Chapter Ten
Neith
Rolling off him, he pulls me close again and tips my chin up.
Studying my expression for a moment, he leans forward and takes my lips in his in another soft kiss.
I smile when I pull back, “I completely understand if you still need to go and beat the shit out of something. I’m not going to get offended or anything ridiculous.”
“I’m right where I want to be, Neith,” he replies with a smile. His smile turns wicked, “Apparently, sex works just as well to calm the other side of me.”
I grin, “Well, that works out perfectly.”
After snuggling for a while longer, we clean up, and I realize that I didn’t bring anything to drink up with me. I know for a fact that if I don’t go and get something, then tonight is going to be one of those nights where I wake up ridiculously thirsty at some point.
“I’m just going to go and grab a drink from downstairs,” I say as I pull on underwear and a big sleep shirt. “Do you want anything?”
“Could you get me a drink too, please?” He asks, his eyes watching me hungrily.
I nod and leave him choosing something to watch on the TV. It turns out that he’s like me, and he can’t sleep unless there’s some sort of noise in the background.
The house is dark, only a few lamps have been left on, which is helpful because I would definitely trip over something and end up waking everyone up if they weren’t left on.
Actually, I bet that House knows that and has turned them on just for me, so I don’t wake everyone up.
Walking into the kitchen, I’m completely absorbed in my thoughts as I head to the fridge and pull it open.
A yap at my feet has me glancing down with a smile as I see Bitey hopping around excitedly, and I bend down to stroke him.
“I guess you disappeared when Baz went down, huh?” I say quietly, “That’s okay, it was scary. This is your home, you can go wherever you want to, but according to House, you aren’t allowed off the grounds, okay?”
Bitey yips at me again, licks me with his long tongue, and then does this weird shuffle out the kitchen door.
I guess that’s that then. I’m going to assume he’s going to find somewhere to nap. Standing back up, I study the contents of the fridge.
“Score,” I grin as I see a plate of leftover pastries waiting for me. Pulling one out, I take a huge bite.
“You like the pastries then?” An amused voice says from behind me.
I jump, make this weird squeaking sound since my mouth is full of pastry, and promptly fling my pastry somewhere behind me as I spin around just in time to see Zephyr catch the pastry I’ve flung.
He bursts out laughing, a full belly laugh as I stand there with my hand over my heart, wondering whether supernaturals can have heart attacks.
“Can supernaturals have heart attacks?” I ask out loud because the speed at which my heart is currently going, it feels like a very necessary question.
Zephyr shakes his head, a smirk still playing around the edge of his lips as he holds the pastry back out to me, and I take it with a grin.
“No, you can’t have a heart attack. I’m sorry I didn’t mean to make you jump, I thought you saw me when you came in,” he explains, although there’s still amusement in his eyes.
“You’ve been in here the whole time?” I ask. He nods, and I add, “Damn, I’m getting too comfortable.”
Zep frowns, “I think you can afford to be comfortable here. Not only have you got House and Ethel, who are forces of nature themselves when it comes to protecting those that they care about, but you also have extremely strong wards that Ransom put up, and all of the men here would do anything to keep you safe. There’s no doubt about that. ”
I think about it for a moment, “You know what? You’re right. I can be comfortable here and let my guard down. I’m safe.”
He watches me closely, and I take the moment to really look at him. He’s tall, with broad shoulders, and from the way his muscles are visible under his shirt his got muscles upon muscles hiding under there.
What is it about a man in slacks and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up that is so fucking hot?
I mean, damn.
I probably spend far too long studying his arms, which is why I notice his hands.
Men’s hands are another weak point for me, and no, I can’t explain it.
What interests me about Zephyr’s hands is that they don’t really match the whole refined suit-wearing thing that he’s got going on.
They’re scarred and calloused, not the hands of someone who doesn’t like to get his hands dirty.
I have a feeling that there is a lot more to Zephyr than meets the eye. I mean, of course there is, you only need to look at the situation that he’s in to see that.
Not only that, but there’s an air of barely controlled danger that surrounds him. Like his violence is right there, just under the surface, waiting to be called on at a moment's notice.
It’s intriguing.
He’s got a strong jawline, dusted with dark stubble that wasn’t there when I last saw him. His eyes are amused, a dark eyebrow raised as my gaze meets his, completely unashamed by the fact that I was so obviously checking him out.
I take a huge bite of pastry in order to stop my mouth from saying something that my brain one hundred percent didn’t agree to say.
Carrying on studying him because I’ve been caught anyway, and what the hell, why not, I realize that his eyes are a dark brown, and I frown, “Your eyes don’t seem like they’re yours.”
Yep, there it is.
The weird thing my mouth shouldn’t have said. Admittedly, it was said through a mouthful of pastry, but from the way that Zephyr freezes, I know that he heard me.
Pure shock colors his expression, “Excuse me?”
I wince, “I am so sorry, that was really rude. Sometimes my mouth says shit that I didn’t tell it to say.
” I ramble, and he stares at me, his expression still shocked but also holding another emotion that I can’t quite put my finger on.
“Okay, I think I’ve embarrassed myself enough for the evening. I’m going to go.”
Zephyr
I watch as she rushes out of the kitchen. I probably should have reassured her that she didn’t offend me, because quite honestly, she didn’t.
She has shocked me though, and I find myself unable to say anything. I run a hand through my hair and sigh as I lean back on the counter. It’s probably a good thing that she’s gone. She makes me lose my damn mind, and all thought and reason go with it.
I remember everything.
People avoided me, no one would look at my face, let alone meet my eyes, even those who I considered the closest to me couldn’t, and then there’s her.
She can meet my gaze with no problem, and definitely doesn’t look at me with fear, although she should. I don’t know how she heard me in the kitchen, and I don’t know how I knew that it would work. But I’ve quickly come to realize that anything to do with Neith is unpredictable, to say the least.
I know who she is, of course I do, and it’s creating an extreme amount of conflict in me.
I smirk. That was a lie.
Admittedly, it’s not creating that much conflict, because fuck that.
Any loyalty I thought I had fled the moment that my eyes landed on her. I’ll not only watch the world burn for her, but I’d light the fucking match myself, or I suppose, since I’d be doing it for Neith, I’d set the bomb myself.
Neith loves explosions in a way that makes the feral side of me growl with approval.
The situation is fucked up, but I am more determined than ever to find a solution.
Anger burns brightly at the situation that I’ve been forced into, and I feel my magic rattle at the cage I’ve stuffed it into. I can’t allow it out here. I can’t allow my anger out here either.
Wrestling with myself, I quickly make my way back down to the basement and step through the small magical door into my home.
She fucking saw me, she was right fucking there, and I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t do anything. I’ve been trapped for far too fucking long, but this is a new level of torture that I’m not sure that I’m going to be able to survive.
I swing, my fist making a hole in the wall as the plaster crumbles.
It’s not enough, it’s never enough. Moving throughout the room, I allow my anger to take over.
Anything that can be thrown gets thrown as I roar out all of the pain and frustration that never seems to leave me.
My shift ripples across me, but it doesn’t actually happen, no, that has been taken as well.
My roar shakes the walls, as my meticulously positioned paintings fall to the floor, their wooden frames splintering apart.
The vase that I spent close to a decade trying to source gets thrown next, it shatters as it hits the wall next to the fireplace and sends glass skittering across the hardwood floor.
What’s the point?
The side tables fall prey to my despair next as I launch them at the piano. It makes a godawful sound, so I throw something else. This one gets lodged in the wall above it.
My hands tear and destroy anything that they can get their hands on, as I try to stop feeling the overwhelming anger that courses through me.
Finally, I stop.
Chest heaving as I glance around at the devastation I have caused in the room. I bow my head for a moment before I walk over to the one thing that seems to have avoided the destruction.
Pouring myself a glass of bourbon, my feet crunch over the glass and debris on the floor as I take a seat on the couch.
Staring into nothingness, the glass hangs from my fingertips off the edge of the couch, as the blood from my knuckles drips down the glass and lands with a soft splash on the floor.
The sound is loud in the silence.
Always silence.
My breath stutters in my chest.
My head bows.
Fuck.
Neith
I am still cringing over offending Zephyr last night, even though as soon as I got upstairs, I immediately spilled the whole story to Ransom, and after he stopped laughing at me, he tried to reassure me that he was probably just silent because I was rambling and not because I actually offended him.
I still feel bad, and I feel like Ransom was just saying that to make me feel better and not because he actually felt that way.
Which means I need to find Zephyr and apologize again.
But not right now because he’s probably sleeping since he was up so late.
Yes, I am stalling because I don’t want to face my embarrassment.
“So, how did you sleep, Baz?” I ask over the breakfast table.
His eyebrows draw down slightly, “Really well, I think.”
“You think?” Doc asks, sipping his coffee.
Baz nods, “Yeah, I didn’t wake up at all, and my bed might be the most comfortable thing in the world, but I’m still tired this morning.”
“That’s understandable, actually, you’ve been on the run for a really long time, and it’s going to take your body a while to catch up on the rest that it’s missed out on, and to realize that it’s safe,” Griff replies reassuringly.
Baz nods, “Yeah, that makes a lot of sense actually. I’ve pretty much always been on high alert, at least I have for the past few years, or rather decades. I can let down my guard here, though. It’s safe.”
I tilt my head slightly, those words echo the ones that I said last night, and it occurs to me that although the situations are different, we have something else in common.
We are both finally somewhere that we can relax and know that we are protected and safe.
“Have you heard anything from Ty about The Owner?” I ask Van.
We briefly touched on that situation with Baz last night.
We haven’t gotten to the Choosing, who my real parents are, although we did explain that we needed to find Pete, who is my dad, but for some reason, no one mentioned that he’s the king of Trieneliea, which is odd.
Unless they were waiting for me to mention it, and I was so busy trying to make sure that he knew about the risks of the job that it just slipped my mind.