Chapter 21 Surprise!
Surprise!
Kit/Kat
“Where are we going? I thought we were heading to dinner,” I say as my stomach growls.
Salem chuckles, bumping me with his big shoulder and knocking me off balance a little. Once I’m in control of myself, he pulls a granola bar with my ribbon on it out of his pocket. “Don’t want you to be hangry, KK. You get hard to handle when you’re all… riled up.”
Heat floods my neck, spreading toward my face unbidden. This fucking guy… I clear my throat and mutter, “Thanks. Sorry, my stomach was rude. Slash has sort of trained me.”
“Lucky him,” Oriel says as he flanks me on the other side and I have to force my eyes to the ground to keep anyone else from seeing the mild panic in them.
Now there’s two of them and I’m definitely going to die on the spot one of these times they’re poking at me.
“I take my job as a trainer seriously, it’s true.”
My hands cover my cheeks as I let O and Salem lead me wherever the fuck they’re all avoiding telling me about, hopelessly trying to get a grip on my reactions.
Slash missing their innuendo is funny, but I can’t even enjoy it because I’m so filled with that hot, itchy feeling.
I’m not stupid; I know it has to do with my body having a physiological reaction to the gorgeous men taunting me.
But it’s new and different, so I just don’t know how to deal with it.
Hell, I don’t even know if it’s going to give off some…
. signal that the others will pick up on.
Dank’s potion works on a lot of things as far as I know, but what about… arousal?
That makes my anxiety spike a bit, and my pulse jumps as I try to figure out what I’m going to do to get that answer.
Obviously, I can’t control how my body reacts; I’m not a Cubi.
Although, I guess they can’t really do that until—I shake my head, pushing out the intrusive ADHD thoughts so I can focus.
This I can do; I learned coping skills. But my pussy isn’t my brain; telling it to shut up won’t work.
It might make me feel better, but it won’t fix a genuine issue that could give me away before I’m ready to admit stuff.
Gahhh. why the fuck is everything so damn hard to wrangle? I’m such a mess.
“KK? I can sense you spiraling from back here.”
X’s voice is soothing, likely on purpose, but it’s not patronizing.
They’re just trying to help, especially because they also know the four-one-one.
So I cough to make sure my voice isn’t a dead giveaway, then respond.
“Um, well, you guys know that being unaware of my surroundings is difficult for me because of the stuff, so…”
“Wait! I know what to do,” Oriel says and my gut clenches. I have an idea what he’s going to suggest and I don’t know that I’m ready for that with a full damn audience. My pulse spikes again when I imagine all of them—except for our pissy prince—watching me while I can’t see them.
Unfortunately, the reaction I get isn’t the one I thought it’d be—no, it’s more heat in my veins and a clench inside that is not fear. “I don’t think—”
Before I can finish, O whips out a blindfold and is standing in front of me, lifting my chin to meet his eyes. “I promise it will be okay. Even though this is a lot of trust, you know that Salem and I won’t let anything bad happen, right?”
I nod, swallowing hard as I look at him.
“Hey! I will not let bad shit go on, either,” X growls indignantly. “Nor will Annie or Slash. Don’t be an asshat, O.”
The crow shifter rolls his eyes, then tears his gaze from mine to the offended cobra shifter.
“X, that’s not what I meant. He’s already had one discussed and shit was fine.
Salem is around him more than anyone. It’s different in terms of familiarity, okay?
I wasn’t making a value judgment, you big diva. ”
“Well… I guess—”
“He had a blindfold on with you previously?”
Annie and X speak almost simultaneously and I have to tighten my fists at my side. I don’t want the guys to fight, especially about me. Biting my lower lip, I cough again before they can devolve into bickering. “Hey. Hey. Shut up.”
They all stop, looking at me as I turn to face the group.
Slash is studying me carefully, as if he’s trying to find out if I was harmed by what Oriel claimed.
X and Annie both have odd expressions on their faces that I can’t place.
Salem is glaring at the crow demon with daggers in his normally sleepy eyes.
This is so fucking weird that I can hardly stand it, so I hold a hand up.
“Sorry. I’m not being rude, but you’re not giving me time to think.
I need that in order to consent, and the potshots distract me.
” My smile is sheepish, but it makes their spiky emotions recede almost immediately.
That lets me breathe more easily and I let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks. I needed that.”
“Did us being calmer actually help you?” Salem asks curiously.
“Yep. My chest got looser and I can breathe better,” I answer immediately. “I could sort of feel your emotions pressing in with my anxiety and it was… a lot.”
Anton’s gaze narrows on me. “Feel us, you say?”
“Mmm hmm.” I breathe out again, shaking my limbs one by one to dispel the sparkling sensation in them that often precludes a panic episode. “Now I can do my things to help keep on an even keel. But thinking you were going to really fight over me was definitely not good.”
Slash snorts, shaking his head at me. “Little demon, we will never truly fight over you. That would be ridiculous. You are one of us, and that means you belong to all of us.”
“Even those who don’t have a clue yet,” Salem mutters to himself. Oriel’s eyes sparkle and he raises a fist to bump it with my roommate’s.
Surprisingly, I let out a hiss at them, and my hands fly to my mouth to cover it. I mumble behind them, “What the hell was that?”
Xerxes throws their head back and laughs, but the others just stare at them. Once they’re done, they grin. “KK, you just hissed at those two goobers like a cat. I fucking love it. I don’t know why, obviously, but damn, that was funny as fuck.”
My face turns beet red, and I shrug. “I don’t know why, either. But… take it as a warning, I guess.”
“That would be in line with how it sounded.” Anton smirks as he tilts his head. “We should get moving, so we’re not late. Kit, if you’re going to allow Oriel to provide his estimation of help, then say it now.”
I look at all of them, biting my lip nervously for a moment. Finally, I nod. “Okay. Do it, O. But you and Salem better not fucking let me trip on something or I’ll skin you alive.”
“Now that is something I enjoy seeing,” Slash says mildly. “And an excellent demonic threat, little demon. Very good.”
His praise makes everything light up within me as the crow brings the blindfold to my eyes again.
I have got to find time to talk to Dank about this shit before I get into trouble with these guys.
We walked for about twenty minutes, though I felt the atmosphere change at one point, and I don’t know why. It was odd, and I felt like I was in the Arctic because of the chill in the air. When we actually stop, I wait for Oriel to remove the blindfold, but he doesn’t.
“Hey, when do I get to see? And what was that weird… vibe… in the middle of the trip?” I frown, rubbing my hands on my biceps. “It was freezing for like three minutes.”
“Don’t freak out, okay?”
Oh, that helps a lot, thanks… said no one with anxiety disorders ever.
“Telling me not to panic is never ever going to keep me from freaking out, Salem.” I aim a stern expression in the direction his voice came from, hoping it’s effective. “That’s like saying ‘don’t think about it’ when you have to piss.”
“Huh. I didn’t think about it that way. Good metaphor, KK,” X chirps as they come closer.
“But to answer your question—since everyone else is too chickenshit to do it—Oriel shadow traveled us, so the trip was shorter. For those of us without those powers, it feels weird. Though, I can’t say cold is what it felt like to me. ”
“It feels like that to me.”
My entire body goes rigid as Jasper’s amused tone comes from a few feet away.
The cloth over my eyes now feels like a binding, and I make a soft sound of panic as I reach up to claw it off.
I didn’t know that he was coming, nor that I’d react quite so keenly to him if he showed up while I was that vulnerable.
My eyes dart around the circle of demons, noting Zav has arrived as well, and when I get to the prince, he looks strangely upset.
Why the fuck is he upset? I’m the one who was shadow traveled, blindfolded, and snuck up on.
“Uh… yeah. So um…” I fumble my words as I mentally run through every mantra I know to get myself under control. “Not to be a pain in the ass or anything, but where is here? And why did we have to shadow travel? Oh, and why the fuck didn’t anyone tell me?”
Anger floods me, and I know it’s just trying to combat the panic about Jasper being here while I could not see him.
Logically, I’m totally aware that the prince could have hurt me many times before now if he actually intended to.
And I don’t think he’d do something like my past trauma at all—I really don’t.
But I don’t feel entirely safe around him yet because we can’t seem to find stable ground, so my brain is running through emergency protocols.
“Don’t be mad, KK,” Oriel says as he steps closer to untie the blindfold with gentle hands. “I didn’t want to scare you. But we needed to move more quickly once we covered your eyes. The terrain would have been dangerous in that state.”
“Just… tell me,” I grit out. “I know you probably had good intentions, and maybe didn’t even think I’d notice.” His sheepish expression tells me that’s spot on. “But I did, so that should be a lesson about assuming things when we don’t know what the fuck I am or what powers are still developing.”
“He’s right, actually,” Jasper says and I whip around to gape at the typically dickish royal.
“We shouldn’t assume anything about his abilities until he’s fully emerged.
He could be any combination of things; we’ve all agreed on that.
That means anything we do might not affect him like us, but like the others, or even things we have no experience with. ”
“I… I…” That very smart statement, said with zero snark, has me speechless.
Did Jasper get a personality transplant since Weapons class?
Zavida pats his hand, looking proud. “Good point, Jas. You’re absolutely correct,”
“I concur,” Anton adds. “I believe we should actually be actively looking for signs like Kit feeling the tension before… in the vein of X’s lineage. But also, I do not believe any of us besides Jasper feel cold in the shadows, do we?”
They all shake their heads, and Jasper gives me a smug smile. “See? That’s more of my lineage, as Anton is suggesting.”
I wrinkle my nose. “So you believe I may come from Wrath or Lust? I can see the first one, but, uh, not the second.”
Xerxes laughs, their eyes sparkling with mischief. “I think your past may have more to do with that than it being a sign that we’re mistaken. Once you get healed enough to give that theory a test drive, you may find out otherwise.”
“No shit,” Oriel and Salem say at the same time. I gape at them, but they don’t see it because now they’re eyeing one another like they’re getting ready to compare dick size.
Yes, even I know what that looks like on guys… I had two asshole brothers who did it all the time.