Chapter Twelve
Cliff
Storm and Buck took over in the kitchen as Rayne and I settled onto the couch. Without much else of a word, Vida found herself in my arms with a little pillow thing for her head. She wasn’t all that interesting to look at, chubby-cheeked and sleepy…covered in drool that slid over her blanket.
Baby? Kit? Jacque stood on his hind legs and sniffed tentatively before hopping onto the couch.
“Hey, I dunno if bunnies ought to be around babies, lil dude.” No sooner did that come from my mouth, I halted as Pecker fluttered onto the couch to peer introspectively at the baby.
Chick is good. I make strong chicks. Be impressed, new hen. I’ll make chicks with you!
I frowned, and Buck cleared his throat, alerting Pecker to his presence.
Flee! Pecker squawked and ran off, a shed feather laying in his wake. Help! Other rooster! The interloper has threatened our hens and chick!
Storm stuck his head in from the kitchen door, giving both of us a scrutinizing glance. “Quiet, drumstick. I know ten recipes for fried chicken, and you’d make one hell of a single nugget.”
Pecker puffed his chest. Other rooster has my back!
“I have the back of your thigh for dinner… But Jacque can say hi to Vida. Goddesses are very resilient, and he’d not dare hurt her. Animals know.” Storm wiped his hands off on a dish towel and turned back to hand it to Rayne.
“I was making something for the potluck after the run tonight.” Rayne wiped his own hands off and sidled in while Jacque took his cue to lean up and sniff at Vida sweetly. A tentative few bunny kisses to her cheek later and he retreated with a somewhat smug sensation about him.
Baby.
“ You can understand him, right?” Buck nudged my shoulder, lips twisted.
“A bit. Words here and there. I used to think it was my imagination. We had whole conversations until I got the board, and he suddenly had lots more things to say.” I smiled at Jacque then at Vida who cooed happily, her little curls a dark smattering across her soft head.
“He only speaks around you. Treasure it. And the fact he understands is so very rare.” Buck reached over to take Vida, but I tensed, not wanting to part just yet from my niece.
“Alright, turn the kiddo over.” Rayne made grabby hands and took Vida from me before escaping to a chair at the side where Storm hovered about. Wordlessly, he lifted his shirt, raised Vida to his chest, and situated himself with the cloth Storm had dried his hands on earlier to chest feed the contented little one.
“Huh…” I blinked a few times.
“Make fun of me all you want. It’s hella cheaper than formula.” Rayne didn’t seem like he was doing it to save money though. The unabashed way he tucked her into his chest and smiled at her made me struggle not to smile.
“Ahh, I get it. Godhood doesn’t really pay all that well, I take it.” I leaned back and Storm’s expression went from mild adoration of my brother to light incredulity that ceded to Rayne’s light glare.
“Godhood pays nothing. It’s what we do for people that evolves into a unique kind of wealth. Also, my IT service company is doing pretty good. We get by nicely.” He focused his attention on Vida again and I had to tamp down the jealousy spiking in me. “Now, where do you two intend on staying? We have a room here for you two, but fair warning—gods get freaky and I don’t want to hear your whiny little bottoming noise.”
“Or topping,” Buck added, leaning back as he spread his arms along the back of the couch with a grin full of absolute shit-eating smugness.
“Oh.” Rayne eyed me up and down with a hint of doubt before huffing. “Well, damn. Stop making it harder for me to rag on you, jeez. Also, Buck, you did not hit me as a switch.”
Buck shrugged. “I was adapted at a time when gay wasn’t really considered a thing. Roles and preferences were largely on the couple. A man may have had a wife, but he could have a husband, too. They might share her for the legacy, provide for a woman to balance out family lines or something, but having a male companion was a common thing. Finding pleasure between the two was largely inconsequential. As long as they weren’t related… Even then…”
Rayne’s mouth pursed into a fine line. “Right… Okay. Anyway. Moving on!”
“As you wish. I could give you more details?” Buck gestured and made Rayne pantomime a gag before holding a hand up in protest.
I really like him. A lot.
“Right, so moving on! You can stay here, or in the barns if you’re going to get loud, or one of the packhouses for a while until you build something…” Rayne gave me a pleading look.
“Packhouse will do fine,” Buck agreed before reaching for my hand for a squeeze. “I want Cliff to see the wolves, too.”
Rayne nodded along and smiled. “Maybe a trip out to see Sal later if River allows? River isn’t really ideal for getting more knowledge about the whole omega thing, but Sal is gold.”
An oven in the kitchen beeped and Storm sidled off, patting Rayne’s knee as he puttered about.
I’d seen the boars, a few of them during my brief hold with Grim, and they’d surprised me, but nothing shocked me. Every new revelation made me feel like some long-distant thing I was missing had returned.
“Rayne, I think this cornbread is done. Smells done. Want me to pack it up?” Storm shouted from the kitchen.
“Yeah. Put a towel over the top to keep it moist, not the wrap or foil. It’ll get soggy otherwise.” Rayne’s casual toss over his shoulder caught me off guard.
“Who are you and what have you done with my brother? You burned a salad once for fu—frick’s sake?” I blanched and Rayne gave me a wicked glare that faded into indifference. Storm snorted from the kitchen.
“The witches are teaching him how to cook because he isn’t one of the boys’ club.” Storm huffed as he carried a few pans out of the kitchen, stacked, making his way outside to what I assumed was his vehicle. He returned to the kitchen and came back with another two pans stacked; lips twisted guiltily as he passed by.
Rayne smirked. “He thinks I don’t know he stole a piece. But no, I wanted to learn to cook, and all the witches are like really cool aunties and grandmas.”
“No shit? They like you? And they’re cool with the whole…” I gestured toward him and made a limp-handed motion.
“Gay? Omega? Babies?” He tilted his head as Vida fussed and pulled from his chest with a cranky little grunt.
“Yeah.”
“Oh yeah. They knew and helped me into the mindset. You think I just walked in here one day and went ‘Gee, I sure hope I can make babies!’ Really?” He rolled his eyes and procured a towel from somewhere before burping Vida over his shoulder. She spit up and he patted her bottom, confirming what I suspected was a dirty diaper.
I really hoped they’d offer me some of that comfort. The way Rayne grinned at me as he excused himself told me that was likely the case.
“Want me to handle it?” Buck offered to take Vida, but Rayne waved him off.
“Go get Cliff ready. I got it.” Rayne slid out of sight as Buck did just that, offering me a wide smile.
Maybe having a kid with him wouldn’t be bad. He seemed to be content with doing his parental duty. As I thought about it, Buck caught my gaze and smirked before leaning in to catch me for a soft kiss.
He smelled like stone and earth, petrichor and the stale air of caves, but not in a foul way. He welcomed me into his presence, and I found myself kissing him back, perhaps a little chastely.
The deep green of his eyes flared, and I wanted nothing else but to drown in them, to have him in my bed again, but my libido stilled when he rested our foreheads together. Rough fingers combed the side of my head and into the fringe of my hair as he inhaled deeply. “Come on. We won’t get much alone time until we go to bed. And beware of River. He’s squirrely.”
I snuck a soft peck before Buck gestured me out to my car, the old thing sitting a little unevenly on the gravel drive. I dusted off a headlight before climbing in and waiting for Buck’s direction. He bent low to scoop Jacque into his arms.
In a moment, he was beside me, buckling his seat belt without provocation. I didn’t think he needed to, but it was nice not to hear the twangy dinging every ten seconds. Jacque nestled into his lap.
“Just follow them.” Buck pointed toward the truck as Storm and Rayne came out of the house with Vida in a carrier. They started the truck up easily and peeled out after a few moments, leaving us to follow in their dusty wake.
I wasn’t certain what I expected, as everything abnormal had happened in such a short period of time, but the swampy little backwoods community wasn’t it. Tons of little breadbox houses lay built in a meandering grid, no two bigger than the other, save for an odd extra room added on here and there. Streetlights running off home power lit the gravel ways between homes where lights lay off or dimmed.
“Watch for wolves. We have pups about.” Buck’s warning had me scrutinizing the dusk-dimmed landscape as I rolled in, following Storm’s truck at a crawling pace until he stuck his arm out the window and made a few hand gestures that had Buck raising a brow. “Turn left at the next drive and go two rows back. The green house.”
I did as I was told, and we pulled up to an empty house with a lawn a week or two out from needing a mow. The weeds gathering between the walkway stones told a story, too. “This us?”
Buck nodded, slipping out of the truck with Jacque before carrying him through the patch of a front yard and onto the porch. For his part, Jacque seemed relatively unbothered by the ordeal, not even flinching as the first of many howls echoed about the neighborhood. And in each of their eerie keens lay a message, welcoming gods to their land.
With a nod, he searched about, finding a key in the usual spot beneath the doormat before letting us into the small breadbox house. And, inside, aside from the slightly stale scent of disuse, it was clean and kempt, barely furnished with the bare necessities. “Guesthouse. It’ll be ours in time, or we can build our own. Storm has no qualm with us dwelling in his territory.”
“He better not. He’s my brother-in-law.”
“And my brother. Siblings fight though.” Buck inspected the house and sat Jacque down to inspect it, too. He peered beneath cabinet counters, fiddled with the HVAC, and pulled some cleaning chemicals out of the bottom of the sink and sat them out of Jacque’s reach. “I’ll invest in some latches.”
My heart melted a little, but I pushed my reaction down as I wandered the place.
The bed needed sheets and blankets, which I thankfully had plenty of, but the way Buck stared at the full-sized thing made me wonder if he was about to test it out right there and then. With me.
“I’ve never slept before.” His quiet whisper drew my attention as I processed it.
“Not even when I slept? I don’t think I can go without sleep, Buck. You okay?” I took a step forward to rest a hand on his shoulder, drawing his bewildered gaze to me. Something about his eyes held a new kind of pain, an ache I was familiar with. Exhaustion.
“It’s not common for what we are to sleep. Storm never slept until Rayne. I think I… I think I will, now.”
I thought about my short time with Grim, the deep exhaustion in his eyes. The longer I stared at Buck, the more of that familiar exhaustion I saw in his eyes, the earthen green of them pools of eternity. “It’s not going to be some fifty years of slumber?” I eyed him as Jacque rooted under the bed.
“Storm said it lasted a few hours at first, curled up with Rayne the first time. It hit your brother hard, and he passed out. Likely you did after all you went through.”
“Dude, I was drugged. By the time I woke up, I was in meat-beating mode.” I shrugged. Getting walked in on by Buck hadn’t been the worst moment of my life. Sorta welcome, if I was honest.
Buck gave me a half grin and rooted around cupboards for linens that I didn’t need. I’d get my own later. For that moment, though, I wanted him against me, his reassuring mouth, his breath and firmness.
When I approached and pulled him from the oak cabinet, hinges creaking, he leaned his head down for a soft kiss, as if reading my mind. It was a bare brush of lips, stubble rasping, tongue following. The whisper of his earthen breath made my skin crawl and tighten until he cupped the side of my face.
“We better get moving before someone starts looking for us,” Buck’s thick voice croaked out in a dry sort of way. I yearned to keep going, to hide away for another day, to experience the new pleasure. I wanted nothing more.
“Or we can—” I started, but the rapping of sharp knuckles on the thick front door made my shoulders tense.
“We can join the wolves. Bring Jacque.” He placed a finger on my lower lip and traced the curve of it, his expression lost.
I parted unwillingly as I went to retrieve my bunny. The door opened and pounding paws cascaded over the linoleum and wood flooring in succession. A fluffy gray pup with a brindled white buddy charged in and Jacque barked at them with matching excitement. Friends!
His life passed before my eyes. Years of my little baby bunny came to a screeching halt as I waited for the horrible sound of dogs on prey. Instead, only excited whimpering met my ears as a chorus of puppy thoughts and speech broke into my mind like Jacque’s little words. Friend! Play! Different! Special!
Two fluffy wolf pups lapped and pawed at an equally excited Jacque who jumped over and around them teasingly, ears perked.
Biggest ears, Hail!
“Easy now, Clay.” A rather stocky young male at the door gave me a wary smile that turned soft when Buck leaned down to pat the brindle-furred pup.
“Evening, Mattias. How are our namesakes?” Buck’s once-lust-laden face turned sweet and warm in an instant as the large blond male stalked in, bare-chested and paler than he had any right to be in these parts with swampy weather and sweltering summer suns.
“Same as always. Hail ate a bee this morning. Didn’t you, sweetie?” A gray pup with soft blue eyes pinned his ears back in shame as he distracted himself momentarily from Jacque. “Teenie about had a conniption.”
Distraction over, they went back to mouthing and playfully leaping about Jacque as I awaited an opportunity to ask them nicely to—
“Easy, my tether. This beast is my mate’s ward.” Buck waved the pup I’d guessed was Clay down and they gentled their play.
Special bunny! Hail gave Jacque a lick before they nuzzled and pawed at him some more.
“He’ll be safe. They know better. Just in case, Mattias.” Buck glanced at the adult that’d entered with them and exchanged a warm smile. “He’s growing so fast.”
“Yeah. I don’t miss the sleepless nights, but he was cute. Still is kinda cute.” Mattias crossed his arms over his chest as the two pups nipped and provoked Jacque into play before my hare chased them both outside with a squeaking bark of command.
Gonna getcha!
I should have been afraid, more cautious or something, but the way the pups gentled their play and knew instinctively that he was not a toy made my worries fade.
“See, he’s in good hands.” Buck swept an arm around my shoulders and guided me out, distracted in conversation with Mattias about a project they were working on, starting a shipping firm for a few owner operators in the pack. The details were lost on me as Buck paused and pointed me toward a well-lit house a few rows up surrounded by women milling about and the odd man with a child.
As I stared, he nudged my back. “Business calls. I’ll meet you there. Rayne is just inside the back door, but someone will welcome you in regardless.”
I nodded and headed off that way, confident that Jacque would be okay by some stretch of imagination.
I forged my way down the sloping landscape toward the teeming home, following the scent of roasting chicken and vegetables, wolves darting past me in the shadows, each lending me a golden eye for a curious blink or more.
I should have been afraid.
But I wasn’t.
“Well, hello, new friend!” The chipper voice drew my attention as I turned about.
Where behind me there had been nothing but a moment ago—there hovered the thin set frame of a short and pixieish male. Bright blue eyes the color of deep waters stared at me beyond ochre skin and long, pinned-up dark hair that seemed to flow about him, the odd lock twisted into a tiny braid.
Thin, cold arms wrapped around my chest for a squeezing tight hug. “You are not one with water like your brother. In my pathways, our union would be a waterfall, and your resilience would wear away bit by bit over time.”
I froze as the twinky male laughed like cold bubbles and slid off of me with a bright smile, revealing too-white teeth. Race was hard to gauge at the best of times with the shifters he’d seen. The pigs had been on the Caucasian side, while the wolves, with the exception of a few, leaned toward Native and African heritage mixed. Honestly, the ambiguous tan and features I wore seemed to blend right in with them, Rayne too. I’d been asked if I was Hawaiian before. Truth told, neither of my parents were familiar with who their biological fathers were. Maybe I could have been Hawaiian or Samoan.
The longer I stared at the male before me, water raced through my mind, harsh and whooshing. The creatures that came to me had scales and fins, sharp teeth and predatory eyes that reminded me of colder times and harsher years. Drowning men cried out in the titter of his shrill voice as he spoke. “You are Rayne’s brother, yes?”
I nodded dumbly. “Drowning River…”
He brightened when I said the name.
“Don’t stare too hard, now, young one. You’ll get dizzy.” He steadied me by holding my upper arms and patting me gently until I ceased to sway.
“Way cuter than I thought you’d be,” I said, blinking myself back into focus as I passed something that very much resembled a merman in his reeling forms.
“I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not, young aspect.” He snorted and released me. “Come, I want my time with you before the children have time to corrupt you.”
A millennia of crazy swirled in his eyes, overpowering just as much sadness.
A stocky red-haired male approached us, a softer sort of blue in his pale eyes, a smile curving his lips.
“You’re a calm one, like me. Buck needs that.” He smiled and offered me a hand, catching my limp palm with a strong grip. Of all his forms, as I stared at him, River’s aspect, I knew he’d never been wholly human, like me or Rayne. “Brook.”
The name fit.
“Nice to meet you. Cliff.” I shook his hand, gaining my grip as the two ushered me off nearby, playful chaos in River’s every chuckle of excitement.
Where the river meets cliff, there shall be a waterfall.