I shuddered in delight.
“Come here, Kai,” Hisashi demanded, reaching out his hands toward the Kraken.
I pouted when her soft hand left my shaft, and her lovely breasts no longer pressed to my back.But I was rewarded with the sight of her perfect round ass gripped in Hisashi’s hands as she rode his face toward ecstasy.
All-in-all, it was a very nice start to the day.
But we had onlyjustfound our mutual release and collapsed into a heap on the bed to recover for another round when Hisashi jerked upright and gripped his head in his hands.
All the languid, lovely post-coital feelings left my body in an instant as Kai and I sat up beside him.Our fluffy-tailed young lover was much better at controlling his magic than he had once been—especially since he had tied himself to the pride in place of a physical shrine.We gave him stability.Grounding.But still, we all remembered the times before… when the sheer strength of his own magic had nearly been his undoing.
“Hisashi?”Kai said, putting a hand on his shoulder.Her brow creased in concern, and she suddenly lost all her playful manner and radiated the aura of a monster ready to devour anyone who fucked around with her hoard.
He shook his head.“It’s Kana and Asa,” he ground out between clenched teeth.“I don’t know what the hell they’ve done now, but it’s them.I just felt them traipse through the in between.And I have a really bad feeling something is off.”He pressed a hand to his solar plexus and my worry—which had started to recede once I realized Hisashi wasn’t losing control of his magic—ratcheted up again.Hisashi’s premonitions were sometimes vague, but they were always correct.
I sighed.“Of course it’s Kana and Asa,” I said in a droll voice.“It’s been atleasta week since they endangered themselves or someone else.They’re long overdue.”
I tried to sound flippant, but my breath felt restricted, and I couldn’t deny the shot of anxiety that always lit through me whenever the twins got up to mischief.
I wasfae.I lived for mischief.But it turns out, it’s not quite so amusing when it’s your children at the center of every new crisis.
Sliding off the bed, I started handing everyone their clothes.Then I tossed my own clothes into the hamper and went to get a new outfit.One couldn’t go off rescuing one’s progeny from unknown mischief in wrinkled clothes.
Clucking my tongue, I pulled my best suit and all its various pieces out of the closet.With the twins involved, there was a large chance that I’d have to remind someone that I was technically the king of the Silverleaf fae.I ran my fingers over the fine fabrics as I hastily got dressed.Silk and cashmere.And I was going to take the cost out of their lily-white hides if those two terrors put me in a situation where it ended up stained.
Once I was dressed and my hair was stylishly braided back on the sides, I donned a few pieces of showy jewelry.Then I turned to watch Hisashi pace the length of the room and tug at his hair in frustration while Kai lounged in a nearby chair, her dark blue eyes taking in his every movement.
“Well?”I said on a sigh.“Where have our precocious progeny gone now?I’m guessing it involves otherworldly travel, since you sensed their antics?”
He groaned and stopped pacing.“Oh, they traveled all right.Thank all the gods we were smart enough to have Halstad tag them.”
I nodded in agreement.We had discovered very early on that Asa and Kana had inherited their father’s ability to travel through the in between, where mortals shouldn’t tread.Gods, that had been terrifying.But Hisashi was able to retrieve the toddlers before they were devoured by the hungry ghosts that inhabited that realm.And no one had argued when our resident mage insisted on working a spell and tattooing it into their precious young skin so Hisashi could sense when they went realm-jumping.
Mixed-breed babies were rare.And thank the gods for that, because their powers were unpredictable.Walking the realm in between life and death was bad enough.But they had also developed other minor powers that were quite nerve wracking in a child.We were constantly trying to stay one step ahead of them.
I hadassumedthat they were of an age where this sort of thing would be less of an issue.By the timeIwas fourteen, I was riding with the wild hunt and learning how to be a great and terrible fae royal.But in this modern time, apparently children were still children at that age.I shook my head to myself at the thought.
While I was certainly glad my children weren’t expected to know how to manipulate people and murder their enemies, I did wish they had a bit more sense of adult responsibility—or at least a healthy sense of self-preservation.But the twins were blissfully unafraid of death.
“Where are they?”Kai asked, pulling me out of my inner musings.
Hisashi’s shoulders slumped, and he ran his hands over his face.“That’s the problem.I felt them move through the in between.But then I lost all sense of them.”His wide, silvery blue eyes darted between me and Kai.“I can’tfindthem.”
I felt his power lash out around us as he pushed himself further.White fox ears sprouted on his head, his features sharpened, and his nine fluffy tails erupted from his backside as he tapped into his full power.But a after a moment of intense concentration, he let out a canid growl.“Where the fuck are you!How did you go where I can’treach?”
Thatwasconcerning.Hisashi was the most powerful nine-tailed fox I’d ever met.He should be able to follow the kids anywhere with Halstad’s tracking spell tying them all together.
“You can’t feel them?”I asked stupidly.He had already said that.But I was stuck.Floundering to make sense of this.And my anger was rapidly rising.I was used to being one of the most powerful people in the room.I strode over to Hisashi and gripped his hand.“Pull from me.”I could share my power with him when he needed it.I had done it before.
But he just shook his head.“It won’t help, Oisin.They’regone.Out of the in between now, and I can’t see a trace of their footsteps.That magical signal that tells me where they’ve just been… it disappeared.”
I growled my own frustration and yanked my hand back to tug down my jacket with an angry jerk.“They can’t just be gone.”
Kai stood and headed toward the door.
“Where are you going?”Hisashi demanded.He wasn’t mad ather, but his voice was full of frustrated rage.
The beautiful beast paused at the threshold and cast a casual glance over her shoulder at the pair of fuming males behind her.“We need to get them back before Gesa gets home,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice.“Or she’ll be impossible to deal with.”
