Page 16 of Blood Loss (The Obscura Saga #2)
LAT H AN
The rest of the day, into the evening, they hole up inside the anonymity of the guest house. Lathan ices his nose on and off as Lucas suggested, and Kylo fights a nap until he can’t and the exhaustion from shifting consumes him.
There’s a knock at the door closer to dinner, and when Lathan tends to it he finds David with his theoretical tail between his legs, apologizing for his brother and nephew—his father, his whole bloodline. Lathan doesn’t say too much—he knows how hurt he must already be, and remembers what Pedro said to Maria—but makes a point to assure him that both he and Kylo are alright, that Kylo’s shifted back to normal.
Early the next morning, Lathan is the first to wake, as he usually is. The bathroom mirror is unforgiving, showing him the dark bruising under his left eye, the discolouration around his nose. He’s almost annoyed, but the potential of Ethan and Leonard being remorseful as they look at his battered face later in the day lightens his mood. A slim potential, but existent nonetheless.
He pulls on a pair of black jeans and a dark knitted sweater, warm enough on its own in the early spring, and rubs his face as he heads to the main house to find for something to eat.
The classic aroma of breakfast swirls around Lathan the moment he steps inside the house, activating his salivary glands. He breathes it in deeply, eyes closed, and then starts to say, “Mmm. What’s the occasion?” but his voice trails off as his eyes open and he sees some freshly familiar faces.
Around the table idles the woman with spiky grey hair and a young woman who looks similar to Kylo, around his age, with straightened, mousy hair, smudged eyeliner rimming her eyes, and light pink gloss on her lips. In the living room, David is sitting and chatting with a man—probably his other brother—who had stayed silent during yesterday’s debacle.
Lathan’s muscles instantly tense, his face hardening, and he’s incredibly aware of his casual attire. But he doesn’t want to be ridiculous and just turn and run. So he clicks the door shut behind him and tries to keep his eyes moving around the room. Tries to look calm. Casual.
“Lathan, honey, come grab some food while it’s still hot!” Maria calls after glancing up at him. Sweat dots above her brow, and her hair is pulled back into a ponytail, a red headband keeping any flyaways from her face as she pours homemade batter into a waffle iron. On the table, there are platters of sliced fruits, scrambled eggs, pico de gallo, soft tortillas, breakfast sausages, and bacon beside cartons of juices, a pot of coffee, mugs, plates, cutlery, and napkins—all set up like a hotel’s breakfast buffet.
The woman with spiky hair looks over at Lathan as Maria shouts—sounding sweet, if not a tad stressed—and tips her head up at him with a smirk. The girl next to her turns and peeks a glance at him as well. Her cheeks flush, the same way Kylo’s often do.
Lathan catches their differing reactions to him for a moment, then moves his gaze onto Maria as he creeps into the kitchen beside her. “Do you need any help?” he asks, hopeful that she puts him to work so he doesn’t have to sit with the pack members he wasn’t expecting to have already arrived.
“No!” she exclaims, jumping between the waffle iron and the stove as she cooks more eggs. “Ah—no, thank you,” she offers, softer and with a sheepish smile over her shoulder. He sees the edges of her mouth teeter as her eyes land on his nose, on the bruising, and she quickly turns away again. “I’m just a bit… busy . Please, eat.”
Lathan leans away from her just as quickly as he had appeared; her fluster is palpable, and he feels bad. Guilty. Had he not been there yesterday, there’d be no need for her, or anyone else, to be so on edge, directing her anxiety for today’s meeting into a task.
“Is Kylo up yet?”
He swallows dryly as he glances to the sliding door that leads to the backyard. “Not when I walked over, no.” He knows he can handle whatever’s to come this morning, but part of him begs silently for Kylo’s presence, for his newfound protection.
He pulls out a chair for himself across, and a couple seats down from, the women seated together—purposely evading the living room and any more of David’s potentially aggressive brothers. Without looking at anyone, he takes a plate and piles some fruit on it so he has something to nibble at and distract himself with, even though his appetite has soured.
“I gotta hand it to you,” a raspy voice says, “you and Kylo handled my hotheaded brother and his shit son pretty well yesterday.”
Lathan looks at the older woman from under his brows. She cheers her coffee at him in the air before taking a swig; he can smell the notes of Irish cream. He shifts, not expecting her to speak to him—at least in this way.
“Just didn’t want to start anything.” He plucks a sliced strawberry from his plate and tosses it in his mouth.
“Well, those pricks would’ve started something with whoever Kylo mated in. So don’t take it too personally.” She shrugs. “They’re still stuck on the ‘old ways,’ if you catch my drift.”
Lathan nods and picks up a grape without saying anything. The younger woman beside her watches him intently—his mouth, how he chews the fruit. When Lathan catches her studying him, he stares back, waiting for her to say something, anything—
“Oh, uh,” she says finally, her cheeks dusty pink. “You…eat. Normal food.”
—But not that. Lathan blinks, then remembers that she, and likely majority of the pack, won’t know how vampires work.
“Yeah,” he says simply, picking up another berry.
“I, uh…” She hesitates, and Lathan braces himself. Here it comes.
“I’m really sorry about Ethan—my brother—and my dad.” She speaks quietly, as if ashamed. She hasn’t looked away from him since he picked up the first strawberry, and he flicks his eyes up to check, causing her to flush darker and steer her gaze away quite obviously.
The older woman notices her shyness and then, after processing for a moment, lets out a rough laugh and nudges the girl playfully. “Think he’s cute, don’t you?”
“What?!” The girl darts her wide eyed gaze to her aunt, her face beet-red and the hairs on her arms standing straight up. “H-he’s Kylo’s mate!” she stammers in a flustered defence, though doesn’t deny the accusation.
“Doesn’t mean we don’t have eyes,” the woman replies between chuckles.
Lathan’s lips twitch—not a full smile, but the essence of one. He feels his guard slipping around these two women, and he doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not, but doesn’t bother putting it back up yet.
“I’m okay,” he says, trying to reel the conversation back to the girl’s father and brother—as if he didn’t hear the rest, for her sake. “It’s…”—he can’t find more words, so he just repeats the sentiment—“it’s okay.”
He’s aware of Maria’s cautious eyes from the kitchen, monitoring his interactions with the pack members nervously. He pushes his long hair off his right shoulder—brushed, but not pulled back as it was yesterday—so she can see his face, and that he’s okay. For now.
The girl follows the flick of his hair, then refocuses the conversation. “B-but it’s not, though. It was awful… I didn’t go back with them. I couldn’t, not after that. Patty’s letting me stay with her while I look for my own place.”
With the way her words spill from her mouth, rapid-fire, he knows she’s trying. He can tell, from his own years of staying in the shadows and preferring to observe people than interact with them, that she really is hurt by what her family did. He doesn’t know what to say—‘thank you’ doesn’t seem quite right when she’s removing herself from her home for a stranger—but he holds her golden stare with appreciation.
“Right,” the silver-haired woman blurts with the flick of a finger in recollection. “I’m Patricia—but just call me Patty. No Aunt or Auntie needed, please and thank you.” She switches which leg is crossed over the other, motioning at her niece with her boozy coffee. “This is Chloe, Leonard and Susan’s daughter.”
This makes more sense , he muses. Kylo said Patty and Chloe were safe.
He sits back, spine relaxed, and looks between the two werewolves. “Lathan,” he says in greeting fashion, because his introduction yesterday was almost more of a threat from Kylo’s mouth.
Soft, delayed thumps distantly fill the air. They’re calculated, drawing Lathan’s attention. Soon he realizes it’s a toddler, butt- scooting down the stairs to the main floor. When he sees little Mateo, his entire demeanour softens—which intrigues Chloe and Patty enough to look back at Mateo, too—and then high-pitched shrieking is rushing right toward him.
“ Laaayfiiin !”
He pushes his chair back a few inches so he can scoop the child up into his lap, a bright smile on his face, reserved for the kid alone. He brushes his floppy hair out of his face and the little boy giggles, gripping onto Lathan in a snuggly hug.
Kianna hurries downstairs and blows out a breath when she sees her son with the vampire. “Sorry, he heard your voice. I was in the bathroom.”
“It’s all good,” he says, still smiling at the toddler plopped on his thighs. Mateo reaches for one of the strawberry slices on Lathan’s plate and sucks on it, prompting Lathan to grab a butter knife and slice the grapes in half for him too.
“Wow, the little guy sure seems to like you,” Patty notes with amusement—though she eyes Mateo like a child is a foreign object.
Lathan tucks Mateo’s hair behind his cute, pointed wolf ears so it doesn’t fall into his mouth as he chomps on a grape next. He slides the knife away when he’s done cutting the fruit and shrugs, still watching the toddler. “I got to meet Mateo last term during visitation at Obscura. He was drawn to me for some reason.”
“That’s for sure,” Kianna chuckles as she pulls up a seat next to Lathan. “Ever since Kylo started sending me pictures of you two, he’ll find them on my phone just to talk about Layfin . It’s really sweet.”
Lathan smiles again, warmed by Mateo’s clear adoration of him. It really does make him feel loved to be the heart of a child’s unobstructed obsession.
Right now, interacting with Mateo, making the boy giggle and cutting his fruit for him, feels like the one thing he can do right.