Crilus let out a long sigh and handed the phone back to me. Teddy wasn’t thrilled at Crilus’s lack of conversation skills, but he’d have to deal.
“You’re welcome here. You, Mori, and Preston, but in the guesthouse. The staff will help you. Unless you need my particular skillset, I don’t want to be disturbed.”
“Is Crilus in heat?” Teddy asked.
I almost told him to mind his own business, but Crilus started stroking my dick.
“Teddy?” Crilus said his name, amplifying his voice to be sure he was heard.
“Yeah, Cri?” Teddy asked.
“We’re going now. Do you know where we are? Ask Medwin. I bet he knows. I’m going to go now because we’re busy. Tell Mori I love him, and I’ll kill Venal for hurting him later, okay?”
“Venal is in cust---” I never heard the last part of Teddy’s sentence because Crilus hung up the phone and tossed it to the foot of the bed.
And that was the real beginning of Crilus’s heat cycle. I decided then and there I’d be the one who did my best to stay in touch with the others as to stay aware of the threat level posed by Sharon Claudis. Later, Crilus was going to feel like an asshat for not caring more about the fight, but heat always ran the risk of making omegas oblivious to the rest of the world. For a second, I wondered if that made me a bigot or a cave alpha.
“Heat is serious business,” Crilus murmured as he scooted down the bed so that he was at eye level with my dick. “I care. I care so much but I can’t help them right now. Maybe if she came here,” he looked up at me. “I think if she came here right now, I’d tear her limb from limb and leave her corpse for the blackbirds to pick at but she’s not here. This is here though.” He squeezed my cock for emphasis, making me moan and lose my train of thought for a second.
“You smell so good, mate,” I ran my fingers through his hair.
He was right. We’d worry about Sharon Claudis if she showed up. Otherwise, there wasn’t a thing we could do about it while Crilus was in heat. I did my best to live my life as anything except a cave alpha but when it came to Crilus I didn’t want to share his attention with anyone else right now. He was mine. All mine.
Mine.
The word dug into my brain, and I couldn’t let go of it as Crilus slid his warm, glorious mouth over my dick. I lost myself in his slobbery mouth moving up and down my shaft and his arms wrapping around my middle to hold me in place. It was a good thing that we came all the way out here. In town, someone might’ve disturbed us. Someone might’ve tried to crash on the sofa and if they got too close to Crilus right now…
I didn’t want to think about what might’ve happened. My fangs elongated at the thought of someone brushing against him because he was mine. He was mine and he was going to have my baby and no one else’s. I entwined my fingers in his thick, soft hair and ground my hips forward, savoring his soft, moist mouth. This was perfect. He was perfect. He was perfect and all mine. He was perfect and the start of the next chapter of my life. The best chapter, if I had to make a prediction. When I came in his mouth, I knew we were going to lose track of the rest of the world for a while. The timing wasn’t great but at the same time it was the best damn timing in the world.
And lose track of the others we did. I had vague recollections of the staff informing me the trio had arrived. They carried baskets of snacks into the kitchen even though it wasn’t their job to do housework. They maintained the landscape in exchange for a decent salary and houses on the grounds of the estate. I felt a bit sheepish anytime one of them went above and beyond and tried to remember to make note of it so that their pay wouldreflect it. I never wanted to be the boss who took advantage of his staff. Every minute they spent going above and beyond for Crilus and I was a minute that took away from their free time.
Crilus did get his way, and we romped and made love in every room of the house. Several times in most rooms. We alternated between romping, sleeping, eating, and occasionally showing off magic for each other. The house was littered with the remnants of blood and elven magic mingling together. There was a tree growing through the floor in the kitchen and I wasn’t sure which one of us did that. Logically, I leaned toward it being Crilus’s doing but he had no recollection of it but since it offered fresh peaches each day, I decided that it was a problem to solve when we didn’t have real problems hanging above our heads.
I lost track of time and the numbers on the clock became meaningless. Occasionally, I’d remember to check our phones. So many people tried to talk to us that it was almost obscene. Their names blurred together, and I started only answering text messages from my parents or his. Everyone else could wait. If Mori and the others wanted to know if we were alive they could just peep through the windows or something. What didn’t they understand about our situation? This was our time and Crilus was mine. All mine.
“All yours,” Crilus mumbled back to me sleepily whenever this thought crossed my mind.
Sometime during our hideaway my parents returned from Greece. When I saw their car in the driveway I tried to figure out how many days we’d been locked inside the house together but had nothing to go on. Did they return on time? Shorten their trip? Spend even longer in Greece? I wanted them to meet Crilus at some point but not right now. I wasn’t ready to share. I pulled him tighter to me at the thought and he nuzzled into my chest.
As the days wore on it was almost impossible to believe that we had lived any other way before. Logically, I knew I had awhole life waiting to be lived on the other side of the front door but was it actually real? Sure, the people outside the house were real, but had those things actually happened? There was no way my Velcro elf would have run away from me. We didn’t even shower alone anymore.
Things might’ve gone on this way forever if not for the empty blood freezer. Each of the houses on the estate had a fridge, complete with a freezer, that stored only blood in various forms. In the beginning, it had been restocked often and extra was sent in the snack baskets left for us on the porch. Now? It was empty. I checked the other fridge. It wasn’t empty but there wasn’t any blood in it. Was this their grand plan to steal my mate? To starve me out? Did they want to see me crazed and ---
That was ridiculous. I shook my head and leaned against the fridge. Had I actually lost my mind? Everyone on the estate was either related to me or Crilus in some extended way. Well, maybe not Teddy, but he was a friend.
Crilus’s heat had waned a few days before. We’d even taken time to straighten up the house and cook actual meals. We weren’t ready to rejoin the rest of them yet. Maybe we’d never be ready. We could stay right here forever inside my wards that kept us safe and happy. In here not even Crilus’s haunting elven granny could find us.
“Sweetheart, did you move the bloodshakes?” I called out, hopeful that this was all some great big misunderstanding. My throat burnt with the thirst, and I didn’t want to snatch up Mori or Preston and make them into a snack. Mori. It would have to be Mori. Preston was pregnant and Teddy didn’t look like his blood would taste very good.
“No,” Crilus came through the house, wearing only one of my shirts. A black one that hung down to his knees. “I don’t mess with the blood stuff. I’m afraid I’ll mess it up or make it go bad or something by storing it in the wrong spot.”
“They didn’t send more,” I said. “The store hasn’t even sent the prearranged delivery.”
“Weird,” Crilus said, crossing the kitchen to join me and searching both fridges for something I’d overlooked. “Can you call them? Maybe they’re running behind or you drank more than usual? I’ll text Mori too. If I can find my phone that is. I can’t believe once upon a time I lived with it glued to my hand.”
Someone knocked on the door and we turned in unison to hiss. Crilus’s crow caw-cawed and I took his hand. For a moment, we figured whoever knocked might go away but then they knocked again.
“Is it the delivery from the store? They’ve never knocked before,”Crilus said over our mating link.
