Page 40 of Beggars, Sin, and Wine

“And you, little one?” Kat asked the demon.

“I want to go with you, but I want to video call my mom when I get there and let her know I’m safe.”

“Done! Grab the Benji train and I’ll proof you all there.”

I wasn’t letting go of her until we were out of there. Until I got turned to stone, I thought Medusa could have been a myth, but I thought she was dead. I tried to remember my Medusa lore. I didn’t remember anything about her originating as a green witch, but I did remember she was supposed to be beautiful.

She was drop-dead gorgeous. She had wide-set, green eyes that were framed by thick lashes. A cute little button nose and a wide mouth. The snakes were pretty, too. From far away, it looked like she had curly hair that was caught up in a breeze.

And the snakes liked me. They were slithering across my neck and flicking me with their tongues, but not biting. Benji and I were both used to snakes because of Pax’s familiar. Pax had always had an affinity for snakes. Pax had escaped with a group of people before, but the only reason they even got that far was because of a snake.

None of us should have been shocked our mate was Medusa. Now came the hard part. My mission for so long had been to rescue and heal Coalition victims. I had a chance to take them down for good.

But we also needed to help Medusa deal with her trauma from this place. Before we did any of that, we needed to get her strength back because if we had waited any longer and Benji hadn’t done his thing with Hannibal, she would have wasted away in that dank basement.

There was a small part of me that thought I was back on that thin mattress in the basement hallucinating from hunger. That Di never hired my mates to break me out of here and I’d just been hearing voices in my head while slowing dying of hunger in that awful place.

When Benji’s smoke cleared, we were standing in a charming, cozy living room. It very much looked like men lived here, but men who had good taste, liked things low key and comfortable, and were clean.

Cas refused to put me down, and I was actually grateful for that because even though Hannibal ordered me fed again, the portions weren’t enough and the food wasn’t really nutritious enough to do much for the starvation they put me through.

“I need someone to pinch me so I know this is real,” I said.

“I’d pinch that beautiful butt, but I just found out your name, so that might be a little forward,” Benji said, wagging his eyebrows at me.

“If she’s too weak to hit you, I will,” the vampire said.

“If you’re going to be mated to Jezebel and just ignore her like that, you’d better at least tell me your name if you’re going to threaten my mate,” I growled.

“Relax. Benji and I bonded while we were plotting to overthrow the monarchy. He’s like my younger, hybrid brother. I’d never actually hit him. I’m an original vampire so I’m older than you. I’ve been everything from Chieftess to Queen. There have been countless people who have hired shadow demons to get rid of me and none of them succeeded.

“That said, I really don’t want to fuck with your boy’s shadow wolf or you without those glasses. I didn’t live this long and finally meet my mates to start shit with two people who could actually kill me. I’m glad you were there for Jezebel during her imprisonment. I had to turn off the mate bond so I could think straight to get all of you out. I’m Kat, by the way.”

I finally got to see what Jezebel and Calamity looked like. Jezebel looked exactly how I imagined it would look like when one creature who was meant to be alluring in both appearance and voice had a child with another creature who fed off sex. She was haggard and like me, she had been living in a place where we had a shower in our cell, but they weren’t giving us soap or shampoo. She was gorgeous. Jezebel had long, red hair and looked like a model.

Calamity was fucking adorable. A lot of humans thought imps were these small, ugly creatures, but they were basically the demon equivalent of pixies. Cute little things that thrived on mayhem. She was a tiny thing with strawberry-blonde hair and a spattering of freckles.

“Jezebel, I love you and we’re all going to get that drink, but I’d really like to wash with soap and shampoo. Two of my mates are shifters and I think the mate bond is preventing them from dumping me in a bathtub and telling me I stink.”

“I like your stink,” Cas grunted.

“You really don’t, big guy. I feel gross.”

Cas snapped into action.

“Benji, take Kat and her mates to the guest cottage and come back. Pax, draw her a bath. While she’s soaking, get her something green witch appropriate to eat from the garden and keep checking on her since she’s weak. Benji, when you get back, we need to get supplies for her. Everything in our village is closed since it’s late, so we’ll have to make an exception and hit up the twenty-four-hour Super Mart in the next town over for things and get the rest when our people open.”

Benji pulled a face.

“Super Mart is morally reprehensible. It’s a gross display of unchecked capitalism that if you want to pick between twenty different generics of Dr Pepper at three in the morning, they’ve got people working and barely paying them.”

Kat swatted at the back of his head.

“You’re going to have to get real cool about a lot of shit now that you have a woman living here. She doesn’t just need clothes and food. There’s going to be tampons and pads all up in your man space now.”

She looked at Benji like she expected him to go off on periods being morally reprehensible since he thought that about a lot of things.

“And? Periods are natural. Not only do we not care about tampons and if she gets bad periods, we’ll spoil the shit out of her.”

---