“I didn’t want to bother anyone.” Her voice held that frayed quality I was coming to hate: the sound of someone conditioned to minimize their own pain. “I just wanted to find— Um, come downstairs.”
“I’m going to pick you up,” he warned her before he bent, one arm sliding behind her knees.
My smirk grew as he lifted her with the reverent caution usually reserved for disarming explosives. She stiffened at first, then tentatively curled her fingers into his shirt, and I noted the exact moment he stopped breathing when her cheek brushed the edge of his jawline. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he lowered her onto the couch, and she stared up at him with those stormcloud eyes, awe and confusion swirling in their depths.
Zane choked on a laugh, muffling it into Brumous’ fur, and I bit the inside of my cheek. Our strategist brother, reduced to fussing over throw pillows and blanket placement.
“Bleeding night, just kiss her already,” Zane stage-whispered as Brumous rolled over for belly rubs.
“Next time, you wait for assistance,” Cas growled instead as he stood straight.
Zane waggled his eyebrows at me behind Cas’ back. I kicked his shin, biting back a laugh. Casimir was all hard edges and sharp words, but when it came to Seri, he was turning into an overprotective, borderline-obsessive caretaker. It was equal parts amusing and endearing.
To Seri, though, it probably felt overwhelming. She seemed to trust him, which was a win in itself, but every time she looked at him, there was something in her eyes. Something soft and confused. Something like yearning.
She didn’t understand yet that his intensity wasn’t anger or disapproval; it was just how he coped. He buried everything under layers of protocol and control, and when those layers slipped, it came out as this frantic need to protect, tact be damned.
“We’re compiling a list of supplies we need,” Cas told her, his tone all business. “What would you like to add?”
“Oh, I don’t need anything,” she murmured.
“We already have a manifest longer than Zane’s arrest record.” I leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Get anything you want.”
“What about lingerie?” Zane interjected with a waggle of eyebrows.
“Clothes would be a good idea,” I cut in, shooting him a warning look. “Proper ones that fit and make you feel good.”
“Yours are structurally unsound.” Cas nodded, clinical as a field general assessing gear. “Your shoes alone qualified as OSHA violations. They were so disgusting, I burned them.”
The color drained from Seri’s face.
As I floundered around for something to say that would take the hurt out of her eyes, Zane leapt in with his best deflection strategy: Distraction via humor.
“Oh, hey, Ko, remember Cas’ barefoot brawl with the sludge monster? Seri, you should have seen it! Cas stepped right into a puddle of acid ooze like it was nothing. His boots dissolved in, what, five seconds flat? And he just kept going, barefoot, slicing through those baddies like a maniac!”
I snickered at the memory. Cas had been so focused on the mission he hadn’t even noticed his boots were gone until Zane pointed it out afterward. The look on his face, half annoyance and half indifference, had been priceless.
As Zane embellished, Seri’s giggle burst out like a startled songbird, high, clear, and utterly disarming. Cas’ ears turned crimson. I tried catching his eye, willing him to see how lit up she was, but he was too busy glaring holes through Zane’s skull.
I sighed.
I needed to have a conversation with him later. If he kept bulldozing over her feelings, he was going to scare her off before she ever figured out that there really was a different Casimir buried deep, deep,deepwithin.
For now, though, I let Zane’s story do the heavy lifting.
At least until a soft, “Koko?” caught my attention.
“Yes, beloved?”
“Can we talk about something? In private?”
Three sets of dhampir hearing sharpened to lethal focus.
“Just me?” My lips twitched as I stood and walked toward her.
Cas returned to his chair, picked up his tablet, and started working again. Zane collapsed like a deflated balloon as he rolled onto his side, displacing Brumous, whowoofedin confusion.
“Yes.” She didn’t glance at the others, but her throat worked around whatever words came next. “I don’t know if I can trust Zane with a secret.”
