Chapter Eighteen
Crilus
I woke up earlier than I expected to. The night before had morphed into a day and passed into a night again before this morning woke me up. Right? That was how it happened? It didn’t all happen in one night, had it? Only it had. I blinked at the bright morning sun shining through the window. Whatever timer Teal had the shades on worked even when he wasn’t around.
Pierce lay on his back, one arm wrapped around me and the other over his eyes. His heart beat slow and steady under my ear and I held my breath to listen to it. Maybe if I laid still long enough, I’d fall back to sleep. Sleeping was easy. It wasn’t messy like my waking life.
“Your phone keeps zapping,” Pierce said, and I startled away from him.
“Sorry, mate. I thought you realized I was awake,” he yawned.
“You were too still,” I shook my head even though he couldn’t see me. “Is that a vampire thing?”
“A bit and it’s a bit of guard training too. I didn’t want to wake you. You were sleeping well until your phone started going off.”
“Zapping?” I arched a brow.
“That’s the sound the vibration makes. Zap-zap. Zap-zap.”
Laughing, I reached over him and grabbed my phone from the nightstand. Downstairs, breakfast was ready and Dad sent me a text to let me know. The rest of the texts were from Teal, Clarence, and Morvan. The first two talked about how they managed to wrap up fixing the windows, but they weren’t certainthey’d gotten all the glass. Morvan and Rho texted me a video of Baby Cutter rolling around as a little fleshy gargoyle with a big, floofy straw-colored lion’s mane.
“I know we’re supposed to be doing the whole matingmoon thing, but I don’t think I can have sex in Teal’s bed. There’s a washer here. I don’t think he’d care but I don’t think I could do it. It’s too weird.”
“Is that your excuse for putting off our claiming vows or is that your way of saying you want to go back to your place.”
I bit my lip. All of the above was sort of true.
“I’m more than happy to go with you to the bar when you feel up to it,” Pierce said when I didn’t reply. “Though, if you’re just looking for a place to hang out, that has a bed none of the triplets have ever romped in or even slept in, I do have a house. I don’t live in my car. In fact, I have two. An apartment downtown for when I’m working in the city and a modest house on my family’s estate. We call it an estate but these days it’s only me and my parents. There are two other houses from when my grandparents were on this side of the door. They’re currently unoccupied. We use them as guest houses on the rare occasion we have guests. So, if Creon wanted to accompany us ---”
I put my hand over his mouth.
“I know you think I’m immature but I’m not taking my dad on our matingmoon.”
“My parents are in Greece,” Pierce shrugged.
“I think maybe the downtown apartment would be better. Closer to the bar and ---” I wanted to facepalm. “How do people make their lives fit together?”
“Mate,” he rolled onto his side to face me. “You’re the only one stressing out about what that looks like. Things’ll work out. I’m used to sleeping in different places throughout the week. I am partial to my home on the estate but I don’t need to be there every night.”
“How are you not overwhelmed right now?” I growled.
“I am,” he laughed. “Guard training.”
“I—How—What are you freaked out about then?” I demanded. “I don’t want to be the only one who sounds like a loon.”
“I’m not freaking out. I’m trained against that. What I am feeling is the overwhelming urge to kiss you to calm your scent. Maybe devour you. Interpret that in the most sexual way possible because you’re not food,” he smirked. “Also, I’d like to swing to the GGB and eat Sharon Claudis in a way that totally means she’s food. Plus, I want to know everything about you, and I don’t mean the BS they collect in files. I want to know what your favorite color is and the book you hate the most and---”
“The book I hate the most?” I laughed.
“Yeah. What people hate says a lot more about them than the things they like. And I’d really like to drop my glamour.”
“Your glamour?” I sat up. “What? You change how you look?”
“Not exactly,” Pierce sat up and stretched his arms high above his head and popped his neck. “Perhaps it’s not glamour the way you interrupt glamour. It’s the act of hiding one’s aura to keep the effects of magic to oneself or to prevent every passerby from knowing how much magic you have.”
“So, either you’re bragging or walking around using up a lot of magic all the time.”
“Only when I’m not at home.”
