Chapter 8 #4
Ignoring my hand, she scrambles to her feet and takes a few steps back. She glances around as if she might find an ally in Cay or even DeVille. The young shifter’s expression is set in stone, though, fiercely protective of his mate.
Cay looks resigned. “Just go to the Outcast, Doc. I suggest you … don’t leave anything out. You don’t need the truth dropping into his inbox.”
“That’s what Coda’s been doing when they get bored. Emailing about every little disruption or cover-up in the MC or the pack,” Presh says to me, sounding slightly gleeful about it. “It’s driving the Outcast nuts.”
“But you agree with me,” Doc Z says to Cay, ignoring the interjected clarification. “About her.” She slashes a hand toward Bellamy just in case that wasn’t clear.
“We don’t know each other very well,” Cay says.
“What? We’ve known each other for five years! We dated brothers, for fuck’s sake.”
Cay grimaces. “Are we calling casual, dirty fucks in the storage closet or clubhouse bathroom ‘dating’ now?”
Doc Z reels back. “That’s not … that’s not all … Rath was always …” She drops that line of thought, though she was the one who brought it up. “I was there for you, Cay. I always have been. When Kiki went missing —”
“Not missing,” Cay says. “Kidnapped. And Zaya was the one who rescued her.”
“What? That … you didn’t tell me.”
Cay leans a little closer. “Not all of us went to fancy schools or had talents easily hidden that made us outshine others in our fields.”
Doc stiffens.
“Some of us have had bloody pasts forced upon us. And even though we now try to hold to a lighter path, some of us were very recently prepared to walk into a building and murder everyone between us and our sister.” She flicks a gaze at Bellamy, then back to Doc.
“The difference being, it seems, that I don’t have purple eyes. ”
“I’m not … prejudiced.”
Cay just shakes her head, crossing toward Presh, then also snagging DeVille by the back of the arm. “I hear they grill a mean steak here.”
Doc Z hesitates, then snaps her mouth closed and strides over to her bike. Bellamy tracks her movements as if she’s prey, but she doesn’t uncross her arms or push away from the car.
I return my attention to the beach, not quite certain what’s drawn my gaze there — until I see the cu-sith sprawled across an outcropping of rock near the massive wooden pilings on which the restaurant sits.
He’s out of sight from the main windows, as best I can tell from this angle, and still apparently not attracting attention from anyone outside.
“It’s too bad,” Bellamy murmurs behind me as Doc Z starts her bike. “A medic is useful. And now we have to watch her.”
Turning my face against the wind as it shifts and plays havoc with my hair, I note another figure on the beach and raise my hand.
A woman with her wild blond curls also tangled in the wind and her sandals dangling in the fingers of one hand walks toward us down the beach, coming from the spa, no doubt.
Gigi lifts her hand in acknowledgement.
Doc Z takes off in a roar of noise.
“It is going to be worse, isn’t it?” Bellamy asks quietly, almost introspective. “Being claimed by you.”
“For you and all the discord, the snags, you’ve caused within the weave of the universe? I have no doubt it will be far worse to be mine.” I glance over at Cay, Presh, and DeVille as they enter the restaurant. “For Presh …”
Bellamy follows my gaze. “I think you’ve already made it clear what you’d sacrifice for baby sis.
” She pushes off the Benz and wanders after the others, talking over her shoulder.
“So I’ll watch the one back you so obviously don’t give a fuck about.
Your own. And I’ll see what I can do about the medic problem.
Because I can tell you now, all-powerful you may be, but the rest of us are going to need regular access to healing. ”
“Don’t kill Zephyr,” I say.
Bellamy shrugs. “If she’s not a problem, then she’s not a problem. Right?”
I huff out a sigh as she crosses into the restaurant.
I wait for Gigi to get a little closer, then call out over the wind, “Join us for dinner?”
The combat mage closes the space between us, climbing up the short set of stairs from the beach. “I’m ordering the fucking lobster. And the asshole supreme can pick up the tab.”
“And me, right?” DeVille leans in to speak to me quietly as I step through the glass front door with Gigi.
Presh, Cay, and Bellamy are gathered by the host station, waiting on a table in the seemingly at-capacity restaurant.
Our fault for wandering in around dinnertime without a reservation. “I’m yours too, right?”
I offer him a twist of a smile. “Yes, you’re mine too. By choice.”
Pleased, he bumps my shoulder with his — nearly knocking me sideways. Apparently, three months isn’t quite long enough for him to get a handle on the strength the sabertooth tiger lends his human form. Then he moves to fling his arm around Presh, smirking.
She quietly screeches in protest, likely only moderating her tone because we’re in public, as she attempts to shove him away.
Deville whispers something in her ear.
“Ugh,” she cries, shivering dramatically. “Don’t get your hot breath on me, Andy. Gross.”
Chuckling to himself, he lets her go.
The young awry peeks at me over her shoulder.
The pleased smile flitting over her face makes it clear she knows that DeVille’s whisper, and his ongoing grin, is about me confirming my claim on him.
And that Presh is happy about that growing bond as well.
Then she spots the combat mage at my side, and her smile widens. “Hey, Gigi!”
“Precious.” Gigi smiles back.
Presh’s smile is instantly quashed when the host, a shifter of some sort in her late teens, returns, smiling broadly at DeVille and pretty much ignoring the rest of us.
“Coda is staying too,” Gigi says quietly, her gaze on the teens as well. “With you. On the estate, specifically.”
“But maybe not you?”
She twists her lips, glancing at me sideways. “Maybe not me.”
I don’t ask her if that’s what they’re fighting about.
I don’t even ask her for clarification about their relationship.
Neither of those things are my business, but I do give her just a touch of what I know I’ve been missing for too many years.
“It’s good to have a choice,” I say. “But if you want a home …” I look back toward the teens, Cay, and Bellamy.
“Even one as complicated as the other people who make it a home might be, you have one with us.”
“You forgive me, then?” she croaks with suppressed emotion. “For losing Presh? Getting you —”
I cut her off. “My actions are not your responsibility, Gigi. You must have known that for a while now. Also, there’s nothing to forgive. You know all about dealing with one of the awry. If Presh wanted off that estate, she was getting off it whether you took a shower or not.”
She falls silent. Cay is debating over whatever table the host is offering, or maybe how long the wait is going to be, while the host continues to send flirty looks DeVille’s way. He’s oblivious, of course, but Presh is seriously displeased.
“Coda loves you,” Gigi whispers. “Not … romantic love, and I’m not sure they’d even admit to it.
But they aren’t going to forgive me, and they don’t even truly know what you’ve been through these last three months away from us.
Not yet. Though I think that’s part of what’s scaring Coda. Losing sight of you, not knowing.”
Gigi and I have never talked about her past. That kind of conversation isn’t where I naturally dwell, and she’s never seemed inclined to voluntarily fill me in. “But you do? Understand?”
She looks me dead in the eye and whispers, “I think you know I do, Zaya. Not at the Cataclysm’s hands, but …”
“Maybe that’s all the more reason to stay with us.”
“Maybe …”
Presh glances back at us again, grinning and practically radiating joy. “They have a table!”
A soft answering grin stretches across Gigi’s face.
It might be impossible to not smile at Precious when she’s smiling, but it’s not charisma.
It’s certainly not any sort of sheltered upbringing.
It’s that inherent goodness that comes with her essence, yes.
But it’s also just … a choice. A choice Presh makes every day.
“Maybe …” Gigi murmurs a second time.
The large booths spanning the center of the main seating area of the restaurant and the tables along the windows above the beach are all full.
So the six of us take a somewhat private U-shaped corner booth overlooking the parking lot.
Gigi slides in next to me, pushing me closer to the window, while Bellamy caps the other open side of the booth with Presh and DeVille between herself and me.
I’m appalled to discover that there aren’t any milkshakes on the seafood-dominated menu. I might have to flex some of this Conduit power before dessert.
Kidding.
Maybe.
I order the alder-smoked salmon, swapping the rice for garlic mashed potatoes. Of course and always.
While Presh and DeVille talk, the rest of us sit with our own thoughts clearly whirling around in our heads. I have no idea the last time I did more than nap, and my exhaustion is finally catching up with me. Both Cay and Gigi checked their phones, grimaced faintly, then tucked their devices away.
Bellamy appears to be contemplating how she might level the entire building if called upon to do so. Either that or she has a nasty stomachache.
She did mention being starving.
Presh is sweetly interrogating DeVille about every interaction he’s ever had with the flirty host, getting more and more frustrated as — in her mind — DeVille evades the questions.
Having seemingly already forgotten the pretty shifter who seated us, he legitimately can barely remember her.
‘From school’ and ‘she might be on the basketball team’ are the only significant things Presh pries out of him.