Chapter Eighteen
Harley
Harley had gone past thinking about what if’s hours before. His unusual senses alerted him they were past the danger period. Although that didn’t put his mind at ease, not when the effects of whatever had invaded Nomad’s system could have caused unknown damage. Usually the positive one, he struggled to hold on to it with the anger still festering inside him. Nothing could change what had happened, but someone would pay for the hours of torture they’d gone through.
His stomach growled and his cat chuffed, but they remained where they were. They wouldn’t shift or eat until Nomad could too.
He drifted with his thoughts circling around what Cosmo considered was a co-incidence. Had the owls seen them at Bree’s, or was it in the mountains, close to where Cosmo had hunted the owl? If it was the latter, then what was there in the mountains that they didn’t want discovered?
His frustration grew when he had no answers and right now couldn’t go hunting to find them. Unprepared to shift to call Gabai, or anyone else for that matter, he lay listening to Nomad’s heartbeat.
Bone tired, it took Harley long minutes to notice the change in Nomad’s breathing. At some point he slipped into an uneasy sleep that was much fucking better than the fever induced shaking he’d done for hours as his body worked to purge the poison. Cosmo remained on top of Nomad, his purrs never ceasing. They weren’t the kind to show pleasure. They were moving his body continually against Nomad’s vibrating heat. It gave Harley’s heart a jolt of pleasure because he got what their little mate was doing.
How Cosmo had cocooned their mate in blankets, slayed Harley. He’d piled them on him to force Nomad’s body to work overtime. Something Harley had not considered doing, but Cosmo had, keeping his head while Harley had focused on cleaning the wound when Nomad couldn’t. They’d worked as a team, and he would be forever grateful to Cosmo for that. Alone, he didn’t want to think about how the outcome might have been different.
For now, he couldn’t rest easy, though, not sure they were out of the woods yet. He wanted Nomad to wake and be his usual grumpy self, to know for sure he was okay.
His animal had stopped licking Nomad’s leg a while before when the taste changed once more. He sniffed the wound, getting only blood and Nomad’s natural scent. It helped calm him like nothing else could. He nudged Cosmo with his nose. Come and snuggle down here with us. I want to feel you both.
As if drugged himself, the little black-footed cat staggered, nearly toppling off Nomad’s back. Harley used his head to prevent that .
Climb on Daddy’s head.
When he did, Harley carefully lowered his body close to the floor so Cosmo could make a small leap, no catlike reflexes showing at all. Harley cursed that he couldn’t take care of Cosmo the way he needed. He’d shifted three times, and he would be starving, but he didn’t complain as he tucked in against Nomad’s head and Harley came in to snuggle him.
When Cosmo’s heartbeat slowed in time with Nomad’s, only then did Harley let himself shut his eyes, his cat remaining watchful for danger as he drifted into a half sleep.
How much time passed, Harley couldn’t say when he roused. Nomad’s breathing pattern indicated he was waking. Harley's head lifted right as Cosmo’s did, they both stared at Nomad.
Waiting.
Nomad
His body ached, that was what filtered through the haze of tiredness that he fought to surface from. Several things registered at once. He was in his animal form. He was lying on a firm surface cocooned in blankets and by the smell of it was the floor at the top of the stairs.
How had he ended up here?
Fragments he could see in his mind slipped away before he could grasp them. Returning again and again as he forced his mind to piece together what had happened past the owl attack.
Poisoned.
I’ve been poisoned.
Fucker.
Nomad would rip the owl's heart out and shove it down his throat when he got hold of the jackass. Violent thoughts helped shift his blood around his body and prove the last dregs of whatever had poisoned him, were gone.
His nose twitched when the air shifted and the smell he encountered was that of his mates. His eyelids slit open and closed three times before he was able to keep them open and focus on Harley and Cosmo.
Their animal forms stared at him with intent. His senses awoke to them, and his mind picked up fear and relief. I’m… okay…
It was the best he could offer. He needed food, a shower, and a soft bed to sleep on for a week.
I can help with all those things, but I need you to shift. Do you have the strength? I can use my cat to help.
Unaware he’d projected his thoughts, Nomad chuffed and focused on shifting.
It took much longer than normal, and when it happened, his joints ached. His head felt heavy on his shoulders as he sat where he was in a pile of blankets, looking at his arm. The skin where the claws dug in was a dark red, puckered and scared. He breathed a little easier at how, when he focused on the wound, it was tender but healed enough so as not to cause worry.
Seconds later, both Harley and Cosmo were next to him, naked and drawn looking. He’d bet he didn’t look much better.
“Let’s help you into the apartment,” Harley muttered hoarsely.
Cosmo came up and stood silently at Nomad’s right side when Harley hauled him up from the ground, shouldering a lot of his body weight. “I can manage,” he grunted.
He tried to fight to stand on his own. But all it did was piss off Harley, who didn’t curb the curse words he projected at Nomad, whereas Cosmo hissed at him and wrapped his arm around Nomad’s waist.
He gave in and let them guide him in through the open door .
The place looked like a tornado had hit, things were scattered over the floor where Nomad suspected they’d got tossed by whoever had gathered up the blankets.
On the sofa, Harley left him with Cosmo, going to the kitchen where sounds filtered from, but Nomad had already shut his eyes. Sleep claimed him as Cosmo practically lay on top of him, snuggling in and cooing nonsense words as he kept him warm.
Cosmo
Food and sleep with a shower in between.
Essential to healing and their body’s recovery from all the rapid shifting they’d done.
Only sleep was the one thing Cosmo couldn’t succumb fully too, even when his body screamed at him that he needed the rest.
Now that his Daddy was out of danger, Cosmo’s mind spiraled in a thousand different directions.
Pissed and worried, he tried not to latch onto the melancholy that threatened to supersede everything else.
Was he to blame for this?
Did the owl who attacked his Daddy Nomad do it because they’d gotten too close to whatever it was the owls were hiding? Or was it out of retaliation for Cosmo killing the owl the council had sent him after?
He wished he knew what was on the implant behind that owl’s eyes, but back then, the only thing that mattered was proving himself. He’d never questioned if what he was doing was right or wrong. He’d taken the council at face value and believed that they’d been created for the good of all shifters. It had never occurred to him that they’d betray their own kind.
He’d just blindly trusted. Not for praise. Not for rewards. Not even so he wouldn’t receive a punishment. It had all been so he’d have something to belong to, some sense of family beyond the soft gray memories of ghosts whose faces he could no longer remember.
Slipping from the bed, Cosmo crept silently away from the bedroom, retrieving the backpack that held his knives. The area around the couch was still a disaster, and the cushions were uncomfortable when he sat on them without the benefit of extra padding. Discomfort was a state he’d grown used to though, especially in the places he tended to lurk and cram his small body while waiting for a target. While he’d learned to create comfort for himself in his home environment, it was easy to remind himself that this apartment was only a temporary stopping point.
It let him melt into a sort of meditative mode as he honed the first blade, never needing to sharpen them more than once a year because he maintained them weekly, never knowing when he’d be called upon to use them.
Only there would be no more calls, no more orders or directives, no more assigned targets or assignments in general, and he still hadn’t had time to process that. While he felt no regret over gathering information against the corrupt members of the council, he did feel a sense of loss over his position among them. The skills he had were ones he cherished, despite the bloody hunts and broken bodies he’d left in his wake.
Because he’d always viewed himself as a protector, it was difficult to face the fact that there might have been times when he’d destroyed someone who might have been able to expose the council’s wrongdoings sooner. He thought of Lir and the many times he’d sabotaged the man’s efforts to gather intel for Bree and how close he’d come to incapacitating him on more than one occasion in the hopes it would get him to stop.
Moving from one blade to the next allowed him to slowly formulate a plan of action, one in which a kitty his size would easily be able to scale a tree in silence, set up net snares and creep upon all but the thinnest of branches without plunging to the forest floor. Vengeance left him eager to sink his blades into them, but the phantom reminder of Daddy Nomad’s hand on his rear end the day Cosmo had scared him by rushing into his burning home alone was enough to give him pause.
His plan was sound, but the fear he’d felt at nearly losing Daddy Nomad was bright and fresh in his mind, along with Daddy Harley’s. He couldn’t be the source of that, which meant that he couldn’t go slinking off alone the way he’d always done in the past.
He had mates, mates with as much, if not more, training as he did. He was a part of something now. A part of them. Which meant that he needed to wait until they were ready so that they could tackle this mission together.
A new beginning.
And step one into the future that awaited them.