Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Ilyas
The little human’s mouth dropped open, showing her pink tongue as she gasped. “What? I’m not his mate. I’ve said, like, twenty words to him since he moved in.”
That may be true, but I’d watched the way he’d nuzzled her skin, inhaling deeply like he couldn’t get enough of her scent.
I also saw how he almost immediately improved.
I wasn’t an expert on orc relationship dynamics, but gargoyles also mated for life, much like orcs.
Being with your mate kept you healthy and vital, and that was what I saw in Eric in the car.
In response to her question, I just shrugged. “We won’t know until he wakes up.”
Syke sighed. “And he won’t wake up until you take off your clothes and hop into bed, human.”
“Hailey,” Otis corrected.
Syke struggled with the niceties that had come with creatures unveiling themselves. For a long time, he was feared by monsters and humanity alike, and now he was trying to help. It did not come easily or naturally.
Huffing a sigh, he nodded. “If it is mate sickness, he won’t wake up without skin-to-skin contact, Hailey.”
She paused, her gaze bouncing from me, to Eric, and then to Syke. I thought she’d run screaming from the room, but she didn’t. Instead, she shed her hooded sweatshirt and sweats, leaving herself in a tight tank top and a pair of underwear that looked a little like Louis’s boxers.
Her jaw set defiantly, she climbed into bed beside Eric.
Louis had dragged the blankets from him and searched him for wounds, but there were none, which confirmed our hypothesis of clan sickness…
or mate sickness. He’d also wrangled most of the clothes off the orc, which wasn’t an easy feat when he was basically deadweight.
As soon as her skin touched the orc’s, there was a rattling sigh that reverberated around the silent room. He gripped the girl and dragged her closer, hugging her tightly against his chest. She looked up at me, her eyes wide with worry.
Otis crouched down beside the bed. “He’s no threat to you like this. He’s as weak as a kitten, even you could beat him up if you wanted, but Louis will be here with you if you feel threatened. You just have to say the word, and we’ll pull you out. You don’t owe this orc anything.”
She nodded, but she was still holding herself stiffly.
I watched the color bleed back into the orc’s cheeks, and I knew Otis and Syke would see it too.
I didn’t know if it was the fact that Louis was spooning the big guy, or because Eric was using the girl like his favorite teddy bear, but it was working.
We stood around the room like sentinels a little longer, occasionally brushing our hand somewhere on the orc’s skin like we were a real clan, and the girl eventually relaxed. When she realized we weren’t going to pounce on her like animals, her breathing evened out.
Otis tilted his chin, and we left. Walking into the hall, we shut the door slightly so the room was more den-like. “This is a problem.”
Syke ran his tongue over his teeth. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
Huffing a laugh, he inclined his head. “You aren’t wrong. If the orc has started a mate bond with an unsuspecting human, then the powers that be are going to get their balls in a bunch.”
I might not have put it exactly that way, but I had to agree, though I wasn’t sure how unsuspecting she’d been.
She did call us after all, so either she could feel the beginnings of the bond, or she had some really good intuition.
You couldn’t fake the kind of surprise she’d expressed, however, when I told her, so it was probably all entirely subconscious.
I moved past my team and back into the living space.
We were still on shift, and it was currently my turn to man the phones, something I viscerally hated.
We redirected the phone to one of the other crisis team members, whoever was on call, while we were out on a run, but we tried to respect their free time and took it off as soon as we were back in the office.
Sitting down in my chair, I turned the switchboard back to the office and hoped beyond hope that we didn’t get any more calls tonight. It wasn’t a full moon, and we’d had our fair share of nuisance calls earlier, so maybe I’d get lucky.
We weren’t.
We had one legitimate call—a werewolf poisoning.
The caller had been an employee who’d bought a cake for her boss’s birthday that had a chocolate center, and she was worried she’d accidentally murdered him.
I’d even been polite when I’d reassured her werewolves weren’t dogs, so he’d be fine.
Other than that, we’d had one prank call from a bunch of kids, and one hate call.
I was ready to hand over the shift to the next team.
Not that we’d get to go off shift entirely because of Eric, but at least we wouldn’t have to deal with call outs. Team two couldn’t arrive fast enough.
Allison was in first, but she always was. As our resident guardian angel, she took this job seriously—obsessively so. Syke said she needed to get laid or get a life or something, to which she just gave him a very un-angelic gesture.
“Morning, Ilyas,” she sing-songed. She was irritatingly upbeat, but impossible to dislike. She frowned. “You look rough. Big night?”
Otis must have heard her arrive, because he appeared, freshly showered. “We got an orc with clan sickness up in the refuge room. A possible mate is there too, though it appears she didn’t know.”
Allison raised her eyebrows. “Clan sickness? We haven’t seen one of those in a while. When does Amoranze get in?”
Sighing heavily, Otis shook his head. “Not for at least a week. She’s down south, dealing with another issue. We’ll step in until they get here. We’re right down the end, so we shouldn’t get in the way too much.”
“Giving up your time off?” Allison raised an eyebrow. “You’re too good, Otis. We’ll stay quiet as much as we can and give you guys a break.”
It was generally understood that our job could be mentally draining, especially considering most of us were not particularly social by nature, except Louis. The happy-go-lucky dickhead was the glue that held the rest of us antisocial fuckers together, so time off was sacred.
Otis tipped his chin down. “Thanks, Allison. We’ll use the second kitchen so we aren’t in your way either.” He looked at me. “Go home and grab some gear to last you a couple of days. I’ll take the next shift with the orc.”
And the girl, but he didn’t say that part, at least not in front of Allison.
Nodding, I left the building, running into team two’s other members in the elevator.
Deuce was fucking around with a ball of energy in his hands, rolling it across his knuckles like a lucky coin.
As a warlock, he was pretty adept. I was fairly sure he’d come to the Creature Crisis Center as a penance from his coven, but he had stuck around because he enjoyed the work and it kept him out of trouble—mostly.
Chet and Liam were behind him, rolling their eyes at Deuce’s shit talking.
Chet was a dragon, one of very few left.
There were no female dragons remaining, and I wondered how much his position here was to keep an ear to the ground for any rumors of female dragon awakenings, or perhaps it was because he no longer had a flight of his own, and therefore he’d adopted his team as a kind of substitute.
Liam was a minotaur like Otis, a cousin to be exact. He was not quite as old, dominant, or experienced as Otis, so he idolized both his cousin and Chet in equal measures.
I waved a finger, thankful that it was generally assumed I was the strong, silent member of team one, so none of them tried to strike up a conversation with me, unlike Allison.
Getting on my bike, I roared out of the parking lot and back to my apartment, but even driving that far and that fast, the haunting eyes of the girl chased me.
Gargoyles lived together in groups, much the same way orcs did, but most gargoyles would shudder at the comparison.
We lived in an affluent area around the park, the tall stone buildings housing what few gargoyles still remained in the area.
We didn’t really socialize except for official events, despite the fact we gathered in one spot.
I particularly tried not to have much to do with my brethren.
They were pompous and conceited, and by and large they looked down on me and my work at the Creature Crisis Center, like helping the wider creature community rather than just gargoyles made me somehow lesser too.
Scanning my pass, I slipped through the foyer and hoped I didn’t run into anyone.
My steps echoed as I crossed the marble floors, but that was the only sound. Jamming my finger on the elevator’s up button, I willed it to hurry.
When the door opened, the last person I wanted to see was already inside. Fuck me.
The key was the gargoyle’s version of a leader, though it was more of a title than a dominance thing. We elected a key, and they held the position for a century.
I’d been in my first mature century when Adrik had been elected key, and he’d been a pompous douchebag ever since, but he was old, and that somehow gave him more credibility than he was due.
“Ilyas. It is good to see you.” His tone implied otherwise. “Finished rescuing gnomes from trees for the day?”
I grunted in response and pressed my floor number unnecessarily hard, but it didn’t speed up this trip. “No. Just had to grab something.”
“We’re hosting the French delegation next Tuesday. The whole flight should be there. There will be opportunities to find a mate.” His tone insinuated I should be there too.
Man, I could have kissed Otis for making us the orc’s surrogate clan for the week. “Unfortunately, I can’t indulge. I have to work at the crisis center. Please give the delegation my sincerest apologies.”
Thankfully, the elevator doors slid open, and I slipped out before he ordered me to be there as the flight’s key.
I rushed into the apartment and threw what I thought I’d need into a bag, then I opened my bedroom window and stepped out, my wings flaring wide as I floated down to the ground near my bike.
No way was I going to run the risk of being trapped again.