Kefir turned to see Arslan standing next to them, a slight smile on his lips.
“Congratulations,” the leader said to him.He glanced at Ellery, too.“Congratulations to you both.”
Ellery reached out and shook the other man’s hand.
Kefir was quite sure that there was something passing between them that he didn’t really understand.But it didn’t feel like he needed to understand it right then.Kefir smiled slightly.He had enough to do, making sure he understood everything that was going on between him and his master.Everyone else in the pride would just have to take care of themselves for a little while.
Only a few more minutes had passed between them, when Kefir saw Ellery looking toward the door.
“The sacrifice has already left, sir.”He’d seen Luther and Blaine lead him out to the car a few minutes before.
Ellery raised an eyebrow.
Kefir cleared his throat.“The pride is expected to remain here while the sacrifice is in the den.No one would think us rude if we wanted to leave now.”
Ellery chuckled and sent him out of the room with a tap on the arse.It didn’t take either of them long to pull on their clothes and throw a few of their other possessions into Ellery’s backpack.
Before Kefir knew it, he was on the back of Ellery’s motorcycle, clinging tightly to his master as they sped toward his new home.If anything, Ellery seemed to ride even faster that night.
The air whipped past them.The engine roared, sending vibrations singing through Kefir’s body.His fingers clenched against Ellery’s leather jacket.Behind the visor on the borrowed helmet, he closed his eyes tight and concentrated very hard on keeping his claws to himself and leaving both his gloves and Ellery’s jacket unharmed.
When the bike had rolled to a stop outside an old house on the far side of town, Ellery easily lifted Kefir off the machine and set him neatly on the pavement.Kefir’s legs weren’t very steady beneath him.They still seemed to shudder in time with the vibrations that had purred through the bike and with the nerves that swirled inside him too.
He remained upright and reasonably steady as he followed Ellery up a path to a front door, but he wasn’t entirely sure how.
“Would you like a tour, kitten?”Ellery asked, as he dropped the latch and sealed them into their new home.
Kefir nodded.
Ellery’s hand came to rest on the small of Kefir’s back as he led him through the house.It wasn’t a sprawling maze of rooms like the pride’s den, but it was far bigger than Kefir’s flat.More importantly, it was Ellery’s—Kefir could feel his presence in every inch of it.Ellery seemed to fill the whole place.The scent of leather seemed to wind through it all, too, with just an underlying hint of petrol and oil.
Kitchen.Living room.Kefir took in every detail, relishing this peek Ellery was giving him into his life.It was all perfect, except for the fact that the more that Kefir studied the space around him, the more aware he became of the fact the house wasn’t quite as full of Ellery as he first thought.As Kefir walked around, he couldn’t help but notice that there was something missing from the picture he was getting of Ellery’s life.
There were shelves that were empty.There was an empty wardrobe in the bedroom, an empty space on one side of the shelf above the bathroom sink.In the office Ellery had set up in a spare bedroom so that he could do his paperwork from the bike shop at home, there was a practically empty desk.A conspicuously empty filing cabinet stood next to all the overflowing ones.
There was a void in Ellery’s life, but it didn’t feel like a space that had been left empty for long.There was no dust on those bare shelves.The gaps had the appearance of something that had only been created recently.
There were two notebooks on the otherwise empty desk in the office.Kefir glanced toward them.A moment later, he was standing directly in front of the desk, staring down at them in fascination.A family tree was roughly sketched out on the top page of one of the note pads.Ellery’s name was listed there, along with a great many other Elleries.
It was his master’s family line.
Kefir tore his gaze away from it and looked at the top page of the other notebook.There was a heading at the top.Clubs where Cameron/Caramel might be working.The first few were already crossed off.
Ellery had promised to help Kefir find Cameron.He was keeping his promise.
And Ellery had been listening when Kefir had told him about adding information about human mates to the information he was gathering on the prides, too.He’d made out his family tree for him, as if he knew he was going to be Kefir’s mate.And he’d left the information there on the desk for him to find, as if he knew he’d be visiting that room.
Kefir turned back to his master, but Ellery spoke before Kefir could find a single word.“Tour’s not quite over yet.”He walked out of the office.
As Ellery led him into another room, Kefir quickly found himself looking for spaces Ellery might have created in there.But there weren’t any.The room was full.There were no gaps that needed to be filled.
Kefir couldn’t help but feel a little sad about that.
Chapter Sixteen
Ellery bit back a smile.His newly acquired kitten looked thoroughly fascinated by his new surroundings—the vanilla bits and pieces as much as the hints of leather dotted around the house.But, as Kefir stood in the middle of the playroom, there wasn’t any vanilla for him to rest his eyes on.It was all leather in there.All kink.
As Kefir ran his eyes over the rack of toys on the far wall, Ellery leaned against the doorframe and admired the picture the little lion created, sweet and clueless in the middle of it all.
