by Amy Lane
He couldn’t tell from her bemused expression if she understood that this was for her own sake, and he wasn’t trying to push her away. “You’d still sleep with us and everything, Katy,” he said, trying to reassure her, and her throaty laughter finally told him that even if she didn’t understand what he was trying to give her, she at least understood that he wanted to give her the world.
His hands were sweating and he pulled them from her shoulders so she couldn’t tell, but they were shaking too, and she took them in hers and raised herself on her toes and kissed him softly. He opened his mouth in wonder, and then she invaded, tasted, found a home inside him, and when she pulled back her expression was kind and a little amazed.
“When would the ‘sleeping’ with you start, papi?” she asked softly, and he flushed. He was aware—more than aware—that they were on something of a timeline, if they were going to be three mates instead of just him and Jacky.
“If you want to start tonight, that would be fine.” He swallowed—from what he’d heard, the entire hill would be up tonight, for long and long, talking and celebrating. He had discussed with nobody and admitted not even to himself that the idea of taking part in something like that held a charm and amazement for him. If the group of people he’d worked with on his run with Cory would let him, he wouldn’t mind sitting in the back of that crowd for a while.
“Just to sleep?” she asked, looking as though he was about give her the sun and the moon and the stars—with a caveat.
“Well, you know,” Teague flushed, “whatever comes up. I mean, if you plan to stay with us, then when stuff, uhm,”
“Comes up?” she asked, her mouth quirking upwards, and he found his humor to answer her back with twinkling eyes and a straight face.
“Yup, darlin’—‘comes up’. If anything comes up, well then, you’re staying with us, and that’s a plan, right? We’ve planned for that. It’s not happening because I’m an out-of-control horny bastard, or because I’m naked and you’re soft…it’s happening because that’s what we want, and it’s for real. So, you start sleeping in our room, and we call it done. We’re mated. The other thing—that’ll happen.”
He closed his eyes and breathed in her smell, and Jack bumped him—on purpose—from behind. He opened his eyes and swallowed, and saw that her face had grown soft and bemused and her lips were slightly parted, just from standing close, hand in hand. “Oh yeah, Princess—that’ll happen.”
He took a sudden step back, thinking that her pretty dress and done-up hair shouldn’t be wasted on just him and Jacky, and offered her his arm.
She took it and smiled, and together the made it out the door, with Jacky behind her, his hand on her shoulder.
The banquet room was nearly filled up when they arrived there and Katy floated down the staircase in pride. Jack and Teague met eyes then, and saw through her eyes, the formal she’d never had in school, the feeling of being valued and happy that had never been hers.
Until now.
Green, Cory and Bracken were waiting at the end of the staircase with smiles, and Cory chirpily took them to their places. She was dressed nicely in dark green, with high heels that she wobbled on once or twice, and as she approached their table, Nicky—who was sitting next to a slightly built, sandy-haired man who smelled like shapeshifter—turned around and guffawed.
“What in the hell was Bracken thinking, putting you in those?” he snorted.
Cory cast a fulminating glance to where Green was standing with narrowed eyes and a dark twist to his sensual mouth. “They’re payback,” she muttered, “for going out in the rain this morning.”
“Well good for Green!” Renny snapped from across the table. Teague noted with some surprise that she was dressed in a gold/brown sweater and skirt, and the little were-kitty’s usually flyaway brown hair was secured nicely in a gold clip. “Don’t you have any respect for what happened last year?”
Cory’s mouth thinned, and Teague realized he’d heard mutters of this all week. Bracken, Green, and even Nicky had been nagging her about her health and being careful—he just hadn’t realized it was related to anything other than their usual concern.
“Just because we’re supernatural doesn’t mean we have to be superstitious,” she said mutinously, and Nicky caught her hand before she could turn back and resume her place on the receiving line.
“Would you please, though,” Nicky asked nicely, “for us? All of us?”
Cory looked up—almost in spite of herself—and saw the same thing Teague did as he was taking his place between Jacky and Katy. He saw Renny and her husband, Max, Phillip and Marcus, Mario and Lambent and others whose names he didn’t know but whose attention was focused on the little sorceress in concern and affection.
She rolled her eyes and shook her head and blew out a breath. “Fine. Fine—I’ll send Bracken with you all tomorrow and stay in the house like a good little woman until school starts up again. No more running in the rain…”
“No more nights in the garden?” Nicky asked meaningfully, and Cory shrugged.
“After tonight?” she negotiated, and Nicky glanced at Green and Bracken and nodded.
“Fair enough,” he said softly and kissed her hand. She bent down and kissed his cheek and then smiled somewhat gamely at Teague, Jacky, and Katy.
“Ignore us our little melodramas,” she said with a bright face, and then nodded her head at everybody and walked back to talk quietly to her mates, who both nodded their heads emphatically.
It was on the tip of Teague’s tongue to ask what it was he didn’t know, but Mario turned to him with rolled eyes and said, “Hey, wolfman!”
“What?” he asked warily, but in good humor.
“Whatever it was you did to make that woman think ‘yellow’, could you not do it again? The new paneling is making my eyeball twitch!”
They’ll give you enough shit about it so you know they don’t really give a shit about it.
Teague had to laugh. “If it’s at all possible to not repeat what happened yesterday, I’d like to find a way to do that,” he said dryly, and there was a burst of laughter at the table.
Nicky spoke up impudently, saying, “Yeah—well if we could keep Bracken from pissing her off, that might work better. That black and pond-muck thing she does with the trim puts me in a funk for a week.”
“Yeah, but the make-up-sex paneling is my favorite color,” Renny chimed in innocently, and Teague glared at them both.
“Now you’re just pulling my leg!”
“Why not?” Max grinned. “It’s not like you don’t have three more and a tail!”
“Which is more than I can say for myself,” Jacky muttered. “He ‘bout chewed mine off yesterday.”
Teague colored, and Katy’s eyes twinkled as she said, “Oh, is that what happened to your tail?” and then Jacky flushed and the banter turned to other things.
Green stood up after a few moments and welcomed his people to Thanksgiving dinner. “We have much to be grateful for,” he said, his voice heart-full, and Teague believed him, even when the leader shocked him badly by mentioning him and Jacky and Katy in the list of people who had joined them in the past year. Max was mentioned too, and Teague was amused to see the stoic cop blush, even as his winsome kitty-bride patted his cheek playfully. Green finished up with, “And of course the good health and happiness of our Lady Corinne Carol-Anne is something we are all grateful for—she has come to set the order of our stars, and she fills my heart with every breath.”
With that the lovely, graceful sidhe turned to his beloved and bowed, and Teague watched with interest as the plain college student with the freckles and high heels all but squirmed in her seat and hid her face like a little kid. She did understand—she got it all Teague marveled—every insecurity he had, every doubt about himself, she felt it too. And then she stood up and rose above all of that.
“And you give life to our souls, beloved,” she said, just loudly enough to carry to the happy assembly. Then she turne
d to the tables and grinned. “But we still need to eat—the Goddess bless us all, and lets begin.”
Teague blinked, surprised, as dinner rolls appeared with beverages on the table in front of him. He was sure there was a carrier—a sprite, a tiny creature of some sort, but they had been so efficient—and so motivated—that they moved quicker than the eye.
There, next to his plate, was a chilled bottle of Miller, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how anybody had known. He looked at Jacky and saw a tall glass filled with ice and what was probably Vanilla Coke, and shook his head. Someone had known.
Jack raised his eyebrows, and Teague felt your heart will be bigger than the sky and did his best not to tear up like a total and complete pussy. He reached for his beer instead.
you’re going to see that reaching for love is like reaching for salt or your fork or another drink of beer
He heard her voice in his head, and looked up suddenly at Katy, who was smiling at something Renny had said, and then at Jacky, who was still gazing at him thoughtfully. He slipped the reaching hand under the table then, and the other one too, and reached instead for Jacky and Katy. He ignored their startled looks and simply squeezed their warm, welcoming hands and then released them. He put his elbows on the table and leaned forward to listen to Nicky as he started the story of why everybody was so worried about the Lady Cory this week. But he felt Jacky’s shiny eyes on him, and he turned and gave his beloved a wink, then brushed Katy’s shoulder with his own when she looked at him curiously.
A child can do that. It ain’t no big thing.
Cory
Supernatural-- Not Superstitious
I sat in the garden with my bare feet tucked under my bottom and pulled the newest shawl Grace had knit me around my shoulders. This one was violet and green, a little thicker than most, and alpaca, so it actually helped keep out the chill of the rain that was hammering every place except the top of Green’s hill.
I didn’t have to hear the trap door open to know that Green was behind me, but I didn’t turn to him. Instead I just continued to gaze at the trio of trees where I most usually saw that beloved pair of sky-spangled eyes materialize.
He wasn’t coming tonight. I knew that. We’d spent a long, giddy night in the garden together, the three of us—those didn’t come without a price.
Green continued on graceful stockinged feet—stockings I’d made him, actually, with beads and special old-fashioned cuff-petals and stuff. He liked them—and I liked making them for him, since there were so few occasions when he would wear socks. His hand was warm on my shoulder and I leaned into it, acknowledging his tenderness but not quite ready to break my useless focus on the place where Adrian appeared.
“Was it worth it?” Green asked, and for a moment I was confused—and a little angry. Of course it was worth it—I’d stopped asking that question last year. Then I realized that he was talking about this morning and my little foray into the rain.
“I got wet and cramped, Green,” I said dryly. “It was no big deal.”
Green made a Bracken sound—a sort of harassed, irritated growl. They had both been furious this morning, but I think Green more so than Bracken. (For one thing, Green got to be mad at Bracken as well as at me—double the ire, double the fun!) But I couldn’t take it back. I’d seen Teague bolting out of the house in his running shoes, so blind he didn’t even remember plowing me over, and I knew that someone had to talk with him, someone had to calm him down, or all of his healing, all of his acceptance of himself and his self-worth—it would all be shot to shit.
So I’d made Bracken blur me to the running trail, wearing whatever I could slap on in thirty seconds. His running shorts would never be the same—and my shoes weren’t in such great shape either. It had been a good plan—even if Bracken had almost blown it by making “I told you so” sounds in the brush—and if it hadn’t been pissing down rain, Teague would have either heard him or scented him nearby.
“I’d do it again,” I told Green now, hugging my knees. “I’d do it twice, and you can growl all you want, but you have to admit—they looked really happy tonight.”
Green sighed—even through his worry it was hard for him to stay mad at me. Which was good, because it was next to impossible for me to be mad at him. He came around the bench and nudged his way next to me, then seized my chin and pulled my eyes around to meet his.
“They did,” he said softly, letting his sincerity shimmer in his wide-set emerald eyes. “And I’m glad it worked out. But you need to take our worry seriously…”
“I do,” I told him, admitting for the first time—even to myself—that I remembered last year, and the great driving gulf of pain I’d almost thrown myself into. The elves—and Nicky, and Grace and Renny and pretty much everybody who remembered the events of last year—all agreed that, in the preternatural world, bad shit celebrated anniversaries too.
I’d almost died last year. I’d been so close, it had taken Adrian to come into my dreams and force me to stay. I tended to brush it off now—I was healthy, I was strong, I was beyond happy—but some things, some terrible, painful things, really did leave psychic scars. The people who loved me were afraid I’d be more susceptible to danger, to sickness, to accidents in this next week.
I kept trying to reassure them--I was almost a different person this year--but that didn’t keep Green from having a seismic aneurism when Bracken carried me in with blue lips and a universe-class charley-horse in my calf.
“You’re really going to give a grown man advice, ou’e’eir, when you’re not wise enough to get out of the rain?”
“If I am your ou’e’eir, you’ll give me credit for knowing that a little water won’t hurt!”
Of course, I’d have made a better impression if my teeth hadn’t been chattering, and if I hadn’t needed Green’s healing touch on my calf to ease the clenched and screaming muscles.
“You’ll stay close, then?” Green asked tonight, rubbing his cheek against mine, all angry words forgotten. I smiled, and the perfection of his touch made tears start at my eyes. I hadn’t been shitting Teague when I’d told him how he’d feel tonight. Ask me how I knew.
“Beloved, if I could, I’d wear you like a whole other skin.” I burrowed into his touch then, not wanting to gaze into the night anymore, not wanting to long for the thing that could no longer be. I had Green. I had Bracken. I had happiness. For this next week, at least, I needed to let my sadness be.
Green gathered me in then, and I sat on his lap with my shawl wrapped securely around my bare shoulders. We touched in silence, simply being grateful and happy for a moment—a scant moment—of peace.
Green was the one who broke the silence, uncharacteristically insecure about the fate of some of our people. “You think they’ll be alright, then luv?”
“The werewolves?” Like I needed to ask. “I think Jack is better for Teague than he will be for us,” I told him truthfully. Teague wanted Jack to take over Mario’s place in the group of students who usually went down to Sac State. I thought of long car rides with the irritated jealousy that had beaten at me the day before and almost forgot I was happy. But I should be able to overcome that, right? I certainly had no designs on Teague—wouldn’t Jack see that eventually?
“I think you’re right,” Green said surprisingly. “But I think they’re ours—both of them. Just like Katy has been. And I think I’ll be more at rest when they all actually mate and bond.”
I perked up. That’s right. Werewolves would bond—lose all desire for anybody other than their mates. An entire taut-wire of tension I didn’t know I’d had dribbled out of my spine, and I collapsed a little more securely against Green.
“Absolutely,” I murmured. “They’ll bond, Jacky will stop wishing I was dead, and it will all be gravy.”
Green chuckled, the last of his irritation at me disappearing, and he whispered in my ear. “Speaking of bonding, beloved…we are alone.”
“Absolutely,” I murmured back, raisin
g my face to his.
My beloved tasted like Thanksgiving.
Changing
Book Four
A Jack & Teague (&Katy) Adventure
By
Amy Lane
Teague
On Pain of Waking
Fucking dream.
Teague’s body was warm. It was protected on either side by love. His soul was whole—for the first time in his life, his soul was whole. He had something beautiful to look forward to and good, good memories to build from.
He had a home.
And then the goddamned dream. It had changed since the night before—maybe the fucker just couldn’t stand for him to be happy.
Whereas before, it would start like the real life moment where Katy bit Jack, now it started with all of them in flight. The dream was chasing them—something was chasing them, and Teague pushed Katy and Jack in front of him and screamed “Go go go go go…”
Right into the jaws of the phantom fear. It gnashed shadow teeth and Teague screamed, and then they were at his feet, bodies mangled, eyes blind, and Teague was on his knees in their blood, screaming his throat raw…
“Mmmm…” Katy’s voice was sleepy and petulant. “Teague, pappi, don’t fuss… it’ll all be good in the morning.”
Jacky tightened up against his back and there was a sudden blare from the clock radio on the nightstand.
“What in the hell…?” Teague muttered, and Kay rolled out of his arms with sleepy laughter.
“Nevermind, pappi, it’s time for me to go to work anyway.”
“Work?” Teague echoed, feeling stupid, and Katy was picking up the change of clothes she’d brought into Jack and Teague’s room the night before as they were coming in from banquet.
“Yeah, Teague—it’s Black Friday. Everybody gonna be there, even Cory and Bracken. Hell—Grace went right from the banquet to the store, got it all set up!”