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Three hours after their aborted shower, Dev finally managed to get Genie back in his suite.

“Healers have a special place in any supernatural group,” he told her. “Dominant even to the leader under certain circumstances, but often submissive in other settings, depending on the specific personality of the healer, but I find that’s most often the case.”

Genie shrugged. “I guess. I mean, there was a problem with a human in the clubhouse in Chattanooga once, an allergic reaction. I jumped into action, and no one said anything about the fact I gave orders to the bikers, and that’s pretty much never done by someone of my status. I knew another of the humans had an epipen because of a peanut allergy, so there was thankfully a way to save the other human’s life. She was turning blue and couldn’t breathe, so…” she shrugged again.

“Right, and you walked into our infirmary and gave orders to a powerful vampireanda bear shifter who’s used to being in charge, and they listened to you. Remy pretty much only listens to orders from Brooke. I canaskhim to do something, but neither of us gives the other orders unless it’s an unusualsituation.” He crossed his arms. “You also didn’t think for a moment that I’d lost control and bit someone. You said that to Brooke to try to find out why I’d bitten them.”

She met his gaze. “Is that a problem?”

He smiled. “No, I’m impressed. Intelligence is damned sexy.”

“How many shapeshifters in the coterie are bound to you like that?”

“I’d love to be able to talk to you freely, but that’s something even other members of the coterie don’t know. Remy and Claire have an idea, since they’ve helped me keep everyone alive, but the others you saw helping with the twins are only aware of some, because no one else is used for every person I bite.”

“I have so many questions, but I’m guessing you can’t answer them. Whatcanyou tell me?”

He could introduce her to some of the shapeshifters he’d bitten, but it wasn’t going to happen tonight. Therewassomething so she’d have an idea of how their coterie was different, though. “The other vampires, especially other Master Vampires, sometimes refer to Brooke’s coterie as theIsland of Misfit Toys. It’s true in a way, because she welcomes supernaturals who don’t really fit into normal society. Some need heavy-duty help to learn control, others just need people who accept them as they are. We have an unusually high number of vampires who were turned in their teens. Brooke is the only prepubescent vampire I’m aware of who is master of a territory, and there are only a handful who’ve made it past a couple of hundred years without going mad. You met Claire, she was seventeen when she was turned. She’s never going to be…” He sighed. “She lives a good life, but she’s never going to be able to exist without someone holding her leash. We have others who were turned as early as thirteen and fourteen, and they are now hundreds of years old.” And atwelve-year-old male sadist who was just fuckingfreaky, in a terrifying, horrifying way. The partof the brain that forms so you can make good decisions and see things from other people’s perspective never formed, and likely never would, since he was coming up on four hundred years old.

Brooke had somehow found a way around that. Mikael was stunted at fifteen, and he also made idiotic decisions sometimes, but he was pretty good at staying out of the Concilio’s crosshairs, at least.

When Genie didn’t say anything, he asked, “I assume you fall under the demesne of the owl king?”

“When push comes to shove, yeah, but he mostly ignores my kind. We aren’t required for any kind of service, and if someone gets in trouble and is reported to him, he sends someone else to deal with it — usually by killing whoever caused the problem, if it isn’t something super-easy to fix. So, it’s best if we keep our heads down and don’t draw attention to ourselves.”

“The new owl king does that? Or was that the old one?”

She took a few seconds to consider. “The old one, but I guess we all assume the new one will be the same. Come to think of it though, I haven’t heard how he’s handled problems with our kind since he was crowned.”

“I don’t think he’ll be as quick to execute problem owls, but I don’t know that for a fact.”

The energy he’d been focused on fostering throughout their date had been broken by Elijah’s drama, but they were comfortable with each other. Still, he thought the sexual component might be finished. Or, maybe not.

“Do you still want melons and bacon?”

She looked at him a good ten seconds before she suddenly looked sad. “Iwantto want them, but I don’t. I have plans tomorrow day and night, but I can do something Sunday evening. I work Monday night though, so I’ll need to be home by four on Monday morning so I make sure I get enough sleep.”

It was three in the morning. Too early to go to sleep, too early to keep her occupied with something other than sex before he took her home.

“I can have the cook throw some steaks on and fry up some potatoes — or something else, if that doesn’t work for you.”

“Thank you. I’d like it if we can eat, and then I can check on the twins before you take me home.”

Chapter Ten

Dev moved the twins into another section of the infirmary when he returned from taking Genie home. This part of the infirmary didn’t have glass walls, and included a king-sized bed.

He slept the day between the two of them. Both had a wrist locked to the side of the bed because he didn’t trust them not to get up to mischief. He also set up a guard duty, so someone sat outside the door while he slept. And, of course, the control room was monitoring the video feed.

The leash was fully set into Ezra’s psyche, but it was shaky on Elijah’s. Historically, having to give antivenom meant the binding didn’t take. It was apparently important for the body to have to fight the venom without help for the magic to work.

Elijah was almost all the way through the process, so it was there, but not as strong as Dev would’ve liked. It was possible he’d need to bite him again, though that might not work.

When he mentioned the possibility the next day, though, Ezra told him, “What you do to one of us magically, you have to do to the other. It’s in the contract Brooke signed when she took ownership of us.”

Dev knew that. Their various trainers and handlers had tried to treat them differently a handful of times with disastrous consequences, and it’d been determined they were too closely intertwined for one to take on magic or intense skills involving magic the other didn’t have access to.