Kyn 3: Feral (7 page)

She wrinkled her nose at him, a teasing light in her eyes that reminded him they hadn't finished what they'd started in that bathroom. A bolt of desire hit him broadside, bringing a low rumble to his throat.

“And don't try and change the subject missy!” He warned her, folding his arms across his broad chest again. “You were telling me about Jane.”

“Oh buggarit... well a gal's gotta give these things a try! Ok... we're not just Pixies.

There's something odd mixed into the bloodline. You know much about English Royalty?”

Feral laughed, “What, you mean as in Human English Royalty? Hell, I have enough trouble remembering who's President now! You can't expect me to know history as well, not when these humans die off every eighty years or so... uhm, no offence,” He added in haste as two pairs of eyes swivelled to look at him accusingly, Spud adding the weight of his baby stare.

She wrinkled her nose at him, the mock glare fading. “Nah, you're okay. I'm not
that
easily offended. Okay, long story short. Jane was once Queen of England. Until they chopped her head off.”

Feral nodded slowly. “I wondered what the scarf was for.”

“But did you see the ass on him? Like two walnuts in a sock!” Jane grinned as she leaned back against the scatter cushions that lined the sofa, her eyes twinkled over the rim of her wineglass.

Tessa suppressed a giggle, or tried to. The two glasses of wine, two
large
glasses of wine, she had ensured she didn’t quite manage it; some of the giggles escaped her, sneaking around the edges of her lips.

“You, madam, are
far
too old for thoughts like that! Why I’m absolutely scandalised!”

she exclaimed in mock indignation, wagging her finger at her aunt.

Although, technically Jane wasn’t her aunt. She was Tessa’s great, great, great something aunt. As Feral had instinctively known, she had a bit of a long lifespan for a Pixie.

Which she wasn’t. Quite what Jane was Tessa didn’t know, none of the family did. She wasn’t even sure Jane herself knew.

Jane leaned forwards to put her wineglass on the coffee table. Here in her own apartments at the back of the hotel she relaxed somewhat. The scarf she usually wore looped around her throat was lying discarded across the back of the chair Tessa was curled up in.

She had grown up seeing the horrendous scars across Jane’s throat, knew the story but always the sight of them took her breath away. Tessa swallowed, resisting the urge to rub her throat in sympathy. How the hell did you survive your own beheading?

“Don’t think about it,” Jane said, her voice quieter than usual, “I don’t. Not really something I want to remember.”

Tessa blinked, colour flaring over her cheeks at being caught staring, covering her surprise with a downward sweep of her lashes. “I’m sorry, how did you know?”

Jane shrugged as a sad smile curved her full lips. “You get used to it. The little looks, then the careful look away. The way you can just tell they’re dying to ask. People never look at me properly unless I’ve got my neck covered. Polo necks are possibly the best invention on the planet in my eyes,” she smiled, trying to make a joke of it but it fell flat, the sad tone plucked at Tessa’s heartstrings.

She hadn’t realised it was so bad for Jane but hearing the other woman talk about it and seeing the sadness there, it brought the realisation home for her. “What about healing spells or using glamour?” she asked, “Surely something would work?”

Jane shook her head. “I’m not Fae or Pixie so I can’t cast glamour. Even then, most paranormals would see right through it. And healing spells don’t work. Whatever made me this way… it means to keep me this way,” She sighed and shook herself, as though throwing off bad memories. “Ok, enough about me. Let’s talk about you, sex on legs, and the punk baby for a while shall we?”

Tessa smiled in response, glad to be moving onto another topic. She hadn’t meant to upset Jane or anything, she really should have realised the scars bothered her aunt. After all, most people were offered counselling these days for things like scars and the incidents that lead to them weren’t they? So why should Jane be any different? Tessa had just assumed that because she had them for so long, they stopped bothering her.

Idiot,
she berated herself as she wriggled in the chair, reaching inside her back pocket for the note that had been left with Spud.

“Are you ok for time?” Jane asked as she took the folded paper form Tessa’s outstretched hand. “I’m sorry, I should have asked you that earlier.”

“What, before you decided to get me drunk? As a role model … hate to break it to you... but you’re crap!” Tessa teased as she reached for the wine bottle on the table to refill her glass.

“Pffft! Role models, who needs ‘em!” Jane dismissed with a wave of her hand, wrinkling her nose and crossing her eyes.

Tessa laughed. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she admitted. “I fed him before I came out and left them watching a game on TV. All boys together!”

“Now the question would be, fed who?” Jane waggled her eyebrows suggestively.

“Oh behave you! The
baby,
I fed the baby!” Tessa retorted quickly. Although… what would it be like to feed Feral? He was a vampire and she heard that, in the right circumstances, a Vampire’s bite could be pleasurable.

In fact, some of the girls she worked with hung out at one of the paranormal joints in town, Moonlight and Magic, just for that reason. Hoping to catch the eye of a local vamp for a … well, it gave a
whole
new meaning to the word necking! They often asked if Tessa fancied joining them but the thought of a guy biting her neck just turned her right off.

Until she met Feral.

She shivered slightly, the thought of the large vamp back in her room getting all up close and personal enough to bite her neck… and everything else that came with it… sent shivers down her spine. Yeah, she could quite happily get all up close and personal with fang-boy. Preferably the sooner the better!

“Heeeelllloo? Can I bring you back to the land of the living for a moment?” She blinked as Jane clicked her fingers in front of her face to get her attention. She had been staring into space, lost in her own erotic daydreams.

“Huh. Sorry, zoned out there or a moment. Been a long day,” she apologised, trying to ignore the heat in her cheeks. “I was expecting a quiet night in with a movie and a tub of Ben and Jerry's.”

Jane nodded sympathetically as she opened the note. “Then tall, dark and handsome showed up?”

“Uh-huh, carrying small and cute, complete with dirty diaper,”

“Niiiice….
holy shit!!”

Jane’s voice was shocked enough to bring Tessa half out of her seat, looking around to see where the fire was. Then she realised Jane was staring in shock at the note she’d given her.

“What? What is it? What’s it say?” she demanded, realising whatever it was it had her normally talkative aunt speechless.

Jane looked up. Her eyes held a stunned expression. “I think you might have brought world war three to my hotel!”

She'd been right. Tessa walked back to their hotel room sometime later, deep in thought. The baby
was
a Morrigan, that much she managed to read for herself but Jane knew the language far better than Tessa. More years to study as well as having the advantage of dealing with all sorts of Fae on a daily basis.

The note had been brief and to the point. Explaining that the baby had been stolen from his family because his mother was a Morrigan, the note maker said she regretted what she had done but hadn't had time to return him as she was being tracked. There were vague references of what 'they' wanted to do to him. She, whoever she was, had asked forgiveness for what she'd done and that they keep the baby safe.

What was puzzling Tessa though was, why the baby had been left on Feral's doorstep in the first place? She could understand leaving him there for protection. After all, there weren't many beings that could take on an adult Kyn Warrior and live to brag about it. But the note had been written in High Fae, not something you'd expect your average Vampire to read.

Hell, she couldn't read it and thanks to her Pixie side, she had Fae blood!

She turned the corner and headed down the stairs. The place was like a damn rabbit warren!! Then there was the fact they hit her sister's apartment rather than Feral's. It was rare for Pixies, even as arrogant as they were, to break in like that. With brute force rather than employing glamour, and Feral had said they'd been expecting a human and a woman, not a Kyn.

Realisation hit her and she smacked her palm into her forehead. She was obviously far more tired than she thought. The baby had been left on Feral's doorstep by mistake. All the doors looked alike in that block, it would have been quite easy to get them mixed up if you had never been there before and you were in a hurry.

She reached their corridor, doing a quick, automatic check on the numbered plaque on the wall. Last thing she wanted to do was walk into someone else's room! She passed her excitement level by nine o'clock this evening. All she wanted to do now was relax and get some sleep.

Oh well, the intrigue would all be over tomorrow. In the afternoon Jane was taking them to the Fae Court so they could get Spud back to his parents, or at the very least to the Morrigan who was bound to know who his parents were.

She nibbled her lip as she walked. The poor things must be going out of their minds with worry and she didn't like the idea that she was contributing to their distress. She didn't know them but she was sure any parent whose child was missing must be going through hell, wondering where their baby was... whether they were okay, who had them, whether they were being looked after, fed enough, kept warm enough... the list went on.

She'd been all for going to the Courts straight away, getting the baby back as soon as possible. Until Jane pointed out that Fae, especially temperamental ones like Mab and the Morrigan, were not people you knocked up out of their beds nor did they need Feral ending up as crispy critter. Reluctantly she conceded that Jane had a point, agreeing to get some sleep so they could leave as soon as the sun faded.

She reached the door to their room, opened it easily. Her lips quirked in a smile as she remembered Feral's earlier grumbling. Honestly, all it took was a light touch, not going at it like a bull at a gate. She pushed the door open and slipped in on silent feet. It closed behind her with softest click. Her eyes flew to the inhabitants of the room to make sure she hadn't woken them. She knew only too well how grouchy babies could be if they were woken before they were ready.

Her eyes fell on the bed and she smiled, all but melted inside. Stretched out full length across the bed was the large form of her Vampire Warrior, and curled up trustingly on the broad expanse of his chest was Spud, his pink hair a bright halo against the darkness of Feral's skin. She itched to rush over to her bag and grab her phone. She
so
needed to take a picture of this, it was just too cute for words; big, scary looking thug but so gentle with the baby he was cradling.

But then her attention was diverted by the lean form of the man himself. Shirtless again. He seemed to have real issues keeping a shirt on for any length of time, he just wore jeans. Jeans that clung to his lean hips and powerful thighs, the top button undone revealing the slight vee of hair that disappeared under the denim.
Oh my god, he was commando under
there!

She swallowed convulsively. There wasn't a spare ounce of fat on him, he was all hard muscle and satin skin. And even relaxed as he was, that charisma shrouded by sleep, she was still fascinated; still felt that pull towards him she had earlier. The desire to run her hands over those ripped muscles. Explore that scar she could just see on his abdomen with her tongue...

Ok, she was definitely a pervert!
Her hands flew to her cheeks as heat flooded them. It was one thing to lust after a guy when he was conscious and asking for it but quite another to still do it when he was sleeping and holding a baby. Just how low could you get?

She shook her head, crossed the room to get to her bag. A quick search through the organised chaos of the contents and she located her phone by touch, drawing it out of the bag and flipped it open as she turned. Only to find Feral watching her, his dark eyes unreadable.

“That won't work, Kyn don't pick up on camera's well,” His voice was barely more than a whisper so he didn't wake the sleeping baby. “Like not at all,”

Tessa frowned, pouting slightly in her disappointment. It would have made
such
a cute picture as well! She flipped the phone shut and slid it back into her bag, saying the first thing that came to mind. “So how do you get a driver's license then?”

“Who said I had a license?”

“What?” Tessa squawked, the shrill sound making Spud jump a little. Feral glared at her warningly, soothing him back into sleep. If he wasn't a Vampire, he'd make a great dad Tessa thought to herself absently, before her indignation at being driven by someone without a license got the better of her again. “You don't have a license? You shouldn't be driving at all then! What if you got caught?”

Feral just shrugged, rocking the baby in his arms on automatic. “Jedi mind tricks remember? What else am I supposed to do? We don't photograph and I don't have a birth certificate. Not easy to get a license without those,”

She nibbled her lip, caught out once again making assumptions. She hadn't had a lot to do with Kyn before. In fact Feral was pretty much the only one she'd done more than nod at.

“He's gone back,” Feral's deep voice was still quieter than normal as he levered himself up from the bed, his posture rigid as he kept the little boy held in his arms in the same position as he'd fallen asleep, a look of contentment on his tiny face. She watched as Feral carefully placed him in the travel cot Jane had sent up to them, making sure he was tucked in nice and tight.

Her heart melted again, a sense of amazement filled her again at the gentleness he showed towards the baby. She knew he had issues with Pixies. There was an edge in his voice at times; a flash of anger in his eyes, when he spoke about them that tipped her off. It wasn't surprising, the Pixie race as a whole weren't a nice one. It was one of the reasons the women were peeling off, choosing to live and marry among the humans. It was a better life.