,” Tempest said.
“I know that. But he says I’d only like it better if it was an island, so he calls it my island.”
Tempest thought about it, before looking him in the eye. “You trust me?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, let me do this, if you don’t like it, I can undo it.”
“Don’t change my land too much. I don’t want to live anywhere else. I like it here. Only one way in and one way out, unless somebody comes in by water. Nobody close to me. Lot’s of privacy.”
“I know… let me think.”
She stood there for a few moments, then started walking.
She walked the entire property that extended into the curve of the bayou, then started back toward the back of the property.
Eventually, she came back toward Boon. “You want to keep it with the trees and undergrowth over there?” she asked, pointing behind herself.
“Yes. Privacy.”
Tempest nodded slowly as she walked back to stand beside Boon. She closed her eyes as her mists began to gather.
“What are you thinking?” Boon whispered, needing to know, but not wanting to interrupt her.
“That if you don’t stop talking I won’t get this right.”
“Hmpf! There’s not anything that could keep you from getting anything right that you want right.”
Tempest smothered a smirk, as she shushed him.
The more power she gathered, the greater the swirl of green that surrounded them.
She lifted her hands and moved them ever so slightly here and there as she directed her magics to do her bidding.
The volume of her mists grew exponentially as they crept across the ground that Boon loved so much, carrying out the changes that Tempest envisioned.
Boon looked down at his feet, then half-turned and glanced behind himself at the bank of the bayou as even more mists swirled there. He opened his mouth to speak, but Tempest raised her hand, one finger extended as she uttered just one word. “No!”
Boon snapped his mouth closed, and crossed his arms over his chest as he questioned his decision to go to Tempest for help. His gaze took in the pale green mists as far in the distance as he could see, encroaching on every inch of property that he’d claimed, and was given by Enthrall.
Eventually the mists began to dissipate. But they were fading so slowly Boon wasn’t sure that they were actually fading, or if he just wished they would.
Tempest opened her eyes and looked around, surveying all around herself and Boon. “Nice,” she said.
“I thought your mists were purple like your mother’s,” Boon said.