him. Do you remember, babe? It was Christmas Eve, and we gave him that briefcase…”
“Actually, you sold it to him for five bucks, because he wouldn’t take charity.” Cass laughed along with his mate. “Poor Paulie. Homeless one minute, on a bus ride to a new town, with his tuition paid in a business degree he didn’t want, keys to an apartment and enough money to tide him over for five years, the next. That poor shifter.”
“Surely that was a good thing, especially if he was homeless.” Arvyn couldn’t work out what the problem was. If someone offered him a briefcase like that, he’d take it with both hands. He hadn’t had a solid home in years.
“Paulie was, or should I say is, a tiger shifter, so he preferred being alone. The sheer number of people in his classes made things difficult for him,” Wes explained. “He’d also been homeless a lot longer than Zeus realized and hadn’t finished high school. So, dropping him in a university situation, taking courses he struggled to understand was like a form of torture. Zeus sent us to help him a second time, this time against bullies, and we found out that Paulie was desperately unhappy, but he was too scared to say anything because he didn’t want to lose the first home he’d had in years.”
“But he’s all right now, though, isn’t he?” Arvyn asked, worried for some reason about a shifter he hadn’t met. “You said he was with Zeus, so they must have worked things out, and now they even have a kid.”
“Oh, things worked out eventually, and part of that had to do with Ra, which could be why Zeus has a vested interest in this.” Cass finished off his coffee with a slurp before putting his cup back on the table. “So, what’s it to be, gents? Montana or Tartarus? I can tell you now, the food’s far nicer in Montana.”
“You’re always thinking of your stomach,” Wes said fondly, but Arvyn tuned them out, turning to Kirill.
“I’ll follow with whatever you decide,” he said hesitantly. “If you don’t want to go then we won’t. But, if there’s a tiny chance Ra comes looking for us, and he can’t…” Gods, Arvyn couldn’t even get the words out.
“I feel the ache of his absence too, beloved,” Kirill murmured. “I know, if I had to choose between my coven and my beloveds, then my beloveds come first, every time. No question. I can’t help but worry, though. There are good people at the coven – vampires who don’t want to enslave other beings, and who just want to live a quiet life. I thought I’d given them that…”
“You’re not losing your coven.” Arvyn leaned forward, brushing his hand along Kirill’s jaw. “You’re worrying about things that haven’t happened yet, and after the week you’ve had, that’s not surprising. But we need to take all this one step at a time. Yakov will be wondering how you got out of the cell, and he’d probably imagine you’d be looking for me, but remember, he doesn’t know what happened to his mercenaries, and they’re not likely to be found anytime soon. So, it could be he’ll just think that I got taken, and you’ve left town to try and track me down or are just on a bender somewhere because you’ve been locked up for a week.”
“I told him he’d lose his head as soon as I got free. If he doesn’t run from that…”
“He doesn’t need to run, because he thinks you’re in my thrall, remember. You told me that last night. He fully expects you to come to your senses when I’m gone.” Which was beyond idiotic, but then Arvyn didn’t claim to know about the minds of vampires. He was only interested in one specific vampire. “The other thing you’ve got to remember is that he doesn’t know all the other stuff we’ve found out about him, so he’s not going to run off. From what little you’ve told me, he’s more inclined to just brazen this out, and seeing as he has the head of security on his side, he probably thinks he has some muscle behind him as well – muscle he thinks you don’t know about.”
“And I do.” Kirill let out a huff, and closed the distance between them, resting his lips on Arvyn’s chin. “I want to kiss those luscious lips, but I can’t because if I do, then yep… my control only goes so far.”