Chapter Nine
“He put a damn collar on you?”
Kefir looked up from his place on the rug in front of the fire in the meeting room.
Luther and Blaine loomed over him. They liked looming.
But, as someone who was already aware that he was significantly shorter than all the other lions in his pride, Kefir wasn’t quite sure what they thought it was going to achieve with him.
He stared up at them until they got bored with standing over him and sat down next to him on the rug.
Kefir managed to scrape up a welcoming smile. “Marrick is—”
“He’s fine,” Luther cut in.
Kefir nodded and turned his attention back to the flames.
They danced very prettily in the fireplace, but the heat they gave off wasn’t the same as the warmth of another man’s body.
Humans might be somewhat cool to the touch, but it was amazing how they could heat a bed when a lion was snuggled close against them.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, but his muscles remained tense as the words he’d overheard played around and around inside his head.
The way they’d spoken about his p—his master, the way they planned to treat him.
Anger and fear battled for control of Kefir’s mind.
He pushed them both down, but he couldn’t make them disappear altogether.
“A collar,” Luther muttered, his tone making it clear how much he loathed it.
“I like it,” Kefir said, still facing the fireplace.
“Kef, listen—” Blaine stopped short as Kefir turned toward him.
“I’m listening,” Kefir said, quite calmly. “Whatever you wish to say, you’re welcome to say it—to me.”
“What?”
Kefir swallowed, his collar moving against his skin with the motion. “I know what you’re planning.”
Luther and Blaine exchanged a look above his head. He knew better than to try to read the silent message that passed between them and waited patiently for it to be transferred into words. But no words came.
“If you have a problem with the relationship a lion has with a human, you take your complaints to the lion,” Kefir reminded them. “I’m the lion.” He might not be a master, but he was still a member of his pride. He was still a lion.
“You’re not acting like a—” Blaine yelped as Luther elbowed him in the ribs.
“Don’t hurt him.” Even Kefir himself wasn’t sure if he meant it as a warning or a plea. Whatever it was, if it didn’t work, he knew what his only other option was. “I don’t wish to have to leave this pride and find another, but if I don’t think he’s safe here, then—”
“No!” Blaine and Luther said, at exactly the same time.
Kefir looked from one of them to the other and back again. “You’d leave if you didn’t think Marrick was safe with—”
“Of course we would, but he’s our mate…” Blaine trailed off.
“Bloody hell!” Luther whispered. “You’re in love with him.”
“Yes.” There didn’t seem to be anything else for Kefir to say on the matter. It was a simple statement of fact. He was in love with his master. “But, if he’s not safe here then…”
Luther brushed the whole issue aside with a rather embarrassed wave of his hand. “Gave up on that idea days ago.”
Kefir frowned. They never gave up on any of their stupid plans until they were caught. “Arslan hasn’t mentioned—”
Blaine made a distinctly unimpressed sound in the back of his throat. “Like he could have talked us out of it!”
Kefir kept diplomatically silent on the subject of exactly who would have won any argument with Arslan.
“You should have heard the temper tantrum Marrick threw when he heard about it.” Luther winced at the memory.
Kefir couldn’t keep the smile back. If there was one man who might be able to call them to heel even more easily than the leader of the pride…
“I still don’t like seeing you wear this,” Luther reached out and tugged gently at the lock on his collar.
Keeping everyone in the pride content was important, but not compared to keeping his future mate happy. Kefir shrugged. “You don’t need to like it. You’re not the lion he gave it to.”
“Ellery gave that to you?”
They all looked up as Marrick crossed the room.
Kefir nodded.
As Marrick knelt on the rug next to them, he stared at the collar as if he’d never seen anything like it before. He looked up then and met Kefir’s eyes. Whatever he saw there, it made him smile. “Congratulations.”
Luther looped his arm around Marrick’s waist and pulled him roughly back so he collapsed in a heap between his two mates.
“It’s not a good thing,” Blaine hissed in his ear.
“It means Ellery’s serious about you,” Marrick said, all his attention still on Kefir, despite his mates attempts to distract him.
“There are two things everyone on the scene knows about him, Kef. He’s a good dom, and he doesn’t give out Velcro collars.
If he put it on you, he means it to stay there for a long time. ”
Kefir reached up and traced his fingertips along the silver links. He nodded. Serious. That sounded right. They were serious about each other, about what was going to happen between them. Serious. Kefir liked that word.
When he turned his attention back to the other three, all of Luther’s and Blaine’s attention had moved to Marrick’s neck.
“You have to have one.”
“You said they were a bad thing,” Marrick reminded him, in the mild tone he only ever used when he wanted to wind his lovers up.
“On lions,” Blaine hissed. “Not on humans—that’s different.”
The door leading to the hallway swung open. Kefir immediately looked up. As Ellery strode in, Luther and Blaine lurched to their feet and squared off against him.
When Kefir would have moved to stand between them, Marrick reached out and caught hold of his arm.
“Let Ellery handle them.”
Kefir looked back toward Marrick and hesitated. Marrick knew far more about human doms than he did. Reining in his instincts, Kefir subsided back to the rug, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to relax. He remained ready to leap up if he was needed, for whatever good it would do.
“They’d never have actually hurt him,” Marrick whispered.
His grip tightened on Kefir’s arm, as if what he was saying was urgently important.
“I know them, Kef. I know they’ve got big mouths, but they wouldn’t—they couldn’t hurt him.
It’s not in them. Hell, it took me forever to convince them to even try to hurt a damn masochist!
They just need to shout a bit and get it out of their systems. Ellery can handle them. ”
Kefir turned back to the three men squaring off against each other.
Ellery was standing his ground. There was no trace of fear or submission in him. His spine was straight, his chin tilted up. He looked more like the leader of a neighbouring pride than a human who’d arrived in shackles just two weeks before.
He owned whichever room he occupied in much the same way Arslan did, and he was glorious. A human dominant equal to a feline leader…
“I can learn,” Kefir whispered.
“Kef?”
“I can learn how to be like a human submissive for him, how to be the kind of mate he wants.” Tearing his eyes away from the men in the centre of the room, Kefir turned his full attention to Marrick.
“I’m learning,” Kefir promised. “He’s teaching me about what kind of submissive he wants to own, and I’m learning. ”
Marrick nodded as if he understood what Kefir was trying to tell him. A moment later, when Ryland and Arslan stepped into the room, Kefir and Marrick rose to their feet.
When Kefir would have stepped forward, Marrick caught hold of his arm again. “Make sure you teach him about what kind of master you want, too.”
Kefir looked over his shoulder at him.
“That’s the way it works,” Marrick told him.
“Sometimes, you have to speak up and tell your master what you want. Ellery’s a good dom—he’ll understand if you speak up about what’s important to you.
” He thought about that for a moment. “It probably wouldn’t hurt if you kind of stress your submission and throw in an extra couple of ‘sirs’ when you do it, but make sure that you do it. ”
Kefir nodded. Taking his arm out of Marrick’s grip as politely as possible, he stepped forward to stand next to Ellery.
Ellery caught hold of Kefir’s arm and guided him to stand behind him instead.
Dominants look after submissives. Ellery knew full well that his sub was stronger than him, stronger than any human, but in that moment, as he squared off against the other lions, his first instinct was to put his sub behind him out of harm’s way.
“If you’d all like to stop making fools of yourselves before the others get here,” Arslan suggested, as he walked calmly through the middle of the standoff and took his seat. “Now would be a good time.”
Luther spun around to face Arslan. “You can’t think it’s right! You’re the one who says that our traditions exist for a reason.”
“They do,” Arslan said, as he welcomed Ryland to kneel at his feet. “Every one of them.”
“Then, Ellery is Kefir’s pet—if anyone should be wearing at collar, it’s him!” Blaine snapped.
Arslan looked past them both to where Kefir stood, just about able to meet his leader’s gaze over his master’s shoulder. Pulse racing, all he could do was pray.
“I’ve never said that Ellery is not Kefir’s pet,” Arslan announced.
“If a man wants to give his lover a piece of jewellery, that’s his business.
It changes nothing in the eyes of the pride.
Kefir is still responsible for Ellery. He’s still answerable for his conduct the same way any other lion would be. Our traditions still exist.”
While Kefir continued to stare across the room at Arslan, the leader of the pride transferred his attention to Ellery.
At that exact moment, the door opened, several of the other lions in the pride bounded into the room, all of them talking at the same time.
Arslan turned his attention to them and began a conversation with the first lion to catch his eye, just to make sure everyone knew he considered the newcomers to all be far more interesting than the standoff that had been playing out a moment before.
Luther and Blaine turned back to Ellery, but they didn’t seem to know what to do with him.
While Kefir watched, they retreated toward Marrick.
The grip they took on him turned his skin white and brought a smile to his lips.
He grinned at Kefir as he was dragged away to a quiet-ish corner of the room.
Ellery turned his back on them all as he gave his complete attention to Kefir. Looking up at his master, Kefir waited for his verdict.
“What exactly are they to Arslan?”
The question sounded very important, in ways Kefir didn’t really understand. He tilted his head on the side. “They’re the same as we all are—members of his pride, sir.”
“And what exactly does that mean?” Ellery asked. “That they’re answerable to him?”
Kefir nodded.
“That they belong to him,” Ellery pushed. “That you belong to him?”
Kefir hesitated. Their conversation didn’t seem to be about Luther and Blaine at all. “We all belong to the pride, sir.”
The car pulled up outside then, pulling everyone’s attention to the window, and the drive beyond it. A second later, Luther and Blaine strode out, a rather happy looking Marrick being dragged along in their wake.
The sacrifice was led in, but Ellery didn’t seem at all interested in watching what happened in front of the fire that night. He led Kefir over to a chair on the far side of the room.
Sitting down, he encouraged Kefir to rest with him, half on the chair and half on his lap.
Snuggling against Ellery, automatically doing his best to warm him up to a lion’s temperature, Kefir glanced across the room. His gaze fell on Marrick. A human dom expected his sub to tell him about important things.
“I don’t think most lions like doing as they’re told,” Kefir whispered.
“Oh?”
“Arslan, he doesn’t… He’s not like a human dom. He doesn’t want anything like that with us.” Kefir looked up at Ellery, not sure how to explain it. “It’s like at the university?” he offered.
Ellery stroked his fingers along Kefir’s spine, encouraging him closer.
“Arslan doesn’t own his students, but it’s his responsibility to look after them while they’re in his lectures, to teach them all the things they need to know to be good historians. Sometimes, that means he needs to give them orders—to insist that they do as they’re told.”
“And it’s his duty to teach his pride how to be good lions?” Ellery asked.
Kefir nodded.
“And what does that make him to you?”
Kefir tilted his head on the side.
“You’ve said yourself that you’re not like most lions. You like doing what you’re told, don’t you?”
Kefir nodded. He’d known that for a long time. The instinct to demand that he be allowed to do whatever he wanted had never existed inside him the way it seemed to in the other lions he knew.
“Do you like doing as he tells you?”
Kefir looked across the room at Arslan, even as his fingers drew intricate patterns on Ellery’s skin.
“I’ve never wanted to be his mate, sir.” He looked up and met Ellery’s eyes, needing him to believe him. “I never wanted to be anyone’s mate until…” Dropping his gaze, he remembered all the advice he’d overheard Arslan give the other members of his pride about humans needing time.
“Kitten?”
Kefir nuzzled against Ellery’s neck, enjoying the simple sensation of skin moving against skin while he tried to think of the right words for the situation.
Ellery’s fingers wound into his hair. He tugged at the strands in that way he had of letting Kefir know that it could feel really good when a man did that—when the right man did that.