“Austin?” I grimaced. “Austin, I'm sorry, I forgot to tell you that it's hard to receive calls here. Text me.”
“Vervain... help. Ec... the...”
“Austin?” I didn't like the sound of that. “Text me, Austin.Text!”
The phone went dead.
The text didn't come. I texted him. He didn't respond.
“Aw, sugar puffs,” I cursed.
Chapter Two
“Austin?” I pounded frantically on the front door of Lieutenant Austin Wright's Lincoln Logs house in Lexington, Texas. “Austin, are you home? Austin!”
It had been morning at Pride Palace but Texas was a good seven hours behind us so that made it a few hours after midnight there. The hour of his call worried me even more.
“I'm coming! Hold your horses.” Austin shouted as the sound of his boots hitting the hardwood floors carried out to us.
“Thank goodness,” I muttered.
Austin yanked open the door and panted, “Sheesh, Vervain, take my door off, why don't ya?” He had a flannel shirt on, unbuttoned (very nice abs, by the way), with his usual jeans and cowboy boots. His short, sandy-blond hair looked as if he had run his hands through it but not in a grooming sort of way, and there were shadows under his pale blue eyes. Still, those eyes were sharp—despite the alcohol on his breath—when they skittered over the group I'd brought with me. “You here for battle or what?”
“I wasn't sure what we'd be facing,” I huffed irritably. “I tried to text you but you didn't text me back.”
“Oh?” He pulled out his phone and peered at it. “Huh. Yeah, my text tone isn't as loud as my ringtone. I didn't hear it.”
“Unbelievable.” I turned to tell the gang of Intare I'd brought with me, “You guys can head home, it looks as if it was a false alarm.”
“Tima,” the lion-shifters murmured as they gave me a respectful head bow, then traced back to Pride Palace.
The rest of my group—Trevor, Kirill, Azrael, and Viper—stayed behind. I would have brought my other husbands—Odin, Re, and Arach—but Odin and Re were taking care of some business in their territories and Arach was in Faerie. And yes, I have multiple husbands—six, to be exact, and one boyfriend—it's a lioness magic thing.
“I don't think I'll ever get used to that.” Austin stared at the space the Intare had been standing in. Then he shook it off and waved us inside. “Come on in. Y'all want somethin' to drink?”
We filed into Austin's living room and over to the living room, where a couch and chairs with wooden frames and cotton-covered cushions sat atop the only rug in the room—a braided rag rug. An antler floor lamp stood at one end of the couch and an old trunk served as the coffee table. It was... rustic.
“I'll take a beer,” Viper said as he plopped down on a chair, his muscular body taking up most of the space even though the chair was a wide one.
The other men and I asked for sodas instead, and I went with Austin through his dining room and into the kitchen to help him carry the beverages. His kitchen was tidy, only two glasses in the sink, and his fridge was mostly bare except for condiments and beverages.
“Don't do a lot of cooking?” I asked as I took some cans of soda from him.
“I've been as busy as a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest. Not much time left for cookin'.” He shut the fridge and looked at me. “Hey, thanks for comin' over. I didn't know what to do after that botched phone call. I thought I'd try ya again in the mornin'. I was fixin' to go to bed when you showed up.”
“I figured you didn't hear me tell you to text me.” I grimaced. “Phone calls don't travel through the Aether well. In the future, always text.”
“Copy that,” he said as we made it back to the living room.
We passed out the drinks, then I sat down between Trevor and Azrael, all of us looking pointedly at Austin.
“Okay, lookee here,” Austin finally began. “I dunno if this is one of your people or not.”
“One of my people?” I asked with a grin.
“Well, Gods are like another species, right?”
I thought about it. “I suppose they are,” I conceded. “But technically the termspeciesrefers to a group of related organisms that can interbreed and then races would be those individual groups within the species. That works well enough for Faeries, who have races within their species, but Gods were all Atlanteans and could possibly be categorized as another type of human.”
