Page 56 of Crave

Even if I was an abomination instead.

Hey, don’t forget about me. Watch who you’re calling an abomination.Bowie was walking through the grass around us, making the long strands sway gently.

Quinn flopped down across the blanket as soon as it was spread, starfishing. “God, this is nice.” His face was tilted up to the sun, and the way the morning light hit his hair made it look like burnished bronze. I wanted to bury my hands in it, tilt his head to mine and kiss him until he was breathless. The urge was like a physical punch in the chest. I still didn’t know how much of my reaction was the Manix side of my nature and how much of it was the man who had been enamored with these brave, stupid teenagers, set to run away to the West Coast even though they’d never been off the mountain.

At first, I’d just wanted to help them because their plight was a little too close to my own family history. But during those two days, while I’d come up with countless tinctures and potions to keep them hidden, to keep Quinn’s Omega scent from giving them away, something in my chest had shifted. I taught them the things they’d need to know to survive in the human world. How to blend in. Where to look for jobs that paid cash. Set them up email addresses. Where to find the areas that were cheap and not too dangerous. Where to get help if they needed it. The Convocation buildings where they could run for refuge, or avoid completely, as needed.

Finally, I’d given them cash, driven them to the train station, and set them free. From that point on, after watching them leave, my chest had ached. I’d thought I was having a heart attack at first, but as it persisted, I knew it wasn’t. My Beast had been crying for a Pack, yearning for what it didn’t know it had been missing. Well, maybe the Beast knew, but the man had been blissfully unaware. Even Bowie had been solemn in those days after they’d left. He mightn’t have a Beast, or any real form, but he’d seemed brighter, more corporeal when they were there. Maybe he was feeding off my connection, or maybe he had his own. We couldn’t be sure.

Bowie and I had decided later that I’d somehow shadow-bonded with them, being the first of my kind I’d ever met. I hadn’t lied to them when I said they were the first Manix I’d ever seen, despite living right outside the Packlands. They didn’t come down often, and I was never in a position to get close enough to talk to any of the Betas that did.

Shaking myself from the past, I took the bowl of strawberries Susannah handed to me. She nudged Quinn’s hip. “Move over, or I’m going to use you as the table.”

“You can use me as the table, the plate, even use my face as a seat if you want.” He smirked at her, and it was an intimate expression between lovers. Jealousy flared inside me. I wasn’t jealous of either of them, exactly. I wanted them both. But I was jealous of their easy manner. Their sexy teasing. I wanted that with them so fucking bad.

She pinched Quinn’s nipple through his shirt, and it made him hiss. “Maybe later, you pervert. Shift over before everything goes bad.” Susannah was wearing a big hat to protect her against the sun, and her smile was ethereally beautiful. Had anyone ever been so beautiful?

Fuck, you’re such a pussy. I’m glad she can’t hear your thoughts like I can, because you're totally blowing that mysterious witch enigma thing you try so hard to cultivate.

Quinn scooted to the edge of the blanket, and Susannah finished unloading all the picnic supplies. Finally, when she was done, she lay down until she was just propped up on her elbows. It pushed her breasts out, and I dragged my gaze away. I wasn’t going to be a leering creep. But I wanted nothing more than to strip her naked and kiss every inch of her that the sun touched.

“Jericho?”

I jolted my gaze toward Quinn’s knowing smirk. My cheeks flushed, and I cleared my throat. “Sorry, what?”

“I asked what you’ve been doing for the last ten years. I don’t think you’ve been just sitting around in your cabin waiting for us to need suppressants.”

Well, actually… “Not really. Mostly, I did exorcisms.”

“What?” They both gasped, and I laughed.

Bowie’s chuckle was silent to everyone but me. He was sitting beside Susannah, and he trailed his hand down her hair. She tilted her head back with a sigh, like she could feel his touch. Bowie, who was normally acerbic and kinda bitter, looked completely transfixed.

Who’s the pussy now, shithead?I asked silently.

Drawing my eyes away from Susannah and Bowie’s incorporeal form, I smiled at Quinn. “Don’t worry, most of the time it was just a possum, or rats that had chewed through already old wiring. So I guess you could say I was in pest control and electrical work too.” Best paid pest controller ever. “I get maybe one or two real exorcisms a year.”

Most exorcisms were just really confused ghosts. Usually, Bowie gently led them toward the light, and it was a job well done. I once asked Bowie if he’d ever wanted to go with them, and he’d just looked at me sadly and said I was his light. Which was both sweet and so fucking tragic.

Quinn raised his hand. “I have several follow-up questions, starting with, what the actual fuck?”

I lay back on the blanket beside them and chuckled. This was nice. So damn perfect I knew I’d been missing this forever. “Call it an old family skill. We’ve always been gifted with necromancy and soul work. It's why the witching community didn’t like us.”

Bowie snorted.Understatement.

“Didn’t like you?” Susannah looked offended on our behalf, which was sweet. When was the last time anyone had defended me just because?

Tanner?

Good point. Twice in two weeks must be a new record. But I also realized that Tanner had kept my deep, dark family secret from the Omegas, which made me respect the vampire more.

“The family deserved their disrespect,” I soothed. “They were terrible people.”

I plucked a strawberry from the bowl and moved it to Quinn’s mouth. Would he let me feed him from my hand? Even I knew the connotations of that, the silent etiquette.

He wrapped his lips around the strawberry and sunk his teeth into it softly, never taking his eyes from mine. He was eating from my hand, and it meant something. His expression told me it meant something. I tried to push down my excitement.

They didn’t know about the abomination of my family story, and part of me didn’t want to tell them either. Didn’t want to risk it forever altering how they looked at me, like the sins of my ancestors still painted my skin. That was how most of the witching community still saw me.

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