I’m guessing a swimming pool wouldn’t give you the same feelings?
Teilo shook his head. “No, Ben. Swimming pools have chemicals. I’ve seen them at some of the houses owned by people we’ve killed.” He wrinkled his nose. “They smelled nasty. The sea doesn’t smell that way.”
“Okay,” Nico said, “So you’d like to swim every day. We can do that on an island.”
“Yes, but…” Teilo reached over with his free hand, taking hold of the hand Nico wasn’t petting Ben’s cat with. He knew if he could find the right keywords, Nico would understand. “We spent so long in cages, my brother. We spent so long confined and controlled. Just hearing Ben and his brothers talking about places they’ve seen, and things they’ve done… Nico, how will we learn about the world and what’s in it, what we like and don’t like, and who we like and don’t like, if we’re not out in the world? At least some of the time, anyway, learning to live like men.”
Nico’s jaw tightened. “I want to be with you and Ben.”
“And I want that, too.” Teilo chuckled. “I wasn’t planning on running off without you. I’d get stuck not knowing how to buy a plane ticket, and it’s not like I can read directions to get anywhere. And besides, I don’t want to be without either of you. My soul would hurt if you weren’t close by. But can’t you see it, Nico?”Please see it.“We could learn what life is like outside of a cage. It could be marvelous.”
“It could be boring, noisy, and full of dangerous people.” Nico was grumpy, but Teilo knew he understood.
“Dangerous people are the least of our worries.” Teilo looked down at Ben, who was flicking his tail lazily, enjoying the scritches. “I’ve trusted you my whole life to watch my back, Nico, my love, and I know it doesn’t look like it at this moment, but this lazy cat would do the same. And it’s not like I don’t know how to fight. My kill count was the same as yours.”
I’m not sure traveling the world and leaving dead bodies all over the place is the sort of vacation I want to go on.Ben was teasing, Teilo could tell, and even that knowledge filled him with wonder. He was learning to understand teasing.
Nico tightened his squeeze on Teilo’s fingers. “I would give you the world and everything in it if it was in my power. I’ve always wanted to do that.” Teilo melted inside. Nico didn’t discuss his feelings often, but when he did… “But first, I want to get rid of those scientists and the trainers with them. I’m sorry, and I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I think it’s something we should do. First,” he added. “Then, anything you want. Anything at all.”
~/~/~/~
Nico
We’ve come so far.Nico made sure that thought was private, but it was real all the same. The fact that Teilo was learning to speak out for what he wanted was so huge, Nico was almost overwhelmed with it, and when his sweet mate laughed, Nico smiled on the inside every single time.
Little things, like ice cream. Not a big deal to most people. For sweet Teilo, who’d never had a Mom who’d give him ice cream and ask for help in the kitchen—Nico knew those moments were precious for his mate and Ben seemed to get a lot of enjoyment out of seeing them experience new things. That made what Teilo hoped for in their future life together all the more possible.
Only Nico couldn’t help the way he felt inside, either. He hadn’t said much when Kylo and his dad had been talking with Ben around the grill, or when he listened to the alligator having his rant. The scientists and their trainers were a danger, if not to him and his mates, to other shifters.
Nico knew how horrific life could be growing up in a cage with a permanent lure in his back, injecting him so he couldn’t shift into his human form. Never knowing if they’d get fed on any day, or even if they’d be given water. Learning to defecate in the corner of their tiny space in an effort to keep their fur clean because knowing if he and Teilo didn’t, they’d get washed down with power hoses that hurt. He didn’t understand the big concepts that Ben used when he suggested he knew how Nico was feeling—words like compassion and empathy. He just knew, deep in his soul, that if those men weren’t wiped off the face of the earth, they’d keep doing their experiments, and more children would die.
Now he had to put those thoughts into words for his mate. “The men are demanding money. They want to build another house like the one they kept us in. This time it might be a bigger house holding even more shifters, and be even harder for people to escape from.” Nico kept his focus on Teilo, although he knew his precious Ben could hear every word. “We’re the only ones who can stop them because we’re the only people living who know what they look like and what they’re capable of.”
“I want the killing to be over so much.” Teilo’s brilliant eyes shone with unshed tears. Nico hated he was the cause, but he knew at a gut level it had to be done.
“I do too, honestly, I do. I want a life filled with swims in the sea, and lazing in bed with my sexy mates, of eating ice cream and all the other wonderful food stuffs we’ve not even heard of, let alone tried. Teilo, my cage brother, my soul mate, can you honestly tell me you’d be happy doing all those things, if there is a chance somewhere some other shifter children were being made and manipulated, or worse stolen and tortured until they either died or were killed just for a meal. Would you condemn them to the life we had when you know we were the only two who survived? Because if you say yes, you can actually do that, then that’s fine, I’ll drop it and never mention it again.”
“You already know my answer.” Teilo was staring at the fingers he had in Ben’s fur. “But when will it be over? Did you want us to go after the Devil and his men, too? What about the original council members who set up the assassin scheme? The list of who’s involved in all of this is huge—it could take our whole life to track down all these people and still not know for sure that the assassin programs has stopped.”
Nico shook his head. “No. There’s other men who want to win that fight. Kylo and Niro, the grumpy alligator… that’s their fight, not ours. I believe, from what I’ve heard, that the assassin program was wrong. What happened here in Paraguay was something on a whole different level. It wasn’t the money that hurt us, it was the people who took that money and created us. And now they want to do it all over again. You heard Beaumont. They threatened the council just to get more money.”
“But we bombed the house. The knowledge that made us is gone.”
“No!” Nico knew what Teilo was doing—he was making sense of things in his own head, in his own way. Despite the way he’d been raised, Teilo had been born with a sweet soul—a soul that agonized before every kill, and shook with silent tears after every job was done before they locked them up again.
He softened his voice. “No, my cage brother, you know that’s not so. Those papers and records we bombed are accounts of what those men have in their heads. The men carry that information with them—the four scientists and the trainers. That’s why they have to die, so they can take their knowledge with them straight to hell where it can’t hurt anyone else. You know this.”
“I know, but when does it end, Nico? How much longer do we have to pay for what they did to us? How much more blood do we have to spill before we can be free, and happy to just love our mates, learn about the world, and have ice cream? How much more death?”
“One more job,” Nico vowed. “Just this, and I swear the only fighting from then on I’ll do will be to protect your rights to be free. Our rights to be free. I promise.”
Ben shifted, cat one minute, and sexy human the next. He pulled Teilo under one arm and then reached for Nico’s hand. “I agree. The scientists and the trainers who were directly responsible for the abuses you suffered should die. And I believe we need to do that ourselves, to get the closure and the surety we need that it was done. We all need to agree, though. All of us. One more time?”
“Agreed.” Nico wanted it so bad he could taste it and he could sense through their bond Ben wanted it, too.
The tears were still in Teilo’s eyes as his back straightened and he nodded firmly. “Agreed.”
“And then I can spend the rest of our days showing you the many wonders life can offer. That’s my promise to you—both of you.” Ben sounded so sure, and there was a part of Nico, who was also tired of fighting, who thought that sounded like a great idea.
