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Chapter 8

Augustine

W ell, that hadn’t helped at all.

No, it had at least led to a conversation that hadn’t been entirely composed of shouting and anger, but it hadn’t done what Augustine needed it to. It hadn’t made his mate understand, hadn’t made him truly listen.

Maybe it was because his mate wasn’t human at all, but the progeny of a nymph and an incubus.

To tell the truth, Augustine didn’t know anything at all about incubi. There were human legends, of course, but there were human legends about everything, and they were always terrifying—and wrong. Human legends said dragons were evil and those who murdered them righteous and good, after all.

So when humans claimed incubi stole souls or ate people, Augustine assumed it was as much a lie as it was when they said dragons liked to eat people and their cows.

Nymphs, Augustine knew. There were a few dozen who called the local waters their territory, and they were largely lovely creatures. Matriarchal and untrusting, but pleasant company when they were ashore, and they seemed to like Augustine well enough. They didn’t avoid him as they did humans, but spoke and traded fascinating objects and offered warnings of dire situations.

Their singing voices were almost as beautiful as sirens, but without the destructive magic and mind control—not that dragons could be properly mind controlled. As Augustine’s father had pointed out, the mind of a dragon was usually quick—too quick to be caught out by enchantment.

And yet now, in this, Augustine was useless. His mind slower than a sloth wading through glue, completely unable to figure out what the problem was.

Declan was his mate. He was a beautiful, shining gem, his soul brighter than anything Augustine had ever seen before. He seemed to enjoy fish well enough. The way his fingers dragged across the satin finish of a table or his eyes lingered on a set of brocade tapestries told Augustine that he, too, appreciated their beauty.

Now and then, he would turn to August, a look in his eyes as though he wanted to say it aloud. Wanted to call the objects beautiful, or comment on their origin or artistry. Then his face would twist into a scowl, and he would once again turn away.

Perhaps Augustine had watched too many movies made by humans, and he was trying to implement all the human ideals of how romance worked, but nothing he gave Declan turned his head for more than a moment.

He hadn’t gone back to Mother’s chest since that first night, not wanting to deal with the emotional strain of the most important person in his life refusing gifts from his beloved dead mother.

What was worse, Declan seemed to be hollowing out as they days passed. Both physically, in the way the hollows under his cheekbones deepened, and mentally, in the way that Augustine kept finding him staring off into space with a blank expression on his lovely features.

He needed sex, he said, but refused to have Augustine. Well, he wasn’t the kind of monster who forced himself on anyone, let alone his beloved. But he had to do something.

The first thing he needed was more information.

A week after finding Declan, he slunk away to the bookshop he sometimes visited at night. It was run by a witch, who seemed to understand his need to be left alone. She let him wander the whole store, end to end, and only ever spoke a word to him when he brought her his books to check out. Even then, it was usually little more than “have a nice day.”

She was perfect, and he’d have loved to have someone like that for a mate.

He shook off the horrible thought as soon as he had it. No. Declan was his mate, and he would figure out how to make him happy. He didn’t need anyone else, not even a clever witch who left him alone as he liked.

On this night, he only bought two books, both on incubi.

Then, he took them home and devoured them. When Declan started stirring around ten, he had already finished the first. It was strange, reading about incubi while living with Declan, because nothing in the book seemed right.

The first book had called incubi unemotional, but Declan was so passionate that Augustine couldn’t handle it, didn’t know what to do about it. The book said they were drawn to riches, to gold and jewels, and cared more for them than people. While Augustine had literal piles of riches to offer his mate, something about that idea hurt him. He didn’t want his mate to love his gold more than him.

He loved his riches, yes, but none of that was as important as Declan. None of the money or fine things, or... well, anything, really.

He left the books in the library and went to make Declan breakfast, as little good as it seemed to do.

His mate ate listlessly, staring at the food with blank eyes and shoving the eggs around more than lifting them to his lips. Those perfect, plush pink lips.

No, no witch could ever do to replace Declan.

He was simply the most perfect thing in the world. Clear teal eyes, perfect pink lips, hair falling to cover his high cheekbones with its watery hue?—

Declan turned to look at him, the blankness in his face disappearing, swallowed up by sheer hunger for just a moment. Two pinpricks of red lit in his pupils, and for a fraught second, August thought Declan would leap across the table at him, fall upon him and try to quite literally take a bite of his flesh. Not that it would have worked, with his tiny pointed teeth and Declan’s thick scales, but the expression was unsettling nonetheless.

Augustine suspected he would have let him, if he’d thought it would help.

He cleaned up after breakfast, leaving Declan to his staring into space, odd as it was, and went back to the library to pick up the second book on incubi.

It was entirely different, the second book, more scientific and at the same time, less sure of itself. It gave facts and figures about incubus attacks—that it was accepted “fact” that incubi could kill people with their gifts, but that there were no deaths that had ever been attributed and proven to be incubus kills. That people had long believed incubi to be cold, unfeeling monsters, but that they usually reacted to psychological testing the same as humans did. They were, the book noted, usually raised to puberty as though they were humans, and thus their formative years made them very similar to each other.

There was one thing the book was entirely clear about, though. Incubi needed to have sex. A lot of sex. Regularly.

And Declan had refused August’s offer without a second’s consideration, had said that he hired sex workers and refused to have sex with anyone more than once.

It hurt August like little else ever had, but it was a simple enough thing to fix, wasn’t it?

It took little effort to make the necessary calls, despite how hard it was, and some hours later, he met an attractive young man at his house in the woods.

It was a little disturbing that the young man didn’t so much as hesitate when Augustine asked him to put on a blindfold, but they were a supernatural agency, after all, and he imagined many of their clients were more secretive than the average human. He took the boy into the house, through a portal he regularly opened between it and his caves when he had to pick up his food deliveries, and into his home.

He had to repress a shudder at having a stranger in his lair.

Having Declan there while he was angry and refusing to speak to Augustine was hard, but it was Declan. His mate . Declan was and would always be welcome in any place Augustine called his own.

This man? This man was something else. Through no fault of his own, he was in Augustine’s home, where he was not wanted, and he was about to have Augustine’s mate... and perhaps Declan would want him, but Augustine did not want him to. For Augustine, the man was everything he disliked in that moment. Human and strange and a threat to everything Augustine loved.

But if sex with a stranger was what Declan needed, Augustine would give it to him, whether it hurt him or not.