Chapter 6 In the Snow #2
In the dresser mirror, I saw Cas come out of our bathroom, towel knotted across his hips and steam trailing after him. He stood there for a long moment, just watching Seri. His green eyes softened in a way they rarely did, the hardened commander melting away to reveal the man beneath.
“May I braid yours while you braid his?” he asked at last, uncharacteristically hesitant.
Seri’s hands paused in my hair, and I felt her body tense with surprise and delight. So far, none of us had been brave enough to touch her hair, not since the shampoo adventure when we discovered that naturally curly hair was not like our straight hair.
“I know how, obviously, since I braid my own all the time.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Mom taught me before…”
Before leukemia doused her light. Before Lucian began turning us into monsters. I kept my sigh silent. No more drama needed tonight.
“Yes,” she breathed, and I didn’t need to see her face to know she was beaming. “Yes, please!”
The bed dipped as Cas settled behind her, creating a line: Me sitting at the edge, Seri behind me, Cas behind her. I felt her shift as he gathered her curls, heard the soft intake of her breath at his touch.
I knew what he was doing. He was trying to make amends for making her feel like we didn’t trust her to come along on a mission. We did trust her; it was the monsters we hunted that we didn’t trust. A mission could go south in a heartbeat and, while we healed quickly, she didn’t.
Cas had ordered a dozen different types of healing potions from Angelo’s family magic shop, and, true to my prediction, had created a rolling med kit just for our girl.
But potions and bandages couldn’t help if a vampire tore out her throat or a wendigo ripped off her arm.
In the mirror, I watched as Cas played with Seri’s curls, not even attempting a braid. He handled them like they might shatter if he wasn’t careful enough. I smiled a little as he brought a handful up to his nose and breathed in her scent, his eyes closed and his face relaxing.
Meanwhile, Seri finished my second braid, securing the end with the band I handed her.
“All done!” She dropped a kiss on my nape that raised goosebumps everywhere. “You look very handsome, Mr. Cimmerian.”
What if she could see through the spy eyes? Be our extra pair of eyes from a safe distance? The technological equivalent of astral projection. All the benefits, none of the risks…
“Koko?” Seri’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts. “You don’t like this style? I can redo—”
“No, baby.” I reached back to pat her leg. “It’s perfect. I was just thinking.”
“About the hunt tomorrow?”
“Yeah. I might have a solution.”
Before I could elaborate, Cas’ sharp inhale cut through the quiet.
It was a sound I knew all too well, a blade unsheathing, and my muscles tensed, battle-ready before I could even locate the threat.
I turned to find him with his fingers frozen in Seri’s hair, his face marble as he stared at the back of her head.
“When?” was all he said, quiet and deadly.
“It’s nothing, Simmy.” Her shoulders jerked toward her ears, survival instincts overriding trust. “Just—”
“Five centimeters. Jagged laceration. Poor closure. Not nothing.” Each word was enunciated to within an inch of its life.
“Let me see.” I started to stand, but her hands flew up, catching my wrists.
“Don’t worry about it, Koko. It’s healed. It’s over.”
Casimir’s pupils dilated, black holes consuming green irises, and I knew the usual checklist was flashing through his mind in bright red letters: Check weapon, confirm exits, neutralize threat.
Only there was no threat present. Only our beloved.
“Tell. Me.”
With a sigh, Seri dropped my wrists, and I stood and shuffled around to see what he was talking about. There on her scalp, hidden by her mass of curls, was a thick white line where no hair grew.
“Arabesque locked me out of the house during a blizzard in early March, just before Josslyn was born,” she said after a moment. “I was trying to get to the barn. It was the only place I could think of to stay warm. I slipped on the ice, hit my head, and knocked myself out.”
My stomach knotted as I pictured it: Seri alone in whiteout conditions, blood freezing on her skin as she lay unconscious in the snow. No one coming to help her. No one even looking. No one caring.
“When I woke up, Brummy was there.” A faint smile ghosted across her lips.
“He himself was still recovering, but he tried to wrap around me, tried to keep me warm. He kept nudging me with his nose, like he was trying to wake me up. I managed to crawl the rest of the way to the barn with his help. We curled up in the hay and made it through another night together.”
“That’s what he showed Zane.” Moving back to her side, I took her hand in mine, caressing her knuckles with my thumb. “The first time Z read Brummy’s mind, he saw you bleeding in the snow and the pup trying to help you.”
Cas’ jaw clenched tight, the muscle in his cheek twitching. His breath came faster and sharper, the black blotting out more and more of the green in his eyes, like a bomb counting down.
“Who stitched it?” he gritted out.
Seri looked down at her lap, fingers tightening around mine.
“Brummy licked it clean. We didn’t… There wasn’t…”
She trailed off, but we didn’t need to hear the words to know there wasn’t anyone to help her. No one to clean the wound, to close it with stitches, to check for concussion or frostbite or infection.
Cas moved to stare down at her, radiating nothing but rage, cold like shards of ice flying through the air. His hands had curled into fists at his sides, knuckles white.
“She left you to die.”
Seri’s head snapped up, her eyes wide.
“I lived through it, Simmy.”
One sentence, and it slipped through a crack in his armor like a hammer-driven chisel.
“You shouldn’t have needed to!” he erupted. “Each injury, each hurt, each scar will be the battle map of my vengeance. I’ll peel the flesh from her bones. Slowly. Let the maggots feast while she still screams.”
I started to reach for him, to try and calm him before his monster terrified her, but one glance at Seri stopped me.
She wasn’t cowering. She wasn’t trembling.
Her body might have been conditioned to recoil from sudden loud noises and fast movements, but in that moment, her eyes held nothing but understanding.
She knew he wasn’t angry at her. She knew that his fury came from a place of protection, of love.
She didn’t fear him. She didn’t fear any of us.
She trusted us completely, even in our darkest moments.
“She needs to be stopped.” Seri never dropped her eyes from Cas’. “But I don’t need her to suffer to make up for anything or for revenge. All I need is for her to die.”
As Cas stood there, chest heaving, looking like he wanted to tear the world apart, she stood and wrapped her arms around his torso, nestling her face between his pecs and kissing his bare skin.
“She will,” I promised, meaning every word, as Cas remained rigid, every muscle locked as he worked to push back the monster.
After Brummy nearly dying, we all needed a break, so I took a page from Zane’s book and tried to lighten things up.
“I will say this for her, though. Because of her, we found you. And Brumous.” I paused, making sure I had Seri’s attention.
“Not only that, but her trick with the antifreeze gave me an idea. A way to let you participate in the hunt tomorrow without endangering you.”
“Really?”
She dropped her arms from Cas, who was just starting to loosen his hands, and launched herself at me. I fell back on the bed, pulling her with me, chuckling as she straddled my waist and lay down on top of me, her arms around my neck as she kissed my chin.
“Yes, really. Do you want to hear my genius plan now or tomorrow?”
“We haven’t discussed this,” Cas said slowly, still recovering.
“There’s nothing to discuss. I’ll take along some spy eyes that will relay feed to the holo table.
Beloved, you can be our bonus eyes and ears wearing the VR headset.
It will be like you’re right there with us.
If you see something we don’t, you can alert us.
If it works, I’ll order some three-sixty helmet cams for us and—”
“Yes, yes, yes! Thank you, Koko!”
She wiggled excitedly on top of me, causing a predictable reaction down below. She was so light, still too thin despite our constant efforts to feed her, but the way she pressed against me was exactly how I liked it.
As for Cas, my words had dissolved the last of his anger, probably because it gave him a new area to focus on.
I could almost see the calculations happening behind his eyes.
The risk assessment, the contingency planning, all the ways he automatically protected those he cared about. Finally, he nodded.
“Spy eyes. Modified holo feed. VR headset integration. She monitors from the security room,” he summoned up. “Directs via comms. We rig the eyes with motion sensors. Thermal overlay. We’ll need protocols. For comms especially—”
“So it’s a go?” I smirked at him, knowing it was.
“Yes. A very solid and reasonable idea,” he conceded, which was high praise from him.
“Thanks,” I replied dryly. “I’m known to have some.”
Then his shoulders finally relaxed, most likely because of our girl’s ass wriggling around since that’s where his eyes were fixed, and he climbed on top of us, careful to keep most of his bulk off of Seri, but still squashing her between us.
The change in pressure, in both her core against my growing erection and Cas’ weight, pulled a groan from deep in my chest. Cas leaned down until his lips brushed her ear, his voice dropping to a silky purr that never failed to make her toes curl.
“Does that please you, little wife?”
Sure enough, she shivered as she arched back against him while still pressed to my chest. Her eyes, when they met mine, were dark with a hunger that I’d missed seeing this past week.