by Holley Trent
Nothing would surprise Mallory about those Halls anymore.
She gave Keith a sly look, pondering the limits of what all of them could do.
Pondering how remarkable it was that a woman like her was allowed anywhere near them.
Muriel took a deep breath and tried again for that mask of serene composure she so often wore. “I…would be the first to admit that I allowed snakes to nest in our midst during my time as queen here. I won’t make any excuses for the things that went uncontrolled while I was distracted.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Keith called down to her. “No one could expect you to do the jobs of so many people without missing some things.”
Mallory could hear as many murmurs of agreement as criticisms. She wanted to march down there and shake every single person who thought that Muriel hadn’t given that community her all. The woman was long overdue for a good rest.
Muriel put up her hands and shook her head. “I appreciate your support, dear one, but let us stay focused on what needs resolution right now. You can all do a postmortem of my reign when these proceedings end.”
“Let’s get on with the sentencing, then,” one of the Fallonites called out.
“Let’s,” Tess agreed, leering at him.
Mallory edged to the front of the balcony and tightened her grip around the railing.
Her father chose that very moment to look up.
Apparently, his shift in gaze made everyone else down there turn to look, too.
“Isn’t that one of them?” the Fallonite delegate in the council who wasn’t Dahlia asked. “One of his children?”
“My…name is Mallory.” She tried to sound brave and unbothered in that way Tess always did, but the words had come out in a warble.
So pitiful.
“Why are you seated with one of Muriel’s grandchildren?”
Tess gave her eyes a roll that could be seen from space. “What do you think she’s doing? If you ask obvious questions, you’re going to get obvious answers.”
“I…I think it’s a fair question,” Dahlia said. Her voice was so quiet her mic almost didn’t pick it up. “So there are no misunderstandings.”
“I—” Mallory started.
Keith shouted over her, “This is boring. Can we get on with this? She’s my woman.”
“What was that you were saying about snakes in your midst, Muriel?” the second Fallonite asked.
Muriel whisked around, fury in her eyes, and looked like she was about to charge at the woman, but Tess moved between the two and cleared her throat.
“We’re not going to do this,” Tess said. “There are definitely snakes in this room,” she said to the Fallonite, “and my half-Fallonite gut is telling me you might be one of them.”
“How dare you?”
“And how dare you come in here and insult my soon-to-be sister-in-law with no basis except for your own premeditated agenda, huh?” Tess strode toward her, just as angry as Muriel had been. “You forget who I am. You forget what my capabilities are. I know a liar when one speaks, and you don’t even have enough magic to obscure your treachery.” Tess was nose-to-nose with the woman, who was indiscreetly trying to edge her chair back.
“I…I motion to replace the delegate from Fallon,” Dahlia mumbled into her mic.
The other woman pushed her chair back, knocking it onto the floor in fury. “Suit yourselves,” she shouted. “Do what you like. You’re all weak-minded sheep.”
“And you’re obviously itching for a fight you’re not going to win,” Tess said. “I knocked you out a year ago, Kelly. If you’d like a reminder of what that feels like, I will be glad to humor you.”
Apparently, Kelly didn’t want that reminder.
She stormed off and tried to go through the door Mrs. Petersen had gone through, but the wolf there barred her exit.
She wasn’t going anywhere—not yet.
A new representative from Fallon was quickly appointed to the council. Tess took her seat and pointed up to Mallory and then to her siblings seated in the front row. “Let’s clear the air in as few words as possible. If I hear anyone in this community maligning the characters of those three individuals or their children, I will personally hunt you down and give you five seconds to convince me that you would like to continue living here. I have very little mercy for people who are so desperate for vengeance that they blame innocents who are victims the same way they are. My grandmother and I personally vetted Mallory and Marty before they came here. We know what they know. We know what their magic feels like. We know how apart they are from their father, who’d told them they would never be welcome here, by the way. And Elliott…” Tess turned to him. “Well, I guess I don’t understand Elliott, but his sisters do.”
As much as anyone could, Mallory supposed.
“And I trust them. You will accept them here. Many of you already have. Those of you who make anyone in this community feel unwelcome based on something out of their control—well, I already told you what would happen. If you ever see me coming for you, you’d better go ahead and start packing your fucking bags because five seconds isn’t a hell of a lot of time to convince someone you’re not a shit stain.”
The crowd resettled. Mallory’s heart swelled with…something she couldn’t quite name, and her thoughts practically burst with psychic well-wishes from down below. She wanted to find a corner to hide in until it was all over so she could process the surge of emotions and figure out what it all meant.
Keith squeezed her hand and whispered into her thoughts, “You don’t have to stay. We can go if you want.”
She wanted to go. She wanted to leave that place and hide, but she held firm.
“I…I need to hear,” she whispered.
He nodded.
“We are in unanimous agreement that the individual standing in front of us is guilty,” Tess said. “Prior to these proceedings, we also agreed that should that be the case, he would serve his sentence at the discretion of the clan in Fallon. They were more severely affected by his actions. They should handle his punishment and rehabilitation, if such is at all possible. Are there any objections in the room?”
No one dared speak. At least, not aloud.
Tess wasn’t wiping her hands of the situation by any stretch of the imagination. She was not only banishing a lifelong resident, but also sending a message. There would be no easy punishments for the people who hurt the clan. Anyone who had a part in facilitating Magnus Anders’s kidnapping of missing children from Norseton was about to get a rude wakeup call.
“They’d best just turn themselves in, hmm?” Keith murmured and kissed the back of Mallory’s hand.
“Was I thinking too loudly?”
“Mmm. A little bit.”
Down below, Dan was vociferously protesting as a couple of wolves attempted to hand him off to the designated security representatives from Fallon. Then he looked straight up to the balcony and shouted at Mallory, “Do something! Be useful for once in your life. If you’re going to sit up there beside him—”
Tess walked past the screaming wretch, snapping her fingers behind his head as she went. She murmured a bored-sounding, “Fuck you very much.”
Dan crumbled to the ground.
Tess continued on toward the exit, chatting amiably with her cousin as she went.
Elliott and Marty looked up to the balcony.
Mallory shrugged and turned her hands over. She was too overwhelmed to communicate much else.
Elliott looked down at his phone and his fingers flew over the screen. Seconds later, Mallory’s phone buzzed.
She read his text.
He was told he wouldn’t get caught.
She quickly texted back, Told by whom? and Erin sent a similar query. Down on ground level, Marty nudged him and mouthed, “What?”
He grimaced and typed more.
Anders, when they hooked up. That’s all I know. That’s what they tell me.
Who is “they,” Elliott?
He looked up at Mallory and shrugged apologetically.
Before Mallory could follow up further, the Fallon contingency collected Dan’s unconscious form from the floor and dragged him out of the room.
Muriel said into her mic. “These proceedings will be closed for now. Mrs. Petersen will remain in Norseton. Her sentencing will be made public through the security office by noon tomorrow. As far as our other issues, we’ll keep you apprised on meeting dates. They’ll be posted at least twenty-four hours prior to start, though I imagine in a community like this, word will spread instantaneously the moment Lora puts them on the schedule. Now. It’s been a while since we’ve served a group this size, and we’ve been short on staff for about a year, but if you’ll be patient with us, we’ve prepared some refreshments and we’ll get them served.”
Surprisingly, most people—Afótama and Fallonite alike—stayed put.
Not Mallory, though.
She found herself lifted to her feet.
Asher nuzzled his face against her neck from behind and whispered, “You all right?”
“I…don’t know? My heart is beating so fast right now, and everything feels resolved because he’s gone, but maybe when things slow down, I’ll change my mind and decide they haven’t after all?”
“You feel like that because he’s a brazen shitbag who wouldn’t give up any information. Also, I think you just don’t want to believe you’ll be fine. But, you will be, okay?” He led her out from around her chair and to the door. “Call your mother. Tell her what happened. She’ll tell you everything’s fine, I promise.” He unlocked the door.
“And then what?”
“And then,” Keith said, moving past them both, “you’ll tell her you’ll see her and the kids in the morning.”
“What’s happening tonight?”
He snorted. “Lock that booth, will you Asher?” Keith disappeared around the corner in the direction of the private suites.
Chuckling, Asher did as he asked, never letting go of Mallory. “Call your mother, Mallory.”
“I heard you, but why?”
“Because you have business to handle. I think you know that already.”
She did.
It was probably about time.
CHAPTER FORTY
“I hope you don’t run away this time.” Keith’s clothes were off and he leaned against the headboard of his bed, eyes narrowed with suspicion.
Mallory grimaced. “Fleeing from potentially dangerous people is what animals do. You don’t need to be a scientist to know that.”
“Am I dangerous?”
Asher, in the attached bathroom, chortled.
“You’re supposed to be supporting me in this,” Keith called out to him.
“I’ll never be anything but honest, lover. You are dangerous. All of you Halls and Dahls. Hinting otherwise is patently disingenuous.” Asher turned off the bathroom light and padded into the room.
Mallory’s gaze was hungry, lingering on his lean torso and trim waist. The semi-erect cock that bobbed gently as he moved. She closed her eyes and groaned.
She had no business getting flustered over a male body. She was a nurse. She’d seen hundreds of them—thousands, maybe.
But they hadn’t been Asher. She hadn’t been intimate with those men, and certainly not while intending to enfold a second man into her embrace as well.
She was being so greedy but couldn’t bring herself to care.
Asher sat on the edge of the bed near Keith and pulled Mallory between his opened thighs. His hair was loose and fell over his shoulders in untidy waves. He was hers.
They were both hers.
There was no need for shame.
“You’ll be fine if…I go with him to school and you stay here?” Asher asked.
She sighed.
She’d known a question like that would be bound to crop up. They were logical men. Keith needed to complete his education, and Asher was dependent on him for companionship. For a lot of years, Keith had been the only person he could trust.
“How far away do you think you’ll go?” she asked Keith.
“Staying in the state. I’ll be here every weekend and during breaks and such.”
“Oh.” She didn’t like the scheme, but Keith needed that adjustment time to grow into whatever role he would take in the Afótama hierarchy. Maybe by the time he graduated, they’d all know what that was.
And maybe the partial separation would be the transition they all needed to make sense of the muddle they were about to make.
“That’ll give us time to plan and figure out what our household is supposed to look like,” Asher said. “The kids need to be inured to the idea.”
“Four years is a long time.” She sounded pitiful—probably as pitiful as she’d thought her mother had sounded when Mallory moved out to get married and start college.
“Shouldn’t take that long if I do summers,” Keith said. “And I’ll do what I can remotely. I thought you could go, too, but Asher reminded me that the kids would be better off staying put here. They’re still integrating. It’d be cruel to move them around.”
“And I just accepted a new job.”
“You don’t need a job.”
“Don’t start that.”
“I’m just stating a fact. It’s not common for people close to the central family to work for outside parties. There’s always so much to do, especially as the clan grows.”
“We can discuss this later,” Asher interjected.
Perhaps he’d observed Mallory’s growing anxiety over the topic. Or perhaps he was simply impatient. Either way, he gathered Mallory up and deposited her onto the bed, kissing her neck, down her shoulder, her arm. Relaxing her with his always-gentle touch and edging her ever closer to Keith.
“It’ll be a transition, hmm? You’ll work out what your place is as time goes on, just like the rest of us.”
“It seems you already know your place,” she whimpered.
His fingers were between her legs, shyly cradling her sex, his middle finger tentatively rasping along her slit.
“What?” he asked. “Managing the two of you? I guess that could be a full-time job.”
“Doesn’t come with vacations,” Keith said.
“I’m sure there are other benefits.” Asher leaned in for a kiss, which Keith gave in peaceful compliance. “What do you need me to get for you?”
“Why don’t you open the drawer and let Mallory have a look?”
Perplexed, Mallory waited for Asher to reach across him and work open the nightstand drawer.
She peered inside, gaping, and then coyly looked to the men. Forcing a swallow down her suddenly tight throat, she reached into the drawer and plucked from amongst the pile of toys a bottle of lube and a condom, then nudged the drawer closed. “You’re certainly well stocked.”
Keith shrugged. “Gotta do something about the urges. When you don’t feel like fucking anyone, you look for other solutions.”
His “solutions” would be finding their way into an opaque trash bag. Urgently.
All except one or two, maybe. She didn’t think he’d be getting much use out of human-like latex mouths—equipped with tongues—and molded pussies in the foreseeable future. The plugs could stay. Those could be useful for all three parties.
Keith smirked. “Stop looking at me like that. Come here.” His hands landed on her hips but his eyes were on her face. He pulled her closer, inch by inch, until she was straddling his lap. “You’re looking at me like you’re devising schemes to clean me up and make me respectable.”
“No. I’m looking at you and wondering when you found time to make use of any of those, um, health aids. I was in and out of this room for months and never saw them.”
“I wasn’t at all discreet. You just never caught me.” His grin was predatory. His hands searching, cupping her breasts, working her nipples into tingling, straining peaks while Asher pried the lube from her grip. “I wanted you to catch me.”
“You’re
awful. I bet you wouldn’t even have pretended to be ashamed.”
“Nope. I would have kept right on just to see how long it took you to look away.”
She wanted to believe she was the kind of decent human being who’d look away, but the idea of Keith nude with his body flushed with arousal, straining to come, may have been a spectacle too hypnotizing to ignore.
“You’re so bad,” Asher told him. He must have taken the condom Mallory had been pawing because he was working it down Keith’s hard shaft then. The bottle of lube lay in wait on the bed beside him. “You’d do anything for attention, wouldn’t you?”
“Probably.”
“Something to keep in mind,” Asher murmured in a conspiratorial aside to Mallory.
Oh, I won’t forget.
Asher must have opened the lube without Mallory noticing. He was slicking it between her legs, and suddenly his lips were on hers. She’d been so enchanted by Keith’s taunting smirk and the tease of satisfaction on his face that she’d forgotten that she should be dividing her attention.
Her bones went weak and flimsy with his kiss. She found herself leaning in to increase the press of Asher as his fingers worked gently into her, fluttering against her mound, tickling the straining peak.
“So pretty,” Keith murmured. His hand worked lazily up and down his shaft as they broke the kiss, and Mallory stared hungrily.
“Go on,” Asher said. “I can share. Let him have a taste, too.”
She complied without argument, easing closer to the cock Keith held erect for her. She only held back because his free hand was on her hip keeping her from moving farther.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, Mallory,” he said. “I can’t predict that.”
“I understand.”
Nodding, he dropped the hand from her hip, and she eased onto him with exquisite slowness. Asher was behind her, his hands bracketing her sex and parting her. Making the passage easier. Helping her balance.
“Hands-on type, are you?” she whispered.
“Always.”
“Thank you for sharing.”
She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw his cheeks flaming red briefly before he moved to hide his face in her hair.