20. Chapter 20
20
G avin’s focus shifted past me to where Bastian still sat on the edge of the bed. “We should get your shifter something to eat,” Gavin said, his tone begrudging. “He looks like he’s about to pass out.”
I twisted to look at Bastian. His back was slumped, his gaze unfocused, and his copper skin appeared unusually pallid. My cheeks heated as I realized the reason—because he had fed me, twice. He was suffering from blood loss, and only then did I remember he had been injured during the fight with the wolf shifter. There had been a lot of blood in the car. Shifting had healed him, but it must have depleted his energy stores.
“Oh, Bas . . .” I quickly pulled my top on over my head, then gripped Bastian’s forearm to help him up to his feet. He was shaking, and I wrapped an arm around his back to keep him steady.
“Does anything sound good?” I asked Bastian, then glanced at Gavin, recalling that Javier hadn’t needed food for sustenance. I feared there wouldn’t be much of anything ready-made in the fridge, though I knew from my booze hunt through the kitchen that the pantry was stocked. “What do we have?”
“Meat,” Bastian said, his voice weak. “I need protein.”
“I don’t know what’s in the fridge,” Gavin admitted. “Ash ordered groceries for you as soon as we knew you were coming here. I told him to get a bit of everything.” Gavin opened the bedroom door and stepped out into the hallway ahead of us, a cruel twist to his lips as he watched me help Bastian out of the room.
“Don’t worry,” I grumbled when the vampire made no move to help the shifter. “I got him.”
Gavin’s eyes narrowed, but his sneer remained.
“Sophie!” Micah said, rushing toward us from the floor-to-ceiling corner window in the living room as soon as we reached the mouth of the hallway. “You’re okay! What happened? Here—” He ducked under Bastian’s other arm and helped me half drag the bigger man into the living room.
We settled Bastian on the couch, and I shot an irritated glare in Gavin’s direction as he strode toward the front door. “Thanks, Micah ,” I said, the two words more directed at Gavin than at my son.
Gavin glanced back at me over his shoulder, his expression seeming to say he was enjoying watching Bastian suffer. Considering I had commanded him not to hurt Bastian, I supposed not helping when Bastian was suffering was the next best thing for him.
I rolled my eyes and hurried into the kitchen.
“Does he need to feed, too?” Micah asked from where he stood by the couch and the starving shifter.
“Sort of,” I said as I opened the fridge door.
The fridge was stocked full of a bit of everything. I rummaged through the clear plastic food containers holding pretty much every kind of pasta salad in existence, but they contained little in the way of meat. I grabbed the small tubs of tuna and chicken salad, hoping Bastian didn’t mind stuff mixed in with his meat, then pulled the three bags of fresh-sliced deli meat from the fridge drawer.
I set my finds on the counter beside the fridge, then pulled open the freezer drawer. “Jackpot,” I sang under my breath as I stared down into a treasure trove of frozen raw meat.
I pulled out a package of four enormous steaks and frowned, wondering if that was enough. Then I pulled out three of the one-pound squares of ground beef as well. I dumped the frozen packages of meat into the sink, plugged the drain, and turned the faucet on to thaw the meat faster. Then, finding the silverware drawer, I grabbed a spoon.
“This is just your first course,” I told Bastian as I carried the bags of deli meat and containers of tuna and chicken salad over to the couch.
Micah backed out of the way to let me move closer to Bastian. I handed Bastian a bag of sliced roast beef and set everything else on the coffee table in front of him, then pulled the lid off the chicken salad and stuck the spoon into the mushy chicken mixture before setting the container down.
Bastian tore open the thin plastic bag and shoved an entire piece of roast beef into his mouth, barely chewing, before he swallowed and wolfed down another.
“Should I cook the steak?”
Bastian shook his head. “Not necessary,” he said before polishing off the last slice of roast beef. He ripped open the sliced turkey breast next.
“Okay,” I said, stepping back to stand beside Micah. “Well, it’s thawing in the sink.”
Bastian nodded. “Thanks,” he said between slices of turkey.
“So, vampires eat food?” Micah asked, his voice lowered.
“He’s not a vampire,” I told him, crossing my arms as I shifted my attention to the front door. It was shut, and I figured Gavin was speaking with the other two vampires, Thane and Ash, likely filling them in on Bastian’s new, official role as one of my consorts.
“Oh,” Micah said. “ Oh . He was your food.”
My cheeks heated for about the thousandth time.
“So, he’s human?”
I shook my head. “He’s a shifter.”
“Wait, what?” Micah grabbed my arm, dragging my attention back to him. “I thought shifters were the enemy.” He looked incredulous. “Didn’t they kill, like, your entire family?”
“They did, but Bastian’s different,” I explained. “He’s a defector, and he’s another of my, um, guards— like Gavin.”
Micah studied the shifter who was currently inhaling slices of Black Forest ham, tilting his head to the side like he wasn’t quite sure what he was looking at.
The door opened, and Gavin strode in, Thane and Ash flanking him, the larger men looking like day and night personified. Though their expressions remained guarded, their dark stares in Bastian’s direction confirmed my suspicion that Gavin had filled them in on the newest member of my harem.
“As soon as the shifter’s ready, we’ll head out,” Gavin said, heading into the kitchen.
He peered down into the sink, then looked at Bastian. He found a large metal mixing bowl under the counter, then pulled the package of steaks out of the water and ripped open the plastic, plunking the mostly frozen steaks into the bowl.
“This will go faster if you shift,” Gavin said, adding the ground beef to the bowl. He carried the bowl into the living room and set it on the floor, feeding Bastian like he was a dog. “Go on, then.” Gavin crossed his arms over his chest and stared at Bastian, still sitting on the couch. “Shift.”
“Gavin,” I said, my voice laced with warning. “Knock it off.”
He looked at me, his haughty sneer gone, suggesting this wasn’t about tormenting Bastian. “He’s one of us now,” Gavin said. “We need to know what we’re working with.”
“It’s fine, Soph,” Bastian said. “He’s right, anyway. They need to know what I can do. Otherwise, we won’t know how to work together to protect you.”
Bastian rounded the end of the coffee table and approached Gavin and the bowl of raw meat he had set on the floor, pulling off his T-shirt and tossing it onto a chairback, revealing the mesmerizing tattoos that covered his upper body.
“Uh, okay.” Micah turned to me as Bastian pushed his sweatpants down.
I glanced at Micah, flashing him the most awkward smile ever, like this was all perfectly normal, and returned my attention to the now completely naked shifter standing in the middle of the living room.
The air around Bastian shimmered, distorted by waves of magic, and in the blink of an eye, he transformed into a massive black panther.
“Holy shit,” Micah exclaimed, stumbling back a couple of steps and sinking into the armchair he had occupied earlier.
Bastian padded closer to the bowl Gavin had set on the floor and started tearing into the frozen meat with his three-inch fangs. In less than a minute, the bowl was empty, and Bastian sat on his haunches to clean his maw with paws nearly the size of my face. How had this giant jungle cat ever fit into my car?
“What other forms do you have?” Gavin asked matter-of-factly.
Bastian set down his paw and looked at Gavin. Again, the air shimmered around him, and in another blink, he shrank into the large, black tom cat I had adopted and named Sombra. I couldn’t help but smile a little at seeing him like that. Another shimmer, and he turned into a raven. Another and he was a huge black bear. With one final shimmer, the beautiful, copper-skinned man I had once deluded myself into believing was human stood before us, gloriously nude. He looked strong and powerful, fully revived by the meal.
I rubbed the back of my neck and averted my gaze to the floor when really I wanted to keep ogling, but Micah was there behind me, and I felt incredibly uncomfortable with everything that was going on.
“I have a dragon and kraken shape as well. Those could prove useful,” Bastian told Gavin.
“A dragon and a kraken,” Micah breathed, and I wasn’t far behind him in my disbelief.
Gavin looked past Bastian to the other two vampires. I followed his line of sight, noting that hints of appreciation softened their hard expressions. “Do either of you have any questions for the shifter?”
“How large is your dragon form?” Thane asked, his deep voice resonating pleasantly through my body.
“Large enough to carry Sophie, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Bastian told him.
Thane nodded, his dark eyes shifting to focus on me. The cool detachment with which he had viewed Bastian melted away as he looked at me.
Sensing Ash’s focus had turned to me as well, I looked at him. He pressed his closed fist to his heart and bowed his head. I had yet to hear him speak, but something about the way he gazed at me made me feel warm and tingly all over.
“Uh, Sophie?” Micah said, drawing my attention to him. “What exactly are the duties of a queen’s guards?”
I choked out a laugh. Motion on the other side of the room drew my eye. Bastian was getting dressed.
“We guard our queen and attend to her every need,” Gavin said, approaching.
“Oh,” Micah said. His eyes opened wider as realization dawned. “ Oh . Okay, gross.” He glanced at me. “No offense.”
“None taken,” I said, my voice tight. “I would like to never talk about this again.”
“Agreed,” Micah said with a decisive nod.
“Sophie?” Gavin touched my elbow. “How are you feeling?”
I turned to face him. “Mortified,” I grumbled.
He sighed. “Are you dizzy or weak?”
“Oh, um . . ...” I frowned, taking a quick assessment of how I felt physically . “I feel fine.” I scanned his face, imagining I could see the crescent sigil. “No change,” I added, letting him know I didn’t have access to my powers.
“Good,” Gavin nodded. “Now that we know the problem, we can find a solution.” He looked past me to Thane. “Is everything in place for the trip?”
I glanced over my shoulder as Thane nodded. “The portalist arrived fifteen minutes ago,” he said in that deep, rumbly voice of his. “She should be finished soon.”
“How are we looking outside?” Gavin asked.
“No sign of shifters,” Thane said. “The street should be clear.”
Gavin turned, looking at Bastian. “You’re certain the Sun Watch doesn’t know about this location?”
“ I didn’t know about it,” Bastian said, raising one shoulder. “So, I can only assume they don’t either.”
Gavin stared at him for a long moment, saying nothing. His gaze flicked toward me but quickly returned to Bastian. “Remember, you share a blood bond with Sophie now. If she dies, you die.” Gavin’s eyes narrowed. “But it doesn’t work the other way around. She can survive losing you.”
I sucked in a breath, Gavin’s implied threat hanging in the air. Did my command to not hurt Bastian still stand when my powers were suppressed, or did the suppression negate past expressions of my will ?
“Are you sure?” I asked, moving closer to Gavin. He watched me out of the corner of his eye but continued to stare down Bastian. “Are you absolutely certain I’ll survive losing him, too? You said losing more than one consort at once could kill a queen.”
Gavin clenched his jaw.
I raised one hand and pressed my fingers against his chiseled cheek, turning his face toward me. His eyes locked with mine, his stare challenging. “Please, stop taunting him,” I said, fear and anxiety making my voice tremulous.
His throat bobbed. “I’m trying to keep you alive,” he said.
“I know.” I offered him a small smile. “And I appreciate that. I really do. I haven’t had much of a choice in anything in my life—ever—but I did choose to bond with Bastian, so please , just give him a chance.” I searched Gavin’s gray eyes, no longer silver or luminous now that my powers were suppressed, but striking nonetheless. “That’s all I ask.”
Gavin closed his eyes and dipped his chin in assent, then turned his face into my hand, brushing his lips over my palm.
“Thank you,” I whispered and pulled my hand away.
At the sound of a buzzing device, Thane pulled a phone from his back pocket and glanced at the screen. “The portal is active,” he rumbled. “We should go now.”
“Get your purse,” Gavin told me. He looked past me to Bastian, then down at Micah before returning his attention to me. “We’re leaving.”