by Marcy Jacks
“I haven’t exactly been going on missions since I’ve been here,” Warren said, figuring that last part needed some clarification.
“Right, but anyway, that’s not the point,” he said, looking flustered and a little more embarrassed than Warren had ever seen him. “What I’m saying is, if you were hungry now, I’m all open for you.”
Warren couldn’t believe it. He looked at Lasius’s untouched throat. Some of the man’s green vine tattoos stretched all the way up his arms and settled there on his neck.
Instead of looking unwelcome, the thorns pulled him in. He wanted to taste that throat, to bite down on it and see if it would sting him.
He also wanted to taste the man’s blood and see if it was just as red as those rose tattoos that spiraled up and down his arms.
“Are you serious?”
Lasius nodded. “Yeah. I’m an open buffet if you want.”
Warren felt his fangs becoming longer and sharper in his mouth. “You shouldn’t give that kind of permission to a vampire. I might take it the wrong way.”
“And that’s fine by me. I’m going to take care of you. I meant it. You and the baby.”
Well, there was always that to consider, as well.
Since he would be eating for two, Warren decided to not bother with holding himself back anymore, and he let himself bite down as hard as he needed to, feeling the skin break and the blood flow into his mouth.
It was fucking wonderful.
Chapter Nine
Lasius watched, amused, as Sorin talked non-stop to his brother at the breakfast table the next day. He and Lucian shared a glance. Lucian shrugged, as though silently apologizing that his mate was taking all of Warren’s attention.
Lasius didn’t mind. It was kind of cute to see Warren so blatantly uncomfortable under the sunshine and rainbows Sorin projected at him.
Sunshine and rainbows from a vampire. That had to be a new thing.
More than once, Warren threw him a glance, the sort that silently begged for help.
Lasius pretended to not register those looks. His mate was on his own as far as Lasius was concerned, and it was good for him to get to know his brother. This was the best thing that could have ever happened to him as far as Lasius was concerned.
Marxus stabbed his bacon and eggs, his head resting on his fist as he tried to look at anyone other than Warren. Some of the omegas around the table smiled politely, though Micah was being a touch cautious.
Lasius didn’t mind. They’d get to know Warren soon enough, and then they would see that Warren was no different from James or Sorin. Or even Zane and Josh, who seemed a little more open to the idea that a new member of the clan was here. One who used to share their job description.
There were other omegas in the house who were less than pleased. A few more were fine with it.
At least, they claimed to be fine with it, but again, it wasn’t something that Lasius was going to worry himself over too much.
As long as none of the omegas poisoned their food, then Lasius was all right waiting to win everyone over.
Seth reached for his coffee, also watching the proceedings with barely hidden amusement.
Sorin had even stolen Lasius’s chair so he could sit next to Warren, leaving Lasius on the other side of the table with Lucian while Sorin tried to dig every ounce of information out of Warren.
Wanting to know what Warren did for his hobbies, if he liked to draw or paint or play instruments—to which Lasius assumed the answer would be no since those were typically the hobbies of the elites in vampire world, not that Sorin would be thinking of that, of course—all the way down to his favorite foods and colors.
“I like black,” Warren mumbled, pushing his eggs around on his plate. “Easier to hide with. Meatloaf and potatoes with bread rolls are good. I like that.”
Josh spoke up. “Isn’t that what they used to serve in the cafeteria on a Fri—ow!”
Josh glared at his brother, Zane, who glared back after kicking his brother in the shin.
Lasius tried to ignore that, but it was difficult.
Right, of course Warren wouldn’t have many hobbies or things that he liked. His entire world was working for Varrick. The man was supposed to be his father, supposed to take care of him.
Sorin was a little older, and while Lasius never thought he would know the answer for sure, the fact that Varrick already had a son, and that Warren was a half-breed, probably had much to do with his station in life.
There wasn’t anything that sounded sexy about meatloaf. In fact, Lasius had it a couple of times, and it had always been dry and fairly gross. He couldn’t imagine that anything Varrick had been feeding his workers had been much better. They probably got the stale, slightly moldy bread that was a couple of days old, steamed potatoes, and the driest, most uninviting meat of their lives.
Zane had once told him that if they ever got butter with their bread then it tended to be a good day.
If he wanted to feed his mate anything, it would be thick steaks with freshly baked bread, and he knew how to make potatoes taste like heaven.
Butter, milk, garlic, and a lot of gravy was the best answer.
Shit, now he was going to have to look online for a meatloaf recipe to make for his mate. Something that would blow his socks off because nothing else would do.
All right, nodding to himself, Lasius pulled out his phone and started to search for some websites. The pictures he spotted right away didn’t look half bad. All sorts of ways to make meatloaf look like the best damned thing he’d ever seen and recipes for bread rolls with cheeses baked into them…
Right, this wasn’t going to be as horrible as he thought.
“What are you looking through?” Lucian asked, a stupid smile on his face.
Lasius growled at him. “Not your damned business.” He turned to Seth. “I’ll make the dinner tomorrow if that’s fine.”
Seth blinked at him.
“I’ll need to go shopping first, but I’d like to do it.”
“You can cook?” Warren asked, sounding impressed.
Lasius tried to not let that note of awe go too much to his head. “Just a little.”
“He can barely follow a recipe,” Tiny said in his deep, booming voice.
Lasius’s shoulders dropped, and he rolled his eyes, watching as the huge dragon gently lifted his spoon of cereal to his mouth.
With his size, he dwarfed the bowl he ate from.
“You are such an asshole.”
Tiny wiggled his fingers at him.
If the man wasn’t so huge, or strong, Lasius might have flown at him.
As it was, there wasn’t much of anything he could do at the moment except glare.
He stopped when he realized Warren was watching him.
The other man looked away quickly when Lasius met his eyes.
That was a smile. Lasius definitely saw a smile on his face.
Of course, it didn’t last very long when he was forced to go back to pretending to be interested in the things Sorin was saying.
Trying desperately to be polite to his brother. That must be a new experience for him.
“Anyway,” Seth said, getting the attention of everyone at the long table. “Lucian, I don’t like bringing up bad memories for you or anything, but with you and Sorin in that house, it might help us out. Sorin got a better look at the layout of the top floors than you would have, but you at least have an idea of how many people are still there and what weapons they’ve got.”
Lucian snorted. The happy smile melted from Sorin’s face.
“I can’t believe we have to trust Van to help us do anything with that house.”
“He’s brought people to us. He’s helping the omegas still imprisoned under Varrick escape. I don’t like it either, but I’m not going to let anyone die because I can’t swallow my pride.”
“Pride or not, that’s got to sting,” Lasius said, completely without thinking.
Luckily, Warren didn’t seem
to take offense to it or notice that he’d said it.
Good. He had enough shit to make up for without constantly reminding his mate of what he used to be involved in.
Warren’s attention was focused entirely on Seth and Seth’s on him, as well.
“Warren, do you think you could draw us up a map of all the lower levels? Where the slaves were kept, the servants and guards slept. The entrances and exits?”
Warren sucked back a heavy breath, letting it out slowly. “I’m not a mapmaker, it won’t be that accurate, but I can do it. I was never in the slaves’ quarters all that often. It’s basically one long corridor with one entrance and no exits. You could block off the exit down there and bury them alive and no one would ever know.”
“So it’s like the one we have here?” Stefan asked.
“I haven’t seen the one you have here, but most likely. The layout of the house is different, but I can’t imagine there were a lot of artistic choices made when the basement and dungeons were dug out. Not unless there was some reason for it like water and rock.”
Seth nodded. “Lasius and I will bring you downstairs later on so you can have a look, and then you can let me know if you see anything different. If there are no major differences, then that’s something that can really help us out, too.”
Warren nodded, a solemn expression coming over him that had Lasius sitting up straight in his seat.
“Whatever I can do to help.”
That sounded…not so eager. Not too excited or ready to work. Why? Lasius was going to have to figure that out.
He watched his mate eat while Seth went over the plan. Lasius could hardly pay attention to it considering where all of his focus went, and when it came time for the dishes to get cleared away and head downstairs so Warren could see the dungeons and slave quarters, Lasius was only mildly concerned.
By the end of it, the monotone nature to Warren’s voice had him completely worried.
“What about you, Sorin?” Seth eventually asked. “This look familiar, too?”
Sorin sighed, a look of discomfort coming over his face, as well, and Lasius figured that Warren’s reaction might have more to do with the bad memories that were being churned up.
“I only ever went to Lucian’s cell and then to his room when he was brought to the slaves’ quarters. It all looks the same, but I don’t want to give you bad information either.”
Seth nodded. “Fair enough, so long as Warren’s accounts of everything are fairly accurate, then I don’t mind going on a bit of guesswork.”
“Does this mean we’re finally going to go on the offense?” Stefan asked.
Seth nodded. “It’s been a long time coming, and that fuck is clearly not going to let us go. No offense, Sorin.”
Sorin nodded. “None taken.”
He seemed to be saying that a lot. Lasius was going to have to work hard to make sure his own mate never had to say that as much as Sorin did.
“Oh, same to you, Warren,” Seth said as a clear afterthought, as though only just remembering Warren and Sorin shared a father.
Fuck. Of course that would happen right after Lasius thought he would do what he could to make sure his mate was respected.
Warren’s arms were crossed as he shrugged. “It’s in blood only, not even in name. Don’t worry yourself over it.”
At least he was strong about it. Lasius had that much to be proud of when it came to the way Warren handled it.
As for everything else, watching Warren go through the tunnels and then the former slaves’ quarters, where some of the omegas still insisted on sleeping, even though Seth had again and again told them they could share the extra bedrooms upstairs, was a clear struggle for him.
Lasius could tell his mate was trying to hide it. That he was doing his best to keep looking at these rooms, these tiny spaces, from getting to him. But all sorts of things must have been going through his mind in that moment.
He was probably observing in the layout how some of the rooms looked familiar to him. The way the omegas glared when they had to come out of their rooms so he could have a quick glance inside probably didn’t help.
He showed no outward emotion, but if the way Sorin looked uncomfortable was anything to go by, then there was definitely something going on with him.
Lasius couldn’t help but wonder where Warren had been born. Had he been born in rooms that looked just like these? Was he thinking about that? About how his mother had to take care of him for the first few years of his life while Warren’s older brother played upstairs, well-dressed, well-fed, having a luxurious life that Warren could only imagine.
When had he found out that he was Varrick’s son? And, by extension, also Sorin’s brother? How hard must that have been to keep those things to himself?
So many questions that still weren’t answered.
Lasius was never going to stop kicking himself for thinking the worst of his mate. It was going to be a stain on the memory of when he and Warren had first met for the rest of his life.
“It looks pretty much the same,” Warren said. “The piping is older in some places, but you said Varrick took this land from you?”
Seth nodded. “There was no house here when Varrick arrived.”
“You didn’t live in a house?” Warren raised an eye at that.
“Well, we had shelter, small huts. I suppose you could call them houses if you stretched out the definition, but it would be a long stretch. The dragons first arrived on the boats with the other Europeans, but we apparently mixed in with the locals a lot better. We were better suited to outdoor living.”
Lasius couldn’t believe it. “You’re saying you’ve got Native American in you?” He looked at the man’s red hair. He’d thought Seth was Irish.
Seth laughed. “No, idiot. I wasn’t alive when the first dragons came over, done with harassing princesses and sitting on piles of gold, or whatever it was they did over there, but I’m not that many generations removed that you wouldn’t be able to tell if I was. My parents were born on this land, but they told me well enough of the hunting and gathering tricks they’d learned from the more peaceful tribes, as well as how to avoid the ones that weren’t peaceful, and how they’d learned to stay out of the way when the fighting broke out. The Irish weren’t looked on so kindly on back then either, so that was another reason to stay out of the way.”
He knew it. Lasius felt a sense of pride over guessing Seth’s lineage correctly.
As to his explanation, that made sense. Dragons existed on secrecy for generations. Now more than ever. Lasius was young in comparison to Seth, probably little more than a kid, even though he was in his thirties, but every dragon knew that there had been those who’d been caught and directed back in the old days, when the only pictures needed to be hand drawn.
Dragons searching for a new life on new land would want to stay invisible in the midst of witch hunts and colonization.
He wondered if those dragons would have stood back if they knew the vampires had come across the pond with them. If they’d known the vampires had been building up resources of their own to set their horrible plans in motion while everyone else was distracted or hiding.
No point in thinking about that now. The only thing there was left was to deal with the fallout of yesterday’s bad decisions, combined with today’s stubbornness, because, after all these attacks, it was more than clear that Seth wasn’t going to give up his family property.
Lasius hesitated briefly before sucking it up, collecting his balls, and putting his arm around Warren’s shoulder. The shorter man looked up at him, as though shocked.
Lasius tried to play it off as nothing, which was why he smiled and leaned in for a quick kiss.
Warren’s mouth was tense but only for a second before it melted against the seductive nature of Lasius’s lips. Lasius was awesome like that.
“How do you feel?” Lasius asked, rising up the stairs out of the basement with his mate. They trailed behind the others, but Lasius kept
his voice low, not wanting them to hear everything he was going to say to his lover.
“Fine.”
There was no way a one-word answer was the right one. Lasius looked at his mate hard, pressing him.
Warren growled softly, and there was the spark in those beautiful eyes that Lasius loved so much.
“Not so fine,” Warren admitted. “Why?”
“Because I want to know how to make it better.”
Warren shook his head. “There’s nothing to make it better. You can’t even fully save those omegas down there. They’re free, but they still insist on sleep in the place where they were prisoners.”
Lasius sighed. He’d thought of that many times. “If they want to stay down there, we can’t stop them.”
Warren said nothing to that.
“Maybe you should speak with Cole. Evzen wouldn’t mind if you talked to him.”
“Which one is Cole again?”
“The omega with his wolf ears pierced. He went through some of the stuff you’re talking about. He wanted to stay in the basement, wanted to keep working. He still wants to keep working, even though he’s free. Evzen told me once that Cole had never before seen a black man until he’d met Evzen. That’s how cut off from the rest of the world he was.”
Warren raised a brow at that, suggesting it wasn’t the average pleasure slave who was that cut off from the rest of society.
“That sounds extreme.”
Lasius nodded. “Maybe he can shine some light for us as to why they’re like that, but Cole is making baby steps now. He’s finally learning how to read, and if Evzen is there, he’ll watch some TV for a few minutes with the rest of us.”
“It sounds like he got the worst of the abuse in this house.”
“And if he can recover from that, then maybe the omegas who want to stay downstairs will, too. Maybe you and I can?”
Warren looked up at him then quickly looked away. They found themselves stopping in the foyer. No one else was around, but Warren seemed to not want to take another step. “You should stop feeling guilty for that.”