Chapter 18 #2
“By resources, you mean me, I assume,” Willowman said coolly, sitting back in his seat.
“And I can speak for myself.” His golden eyes warmed as his gaze settled on me.
“I’ll do what I can to help her. I have some contacts in the rim I can speak to.
Which reminds me, the blood sample I took from you was ruined.
In the hubbub of finding out the orbs had been switched, I must have forgotten to properly store it. We’ll need to take another.”
I’d completely forgotten about my mission to find out how I’d bypassed the ward to the forest on the omega moon. The strange flushes and itchy skin were gone, but it didn’t mean they wouldn’t come back.
“Can you take a sample later this week when we do herbology?”
“Herbology?” Serath was looking at me again, and it was hard to breathe.
I nodded. “I can’t fly or shift, but I can be useful with tinctures and potions.”
“My little apprentice,” Willowman said with a small smile. “I do have a lot of knowledge to pass on. It’ll be fun.”
I caught movement in the corner of my eye—Selas’s hand on Serath’s arm.
My stomach cramped, and annoyance gnawed at my chest. Did she have to touch him all the time?
But when I lifted my gaze, his attention was on me, intense and hungry, and damn if I wasn’t suddenly starving for the feel of his thick cock between my thighs and—
“Dessert, anyone?” Selas asked, her tone higher pitched than usual.
“Not for me,” Serath said. “I need some air.”
He pushed back his seat and left, and it took everything I had not to follow him.
“You did well,” Prasan said.
I let out a rough chuckle. “That obvious?”
“The pheromones in here are thick,” Orix said. “Even Taz can’t stomach them.”
A tiny meow alerted me to the little feline hiding under the table. He popped his head out and peered up at me inquisitively.
“Hey, my name’s Cam. It’s nice to meet you, Taz.”
Taz bumped his head against my leg and purred loudly.
“Cats are great judges of character,” Orix said. “The fact he likes you means you’ll fit into the team just fine.”
“Are you glad you didn’t kill me now?”
Orix rolled his eyes. “Are you ever going to let that slide?”
“Probably not.”
“I’ll get dessert,” Selas said. “Cam, would you like to help?”
“Sure.”
I joined her in the kitchen, where she retrieved a large cheesecake from the fridge. “I’m sorry if I upset you earlier.”
“Don’t be. You’re a guardian. An elite. You have a job to do, and I get that. But I wasn’t born into this. I’m a hunter at heart. We kill the bad shit, but we also do our best to save the good.”
“But it’s more than that with this ghost, isn’t it? You’ve grown attached.”
“Impossible not to. She’s a sweetheart…at least she was. Besides, if we fix her, we can find out who messed with her in the first place.”
“You think that person might be our mole?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but we can look into that once we have his or her identity.”
“I should have thought of that.” A small smile lifted her lips. “A little hard to focus with all the phero—”
“Please. Don’t.” I groaned. “I hate that word.”
She chuckled. “If anyone can fix Melanie, it’s Willowman.” She paused in her slicing. “He’s a great guy too. Attentive. Caring. Powerful. You’ll enjoy your time with him, and he’s not a tutor, so the official no fraternization rule doesn’t apply.”
Wait…was she… “Are you trying to set me up?”
She sighed and turned to face me. “You don’t have to be a nun just because you can’t act on your fated bond with Serath.”
“That’s not what you said the other day.”
“I know, but I was wrong. You could be stuck with us here for a long time.”
“But when Romi gets back, then…” The look on her face made my stomach hurt. “You don’t think we’ll get him back.”
“It’s not that, Cam. I’m more worried about what state he’ll be in when we do.”
She thought he’d be messed up like Varsa. Heck, I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind; I’d just buried it, though.
“We’re going to do everything in our power to save him,” Selas said. “But to do that, we need you and Serath to be focused.”
And she thought all ungratified sexual tension would cause a problem. Her logic was sound, but the thought of being intimate with any male other than Serath made me feel ill. “I don’t want anyone else.”
“I know. But there will be times when you need someone else. Both of you.”
Serath with another woman. Serath fucking someone else? My fingers ached and burned, and a low, menacing growl vibrated in my throat.
Selas’s gaze dropped to my hands. “Cam…”
My fingers were elongated and tipped with granite-colored talons. “Shit.” I shook them as if that would get rid of them. “Shit, shit.”
The talons melted away.
“What was that?” Orix hurried to join us from across the room.
I had no idea. “It happened on the extraction run but only for a moment. It’s never happened before, though.”
“A partial shift?” Willowman joined us too. “May I?” He took my hand and studied my fingers. “Partial shifts are impossible for halfbloods and incredibly rare for gargoyles. We need to get that blood sample looked at by my contact as soon as possible.”
“Why not HQ?” Orix asked. “They have alchemists that could look deep and find…” He trailed off. “Right, got it.”
They might find out I was Serath’s fated mate if they cross-referenced samples.
My original sample would have been screened at the intake center.
According to Lionel, the same samples would have been sent to another lab, and that was maybe where my identity as Basque blood could have been discovered, as deeper screenings were done there. The sample had never made it to HQ.
“We will figure this out,” Willowman said with confidence.
And I believed him.
“Let’s enjoy this dessert, then you can get some sleep,” Selas said kindly. “The next few weeks are going to be intense.”
Sleep with Serath under the same roof?
That was going to take some training of its own.