Chapter Five #5
I’m still wondering when Gideon comes back in, followed by Garin and Teresa, a very competent medic I’ve worked with in the past.
“Thank you for coming,” David says to her, and she grins cheerfully.
“This will be my pleasure. Garin says the young human threw fireballs at the attackers. I like…” She pauses, clearly trying to find the right words. “…fiery attitude.”
Percy chuckles, and David snorts, his pretty blue eyes sparkling. “You’ll love Noah, then. It’s this way.” He gestures toward the kitchen, then says to Percy, “We’re agreed, then?”
Percy nods. “As soon as Sam’s off the phone, I’ll tell him. Go.”
I follow David and Teresa to the kitchen, wondering what they’ve decided. I still need to get a full report on what happened here.
I look around for Dustin. He’s sitting at the table beside Noah, talking earnestly, but breaks off when he sees Teresa.
“Here she is! I was just telling Noah you’ll take excellent care of him. This is Teresa, Noah.”
Polite greetings are exchanged.
“And this is my annoying boyfriend, Andrew,” Noah says resignedly. “He won’t leave, but please feel free to completely ignore anything he says and does. He can be overprotective.”
Teresa laughs. “Boyfriends are supposed to worry,” she says. “But I am very good at ignoring worried boyfriends.” She winks, then holds out her hand, palm up.
“Take her hand,” Dustin explains. “She’ll use her ability and the life force to heal you.”
“Cool.” Noah puts his hand in Teresa’s. “So, Caolan didn’t think I’d done anything permanent…?”
Teresa shakes her head. “Nothing like that. Just strain. I help things along, and then a big sleep and… protein?” She glances at me. My spell says that sounds right, so I nod. “That fixes the rest.”
Andrew heaves a sigh. “Thank fuck,” he mutters, and grinning, Teresa pats him on the shoulder with her free hand.
“You have not yet decided to stop aging?” she asks Noah, and I freeze.
Uh-oh.
“We can’t do that like your people,” he says, and before I can think of a way to discreetly signal her, she makes a pffft sound.
“Maybe not them,” she jerks her head at Andrew and David, “but if you can use the life force to make fire, you can self-heal.”
Well, so much for talking to Noah privately.
“What?” Andrew breathes.
“ What? ” Noah shouts.
“Really?” David asks. He pulls out his phone and makes a note.
Teresa looks at me. “Should I have not said that?”
Huffing a laugh, I shake my head. “It’s fine. I was going to talk to Noah about it when the current situation was over. I thought it might be better to discuss privately at first.”
“So it’s true?” There’s a raw edge of hope in Noah’s voice that surprises me.
He’s made several remarks since I’ve known him about his life span, and I never got the impression that he was particularly distressed by it.
Andrew, yes—his feelings about losing Noah in the not-too-distant future have been very clear—but Noah has always seemed unconcerned.
I nod. “Yes. This only uses life force, not any part of our personal power. You should be able to learn it.”
He swallows, opens his mouth, closes it, and swallows again. I can see his energy meridians relaxing as Teresa works, allowing more of the life force to enter his system and improve his condition.
Finally, he clears his throat. “Would you show me? When all this is over and we have time.”
“Of course.”
Andrew sucks in a deep breath and buries his face in his hands. Noah lays his free hand on his boyfriend’s arm.
Dustin gets up from the table and comes to stand beside me, frowning. “I don’t understand,” he whispers. “What’s going on?”
I lead him out of the kitchen, not wanting to impinge on the very personal occasion.
“Noah is human, and humans don’t live as long as the other species,” I tell Dustin. “He and Andrew will now be able to spend longer together.”
He still looks confused. “What do you mean, they don’t live as long?”
“Species here have finite lives,” I explain. “Humans have the shortest. They live for an approximately predetermined length of time, then die and go to the ether until they are reborn.”
His jaw drops in shock. “They just… die? Whether they want to or not?”
There’s a sound from behind us, and we turn to see David with an amused expression. “I’m afraid so,” he says, and Dustin leaps forward and then hovers anxiously beside him.
“Should you be resting? Do you get any warning at all? You can’t die now, Caolan just found you!”
Oh dear.
“I’m not dying anytime soon,” David assures him. “I wonder, could I impose on you for a favor?”
“Of course!”
“Percy and Sam have some questions about ceremonies among your people—they’re beginning to plan for when your grandfather and the king arrive. Could you advise them on that?”
“Absolutely. I have a lot of experience with ceremonies,” Dustin says. “I’ll go find them. Make sure you take care of yourself.”
David waits until he’s gone, then steps forward and kisses me. “Thank you for offering to help Noah.”
I wrap my arms around him before he can move away, wondering if I can get him to write a list of things he’d be grateful for. There’s a lot I’m willing to do to have him kiss me and look at me with that soft expression.
“If I had known how much it concerned him, I would have mentioned it earlier,” I admit. “I thought it would be better to wait until there were no distractions… and to ensure it was something he wanted.”
He kisses me again. “You’re a good person.”
Excitement rises in me—no, not that kind, although yes, my cock is stirring. With David pressed against me, how could it not? No, this excitement is because David is forming an emotional attachment to me. He thinks I’m a good person. He’s touching me even though sex is not an option right now.
It’s all I can do not to blurt out how much I love him.
Instead, I ask, “Is this okay?”
He draws back slightly, but I keep hold of him. “Is what okay? You being a good person? It’s fine.”
“No, I mean touching like this where someone could see us. Before, I wanted to touch you, but I wasn’t sure if you would be okay with that.”
He hesitates, thinking about it.
“Casual touching is okay,” he concedes finally. “Maybe not like this in a room full of people, though.”
I can handle that. Especially when he sighs and rests his forehead on my shoulder. “I thought you might like to be briefed on what happened here. I know you haven’t had much chance to talk to Garin and Dustin since we got back.”
“Yes, please.” I’d much prefer to hear it from him while he’s in my arms than go find Garin.
“They’d just left when it happened—were literally only in front of the house next door.
Apparently a portal opened just feet away from them and four attackers came through fast. Dustin shouted, which Alistair heard, and they went out.
Garin was doing a good job of fighting them off—one was down already—but two had grabbed Dustin and were dragging him to the portal.
Gideon tells me he put up quite a fight—they both have serious burns on their hands and arms.”
“Dragons can conduct heat through any part of their body,” I inform him. “The attackers were sloppy. Untrained. They should have been prepared for that.”
“Well, it’s a good sign for us.” He lifts his head.
“Noah got overexcited and threw some fireballs, which I guess you already know, but I’m told it was fairly easy to thwart the attack.
The guards at the vault report the same—the initial surprise allowed the invaders to get the upper hand, but as soon as our people began to fight back, it was over quickly.
So whatever Tish and éibhear have been plotting over the years, none of it included proper training for their soldiers. ”
I lean my head against his and rub our temples together, and he makes a sound that goes right to my cock.
“Do we know what the makeup of the attack teams was?”
He hmms. The sound rumbles through his body and mine. “Yes. Two elves, a hellhound, and a vampire at the vault. Here, two elves, a felid shifter, and a demon. And from what I heard, at the hotel it was mostly elves and one incubus?”
“That’s what I’ve been told. None survived, I’m afraid. Our people were rather enraged when they realized one of their own had been killed.”
“Completely understandable,” he says gravely. “The demon Garin put down first and one of the elves are still alive, and the hellhound at the vault, so we have some prisoners to interrogate.”
“I need to report to the king.” It concerns me that these obviously coordinated attacks came so soon after our return.
Obviously éibhear has people watching us, to know which hotel was chosen and that Dustin was here at Sam and Gideon’s house, but they moved fast to be able to attack within less than half a day—even if the attacks were poorly planned.
“And I should go outside and see what the portal residue can tell me.”
He pulls back sharply enough that I lose hold of him. “You can do that? What kind of information can you get? Where they came from?”
“Yes. And only for a short time—a few hours at most.”
He grabs my hand and pulls me down the hallway toward the front of the house. “Can you look at all three? Here, the hotel, and the vault? They probably all come from the same place, but if not, that’s three potential locations we can pin down.”
I smile fondly at his back. “I can look at all three, although one of the others at the hotel has already done so—he just needs help with the map.”
David stops. “Didn’t Noah show you the maps function on your phones?”
What a delightful tool that is! Except… “Yes, but we can’t read the place names.”
“Damn.” He rubs his brow. “Do you think the king can assign someone to work on altering the translation spell? I can see this becoming a major issue very quickly.”
“He already has. We discussed it today.” I get a little quiver of satisfaction at being a step ahead of him, especially when he grins at me.
“I should have expected that. Come on.”