Kefir nodded.“Please?”
Ellery smiled encouragingly before looking back to the table.“Tell me about one of the other lines you’re working on.”
There were a dozen different lineages spread out across the desk.Squirming forward a little, Kefir managed to catch the edge of one particular page.He offered it silently to Ellery, just testing his reaction.
“Marrick’s family tree?”Ellery asked, as he studied the neatly arranged names and dates and all the careful lines connecting them.
Kefir nodded.“He joined the pride, sir.”
“And are you adding in the records of all the lions’ human lovers?”
Kefir shook his head, very firmly.“No.Just their mates, sir.”
“The difference being?”
“Mates don’t leave,” Kefir whispered, his voice suddenly rougher than it had been a moment before.
Ellery nodded very slowly, as if filing that away for future reference.“What about Ryland?Is he here, too?”
He loosened his hold just enough for Kefir to retrieve the appropriate piece of paper, but his arm slid back around Kefir as he returned to his lap, his grip on him as firm as ever.
“There’s not as much information on Ryland’s as on Marrick’s,” Ellery observed.
“It makes Ryland sad, sir, talking about his family.”
Ellery pressed a seemingly absentminded kiss onto the top of Kefir’s head.The same sympathy that had come into his expression when he’d realised how wrong it was for Cameron to be living without a pride came back.He seemed to understand Ryland’s situation without needing to be told any more.
Kefir glanced up at Ellery.He appeared interested and inclined to talk.It was too good an opportunity to waste.
“Luther and Blaine went to visit Marrick’s family,” he mentioned, as casually as he could manage.
“That must have been interesting,” Ellery murmured, most of his attention back on the lineage in his hand.
“They explained to his parents that they were going to take good care of him.”
Ellery’s lips twitched, as if he found something funny, but he didn’t try to share the joke with Kefir.
Kefir pushed on.“Who’s the leader of your pride, sir?”
Chapter Fourteen
For a few seconds, Ellery continued to stare at the complicated family tree on the page before him, but he suddenly found himself unable to give it his full attention.
Something was jumping up and down in his hindbrain shouting at the top of its voice.Kefir wasn’t recounting an amusing story about his two bratty little friends, or even the three bratty friends, if Marrick was counted among them.
The little lion wasn’t even just blithely displaying his lack of understanding of human families.
“Kitten, are you trying to find out who you’d need to speak to if you were attempting to propose to me?”A lifetime spent on the club scene came to Ellery’s rescue, the question sounded perfectly calm.
Kefir nodded, big brown eyes perfectly serious.
Ellery stared down at him, trying to work out how the hell he could sincerely think that was a good idea, while some insane little part of him wondered what his younger sister would think if a werelion turned up on her doorstep, asking for her permission to mate with her brother.
He bit back a chuckle when it threatened to break loose.No doubt Annabelle would calmly invite him in for a cup of tea and ask him what exactly his intentions were.In any other situation, it would have been hilarious.
But the kitten was actually serious.Ellery turned his gaze back to the paperwork in front of him while his mind raced in a dozen different directions.
“Propose us being mates,” he clarified.
