Chapter Thirteen
Kefir glanced over his shoulder as the skin on the back of his neck prickled, warning him that he was being observed. His first thought was that Ellery might have somehow found a way to come home to see him in the middle of the day.
It wasn’t Ellery, but Kefir still had a smile for the leader of the pride when he saw him standing in the doorway. “You’re home early.”
“Paperwork’s as easy to do here as it would be at the university,” Arslan observed, crossing the room to sit in the chair opposite Kefir’s.
For a few moments, Kefir gazed blankly at the family lines he was working on as he tried to put thoughts that had nothing to do with lineages in order.
“When do you intend to offer for him?”
Kefir’s gaze snapped up to meet Arslan’s.
Arslan smiled slightly. “If you’re under the impression you’ll ever make a fine poker player, you’re mistaken. You’re in love with him. Any fool can see that.”
Kefir twirled his pen between his fingers. “Do you think he knows that?”
“Have you told him so?”
Kefir shook his head.
“Then, it’s quite possible he doesn’t. Humans aren’t fools,” Arslan said. “But they aren’t lions either. Their instincts are…different from ours. Good, but different.”
“Did Ryland know before you told him?” Kefir asked, cautiously.
Arslan leaned back in his chair as he seemed to think about the matter very carefully. “I’ve no idea,” he admitted eventually. “I’m not sure he even knew how he felt himself, let alone how I felt. Humans can be like that at times.”
“I don’t think Ellery is very like other humans,” Kefir said softly, his hand instinctively going to his collar.
Arslan followed the gesture, but it was impossible to read his expression as his gaze traced its way along the line of silver links. “Tell me what he’s like.”
Kefir frowned down at his papers as he tried to find the right words. “He’s strong. Certain. He…” His hand left his collar to wrap itself around his other wrist in pale imitation of the way his master so often held him. “He’s not a conventional pet.”
“Oh?” The sound was soft and invited him to continue.
“I think,” Kefir said, very slowly. “If there’s one of us who acts like a traditional pet, it’s me.” Each word seemed to cling to his vocal cords, not sure if it should ever be spoken aloud.
Arslan said nothing.
“He calls me that sometimes,” Kefir admitted. “And kitten—he calls me that, too.”
Arslan raised an eyebrow, but he made no comment until the silence had dragged on between them for several more impossibly long seconds. “Does he call himself your master?” he finally asked.
Kefir nodded, torn between wanting to lift his chin and own the facts of the matter, and an instinctive inclination to worry that he might be displeasing the leader of his pride with his confession.
Arslan straightened up in his seat, not looking entirely comfortable there. “If you had a choice between being a pet or a master, which would you wish to be?”
“Ellery would never—”
“I’m not asking about him,” Arslan cut in sharply. “I’m asking what you would want. If Ellery wasn’t a consideration, what role would you prefer to take with the man you were destined to spend the rest of your life with?”
Kefir turned his attention back to his pen.
It was leaving smudges of ink on one of his fingers just the way it always did, but it had a good grip to it.
It fitted against his hand far better than any of those that left his digits clean.
In a way he couldn’t quite explain, it suited him. Just like Ellery suited him…
“I think…” Kefir shook his head. There was no doubt in his mind, no thinking about it. He dismissed his first attempt at an answer and tried again. “I’m a pet. I don’t think I would ever want to be anything else.”
Arslan nodded; he didn’t seem entirely surprised. He didn’t appear all that sure about what he should say next either. He took a deep breath and stared across the table at Kefir. “Do you think you’ll make each other happy?”
Kefir nodded, glancing up from his pen for a moment.
“As far as the pride is concerned, you’ll still be responsible for him,” Arslan announced, a little brusquely, as he leaned forward in his chair.
Kefir nodded again.
Arslan took another deep breath and pushed himself up from the seat. He was on his way to the door when Kefir finally managed to scrape together a few words.
“Are you disappointed in me?” No matter what the answer, he told himself it was better to know, one way or the other.
Arslan stopped. “Disappointed?”
“That I’m not what a lion is supposed to be.” Kefir kept his attention fixed firmly on his paperwork until he heard Arslan move back across the room to stand directly alongside his desk.
“Our traditions exist to make sure that lions treat the humans they take as pets kindly, Kefir, that a physically weaker species isn’t hurt when a lion gets…
over enthusiastic. I’d much prefer you to be honest with him and find a way for the two of you to be happy than for you to try to pretend you’re something you’re not and for either of you to get hurt in the process. ”
“I’ll never hurt him,” Kefir whispered. He’d have given everything he owned for the words to have sounded more certain.
“But…?” Arslan prompted.
Kefir tapped the end of his pen on the table.
“I can protect him from other humans if I need to.” He had no doubt about that.
The leather Ellery had used to bind at the club him was very pretty, but if Kefir had needed to escape from it to protect his mate, there was no way any of the restraints would have withstood the strain of a lion determined to get loose.
He glanced up. Arslan nodded for him to keep going.
“I know I’m not as large or as strong as the other lions.” He dropped his gaze, ashamed of that fact for the first time in his life. “If the pride turns against him then—” he swallowed rapidly, fear robbing him of his voice.
“You concentrate on your…on Ellery. I’ll see to it that order exists within the pride. That’s my place, not yours.”
Kefir nodded.
“Hundreds of humans have walked into this den since I took command of this pride. I haven’t lost one yet. Not even in those few months after Luther and Blaine first joined us.”
Kefir dipped his head a little, smiling at the exasperated look that flashed across Arslan’s face.
“Ellery will be perfectly safe here.”
Kefir offered his leader another little nod. “Thank you.”
Arslan walked toward the door, but, without Kefir even saying a word, he stopped again halfway across the room. “You still haven’t answered my original question. When do you plan to offer for him?”
“Soon,” Kefir said. As soon as he could gather the courage to face the fact Ellery might not give him the answer he wanted.
Arslan nodded before leaving.
Kefir had no idea how long he sat there, silently staring at all the family trees and lineages spread across the table in front of him.
When he felt himself being watched once more, he looked up, expecting to see Arslan back to remind him of something that needed to be taken care of before he could even think of asking Ellery to join the pride as his mate.
He jumped out of his chair when he saw his master leaning casually against the doorframe, as if he had already been there for quite some time.
“Sir!”
“Was it a nice place?” Ellery asked as he pushed himself away from the woodwork and stepped forward.
“Sir?”
“You were in your own little world—lost in your thoughts.”
Kefir nodded, too busy staring at Ellery to manage to speak.
“You know, a suspicious mind might think you expected to see a different man in the doorway when you looked up,” Ellery said.
Kefir nodded again.
Ellery raised an eyebrow.
“Arslan stopped by to speak to me. I thought he’d come back.”
“Does he often do that—stop by to talk to you in the middle of the day?”
Kefir frowned slightly, not sure he understood why Ellery’s tone sounded so strange. “Sir?”
“What were you talking about?” Ellery asked—except it sounded more like a demand than a simple enquiry.
“You.”
Ellery’s lips twitched as if he was holding back a smile, the way he so often did at the den. “I can’t fault your honesty, can I?” Hooking his fingers under Kefir’s collar, Ellery tugged him forward for a kiss.
The atmosphere around them changed as Ellery explored Kefir’s mouth with his tongue, easily making Kefir’s brain melt and his cock rise.
“Did you have a good day, sir?” Kefir managed to ask, as he was released.
Ellery nodded. Sitting in the desk chair, he pulled Kefir back to rest on his lap. Reaching out to the mess of paperwork on the table, Ellery picked up one of the top sheets.
“This is the work you were telling me about before? The lineages?”
Kefir nodded, squirming to arranging himself more comfortably, at least until the arm Ellery had wrapped around his waist tightened its hold on him, in a silent command to stop fidgeting.
Ellery picked up another piece of paper. “What’s so special about Cameron?” he asked.
Kefir looked at the circled name and the line of question marks that followed it. “No one knows what happened to him, sir.”
“Oh?”
Kefir frowned. “He left his parents pride years ago, but no one knows which pride he joined. I’ve been making enquiries but…”
“Maybe he didn’t join any of them,” Ellery suggested as he ran his gaze over the page. He looked up when Kefir shook his head vehemently enough to make the chair wobble beneath them.
“Lions have to belong to prides, sir. It… A lion without a pride would be…” Kefir shook his head again, a flash of pain shooting through him at the very idea.
Ellery was silent for some time. “I don’t suppose this Cameron you’re looking for was a dancer?”
Kefir tilted his head on the side.
“Rumour has it one of the dancers who works in the local clubs is a lion-shifter. His stage name is Caramel,” he went on.
“A dancer?” Kefir echoed.
“Mostly,” Ellery murmured, his attention already back on the page he was reading.
“Sir?”
Ellery’s expression turned more serious as he set the page down and gave Kefir his complete attention. “I’ve heard that he works for street money, too.”
Kefir blinked at him.
“Men pay him to have sex with them,” Ellery explained.
“Like with the sacrifices?” Kefir hazarded.
“Probably not,” Ellery said, gently. His tone of voice said far more than his words, and Kefir remembered Ellery’s concerns about how the pride treated the sacrifices.
Kefir frowned, helpless to stop himself imagining the other lion’s life and all the situations where those kinds of concerns would have been justified. To be without a pride, without anyone watching over him…
Ellery stroked his knuckles down Kefir’s cheek, pulling him back to reality. “Do you want me to ask around, see if I can find him for you?”
Kefir nodded. “Please?”
Ellery smiled encouragingly before looking back to the table. “Tell me about one of the other lines you’re working on.”
There were a dozen different lineages spread out across the desk. Squirming forward a little, Kefir managed to catch the edge of one particular page. He offered it silently to Ellery, just testing his reaction.
“Marrick’s family tree?” Ellery asked, as he studied the neatly arranged names and dates and all the careful lines connecting them.
Kefir nodded. “He joined the pride, sir.”
“And are you adding in the records of all the lions’ human lovers?”
Kefir shook his head, very firmly. “No. Just their mates, sir.”
“The difference being?”
“Mates don’t leave,” Kefir whispered, his voice suddenly rougher than it had been a moment before.
Ellery nodded very slowly, as if filing that away for future reference. “What about Ryland? Is he here, too?”
He loosened his hold just enough for Kefir to retrieve the appropriate piece of paper, but his arm slid back around Kefir as he returned to his lap, his grip on him as firm as ever.
“There’s not as much information on Ryland’s as on Marrick’s,” Ellery observed.
“It makes Ryland sad, sir, talking about his family.”
Ellery pressed a seemingly absentminded kiss onto the top of Kefir’s head. The same sympathy that had come into his expression when he’d realised how wrong it was for Cameron to be living without a pride came back. He seemed to understand Ryland’s situation without needing to be told any more.
Kefir glanced up at Ellery. He appeared interested and inclined to talk. It was too good an opportunity to waste.
“Luther and Blaine went to visit Marrick’s family,” he mentioned, as casually as he could manage.
“That must have been interesting,” Ellery murmured, most of his attention back on the lineage in his hand.
“They explained to his parents that they were going to take good care of him.”
Ellery’s lips twitched, as if he found something funny, but he didn’t try to share the joke with Kefir.
Kefir pushed on. “Who’s the leader of your pride, sir?”