Chapter 7 #5
“I’m going to need those lesson plans,” I say, slightly unclear about how I can go from being devastated over losing a future I never knew was supposed to be mine with one soul-bound mate, to outright flirting — and demanding sex — with another. “For study purposes.”
Rath chuckles. An actual laugh.
I almost tease him about that too.
But he sobers quickly as his gaze shifts to Rought. “I’ll need you to work with Coda. Make sure we have eyes everywhere they can be, and that we’re ready to lock down if necessary.”
“Meet you back at the estate, my Marrow?” Rought presses the question along with a kiss to my temple.
I meet Rath’s intent gaze. “I’ll be there.”
“Go straight there now,” the bossy asshole says, ruining the playful vibe entirely. “Forget about Bellamy.”
“Sure,” I say flippantly. “I love ceding my autonomy to your directive.”
“The sooner I know you’re as safe as you can be,” he says, “the sooner you can have my cock.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Were you always like this?”
Rought opens his mouth, gleeful as he tries to respond.
Rath gets there first, though. “Since I lost you? Yes.”
“I can’t argue with that,” I murmur, running my hand down Rought’s arm and hooking my fingers through his even as I step away.
Our arms stretch between us until only our fingertips are brushing. Until I’ve put too much space between us. I exit the bar with both of their gazes resting on me heavily.
I’m barely a few steps beyond the exterior door of the bar when Coda shoves a new phone into my hand, not quite looking at me. “I’m so fucking angry with you.”
I take the device, careful to not touch the tech awry.
A few feet away, DeVille is grinning widely at the Benz, which he’s pulled up closer to the hotel bar entrance, and talking to Presh enthusiastically. The young awry looks bored out of her mind. The cu-sith has taken up a watchful position, sitting but alert, next to the doors on my far right.
Gigi sighs. Hands on her hips, hair a wild tangle of blond curls, as she continually scans the area.
She wears tight cotton shorts under an artfully loose red silk peasant blouse.
Her long-legged stance primed for an attack, the combat mage keeps herself between Coda and the cu-sith.
“We talked about this,” she says to Coda. “Zaya is the Cond —”
“Fuck your talking,” Coda snarls, shoving blue-tinted glasses up their nose so viciously that it looks as if it hurts.
Gigi flinches at the vitriol in the tech’s tone.
Coda either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.
Adjusting the small satchel slung across their body, they pace back and forth in ripped, frayed jeans, a worn T-shirt printed with a logo for some old video game, and sandals that appear to be held together by duct tape.
All of the ensemble is too large for the tech’s tall but slim frame.
“We got tossed off the property like fucking garbage!” Coda gestures wildly.
“I couldn’t track you. I couldn’t fucking find you.
Do you know what that’s like? Having everyone around me slowly going crazy because the one person, the person that fucking sustains them, is missing?
Begging me … begging me, Zaya … to fucking find even a hint of you. ”
“All of that was —”
“You got in that fucking SUV! With him!” Coda is shouting, pressing both hands to their face now as if trying to hold it all together.
“I told you I didn’t have access to his phone or his tech.
By the time I picked you up again and got Rought and Rath after your ass, it was too fucking late, wasn’t it? ”
Gigi touches Coda’s shoulder.
The tech awry jerks away from her. “Fuck off, Gigi. I don’t need you constantly in my fucking face.”
She stiffens. Then she turns and walks away, back around the hotel toward the main parking lot.
Coda’s jaw drops, both of us just watching the combat mage until she steps around the building.
The tech awry visibly deflates, actually swaying on their feet as they murmur, “I haven’t been sleeping. I have more shit to do than just keeping tabs on you, Conduit.”
“We should come up with a plan,” I say steadily. “I need to know what to do when I get separated from my phone and I can’t contact you directly. Stupidly, I … I don’t even know how to get a direct message to you.”
“Pick up any fucking phone and …” Coda shakes their head. “Right. Conduit.”
“I did try to get myself seen on some cameras,” I say lamely.
DeVille clambers into the Benz and fiddles around with the controls, as limited as they are in a classic vehicle.
Presh steps up beside Coda, angling her head until she forces eye contact on the tech.
Then she flings herself forward into a fierce, one-sided hug.
Coda, stiff backed and grimacing, clearly struggles to accept the contact, then awkwardly pats Presh on the back with a splayed hand.
“You should probably go after Gigi,” Presh says, voice muffled against Coda’s shoulder.
Coda’s gaze, still partially hidden behind the blue-tinted glasses, flicks to me. “Can I get back to my tech on the estate now? Instead of being continually fucking hampered by Rought’s inferior shit?”
With perfect timing, the gryphon shifter steps through the open door at my back with a huff. “I’ve gotten you everything you’ve asked for, Coda.”
“Days later than I needed it,” the tech says pissily.
“The estate should accept all of you again,” I say, touching my amulet and surprised to find that I didn’t tuck it under my dress, against my skin, as I usually wear it. “I’m not quite certain why it tossed you all out. It didn’t feel as if it was in stasis, not like it was when my aunt died.”
The awry tech just shrugs affectedly. “Then Gigi will find me on the estate when she’s cooled off. Are you my chauffeur?” Coda asks Rought, covering for being rattled and way outside their comfort zone by being an ass.
“Sure,” Rought says evenly, sliding his hand across my lower back. “Let’s call babysitting you when I’d rather be with Zaya ‘chauffeuring.’ ”
Coda scoffs nastily. “You’re overkill for a clandestine jailbreak, shifter. Zaya won’t need muscle or your average tech skills. You can release me now, rugrat.”
“Are you sure?” Presh asks sweetly. “Because you’re still being a total asshole to everyone, so I don’t think the hug has sunk in.”
“I’m always a fucking asshole,” Coda grouses.
Presh releases the tech from the hug, brushing her shoulder against mine as she crosses back to the Benz.
She shoves the driver’s-side seat forward with DeVille still half in it.
He leans to the side rather than getting completely pinned against the steering wheel while Presh climbs into the back seat.
Of course, Presh wouldn’t have been able to move the seat even an inch if DeVille hadn’t been playing along.
“So compliant,” Coda mumbles. “Now that she’s getting what she wants. Scan your face on that fucking phone, Zaya … please.”
I obligingly lift the phone up to my face. Nothing happens.
Coda sniffs, tugging their own device out of their satchel. “Thumb on the screen.”
I press my thumb to the still-black screen. Nothing happens.
“Now remove your fucking thumb. We’ve done this easily a half-dozen times, Zaya.”
“Watch your fucking tone,” Rought says, a low rumble of essence underlying the command. The burnished gold of his gryphon rings his blue-green eyes. “Zaya isn’t your fixer friend now.”
Coda grimaces. But they take the reprimand.
The phone screen brightens around the edges, presumably scanning my face.
Then a lock screen with the time and a photo as its background appears.
Normally, Coda uses digital art for my phone, but this is a shot of the two of us, maybe three or four years ago.
We’re tucked together on a worn black leather couch, as close as Coda ever sits to anyone. Gigi must have taken the photo.
That particular expedition, as Coda is prone to calling our fixes whenever the tech is required to be on-site, was the first time I met the combat mage in person.
The first time all three of us had worked together in person.
We had just uncovered an awry trafficking group in Minsk, Belarus.
A branch of the insidious Mobius Group. While Gigi snapped this photo, three of the teens we’d rescued were asleep in the adjoining bedroom, waiting to be reunited with their families.
But if I was remembering correctly, Coda hadn’t been convinced that those three had safe homes to return to, hence the delay.
Gigi challenged both of us to a game of poker, she and Coda losing hand after hand to me …
I look up at Coda.
“Don’t get mushy about it,” the tech mutters. “I needed a clear shot of your face to feed to my algos. You can change it to whatever.”
“Okay,” I say, tucking the phone away in the pocket of my dress. Energy shifts around me for a moment, but then fades without settling or tugging on me. I glance to my right. Meeting my gaze, the cu-sith rises to his feet, shoulders rolling as he pads off to wait for us at the roadside.
“Fuck me,” Rought says, eyeing the hulking beast apparently primed to escort us. “Broad fucking daylight.”
“Get me out of the fucking sun, AD,” Coda says. “And I’m not cuddling up with you on your bike.”
Rought leans down to press a kiss to my temple, his hand gripping my waist before releasing me reluctantly, fingers trailing across my back as he heads for the parking lot.
“I’ll get Coda set up at the estate,” he says over his shoulder. Then he whispers across my mind: Come home to me, my Marrow. Soon.
I suppress a shiver that fades into a gentle flush of desire. But judging by the widening of his grin, Rought catches it. Or maybe he’s picking up my emotions, as I can occasionally feel his.
Coda brushes a shoulder against mine before following Rought.
Guilt instantly quashes the quickening of desire, but I shove it away before it can grab hold of me.
Yes, I made a choice to go with Reck, but I’m not otherwise responsible for the Cataclysm managing to kidnap and hold me.
Everything making that scenario possible had been set in motion years before I was even conceived.
Thinking about it, if I have the timing somewhat sorted, I was in fact conceived two years or so after my aunt rejected her soul-bound mates.
As if the universe had responded to that choice of hers by bringing its next vessel into being even though my aunt was still relatively young. For a Conduit, anyway.
I can’t carry Disa’s actions, her choices. All I can do is try to make my own choices. Choices that bring balance — and, if I’m lucky, that right wrongs.
Watching as Rought and Coda pull out of the parking lot in Reck’s Authority SUV, I climb into the passenger seat of the Benz. I wouldn’t put it past Coda to steal the Authority tech embedded into that vehicle while its regular operator is otherwise occupied.
DeVille shifts the car into gear, making a tight U-turn to get us facing toward the main road.
“Thank you, Zaya,” Presh says, leaning forward over the back seat.
“Don’t thank me yet, Precious,” I say. “We still don’t know the price of freeing Bellamy.”
“No … I know,” the young awry says quietly. “I’m … figuring out how all that works around you. I think. But Bellamy is being held for no reason, so freeing her shouldn’t —”
DeVille snorts, loudly and doubtfully, sliding the Benz to a stop beside the cu-sith. Red eyes meet mine through the window. The young shifter mutters disconcertedly under his breath, “Is it going to stalk us all the way?”
“Don’t call Reck ‘it’,” Presh snaps.
“Reck is not at home right now.” DeVille eyes Presh, still slung over the back of the front seat, through the rearview mirror. “Put your seat belt on, princess.”
“Don’t call me that, Andy.”
“Then don’t call me Andy.”
Presh huffs, then she settles back and clicks her seat belt into place. “Fine.”
“Fine.” Deville doesn’t do a great job at hiding his victorious grin, pulling us into the road and heading away from the shore and out of Newport.
The cu-sith prowls after us, having no issue keeping up with the car.
Though DeVille is careful to follow the lowered speed limits while in town.
Unless the universe lends the cu-sith some ability to walk unnoticed — as it does me — or the beast’s own nature keeps him concealed, sightings are certain to be streaming into the MC.
Thankfully, any nulls likely won’t notice the beast at all, and any shifters in the area will know to look — and move quickly — in the opposite direction.
I sink into my seat, content to just enjoy the normalcy that comes from hanging out with the teens. When they’re not being actively threatened, at least.