Chapter 16
Deejay
Tio winks at me like we share a secret that Matt isn’t in on, so I scowl at him because the universe doesn’t exist in which I will share a secret with him even if he might have slightly pegged me from the start.
Yes, Matt is handsome for his species, but I wasn’t going to say anything until Tio mentioned it. I only agreed with the Chaos Eater because Matt is convinced he’s ugly, and he isn’t and doesn’t deserve to see himself that way. No matter what his outsides look like—and he is sexy as fuck—he has a beautiful soul, and that matters most in the grand scheme of things.
Not a scheme in which I let my attraction develop into something more than the tiny—teeniest tiniest—crush I have now, but in the long run where he discovers himself, his joyful pursuits, and lives the rest of his life as his own person. The life I will support in whatever way I can.
Our paths are different. Mine includes taking in all the nephews I can for the rest of my exceptionally long life. I’m barely twenty-nine; I have about three-hundred and fifty more years of saving these boys before I might get too old for this. Hopefully by that time at least one of my children wants to take over the job. Hopefully by that time more than one of them will want to keep the boys in our family safe, but I won’t stop even if that never happens.
So, yeah, this crush is temporary, fleeting, and nothing to worry over. Matt’s life will eventually take him back out my door, and I won’t hold him back from that. He can always remain a citizen of my domain, but I don’t hold my citizens hostage. Like my older sons, he will eventually move on with his life.
“I was concerned I might dislike Houston, but you two are far from boring. The Obsidite and the Maledict—such fun,”
Tio smirks, looking between us.
“Please get bored and go away,”
Matt deadpans.
“There’s just no way I can do that now that we’ve officially met. You’re my destiny and I’m yours. Fate has brought us together—how could I ignore that?”
Tio flirts, irritating the hell out of me.
“I’m pretty sure I’m destined to ignore you for the rest of my life,”
Matt grunts, rejecting Tio completely.
“So far you haven’t been able to keep your eyes off me,”
Tio purrs, touching Matt again.
I am seriously about two seconds away from breaking his arm. So maybe my crush isn’t as small as I am trying to delude myself into thinking.
“I’m going to need a shower after this just to wash away the gross you keep leaving on me,”
Matt decides stiffly.
“I am going to curse you if you keep touching him.”
I warn Tio—Matt isn’t his toy, and the touching has got to stop.
“Jealous?”
Tio inquires suggestively.
I take a deep breath and let it out in a huff. “No amount of counting will ever help when it comes to dealing with you. In three seconds, I am going to start gathering my power. If you’re not out of arm's reach of my—Matt, I will bind you up and if your taint gets a rash from it, so be it.”
Tio grins and steps off the Faerie, holding out his arm to show me that he now can’t touch Matt. “Threats work wonders on me,”
he confesses, delighted.
“I will keep that at the forefront of my mind,”
I growl at him.
Matt shoots me a grateful look. “ETA?”
“Soon,”
I reply, glancing at my watch. “Less than five minutes if they’re on time.”
Matt blows out a huff of air. “Let’s hope they’re early.”
“You seem eager to meet the enforcers,”
Tio comments off-handedly.
“It’s eagerness to be rid of you,”
I snort. “And the Faerie,”
I add as an afterthought.
Matt points at me in agreement, making me smile again. “That.”
Tio chuckles wickedly. “I am so very much looking forward to getting to know you two better,”
he grins as a commotion draws our attention to the trail.
Two people wearing the protective leather gear of Loretta’s enforcers appear in the courtyard followed by a woman who runs straight to me to gather up her son. The curse that put him to sleep breaks as soon as she touches him, and he wakes up.
The enforcers are Haverty, Loretta’s right hand man, and the Headsman, Loki Swanson, a man with black hair and black eyeliner smudged below his dark brown eyes, sporting a wicked bruise on his neck in the shape of a single handprint. They surround Matt and the Faerie, which is when I notice that Tio has disappeared.
Fucking Chaos Eater!
Although, it’s not really surprising; the new arrivals distracted us, and he took advantage of that to escape.
Loki takes a knee next to the Faerie’s head and lands a vicious punch, knocking him out before standing. “You can get off him now, we got this,”
he tells Matt in a professional manner.
Matt takes his foot off the Faerie’s chest, happy to stand up straight again, I’m sure. “Deejay could have just put him under a temporary sleep curse,”
he comments.
Loki bares his teeth, not really smiling. “I am currently fourteen hours into my workday, I have zero reason to be kind to this dead fuck.”
“Beast, you want me to take him to the van?”
Haverty asks.
“Yeah, I’ll get the witness statements and—where’s the fucking Chaos Eater?”
Loki demands, turning in a circle.
“Slipped out while we were distracted,”
I sigh. “I should have cursed him too, sorry, Loki.”
Loki lets out a puff of frustration before pulling out a flask and taking a single sip from it. “I was hoping to take the rest of the day off, but now I am going to have to chase that fucker down. Deej, next time you see him, curse his ass to stick to the ground until I can get my hands on him, got it? Permission granted,”
he tells me before looking up at Matt. “You’re the nephew?”
“Not really,”
Matt disagrees.
Loki looks from Matt to me, so I shrug. “I’m going to adopt his little brother, but they aren’t related to me, I just called him a nephew over the phone to simplify matters.”
Loki looks back at Matt. “Jett is the one who does species typing. She gave me this message for you,”
he says, pulling a note from the pocket of his trench coat.
Matt takes the note and reads it then hands it to me. “Thanks.”
I have everything requested. Please come to the Hub at 4 p.m. tomorrow. —Jett Slink
Perfect. Jett must’ve overheard my conversation with Loretta and asked Loki to relay the message. I’ve known Loki for years, consider him a friend, but I’ll probably have to pay for this convenience. No one who works at the Hub does anything for free, especially Loki.
“Ok, since you’re new to this process, we’ll start with you,”
Loki tells Matt, releasing a small mercurial ball from one of the pockets of his leather vest. “This is an extractor; it takes your memories of the events of the last twenty-four hours and stores them away for the trial. I realize that the events in question only occurred in the last hour or so, but the smallest amount of time we can dial these down to is twenty-four hours. Therefore, to protect your privacy, the only people who will review this are the judiciary council. I will take your witness statement, so make sure that it lines up with your memory otherwise you can be tried for perjury. The judges don’t typically sweat the little details, like shirt color and stuff that we don’t remember clearly, but the council would notice if your witness statement says the defendant was a Werewolf when he was a Faerie, got it?”
Matt nods. “I will be as honest as possible.”
“You haven’t committed a crime in the last day, have you?”
Loki asks seriously.
“Not one I am aware of committing,”
Matt replies levelly.
Loki shrugs. “Just checking—crimes witnessed by the extractor are prosecutable.”
He presses the ball to Matt’s head behind his ear, then holds up a digital recorder. “Alright, tell me what happened.”
Matt relates the events from his perspective, then I take my turn, followed by the kid, and lastly his mother. When we finish, Loki offers me his hand, which I take and pull him into a hug. “Good to see you, Deej,”
he says, squeezing me back for a brief moment before releasing me.
He doesn’t like hugs, but tolerates mine because he values our friendship, I think. “Call me sometime. Let’s have dinner. You haven’t met my twins yet and they’re too adorable to miss.”
Loki gives me a tired smile. “If I had time for dinner with old friends, I’d spend it with my brother, but I’ll try to make the time before we move to Massachusetts after graduation. Gage got into MIT.”
“Congratulations!”
I exclaim happily. “Tell him I’m happy for him.”
Loki nods, smiling a bit shyly even though we’ve known each other since he was seventeen. “I’m really proud of him.”
Gage is his younger stepbrother whom he’s cared for since forever. I haven't met him, but Loki talks about him often. “You have every reason to be; you’ve done right by him.”
He covers his shyness with a cocky smile that doesn’t really suit the man I know. “I’m heading out to find that fucking Chaos Eater. See you sometime,”
he announces, saluting Matt and sauntering off.
I watch him retreat until only Matt and I remain in the small courtyard. “Ready?” I ask.
“That’s Loki Swanson, the Headsman? Why is he making arrests?”
Matt asks, confused.
“Loki is sort of a jack of all trades for Loretta and holds the title of Chief Security Officer of the enforcers. He takes on any job she’s willing to pay him for if the payout is worth the pain. If he’s here now, it’s because she asked him to come and he negotiated a fair pay rate he could live with,”
I explain.
“I see. And the neck bruise is?”
“Probably from the Cage,” I answer.
Matt growls low in his throat in acknowledgment, the sound causing a sliver of lust to snake over me.
So bad. So, so bad if he sees it in my aura.
I turn away and start heading back to the kids. “Come on, let’s see how the boys are doing.”
Matt’s rumbling wordless agreement just re-enforces my need to not be alone with him.