KANE WAS DRESSED in a brown silk robe. It was a nice robe, I knew just how nice, because I’d bought it for Asher one Christmas when we were closer. The color looked warm and just right with Asher’s golden hair and the autumn undertones of his pale skin, but the color was all wrong for Kane. His black hair and tanned skin needed something in bright jewel tones like royal blue, or red. If it was possible to make him less attractive to me the color did, and he was wearing a present I’d bought Asher. I tried to think it was an accident, that he’d just grabbed it to cover himself, but the sneer on his face as he stroked his hands down the front of the robe let me know he’d done it on purpose. God, was there anything he ever did that wasn’t for spite, or jealousy?
The energy of his beast swirled through the hallway. It hit Custer and he let it flow over and away from him, but Geoff was too inexperienced to resist. His hyena swirled to life, changing Geoff’s dark eyes to a paler shade of brown. Their combined energy danced over my skin. The hyena inside me blinked awake, pale brown eyes in the dark. She stepped out into the light so I could admire her spotted coat. Her long face with the slightly floppy ears looked almost comical, but the expression on her face in her eyes was . . . thoughtful, but she wasn’t thinking at me, she was thinking about me, or about something. I waited for her energy to rise up and change my own eyes to that shade of pale caramel brown, but it didn’t. She sat there patient, waiting, but for what?
It wasn’t words, but I still knew that she was waiting for someone worthy. Worthy of what? I asked. “Us,” she said, or thought, or something I still didn’t have a word for. Unlike the lioness that was progressively more frantic to find a male to keep us safe from other lions, the hyena waited for no one to protect her. Female hyenas are bigger than the males; they don’t wait for anything bigger to come protect them, they do it themselves.
Geoff dropped to his knees.
“Shut it down, Kane,” Custer said.
“You’re going to bring his beast,” Ethan said.
“I don’t care if his beast comes or not.”
I looked into the eyes of my hyena. I swore she smiled at me. “My hyena isn’t going to rise for you, Kane, never for you.” He was weak, too weak to have in our clan. In the wild we’d chase him off or kill him.
“I don’t give a shit about your inner bitch.” Killing him sounded good.
“He is seeking me, ma petite,” Jean-Claude said.
I didn’t understand at first, and then my hyena sniffed the air. I thought at first she was smelling the other hyenas, but then she “looked” toward Jean-Claude. “You can sense the hyenas, just like you can lion and gold tiger,” I said.
“Oui, Narcissus seeks to force my choice.”
“You’ve called gold tiger, I’m here,” Dev said.
“He still calls hyena, because I can feel it,” Kane said.
“It is an embarrassment of riches,” Jean-Claude said.
I looked at him. “You can still sense hyena.”
“The choice is not finished,” he said.
“No,” Dev said, “this is mine.”
Custer was kneeling by Geoff, telling him to fucking hold on, to not lose his shit. The energy went up a notch as Custer looked at me with hyena eyes in his human face. I waited for my hyena to join the fun, but she just sat there, calm. She really meant it, Kane didn’t have enough juice to interest her, not even with Asher’s vampire marks upping his energy.
“Enough,” Richard said, and his energy filled the air like sunlight flickering through the forest, warm and welcoming. I felt him try to calm the energy in the hallway, but a warm spring walk in the woods wasn’t enough to go up against Kane and Asher’s power.
Richard’s power faded until the only thing in the hallway was hyena. Geoff fell facedown on the floor, the skin of his back rippling and starting to push upward. Custer fell to all fours beside him. His voice was strained so that each syllable came out like he was fighting to still be able to speak. “Can’t-hold-it-to-gether.” Custer was stronger than this, so why was he losing control? Then I felt it, another vampire’s power, and if it was Kane it could only be . . .
Jean-Claude yelled, “Asher, stop this!”
Asher walked down the hallway with his golden hair floating back on either side of his face like from a wind machine in a photo shoot, so that every scar on his face was exposed, but more, he was shirtless, wearing nothing but silk pajama pants. He’d never willingly appear in public showing that much skin, because the scars on the right side of his chest and stomach were so deep they looked like his skin had partially melted in deep runnels, rough waves of flesh frozen forever to remind him of the worst moment of his life. It was as rough to touch as it looked, because I’d explored every inch of it. If he was self-conscious about his face, that was nothing compared to how he felt about the rest of his scars. I’d never seen him expose himself like this willingly. Jean-Claude’s thoughts backed me up; centuries and he’d never done this, so what in the fuck was going on?
“If hyena is your new moitié bête we will still have something in common after you abandon me for the perfection of your wolf king.”
“I would never leave you, mon chardonneret.”
“Lies!” Asher shouted, and the energy was skin-tingling heat, but it was all coming out of Kane like he was a speaker playing Asher’s power over us. Geoff screamed as his face elongated and the ridge of his spine thrust up through his back like a small ridge of skin-covered mountains, and gray and black fur poured over the skin. Custer crab-walked away from him until he hit the wall. “Boss, Geoff is new, not sure how forced change is going to work for him, especially if I can’t control him while he shifts.”
I yelled, “Asher, one of the werehyenas is too new, he’s dangerous when he shifts.”
“Let your wolf king protect you!”
Rodina and Ru moved between us and the werehyenas. Truth joined them; the rest of the security stayed around us.
The power changed slightly; now a different kind of energy was trickling through it like a small stream of safety in an ocean of crazy. Something stirred inside me, blinking blue eyes in the dark. The hyena glanced back but stayed sitting. There was none of the usual hostility to the other beasts, just that continued calmness in the face of Asher’s energy. The blue eyes stepped out into the light and it was my gold tiger, cream with stripes of rich yellow. She looked at the hyena, and it was like they acknowledged each other, but there was no hostility, just I see you, I see you, too, and we are not here to hurt each other today. The gold energy grew from a trickle to a fast-moving stream, but it was still trying to pour itself into the ocean. Dev took my hand in his, and I knew where the stream was coming from. Ethan came to kneel beside me; I thought he was getting between me and the hyenas struggling to hold their human form, but he touched my hand and it was as if he gave his power over to Dev, and I was just the conduit between them, and the power that flowed from him to me matched the new power that was trying to chase back what Asher and Kane were doing. I looked up and found that Ethan’s eyes had changed to hazel blue, his gold tiger looking out at me. My tigress started walking up the path; she looked back at the hyena as if waiting for her to protest, but the hyena just sat there with the almost-grin on her face. Asher had no energy she wanted; it wasn’t that he lacked power in this moment, but that she chose not to accept it. Female hyenas choose their mates always; there is no force possible for spotted hyenas, only shared pleasure. Kane would never be a pleasure and as far as she was concerned neither would Asher.
Jean-Claude said, “Ma petite,” and stroked his hand just above my skin and Ethan’s, and Dev’s. My gold tigress rubbed up against some invisible point as if she were trying to rub up against something I couldn’t see. Then I realized she was reacting to Jean-Claude’s stroking just above our skin. Ethan started to rest his head on the vampire’s shoulder, then caught himself.
Jean-Claude curved his hand around the side of Ethan’s face and the moment he touched him there the stream of new energy got bigger. Jean-Claude helped the weretiger to lay his head on his shoulder. Ethan took that as an invitation and rubbed his face against Jean-Claude’s like a cat scent-marking. Richard came closer, but it was too late for wolf. Jean-Claude touched my shoulder and there was another leap in the energy. My tigress flopped on her side the way that real-world female cats do when they’re in the mood. She rolled around on the ground in invitation, but only I could see it.
I traced my hand up Jean-Claude’s chest where the blood was starting to dry; the blade hadn’t been silver and the wounds had closed. Jean-Claude reached for Dev, and the moment they touched directly, the tiger energy was stronger, the stream overrunning its banks, but the ocean of hyena energy still filled the hallway, because Kane was a full moitié bête of a master vampire and Dev was not. He was mine, but in this moment I understood why my tie to Nathaniel was stronger than any of my other animals to call, because Damian was with us, had been with us from the beginning. To truly make this work you needed a real vampire, not the in between that I had become.
“But I’m part of a real triumvirate now,” Richard said, “why is my power less than Dev’s even before Jean-Claude marks him?”
“I’ve been trained to work energy since I was small,” Dev said.
“Dev was the best magic worker of his generation,” Jake said.
“Then why hasn’t he shown this level of power before?” Richard asked.
“Because Anita didn’t have the fourth mark from Jean-Claude before; as your master grows in power, so do you,” Jake said.
“Think what I’ll be able to do once Jean-Claude marks me himself.”
“You will be nothing!” Kane shouted.
“I am sorry that you are the one who will suffer here, Dev, but I will not lose Jean-Claude to Richard, not if I can hold him to me with shared power,” Asher said, coming closer down the hallway until he stood just behind Kane.
Dev kissed the healed wound on Jean-Claude’s chest like a promise for later, touched Ethan’s hair, and kissed me on the mouth, before he stood up and faced them. “You talk about losing Jean-Claude to Richard’s perfection, but I’m as beautiful as he is, and as unscarred. Why do you never fear losing Jean-Claude to me? Why do you never see me as a threat for Anita, or for Nathaniel? You call him your flower-eyed boy, but he is with me more than you. I sleep in Jean-Claude’s bed almost every day. I sleep on the other side of your flower-eyed boy from Anita, or beside Jean-Claude himself day after day. Richard has not been in that bed to sleep or for anything else in years, but yet you still think that Jean-Claude would leave you for him.”
“I think he would leave us all for him, except Anita.”
Jean-Claude pushed away from the wall and stood with my hand still in his. Ethan stayed close to us. I realized I didn’t know where Angel was; she must have left sometime during the fourth mark when the only thing I could see was Jean-Claude’s chest and Richard beside me. Richard came to stand behind us, putting his hand on Jean-Claude’s shoulder.
“See, see, already they are a threesome again; if the rumors are true and the Ulfric fucked him at last, then they will be complete without the rest of us,” Asher said.
Jean-Claude made an exasperated sound and said, “Asher, we are polyamorous, we add to our poly group, we do not have to give up anyone.”
“Yet there you stand, just the three of you as of old.”
Jean-Claude reached his hand out to Dev, who took it, and Dev’s power deepened like a river that could threaten an ocean. “Mephistopheles is our handsome devil, we could not do without him in our lives and in our bed.”
“Where will he sleep now that the Ulfric is back?”
“Tonight he will sleep on the other side of the bed at Nathaniel’s back with Anita between us.”
“And when Micah Callahan returns from his business trip and takes his spot at Nathaniel’s back, where will Dev be then? The Ulfric will be at your back, Jean-Claude, in the place that Dev sleeps when Micah is in your bed.”
I felt Dev’s power falter, the doubts hitting home. Kane cackled that hyena sound that raised the hair on the back of my neck. Richard saved it by saying, “I came back to fit into Anita and Jean-Claude’s life with no expectations. I’m not going to demand that they kick anyone out of their place for me.”
Dev looked back at him. “You mean that?”
“If you sleep with them every night, then you’re important to them. What’s the word, you and I are metamours, because you’re the lover of my lovers. You were here for them when I was off getting my doctorate and working on my issues. I want a place in their life, but that doesn’t supplant your place, or anyone else’s place in their lives.” Dev smiled at him, and the tiger energy pulsed back to life.
“Where will you sleep when Micah comes back?” Dev asked.
“I don’t know, I don’t even know if Micah would be okay with me sleeping in the same bed with him even if we slept as far away from each other as we could get.”
“When we go to bed tonight, Dev, you will be on the other side of Anita with your arm tucked over both of us,” Nathaniel said.
Jean-Claude raised Dev’s hand and kissed it. “We could not do without our devil.”
“You will be cast out, and after defying Asher like this, you will not be welcome in our bed again,” Kane yelled.
“That is not for you to say, Kane. I am your master and I say who joins us, not you.”
Kane looked back at him, and it was their energy that faltered now. “You don’t need him when you have me. He fills no needs that I cannot fill.”
“He is Dev and you are not, that is need enough. I do not have to justify it to you,” Asher said.
“As I do not have to justify my actions as ruler here,” Jean-Claude said. “You cannot hold me hostage for Narcissus, or for yourself, Asher.” He drew Dev into him, so they faced each other. “I have made my choice for my next animal to call and it is not hyena.”
“No!” Kane yelled; the hyena power spiked and then began to bleed away as if the entire ocean was drying up in the sunlight. Asher was crying, the tears tinted pink with blood, shining like pale rubies in the hallway lights. He was done fighting and had moved on to sorrow. I guess it was an improvement.
“I missed you, too, Asher,” Richard said.
The vampire blinked and stared at him. “What did you say?”
“I missed topping you in the dungeon, so much.”
“No, no, Asher doesn’t need that anymore, not from you, he has Narcissus and Anita and Nathaniel,” Kane said.
“I top all of them, I do not bottom to him.”
“What does it matter? It’s still bondage, you still get the need met,” Kane said.
“Topping and bottoming are very different needs,” I said.
“Shut up! I’m not talking to you!”
“You will keep a civil tongue in your head toward my queen, or I will tear it from your head and let you wait in silence for it to grow back,” Jean-Claude said.
I looked at the love of my life and thought, Damn, that was a very specific and disturbing threat. “We have tried kindness for Asher’s sake, ma petite, but no more.”
“If I can have some security to make sure we don’t hurt each other too badly, I’ll handle this end of the hallway; you mark Dev before sunrise,” Richard said.
“I will go with him,” Jake said.
“I wish I could,” Custer said, “but Asher controls hyena in a way that you don’t control wolves, Jean-Claude.”
“You and Geoff stay away from Asher until we fix this,” I said.
“You’re a great boss,” he said, smiling and looking at me as if I wasn’t still standing buck naked. When he first arrived he’d stared at the female shapeshifters, but he’d acclimated. Geoff was just looking at the ceiling as he added his thanks. That was okay, it had taken years for me to get used to all the nudity.
“We’ll go,” Rodina said, and she and Ru followed Jake and Richard down the hallway.
Richard said, “I want to flog you while you’re tied up and I want to feel you lust after me and deny you.”
“See, he will only fuck Jean-Claude, no other man, or even you,” Kane said.
“I want to fuck you, Asher, but I want to come up with a bondage scene that will be everything you and I want it to be.”
“No!” Kane yelled, and there was movement, but Jake was there and Kane was just suddenly face first against the wall with his arm twisted up behind him. “I will break it,” Jake said in a voice that carried.
Kane yelled for Asher to help him, but his vampire master was talking with Richard and I knew now why Asher feared Richard stealing Jean-Claude away from him and no one else, because Asher wanted Richard, too.
I felt the sun start to rise like a blow through my heart. Jean-Claude clutched my hand. “Moments only,” he said.
“Make me yours,” Dev said, leaning over to put his mouth on one of the healing wounds.
“Do it,” I said.
“I will collapse unwashed and dead if I can finish it at all.”
“We’ll go to bed smelling like great sex, and we’ll carry you to bed, do it now.”
Dev sucked hard enough that it brought a gasp from Jean-Claude, but it wasn’t a bad sound. He touched his free hand to Dev’s blond hair and said the words with my hand in his, so that it was the same as he’d said over Richard and me, down to the three shall be as one. And with each sentence the power grew until the last of the hyena energy was blown away in a warm rush of gold tiger energy that seemed to greet the sunrise that I could feel spreading above us.
Truth and Wicked dropped in the hallway. I heard a sound and glanced to see Richard catch Asher before he hit the floor. I still had Jean-Claude’s hand in mine, and he was still holding me tight.
Dev rose up with Jean-Claude’s blood smeared on his mouth. “You’re still awake,” Dev said.
“The energy buoys me up, but it will not last, I think, so kiss me, my devil, with my blood across your lips.” He didn’t have to ask twice. They wrapped their arms around each other and kissed like they meant it, until Dev came back with fresh blood on his lower lip from getting nicked on a fang.
“Forgive me, I was carried away,” Jean-Claude said.
Dev’s tongue slid over the blood, and he smiled fierce and so happy, maybe happier than I’d ever felt him. “I’m not sorry, I love that you lost control with me the way you can with Anita.”
Jean-Claude smiled at Dev and took his hand as he still had mine. “Take me to bed before the magic leaves and I die again.”
Richard turned toward us with Asher insensible in his arms. “Does he sleep in his coffin, or in a bed now?”
“He sleeps with me!” Kane yelled, still up against the wall with Jake holding him in place.
“Take Kane to a cell tonight and guard him well. No harm shall befall him tonight, but if a night imprisoned teaches him nothing there will be time for punishment,” Jean-Claude said.
Jake turned Kane around and marched him deeper into the underground. We didn’t exactly have cells, but we had guest rooms that were more easily guarded than others. Kane ranted and raved that Asher would hear about this, but we ignored him. It was pretty much the only logical thing to do with him.
Angel came down the hallway as Jake was leading them away. She’d brought the other gold tigers with her. They were all tall and golden- to brown-skinned with varying shades of blond hair and eyes ranging from blue to hazel blue to pale brown. “I thought we’d need help; I guess I was wrong.”
“Your help is much appreciated, our angel,” Jean-Claude said.
“We can at least take Wicked and Truth to their room,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said. She smiled at me, then both of us. Her smile melted a little around the edges when she got to Richard, but she said, “Tucking two gorgeous vampires into bed, no problem.”
“Where do I take Asher?” Richard asked again.
“I want you with me, mon lupe. When I finally die for the day I want to feel you at my back.”
Richard handed Asher to Custer to carry. I sent Geoff with him to tuck Asher into his coffin for the day. That was where he preferred to sleep when he would wake up alone. Nathaniel came up the hallway in the wrong direction. Apparently he and Damian had gone through while I was otherwise occupied, just like Angel leaving. “Why didn’t you help?”
“Damian likes to be in his room before dawn, and you didn’t need your leopard and another vampire you were connected to, this had to be all about you and Jean-Claude and other animals to call.” I couldn’t argue with him, but I did ask if I’d missed anything else while I was pressed to Jean-Claude’s chest. Everyone assured me that was it.
We got to our bedroom with its orgy-sized custom-made bed. We did the cleanup that washrags and toothbrushes could manage, and then we all crawled into bed. I was in the middle, Jean-Claude beside me, though usually Micah or Nathaniel slept between Jean-Claude and me. I still didn’t like that he truly died and then his body would cool during the hours we slept, but tonight I wanted to feel him pressed against me as his life slipped away, so he’d feel me holding him as the last thing. I curled up in the circle of his naked body, still warm and alive as he wrapped his arms around me. Nathaniel spooned on the other side of me and Jean-Claude’s arms went across me to him, and then Dev spooned on the other side of Nathaniel so that our arms overlapped and held each other. Jean-Claude’s arms were long enough that his hand touched Dev.
Nathaniel was already asleep by the time Richard came out of the bathroom. He hadn’t brought any pajamas, so he was as nude as the rest of us as he left the bathroom door slightly ajar like a nightlight. He’d remembered, that was nice.
Dev tensed watching him walk around the room. The bed moved as he climbed in bed behind Jean-Claude. I heard my vampire fiancé make a small contented sound and then Richard’s arm was over him and touching me. Richard’s hand tensed, started to move, but I moved my hand so I could press his hand back on my side. I patted his hand and felt the tension leave his hand and arm. I put my arm back over Nathaniel and Dev, who reached up to touch my hand as if for reassurance. I wasn’t sure I could keep everyone out of my head, but I thought at him how happy I was to feel him on the other side of Nathaniel and how proud I was to call him my golden tiger, and my lover. He raised my hand and kissed my fingertips, which were about all he could reach without moving everyone.
Jean-Claude stroked his hand along Dev’s side under the silky sheets. Nathaniel snuggled lower in his sleep, and then Jean-Claude died. I felt him leave, heard the pained sound he usually made when it happened. Richard moved closer on the other side of him, holding him in place. I did the same on my side, so we held him as close as we could. We would hold him that way all day as we slept, and when he woke we were both there to see him smile up at us. Nathaniel and Dev kissed him, kissed me, then gave us the room, because the first time waking up together after such a long time apart needed to be just us. We started by cleaning up in Jean-Claude’s huge tub with its mirrored walls, but we didn’t end there. We ended on the bed in the silk sheets with our hair still wet, which is very bad for silk, but there would be other sheets to buy, and there would never be another first time for the three of us to wake up together and remind ourselves why we’d tried to love each other ten years ago, and why we’d failed, and why this time we just might succeed.