He stumbles to his feet, chuckling to himself, and then – spotting us on the staircase, all looking up at him – comes sprinting down to meet us.
“Fuck. Nurse Marion is a beast,” he says. “Don’t know how you survived so many years of that, Beau.”
“She was your nursemaid too?” I ask him.
“Yes,” he says. “Before I was sent away to school.”
“The academy, you mean?”
“No, school. I left for school when I was twelve years old.”
“Oh,” I say, imagining how lonely that must have been. I squeeze his hand, and he looks away.
“Are we abandoning the tour, then?” Dray says hopefully. “I can think of better ways to spend our time.”
Fly gives him a little poke. “I’m not sitting in the living room twiddling my thumbs while the four of you engage in some orgy,” he tells the shifter.
“Seriously?” Dray says.
“No way,” Fly counters.
“Kitten?” he appeals. I shake my head.
Beaufort ignores them both and starts walking down the stairs again, all of us following after him.
This time, we make it to the bottom, but no further before two men come bundling towards us out of nowhere. Each of them sports a head of platinum-white hair, albeit cut to different lengths and styled in different fashions, and they look incredibly similar to the shifter beside me.
“What the fuck?!” Dray cries and in the next moment the two men have Dray on the floor and all three are wrestling, curse words flying in all directions.
“Shouldn’t we help him?” I say to Beaufort and Thorne in alarm.
“No,” Beaufort says, completely nonplussed. “They’re his brothers.”
“Middle brothers,” Dray clarifies from the ground where he has an arm wrapped round one of the brother’s neck.
He points to this one. “Dyle.” Then the next, who is scrabbling to pin him to the ground. “Damson. Danders is probably here somewhere too,” he says, sniffing.
“Probably kissing someone’s ass somewhere,” the brother in the headlock says, the massive grin never leaving his face. “Wow, you’re freaking beautiful,” he says to me. “How did this asshole convince you to let him date you?”
Dray punches him in the stomach, kicks his other brother in the groin and then once again stumbles up onto his feet. His hair had shaken loose from its band and his shirt is slightly ripped.
“With my usual charm,” Dray says, “plus my talented tongue and my freaking great big cock.”
The brother nearest him snorts, hands clutching his crotch as he climbs to his feet. “The words pickled pecker come to mind,” he says.
“That’s not true,” Dray says. “Kitten, tell them.”
I open my mouth, but the other brother, Dyle, is already talking over me. “Are you from Slate?” he says from his knees, rubbing his stomach.
“Yes, I am,” I say, keeping my chin raised in defiance.
“Cool, man,” he says. “I’ve never met anyone from Slate before.”
“Right,” I say, because what the hell am I meant to say to that?
“Is it true they eat rats out there?” the other brother, Damson, says. “And use sawdust in the flour–”
“Boring,” the first brother says. He leans closer. “Is it true that you let Dray–”
