Page 32 of April's Fool
“Magical backlash from breaking the wards and forcing a portal. I hadn’t replenished enough magic from the portal there. Gregoris helped. Having thewitches do some of the ward breaking saved me from being really ill—“
“Really ill? Mori, I thought you were going to die!”
“No, I just would have gone to sleep until the magic would fix me. It’s happened before when I was younger. I slept for nine days once.”
“Oh my fucking gods, Mori!” He paused, “So, down in the orchard?”
“I just wanted to kiss you, Damon. To do anything with you.”
Red rose in his cheeks. He turned away from me and made a show of finishing brushing his teeth. I did my own, just to give him a moment that he so clearly needed.
“Come to bed,” he said when he finished.
“We can’t do anything here,” I reminded him, likely needlessly. Neither of us had the energy for anything, anyway.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but just to cuddle, okay? It’s been a long ass day.”
Damon picked his side of the bed first and opened his arms to me. I wished my horns away, worried about hurting him as I cuddled into his chest. With one of his fingers, he traced a pointed ear. I shivered with delight, though that was as far as it went. Sleep was calling me. “Let your tail out, please,” Damon whispered into the dark room.
I did as he asked. Without thought, my tail wrapped around his arm, holding him tightly. Claiming him as mine.
Gone
Amorandes
“What do you mean,they’re gone?” Damon demanded, an edge of pain in his voice.
Cody’s eyes flashed with fire, which quickly banked as he looked between us. “Exactly what I said.” He sighed. “Oak got a call saying he was needed at the coven house. He and Thyme went back after a few hours of sleep. Toth opened a portal for them.”
“So the witches are gone?” I asked my son.
Cody looked distinctly uncomfortable, then scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. He avoided looking at either of us. “Not just the witches.”
My eyes met Damon’s, seeing the same betrayal there that was probably in mine. It hurt like a kick to the chest that Gregoris could just up and leave me without a word of what had happened to him. I couldn’t begin to imagine what Damon felt.
Damon stalked from the room, his fury crackling around him. I made my apologies to Cody. “It’s okay, Dad, I get it.” While I adored him calling me dad, I hated the kicked puppy look he wore in the face of Damon’sanger. It wasn’t his fault we had been let down by our friends and they had left him to play messenger.
“You know—“
“Yeah, he’s mad at Parker. He’s his only family. Just to leave like that…” I picked up Cody’s anger. He hadn’t learned to mask his emotions yet. All incubi and succubi learned at an early age to mask strong emotions with their magic until they were feeding someone. Toth had masked a lot of Cody’s emotions for him, or placed a barrier when they were intimate, but my son needed to learn to do this for himself.
I caught up with Damon in our room as his call connected. “What the fuck, Parks?” Damon glanced over his shoulder as I entered and perched on the edge of the bed. He put the phone on speaker.
“I’m sorry, Damon.” At least he sounded sincerely sorry. “Gregoris just wouldn’t settle. He kept talking about how he’d failed, and something about a Seer.” My eyes widened at the mention of the demon we had gone to. “Once he was recovered enough, I asked him to portal us out of here. We slipped out of the castle when you were sleeping.”
Damon let out a little growl. Now was not the time to find him sexy. “Without saying a word? What the fuck? I thought we were family.” His eyes shone with unshed tears. “How could you just leave?” His voice cracked. “You aren’t safe in Northarbor.”
“We aren’t there.” There was a pause as Parker decided what to tell us. “We went to Vegas.”
“Vegas? What the hell is going on with you, Parker?”
“Gregoris is my mate.” We all had guessed as much based on their behavior. Though it was good to have the confirmation, I would have preferred it from Gregoris. Not on a call like this.
“I don’t know how or why. Don’t even care. As soon as my hand touched his, my hawk knew. He’s it for me, Damon—“
“And I’m happy for you, so fucking happy. You deserve this, but Jesus, Parks, you could have spoken to me. We could have made a plan!”
“You are?”
