Wraith
I… kissed her.
Or whatever the fuck I did.
I don't have a normal mouth. I don't have the anatomy for kissing in any recognizably human way. What I did was lick her mouth and press my teeth against her skin and hope to every god that exists and several that probably don't that it was enough.
She liked it, somehow.
My brain is stuck on that.
The warm pressure of her lips against my… teeth.
How she pulled me closer instead of pushing me back.
The soft happy sound she made when my tongue found hers.
No fear. None at all.
She said I was a good kisser.
Me.
The scarf shifts against my jaw as I swing out the loft window onto the fire escape, but I don't fix it this time. I'm too busy helping Ivy climb through the window behind me. She's barefoot, because she forgot her shoes again, and the cold metal grating of the fire escape will hurt.
So I scoop her into my arms instead.
She lets out a surprised yelp and flings her arms around my neck, grinning up at me, eyes sparking with glee.
It's the grin that makes her whole face light up, somehow not dimmed at all by the sight of me with the scarf hanging half off. I still don't understand how, or why, but I've stopped trying to argue because she'll just argue back harder and she always wins.
I go first, testing each step. The fire escape groans under my weight. It always does. If I don't fix it, one of these days the bolts are going to give out and I'm going to plummet into the dumpster and Whiskey will never let me hear the end of it.
That's okay.
I'll show him Ivy's lockscreen.
We reach the second-floor landing. I shift Ivy to one arm and pull the window open, ducking through, guarding her head with my shoulder.
I set her on her feet on the hardwood floor and she gives me another kiss on the side of my jaw.
It's more of a peck this time, but still dazes me into a stupor.
I stand there for a moment, basking in the strange warm bliss flushing through my body.
The hallway is dark and quiet enough my heightened senses pick up the clatter of the icemaker and Whiskey's snoring coming from Plague's room.
Or it's a hibernating grizzly bear.
Could go either way.
Ivy tips her head back to look up at me. She mouths, Thane's room?
I nod.
She pads down the hallway ahead of me, a bounce in her step. I kick off my boots and follow her, fixing my scarf since we're in the common area now, careful of the floorboards that creak.
One still does.
I freeze.
Ivy freezes, too, her hand pressed flat against my chest.
We wait, listening.
Whiskey's chainsaw snoring continues uninterrupted from Plague's room.
I exhale and keep moving.
The thought catches me as we pass Valek's room, the door left slightly open, that we don't need to keep the loft sealed anymore. My eyes flick to it. The edges of the patch job are visible even in the darkness, the paint not matching as well as whoever chose it clearly thought it would.
No wonder Valek knew immediately.
We should probably fix that.
Considering that Valek is... downstairs.
In Plague's room.
Integrating.
My brain tries to process the concept of Valek as pack and mostly comes up with static. He's new. Unfamiliar. An alpha who my first interaction with was a vicious fight because he was prowling around in my fucking tunnels and I was keeping a vulnerable girl safe.
My omega.
But Ivy claimed him.
If Ivy wants him, I do, too.
It's simple.
Everything with Ivy is simple and easy.
Thane's door is shut when we reach it, but I doubt it's locked. He never locks his door, a habit born from years of needing to be accessible, always on call, always ready to be there for whoever needs him at whatever hour they need him.
Ivy reaches for the handle and gives it a slow, experimental turn. The hinges are silent, and I glance at them, noting the sheen of oil.
Of course he oils the fucking hinges.
Thane maintains everything in this house because he believes the world falls apart the second he stops holding it together.
Hence the headache, probably.
The room is dark except for the red digital clock on his nightstand. My brother is sprawled on his back in bed, tangled in sheets, one arm flung across the mattress, the other resting on his abdomen. His shaggy dark hair, long enough now to reach his shoulders, is plastered across his…
Bright…
Blue…
Face?
An instinctive growl rumbles low in my chest, my ferality registering the unfamiliar blue before it sets in that it's just a fucking headache mask and it only sets in because Ivy's hands clamp over my mouth through the scarf.
"Shhhh!" she hisses, biting down on her knuckle so she won't laugh.
Don't, I sign quickly. He will kill us.
She mouths, I'm TRYING!
I wave her forward.
She slips past me into the room, hopping over Thane's shoes. Her bare feet are silent on the carpet. She moves to the foot of the bed, easing herself onto the edge of the mattress so slowly that the springs barely register the addition of her weight.
She perches there on the balls of her feet, clutching her knees. In the red glow of the digital clock, with her long hair curtaining her face and her pale skin and swimming in a borrowed alpha-sized shirt, she looks like a ghost perched at the end of his bed.
A little haunting.
Thane stirs, rolling his head on the pillow. His breathing changes, going shallow, then stuttering as his body registers something different in the room, and he rolls onto his side, but Ivy's perched on the foot of the bed and the sheets have his legs trapped.
I sign from the doorway. What are you doing?
She looks back at me and signs, Waking him up.
How?
She holds up a finger. Working on it.
She's not working on it.
She's staring at the migraine mask like it's the funniest thing she's ever seen, and I can see her shoulders shaking from here.
She waves a hand in front of Thane's face.
Nothing.
She waves closer. Still nothing.
She looks back at me, delighted, and signs, He's SO asleep.
Just touch his shoulder, I sign. Like a normal person.
She gives me a look that says we are not normal with a touch of where's the fun in that, which is true, and turns back to Thane. She leans carefully over him to look for signs he's actually waking up.
But there's no way to tell.
Not with the electric blue gel mask covering every inch of his face except for his nose and mouth.
It's the inverse of my mask.
And it's so fucking funny to me, I have to brace my hand on the wall to fight back whatever horrible sound a feral alpha makes when he laughs.
A snarl rips out of me.
FUCK.
Thane tears off the migraine mask with a confused snarl of his own and his eyes land on Ivy perched at the foot of his bed in the dark, looming over him.
He screams.