Chapter Ten Lucius
Chapter Ten
Lucius
The light and heat of the rising sun bathe my sleeping face.
Still heavy with dreams, my lids flutter open. My wolf grumbles a drowsy protest, deep in my chest, over this unwelcome intrusion into our well-earned rest. Together, we squint into the sunbeams streaming through the bedroom window of the Christmas cottage.
Through a scrim of melting frost, the visible square of morning sky is coldly blue. The fluffy wedge of virgin snow piled on the sill is already starting to melt.
Clearly, the blizzard is over.
A sleepy murmur coaxes my gaze to the bed.
I’m lying on my side, face to face with a sleeping Zara. The sight of her vivid beauty—flushed and tender with dreams, soft lips parted and lashes resting against glowing skin—makes my wolf snarl with possessive satisfaction.
My mate’s wild mermaid hair spills in a riot of color over the pillow to frame her sultry Marilyn Monroe face and the lush fullness of her bare breasts.
Her creamy curves are dappled with the rosy kisses of love bites from our recent exertions.
Tiny silver rings still pierce her cherry-ripe nipples—for now.
She’s planning to remove them before she gives birth.
I can barely wait to see her nursing our pups.
Wedged against the banked furnace of my shifter heat, she’s kicked off the sheets in her sleep.
Thankfully, despite the crisp morning air nipping our hides with our bedside fire burned to ashes, she doesn’t feel cold. Her round firm belly, taut as a drum, radiates heat between us.
In part, this is due to Vasili, who lies curled around her from behind like a glamorous shrimp, with his sleeping face turned into her hair.
One black-nailed hand, sporting his silver skull ring, splays possessively over the swell of Zara’s belly.
With his pale mane tousled in disheveled spikes around his head, mascara smudged around his lowered lids, and the bruise of a love bite smoldering on his neck, he’s the very image of punk-rock debauchery.
To complete the effect, a few long ribbons of Ronin’s inky hair spill over Vasili’s shoulder, from our still-sleeping mate tucked against his back.
Truly, our vain and haughty Vasili has never looked more disheveled.
Or more blissfully dead to the world.
The soft snorts of Vasili’s sleeping breath mingle with the heavier exhalations of Ash (who always sleeps with his mouth open) somewhere behind me, along with the rhythmic buzzsaw of Maxim’s unabashed snoring.
Still, I’m relieved beyond measure to find no sign of last night’s horned Krampus lingering this morning in our bed—
A tiny scraping sound snaps my gaze across the loft.
There I find Zephyr, stealthily easing open the bedroom door.
Already zipped into his Olympic ski suit with his eyepatch securely in place, the Dark Fae King looks uncharacteristically festive with Mordred’s crimson Santa hat perched jauntily on his evergreen hair.
Feeling my gaze with those keen senses he commands, Zephyr twists toward me and lifts a finger to his lips for silence.
I give him a cautious nod, but raise my brows in inquiry.
In reply, Zephyr dangles the SUV key and whispers, soft as breath, “Our vehicle waits without. I have Zara’s Secret Santa gift in the trunk.”
A rush of relief floods through me. Apparently this Christmas cottage has indeed returned us to where we started.
Just as Neo promised it would.
I don’t dare speak lest I waken our mates. But my sentiment must be obvious. Zephyr’s small feral smile slips into view, with a flash of pointy incisors, before he tiptoes out and eases the door closed in his wake.
The snick of the door latch is barely audible. Nonetheless, in a polycule of sharp-eared shifters, a mere decibel of sound is more than sufficient.
Half-buried in the teal spill of Zara’s hair, Vasili’s glacier-blue eye flashes open.
Hush, I warn Vasili hurriedly through our bond. You’ll wake our mates. After last night, they all need their rest.
His suspicious eye darts over me, then measures Mordred’s heavy bulk spooned against my back, one brawny tattooed arm wrapped tight around my waist. Next, Vasili’s gimlet gaze slices over the sleeping warlock puppy pile behind Mordred, their mingled scents a familiar comfort to my wolfish nose.
Then Vasili’s sharp jaw angles toward the door.
Where’s Zephyr? he demands through our mating bond, wary gaze narrowing on my face.
He’s merely stepped out to collect Christmas gifts from the car—to which, it seems, we’ve returned.
I offer Vasili a smile for reassurance, to dam the trickle of insecurity rising in his guarded face before it swells to a flood of hurt and rejection that sweeps away the bridge those two rivals—Zephyr and Vasili—built between them last night.
“Never fear, my dear,” I promise in a whisper. “Our Unseelie will soon return to us.”
“He’d better,” Vasili mutters, with a disgruntled sniff. “Or I’ll make him suffer.”
“Awww, don’t do that, babydoll,” Mordred rumbles, thick and sleepy, into the nape of my neck. “Pretty sure my cuz’ll let you fuck him again… if you ask nice. He’s giving ILY vibes… all over the place.”
Normally my brain struggles to disentangle our sex demon’s contemporary slang.
But the mating bite I finally gave Mordred last night, which opened the same telepathic bond between us that Mordred already shares with Vasili and our other shifters, seems to have dealt with that minor difficulty quite nicely.
ILY simply means I love you.
As Zephyr’s distant cousin, Mordred seems familiar with the signs.
“Z plus V,” Mordred affirms in a singsong voice, gradually rising in volume, clearly designed to give our uncaffeinated Vasili a good poke. “Sitting in a tree. K. I. S. S. I. N. G…”
Vasili’s upper lip lifts in a sneer that bares one razor-sharp fang in warning.
Unfortunately, the warning is wasted on Mordred, who continues to chant with growing enthusiasm, “First comes love, then comes marriage—”
“Good morning to you as well, Mordred.” Resigned to the knowledge that we’ll all soon be waking, I roll onto my back and stroke the tangle of dark blue hair gently away from the kraken’s face.
My caress reveals more than his drowsy purple eyes and the irrepressible grin sneaking onto his swarthy face and bringing out his dimples.
It also bares the muscled bulge of his shoulder and the fresh double puncture of my mating bite.
“Hiya, Prof.” Mordred leans in for a good morning kiss that still tastes faintly of nutmeg and allspice from the late-night snack of pumpkin pie and eggnog we all shared before sleeping.
Thankfully, our sweetly spicy kiss stops his mouth before his teasing launches Vasili into orbit.
My wolf mutters happily in my chest. A sense of tenderness for him, Mordred, this newest of our mates and lovers, spreads through my chest like a bruise.
Truly, I can scarcely explain—even to myself—why I waited so interminably long before claiming him as both of us (indeed all of us) clearly wanted.
Except…
“You wanted me to be sure,” Mordred whispers against my lips, confirming that our fledgling mating bond is indeed fully functional. “Didn’t wanna take advantage of me—the sex demon—by having actual sex with me. Or make me feel pressured, cuz of you being my headmaster.”
That’s rather the essence of the matter, I acknowledge in the privacy of our bond. After all, I’m responsible for you. It was genuine concern for your happiness, Mordred, not—lack of desire—that held me back.
He eases out of our kiss to look deeply into my eyes, his own gaze soft and vulnerable. “No one’s ever worried about me like that before, Lucius. For real.”
“Worrying about you—all of you—is part of my job description as your headmaster and your alpha,” I say firmly. “Speaking of which, how’s the bite?”
“S’okay.” He shrugs, but winces at the movement. “A little ouchy, but nothin’ I can’t handle, true?”
“Let’s just have a look.” My careful fingers drift over Mordred’s smooth bronze skin to find my punctures. Heat spreads outward from the twin wounds over his cool kraken skin.
“You’re a trifle warm,” I tell him. “I do hope we’re not going to start a mating heat quite so soon, dear one. I’m not at all certain Theo Mercury and his chalet full of glitterati will be able to withstand a sex demon in full heat. Especially after a few mugs of mulled wine.”
Clearly undaunted by the prospect of a full-blown orgy breaking out at Senator Mercury’s sedate Christmas party, Mordred grins and snuggles into me.
I find this a considerable distraction, since we’re both quite naked under the blankets. His dominant cock, the larger of the two dicks he packs between his muscled thighs, swells and nudges invitingly against my hip.
“Yeah,” he says, low and husky. “My heat’s comin’. You got some potent shifter rizz in that mating bite of yours, for real. Pretty sure we’ll all be fucking before we finish the Christmas turkey.”
Inevitably, my body reacts to this scandalous prospect by sending all the blood rushing straight to my tingling cock.
My wolf sits up straight with anticipation.
Mordred grins at my wolfish look. “Don’t worry, bae. It’ll be sigma.”
“I don’t doubt it will,” I say gruffly.
But I forego further commentary in favor of tending my new lover’s mating bite, administering long slow licks that make Mordred squirm and giggle.
“Eee! Stop! I’m ticklish!” he squeals in a whisper piercing enough to raise the dead.
Admittedly, I’m rather tempted to explore exactly where else my Avalon Academy exchange student might be ticklish. Still licking the squirming demon’s mating bite to dispense the healing agent in my shifter saliva, I drift my hand over the broad planes of his chest to find his ribs.
The sex demon shrieks like a girl, then convulses in a fit of giggles.
Apparently, he truly is ticklish.