Page 10 of The Baby Hex (Mori’s Mementos #2)

Pierce

Mori blinked up at us, groggy and cursing under his breath.

Preston had filled me in on his brother’s ‘fainting spells.’ The bear had done a complete one-eighty since finding out that I was Crilus’s true-mate.

He even offered to share his snacks with me now that I didn’t need to keep both hands on the wheel.

Though, they weren’t that appetizing after he nearly bludgeoned me to death with them.

“Fucking Dern,” Mori swore under his breath again. “Fucking asshole. Hope he gets ghost mange.”

“Yeah, he’s an asshole,” Preston agreed, patting his twin’s forehead with a cool cloth.

Mori shooed his hand away and murmured something about how he wasn’t dying. Headlights played around the edges of the window shade and both Preston and I stood up.

“I’ll go. You stay with your brother,” I told him, but Preston shook his head.

“I’m expecting someone. Here, take this. Keep dabbing his head. He needs to wake up and feel everything in his body or he’ll be hung over for days. This shouldn’t take me long but if it does, keep trying to get him to eat.”

“I—” I started to tell him that I was the guard, but Preston was already out the door.

“He’s an asshole too. A knitting asshole,” Mori grumbled.

“Do you want this?” I asked, holding up the cool cloth.

“Give it here,” he said, snatching it from me and laying it over his face as if it might hide him from the world. I sat down on the chair by the sofa that Preston recently vacated.

“Crilus is outside,” Mori announced as if the information would be enough to make me leave his side.

“I smell him,” I nodded, searching through what was left of Preston’s snacks. “If he wants me, he’ll come inside.”

“Are you trying to play hard to get because he hurt your feelings?” Mori asked.

“Me? I’m not playing anything. Whatever is going on with Crilus has nothing to do with me and everything to do with his own baggage.”

“If my mate talked about me like that, I’d punch him,” Mori mumbled.

“Well, good thing is that I’m not your mate. Look, I don’t know Crilus outside of gossip and files. If I had no resistance to magic, I’d be a sucky guard.”

“You are sucky – blood sucky,” Mori cracked up and I rolled my eyes.

“I’m only forgiving that because you’re drunk on magic,” I said and slid a chip under his washcloth mask.

“Stop that,” he said but I took advantage of his open mouth and slid the chip inside.

“You’re—” Crunch. “An.” Crunch. “Ass.” Crunch, crunch, crunch. “Hole.”

“I’ve been called worse,” I shrugged.

“You should go out and talk to him.”

“I think I should let Preston speak with him first. It’s probably important and I don’t want to spook him.”

“You suck so much!” he sighed, fluttering his makeshift mask. “Seriously. You suck. You suck almost as much as Dern.”

“Because I won’t hunt your cousin for sport?” I asked, feeding him another chip before he had a chance to answer. “Look, I get it. Crilus and I are magically bound. It’s true, but that was an agreement we made lifetimes ago. If he wants out of it, who am I to hold him to it?”

The words tasted sour on my tongue. So I fed Mori another chip.

Taking care of him kept my hands busy and prevented my feet from carrying me outside.

Every last primal cell inside me wanted me to crash out the front door and carry Crilus off into the woods until he understood just how ‘mine’ he was.

I might’ve even followed through had he not ran as soon as I revealed myself to him.

“This sucks!” Mori grunted.

“It does. I never said it didn’t.”

“OH! My old bears --- just go jump him already!” Mori grumbled. “You are so annoying!”

“Sit up,” I said and stole his washcloth.

Mori blinked up at the bright lights and growled at me.

I wasn’t having it. He wasn’t going to roll around the sofa all night half out of his mind.

When he didn’t sit up, I lifted him from the sofa and he tried to lean his head up to bite my cheek.

His magically altered state made him easy to dodge as I carried him to the kitchen and sat him down at the kitchen table.

He rested his head against it and told me again to go jump my mate.

“Those sorts of sex games are only fun when the other person wants to be caught,” I grumbled right back at him as I fried him a burger.

“Are you trying to play sex games with my cousin?” Crilus’s voice reached me from the kitchen doorway.

“I’m not going to dignify such a jab,” I said, moving the burger around the pan as if it needed my full attention.

Crilus’s scent wafted through the kitchen, making it almost impossible to smell the blood sizzling out of the ground beef. His heartbeat reverberated across the kitchen, and I squeezed the spatula to keep from rounding on him.

“OH MY GOD!” Mori said.

He had zero control over his volume as most drunk people do.

“WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?” Mori asked.

“What’s he doing to you, Mori?” Crilus asked.

His footsteps fell over the kitchen, and I turned down the heat before I charred Mori’s poor burger.

“He won’t jump you and you ran away! It hurts my feelings because Dern won’t tell me who my mate is and---”

“And what?” Crilus asked.

“I don’t know. I guess I’m hungry.”

“Do you want me to make you some tea?” Preston asked, walking into the kitchen with a bag of snacks tucked under his arm.

“NO!” Mori growled! “NO MORE TEA!”

“What did Dern do to you?” Crilus asked.

“He made me drink tea and—” Mori said but his words wouldn’t come out.

“Stop asking him questions,” I said, plating his burger and avoiding looking directly at my mate. “Whoever he saw bound his tongue on one topic or another. It’s clear that he’s frustrated and a bit slap-happy from the magic. He can keep trying but he’s not going to be able to spit it out.”

“Does that mean I don’t get to talk to you?” Crilus asked and I nearly dropped the plate with the burger on it.

I had to get my shit together. It would be unprofessional to let the others see how much I needed Crilus alone.

How was I going to protect them if my mind kept circling back to him – his ears, his long, beautiful legs, the curve of his shoulders, his hair, the way he looked completely over the bullshit and ---

“OH MY GOD! TALK TO HIM, PIERCE! TALK TO HIM!” Mori shouted, I flinched away from him as I sat his burger on the table.

“Preston, do you think you can manage him for just a few minutes?” I asked.

“I’ve managed him for decades. I had to manage him in the womb before they cut us out!” Preston laughed. “Go on. Go get laid or whatever it is you’re gonna do.”

I froze, waiting for Crilus to run but he only shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts.

The small movement showed more of his thighs and my fangs threatened to elongate.

I had to keep it together. My parents didn’t raise a vampire who foamed at the mouth and chased after omegas like they were blood smoothies.

My teachers at the academy didn’t train a warrior who lost his composure over a slip of thigh.

“Alone maybe?” Crilus asked and I motioned for him to lead the way.

Crilus’s lips pulled tight and he turned on his heels. I followed him back into the living room and up the stairs to a room that smelled a lot like Teal Moonscale.

“Teal’s bedroom, huh?”

“Don’t you start. Don’t you think I have half the bloody territory thinking I’m pining away for him? It’d almost be worth the claiming vows just so someone could tell the rest of the idiots that I don’t pine for him or his thick-head brothers.”

I licked my lips, imagining what the clear magical fluid inside his claiming gland might taste like.

“Stop that! I don’t know what you’re thinking about licking –” he blushed and stammered over his words before finding them again. “Just don’t, okay?”

“I fear that my mind is not fully mine at the moment,” I said, stepping closer to him because I couldn’t help it. “I can only imagine how much it belonged to you in the previous lives we’ve shared.”

“I need you to look at something,” he said, pulling his hands out of his pockets and sinking onto the edge of the bed. “This.”

He held out a photograph of an elven woman who looked as if she wanted nothing more than to devour the heart and liver of whoever took her picture.

“Okay,” I nodded and scanned the photo again as if it were a finder page in a children’s book.

“She is my sire’s mother. She is dead but she is also always up to no good and not in a cute way either,” Crilus said, crossing his long, lean legs.

“I came back to warn you about her. She tried to kidnap me when I was a kid. She’s a bigot and a bitch.

So if you see her, let Mori handle her or something. ”

“Does she haunt you?” I inquired.

“I haven’t laid eyes on her since she kidnapped me. Though, my bar sort of blew up tonight.”

“That’s why we met,” I nodded.

“I just thought you should know and---” he stopped talking and slid the photograph back into his pocket as if the woman could use it to eavesdrop through.

“Do you think I’m frightened of ghosts?” I asked him. “Is this your way of trying to scare me off?”

“I—I’m not staying. I should’ve said that straight off, but I needed you to see her photograph so that you’d be safe from her.”

I opened my mouth and shut it again. I couldn’t let him leave. I wouldn’t be able to stand it. He ran once and came back but I couldn’t count on him to find a reason to talk himself into coming back a second time. I’d do whatever it took to keep him here.

“What’s really going on?” I asked, hoping conversation was enough to keep him here.

“I’m saving us both by leaving,” he said, standing up.

“You’re not leaving,” I shook my head, hating how the words tasted on my lips, but I couldn’t let him go again. Not without a tranquilizer.

“I hate to break it to you, Pierce, even if you’re my true-mate it doesn’t mean you’re my boss,” he stood akimbo and ran his eyes up and down me.

“I can’t let you leave, Crilus,” I said, stepping closer to him. “It is an impossibility.”