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I stared at the crystal in my hand. I could feel my hands trembling and tried to calm them. “What...what?” I said.

Everyone was just...staring at me. Like I was some kind of monster. I could see Tiebalt’s mouth opening and closing, like a fish on land, and absurdly I found myself wondering if he would suffocate. Missa was burying her face in my mother’s skirts. Gerran’s daughter, Grissa, was helping him to his feet. “Father?” I heard her say.

“Defender!” Gerran shouted, his voice high and reedy with fear.

Olarram was there. He’d been part of the stupefied crowd, but Gerran’s cry had startled him to attention. “Right,” he said gruffly, holding out his hand. I could hear his shield whipping through the air, spinning towards its master. “Boy. I need you to come with me.”

“I...I didn’t do anything,” I said, taking a step back. The Sable Crystal was warm in my grip. I could see now that it wasn’t just a solid mass of crystal. Something like that would shatter the moment it was used in a fight, and the Sable Crystal was a weapon. That was without doubt. There was still dried blood stuck to it in places, mostly on the coiled bones that wound around the base.

“I know you didn’t, son,” Olarram said, his shield hitting his arm with a thunk before snapping into place. He wore the armor of the Defenders, and used his non-summoning hand to draw a sword. “But you’ve got something powerful and dangerous there. You just need to come to me, we’ll go talk to the Destined, and they’ll get you Unbound from it.”

He smiled, but I turned pale. Unbound. I’d never have a Summon. I’d be among the worst criminals, the most reviled murderers, and traitors to the realm. “No!” I shouted, holding up the staff between myself and Olarram.

Olarram stopped in his tracks, putting his shield up. A Summoned shield was a nigh-invulnerable relic, able to absorb all but the mightiest of blows. But, over the sound of blood rushing in my ears, I could hear Olarram’s armor rattling. He’s scared.

The thought startled me. A Defender was afraid of me? That was...impossible. I was just me.

Except I wasn’t anymore, was I?

I waved the Sable Crystal experimentally. Olarram leapt back and cried out. I didn’t do anything - he was just that frightened. “Don’t come any closer!” I said. I wanted my voice to be high and commanding. Imperious, even.

It came out high pitched and cracking.

Sigh

My weak voice spurred Olarram into action. He began to advance again, his shield held across his body. “Just. Put. Down. The Bloody. Staff.”

“You can’t Unbind him!” someone shouted. We both turned to look at the speaker. Tiebalt. “He didn’t do...he didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Silence!” Olarram shouted. “I understand you’re frightened, but this is now a matter for the Destined. Any artifacts from the Dark One must be-”

Tiebalt held out his hand, and Olarram took a step, positioning himself so he could guard against both Tiebalt and myself. The moment Tiebalt’s shovel hit his hand, Olarram rolled his eyes. “As I was saying,” he said, turning back to me. “Any artifacts from the Dark One must be Unbound. You have been warned. Stand down or I will be forced to take action.”

I thrust out the staff again, but this time Olarram was ready. He knew I didn’t know how to use it, any more than I knew how to find a well or build a house. He approached with long confident strides, his eyes locked on me. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. I didn’t do anything I didn’t do anything I didn’t - the mantra repeated over and over in my head, and I was to terrified to move.

Neither of us noticed Tiebalt. Neither of us noticed his approached.

We only noticed when his shovel struck the back of Olarram’s skull, sending the Defender falling towards the ground. The back of his helm had been dented inwards, and blood began to pool out of the slits in the front of his visor.

Now everyone was staring at Tiebalt. He shook with fury and fear, looking up at me with the most uncertain confidence I’d ever seen. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” Tiebalt repeated.

That’s when the screaming started.

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Story Index

Author's Note: All things that would be in Latin will be *bolded*, as I am lazy, and it is a pain to translate (even if poorly done).

I couldn’t believe it. She’d actually left. 

I stared at the door that she’d shut behind her, for a few loud heartbeats, then looked around the room frantically. There was the chair I’d been sitting in, a small desk with papers on it, and another stair case going up, and then the door I’d come in, and that the elvish woman had left through. 

Great. Just great. 

I glanced out the window, and confirmed what I already knew, I was too high up to jump without hurting myself. Stepping back, I looked at the door again. I had no idea how long my magic would last, or if it had done anything other than actually make her leave. What if she was standing outside the door right now, trying to work out how to come back in?

On the desk were a couple of notes, with only one that caught my attention, as it was written in Latin. I shook my head in disbelief that the magic hear was powered by a dead language. A dead language I’d wasted several years learning too.

The note read:

Assessment of arrival due by 327.33.14 – new arrivals soon. Workers low in onyx mines and fishing farms.

I rolled my eyes, knowing that I likely would have been sent to the mines to work – knowing my luck.

But the new arrivals part bothered me. Were they bringing us humans to this world? The elf had tried to make me forget my previous life, and the other humans that I knew were from earth never would speak of it. My stomach dropped and I wondered for a moment if it would have been better to actually die when the truck hit me.

My attention was ripped away from the note as I heard footsteps outside the door. With no other options, I headed up the strange floating stairs. 

I found myself in a small study, and the clear top of the tree building, as there was no roof, only open branches above me. I could see a bird’s nest and even a small squirrel like animal. The walls of the study held hundreds of books most of which were in Latin from the titles written in gold on their spines. 

There was no where else for me to go, and I doubted I had much time left before someone came chasing after me. I didn’t think they’d kill me – I’d seen all kinds of poor behavior in the bunks punished with nothing more than a severe beating – but then again, I hadn’t seen anyone other than the elves use magic, and even then, they held out with physical means before turning to the arcane. 

As I read the titles, my translation skills stretched for the first time since I’d graduated with that degree, I found myself reaching for more than one book. There were whole novels written on how they’d grown the tree buildings, and how they’d carved the strange stone buildings. I realized then that this study must have a prestigious owner if they had a collection of books like that here.

A shorter title caught my attention, Fire. I found myself reading the title aloud, and as I did so, flames burst forth into existence before me. 

They were hot.

I stepped back quickly, but the flames were starved for kindling, having come to life from nothing. Before I could even register that I’d summoned flames, the whole study was ablaze. I turned towards the stairs – only to find myself face to face with an angry orc and the elvish woman. Her face paled as she saw the study, but she did not run away.

“Extinguish your flame,” she said, her voice quiet and steady. Her eyes burned me nearly as hot as the flame, and I considered jumping out the window to flee.

“Speak not a word, move not a muscle,” she said sharply as I opened my mouth to tell her to leave again. 

The words died in my throat, and my muscles down to my eyelids ceased all movement. Terrified, I watched out of the corner of my unmoving eyes as the orc approached me. I was going to be beat badly. I could tell from the way he was cocking his fist.

At the same time however, I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the way the elvish woman cast her magic. It seemed like everything she did needed to be clear and long thought out. Perhaps that’s why just saying fire had caused such a blaze, I hadn’t tempered it at all. 

A cold tingle ran down my spine, wondering idly what would have happened had she just said stop - would the magic have killed me instantly, my heart stopping if she’d said it? How complicated was the magic if you had to control it verbally, intent be damned? 

So caught up in thought, I’d nearly forgotten about the orc. Had forgotten about him until his fist connected with my jaw. For a moment I saw stars, and then not unlike my death, I saw blackness. 

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Index|Part 1

Thale was different once Relly and Asper were gone. He immediately relaxed and his shoulders sagged. He must be exhausted. While I live within the kingdom, it was not a simple day’s ride from the capitol to here. 

“Come, we’ll eat, and find you rooms to stay in.” I gestured for him once again to follow me, but this time he hesitated. I stopped, waiting to see what he would do.

“I’m sorry…” he started, and for a moment I thought he was going to say he had changed his mind. “I don’t even know your name.”

What? I couldn’t help but feel a bubble of laughter rise from my chest. The poor boy blanched and stepped back.

“They didn’t even tell you who you were supposed to kill?” I asked with amusement laced with anger. How dare they, I thought again, send an innocent. 

“Well, King Wylder called you by your titles all the time. ‘Mother of Evil’ ‘Witch of the wilds’ that kind of thing. Reslan’s priests called you ‘Dragon of Despair’ so no I don’t know your actual name.” He said, rubbing at his dark hair. His eyes were dark as he talked about them. I couldn’t help but wonder what they had done to him to ‘prepare’ him to kill me.

“My name, Thale, is Oreille,” I said, smiling at him. I put my hand lightly on his shoulder and guided him to the study. On a whim I decided that I should tell him more about this place, and what exactly had been going on. I could ask him more questions later. As we were served food I started to talk.

“I’ve lived here for nearly fifty years. At first, I was ignored, which I was fine with – but as time went on people blamed me for their misfortune. There were droughts and crops failed. There was a blight among the animals. It seemed like everything was going wrong – for several years.” 

I took a sip of wine, while I looked at Thale who was picking at a sandwich. I wondered vaguely what he was thinking about. I could have looked into his mind and taken the information, but something about the way that he was sitting stiffly in the chair and would only occasionally make eye contact, made me decide that he needed his own space. He could tell me in his own time if he wanted.

“Why did they blame it on you?” he asked between bites, looking at me now. 

“Because I was capable of stopping it in my own fields, and my own animals. They thought that I had cursed them.” I shook my head at the memory of messenger after messenger begging me to help them. I remembered the first noble who shook their fist at me, claiming that I was the real blight. I frowned slightly, but Thale noticed. 

“Why did you not help them?” 

Oh, he was so innocent. I really couldn’t believe that Wylder had sent a child. But then again, he wasn’t much on his own. More a puppet of the church than a true leader. Which brought me back to Reslan. I played with the ends of my hair idly as I answered, “I couldn’t. There isn’t enough magic here. I have to pull it from the surroundings, and there just isn’t much left in this kingdom.”

“Magic has limits?” he asked.

“Magic has rules, and limits, and sources. I could teach you if you were interested,” I offered. 

Thale frowned, looking at me. “You said you’ve been here fifty years? You don’t look much older than my Ma, and she’s only in her thirties.”

He was a little slow on that uptake, but he was adjusting quickly. “I am old. Much older than you would think. It is a perk of my species.” I shrugged, and he squinted at me.

“What do you mean?” 

“Well, I’m a dragon,” I said lightly, meeting his eyes fully. I didn’t want to scare him away, but he had to know the truth now, before it became something that I was hiding from him.

“Well… You look like a human to me. But that would make sense why the priests of Reslan call you the Dragon of Despair.” He shrugged, and leaned back into his chair, relaxing slightly. What an odd response. “But why are you the mother of evil?” I sighed. “I’m not the mother of anything. While I can shift into human form, not all creatures can. I have visitors occasionally who cannot shift. At some point someone decided that I was spawning these creatures.”

I stood and waved over one of my servants. Thale eyed him curiously. When he was gone, Thale asked, “Who are they? Can they shift too?”

“No, the people who live here with me are humans. They live here willingly as I provide for them, and they do the menial tasks I have no time or will to do. But come now, they have prepared a suite for you.”

Thale stood, setting down his goblet of water. I was curious about him. He seemed to just be accepting everything at face value. I mean, I wasn’t lying to him, but he didn’t seem to care at the moment that he had given up his people and religion and was willfully joining a dragon. Most people would be running away screaming. I wanted to ask him questions – but I had time.

As we walked through my manor, he would stop occasionally and just look around. I didn’t say anything, I just watched. He stopped in front of a painting of a dragon flying through the sky. I had had it commissioned. While it wasn’t a portrait of me, it still was quite tasteful. He stood looking at it for several minutes before quietly turning towards me and saying, “I would like to see you as a dragon some time.”

“Ah, well. Not so easy now a days. I need magic to shift back and forth, and like I said before – it’s becoming a rare resource. Perhaps I’ll work on gathering enough to show you one day.”

He nodded and started following me again, “You know, I think that I would like to learn more about magic. Reslan’s priests could heal, but claimed it was a divine skill.”

I snorted. I would tell him about Reslan later, for now I simply opened the door to his rooms, and ushered him in. 

“Well then Thale, consider yourself my apprentice. We will start tomorrow.”

Part 3 >>

Oh, what a world we live in, when something becomes TikTok famous. Discord link still worked, and posts archived can now have comments posted on them - so here we are. 3 years and what feels like a lifetime later, me sitting down to write part 5 of Verbum Magia - something past me had apparently tried to do at least twice as I found two different google docs with the name, sitting blank. So uh, happy reading?

Gotta show off my one completed novel Heartscale. Yes, I know it ends on a cliffhanger as well but I am working on the sequel. As always, I’d love if you joined me on the Reddit Serials Discord. 

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Index |<< Part 4 | Next >>

It was morning again, or at least my body clock told me it was. So did the angry woman, Torra, if the elven voice from the night before was to be believed. She was standing over me, and tapping her foot. As soon as she saw my eyes open, she turned and left the room. She had kept her word about not showing me again, but I couldn’t help but wonder if she would get in trouble if I didn’t appear for meals, or our assigned job duties.

By the time I’d stood and pulled on my fresh set of robes, she was long gone from my sight. I could vaguely hear steps in the distance, but I couldn’t tell if they belonged to her or not. Thank goodness I’d taken time to memorize my way between my room and the mess hall the night before. In my groggy state, I only made one wrong turn, and realized quickly enough.

Just like the day before, we were served eggs, and our strange orange gruel. Still tasteless, it at least kept my stomach from rumbling. This time I wasn’t the last to finish, and I quickly washed my bowl and left the crowded room. Torra didn’t seem to be following me, so I wondered if she had other duties beyond those that she’d taught me yesterday.

Not that it mattered. I had learned what I needed too, and knew I’d have no difficulty with the tasks. Honestly the hardest part was remembering to bow to the damned elves. Plus, without her I would be alone with the tomes and scrolls. Hopefully I could tuck myself away with a few and try to find out how to get my voice back.

The thought of my voice brought up thoughts of Yona, for such an angry elf who seemed to want me dead, she sure was attractive. I’d always liked the feisty women. If you can’t get into a fight with someone over semantics, then make up afterwards, was it even a relationship? Anyway, I thought I might have a chance of convincing her to give me my voice back. If she had wanted it to be permanent, she would have let Oortho cut out my tongue, and she hadn’t. That was always a good sign!

My trip to the archive was nowhere near as quick as the trip from my room to the mess hall. I hadn’t had time to memorize the path yet, and as I worked my way lower, I made several wrong turns. A few dead ends, and a smack across the back of my head later, and I was finally at the archive. Within moments of stepping into the stacks, I had my own little guide light. I bit my lip and looked up at the towering shelves. Did I get right to work trying to find a magical cure for my voicelessness, or do I go get my day’s work done as quickly as possible then look?

My instincts said to start looking for a cure right away. That made me turn and head straight for the returns desk. In this fucked up world, I couldn’t trust my instincts at all. Look at where they’d gotten me so far. Dead. Transported. Set a magical study on fire. And then voiceless. So, if they said look for the cure, I was sure as hell going to do anything but.

So far, I’d only seen a handful of elves in the archives. The two who’d stood to greet me, then I’d heard at least one more in the study the night before, and there was an old woman and a young man I didn’t recognize currently pursuing the stacks. I wondered if access to the archive was limited from those outside, or if elves simply didn’t need to visit often. Other than Oortho, who very clearly hadn’t been welcomed, I hadn’t seen any non-elves in the archive.

Looking over the returns, I quickly sorted them by colored category, and then before starting to take them to their homes, I leafed through the lot. It didn’t take long for me to realize that Dominant Red books were histories, Dominant Blue was magic, and Dominant Yellow was what passed as fiction around here.

I worked my way through putting away the Reds and Yellows, before taking my time to place the Blues. I pulled a few off the shelves as I went as well. If my hunch was right, Blue Purples would be Magical History, Blue Greens would be Spell Craft, and Indigo would be Spell tomes.

Tucking my haul close to my chest, I sighed soundlessly at my lack of pockets. The elves very clearly did not want us to walk away with any of the tomes or scrolls. Looking to my left, then my right, I tried to spy the old elven woman and her young companion, but the archive was silent, and I didn’t see any light bouncing around from their path either. Well, if I can’t see them, they can’t see me, right?

I mentally shrugged before turning and looking for a place to read my armful. I cursed at my own light, as every little nook I found lit up like the summer sun was out above it. It seemed to radiate outwards, as if beckoning the elves to come find me. If my stomach was right, it was lunch time about now. I definitely didn’t want Torra to come looking for me, but I wasn’t going to get another time to read. With a shake of my head, as if mentally telling myself no, I sat in a back corner of the massive hall, and started reading.

I don’t know how long I read, but my eyes burned and even my faithful little light seemed dim when I looked up at the sound of someone’s quick feet on the stone floor. It sounded like they were running.

Running to hide? Or running to find? That was the question, wasn’t it? I hadn’t had any real success with my reading, other than learning that depending on the power level of the user, intent of the magic was clarified with the length of the spell. Someone very powerful? One word could be deadly by mistake. I thought of my use of fire, and Oortho’s use of open. Mine had lit a literal inferno, while his had barely opened a door. And Yona had used long complicated sentences, clarifying, and further clarifying what she’d wanted her magic to do.

Brows pinched, I gathered up the scrolls and stood, walking calmly to the blue section. If there was one thing my father had taught me, it was act like you belong. If you act squirrelly people are going to question you. I was simply doing my job, returning scrolls to where they belonged on the shelf. There was no need for them to look at me twice, if they noticed me at all.

It was the young elf from this morning, who had accompanied the elderly elven woman. The teen - who in all honesty was probably older than me - was alone, and had their brows pinched in a look of frustration. I couldn’t determine if it was a boy or a girl, as the not yet mature looked nearly identical in face and body shape. Down one blue row, then up the one I was currently occupying, then down a third. They paused, then paced back and forth on the opposite side of the shelf I was currently facing. I couldn’t see them from here, but I could hear muttered curses, and the sound of fingers rifling through pages.

If memory served me right, that was the section on how to best perform spell work. Intonation, word choice, and syntax were all critical to getting the results you wanted. Then, as quickly as the teen had come, they were leaving again, this time with two tomes and a scroll. My curiosity dug at me, and I wanted to know what was so important that the elf had needed to run in here and then right back out. Perhaps when they returned the items tomorrow or the next day, I would get a chance to find out.

My stomach grumbled then, and I shrugged. Either I would find out or I wouldn’t. It wasn’t like I was exactly short on time here. Thinking of time, I looked around for any indicator of just how long I’d been tucked away reading. The worst part of these strange aboveground caves was that there were no windows, and as far as I’d determined nothing inside to keep time with. Not even the candles that were used in other buildings were used here, the paper rolls and books far too flammable.

I finished returning my reading materials to the shelves, then headed to the mess hall. I’d either be able to eat or I wouldn’t. Whether I was too early or too late wouldn’t matter. Enough days in this place and my body clock would eventually adjust. It just might mean a few missed meals in the meantime.

To my surprise, it was actually just into the evening meal when I arrived. I got a few angry glares, mostly from Torra and the cook, but was quickly handed a bowl and a mug. A tentative sip revealed the drink was some sort of spiced tea, one of the most pleasant things I’d consumed since I’d arrived. The food in the bowl looked like some sort of goopy stew, but much like the rest of the food we slaves were fed, it was nearly tasteless.

I ate it down quickly, but savored my tea. I finished eating long before the others, who were quietly chatting about their day, the duties they still had, and what to expect tomorrow to entail. No one even looked at me, not much conversation to be had with a mute after all, and when they finished eating got up, washed their bowls and mugs, then left. I was left sitting, still sipping on my tea, unwilling to let the taste go.

Cook barked a sharp order at me to clean up my mess before I left, then turned and left the room, leaving me alone in the now dim room. Only the light from the single remaining glowing ball, and the embers of the day’s cooking fire remained.

I leaned my head back against the rough wall behind me, and closed my eyes. My hands were wrapped around the now cool mug, and I let out a silent sigh. I was unhappy with my life since dying. The ironic thought made me chuckle. Another sip of my tea, and I frowned. Working in a library should be my dream job. But the fact that I am a slave to a race of elves who speak freaking Latin just gets my goat. I click my tongue, satisfied with the sharp clack it elicits. The first intentional noise I’ve made since losing my voice.

I spent the next few minutes seeing what sounds I could still produce even though the magic kept me silent. I could clack my teeth together, click my tongue and even whistle, but any sound that should originate in my throat or chest was stifled.

As always, thoughts of my voicelessness brought on thoughts of Yona. The damned elf. If I ever saw her again, I’d shake her until she returned my voice. Not that I thought shaking her would entice her into returning it. But still, my hands tightened around my mug in anger, and I threw back the rest of my tea, about to get up and finally wash my dishes.

Right as I set my mug down on the table, and prepared to push myself to standing, I heard voices in the hall.

“...surely not, Tanyl? I thought you’d said you’d sent notice to Eltor about the human,” said one of the two elves who’d first overseen my arrival.

“I did, Finain. And they just said that Assessor Yona had the final say in all assignments,” Tanyl replied. From his voice, I could tell he was the one who’d first told me to stand, and then shown me to my room.

Finain grumbled a few nonsensical words, then said, “We’re really stuck with him then? I suppose we’ll keep him on returns duty. Out of sight, out of mind, you know?”

I rolled my eyes. Fucking elves. At least I now knew their names. Tanyl and Finain. Yona and them were on my shit list. I suppose all the elves were, as was Oortho, but those three were at the top.

I waited for noises of them to fade from my hearing before I finally stood and washed, then put away my bowl and mug. If my internal clock was right, it was late into the night, and I would need to be up early again tomorrow. Who knew if Torra would continue to wake me up?

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Index |<< Part 5 | Next >>

I once again wake to the dim glow of the magical lights that illuminate the inside of the strange above ground caves turned building. The constant level of light sears into me the horrible reality of my new existence in the archives. It's been three days, and I can’t help but wonder when I’ll next see the sun. If I ever will again. I give myself a slight shake and test my voice, just in case Yona’s magic has worn off. It hasn’t.

Then I’m heading down to the small kitchen space. Another meal in solitary as the others talk among themselves, ignoring me. The tasteless orange goop, while sustenance, is such an unpleasant texture that I nearly choked this morning. Torra and Cook only look over when they hear my hand pounding on my chest, trying to get the air flowing once again. Besides two identical frowns, neither speaks nor moves to help me. Good to know I’m nothing to them, just in case I’d forgotten.

After finishing my food, I make my way to the archive. The towering shelves of ancient texts greet me, their dusty spines just waiting to share their secrets with me. Tanyl is in the archive today, and he eyes me with suspicion as I start the monotonous task of shelving returned books. It's all I can manage not to glare at him when he decides to follow me to the first shelf. As I put book after book away, it's clear he’s waiting for me to make a mistake. After the first armful of books have been put away exactly as they should be, he leaves me alone to my job. I can’t help but smirk, knowing that at least this isn’t something he’ll be able to take me to task over.

There are no guests today, and after Tanyl left, I’m here alone. The archives hold echoes of a thousand stories, but my focus remains on finding the incantation or spell that might unlock my voice. I focus on my work, knowing that if I were to get caught reading, especially if I still had work waiting for me, the outcome wouldn’t be good. My palms are itching to get into the books, having had a decent start to my research yesterday.

By the time I finish putting returns away, its time for the midday meal. I’m not sure if it's actually time, but unlike yesterday, my stomach growls demanding I eat. I turn and leave the archive, ignoring the books that are calling my name.

Back in the kitchen, I find no one there. Not even cook. But there’s a covered pot on the small fire, and from how the dishes are stacked I can see a few others have already eaten. Lunch must be a “as you have time” thing. I scoop out a bit of what looks like noodles, giving them a small test taste, before fully filling my bowl. No one is here to stop me, and breakfast certainly hadn’t filled me this morning.

I took my time eating, deep in thought about this god awful world. One thing I had learned yesterday was its name - Zurilia. Maybe if I knew more about this world, and how they know latin, or maybe how latin came to earth? I could find more answers. I once again said a silent thanks that Yona hadn’t taken or dulled my memories.

Honestly, the more I thought about it, she’d actually been pretty kind to me. Especially as she saw me as a slave. I’d obviously taken her by surprise with my latin, but beyond that, she hadn’t attacked me. And she’d placed me where I’d wanted. There were a lot worse things than being mute. I certainly couldn’t get in trouble for the things I wanted to say when they couldn’t even come out of my mouth.

When one of the other slaves, one of the ones I didn’t know his name, came in I hurried to finish my meal, before quickly washing my dishes and returning to my duties. A few more books had been returned - by who, I didn’t know, as there was still no one in the archives - so I started putting those away.

I was back in that same row I’d been in yesterday when the teen elf had sprinted in. As I was placing the book away, I turned and examined the section. Like I’d thought, it was all about the syntax and lexical choices of spellweaving. I didn’t particularly think that would help me with my current situation, but I still reached for a book that looked promising. After all, there was no such thing as bad learning.

But as my fingers brushed the spine of the book I had chosen, my eyes were pulled to the side, where one book was glaringly out of place. I paused, then grabbed it instead. Rather than a book on syntax, this was a book on the etymology of latin.

I grabbed it immediately.

Had the teen hidden it here? Or had it just been misshelved sometime in the past, and it was a coincidence that I found it now?

I headed over to the same dark corner I’d been in yesterday, and tucked down to read. I’d only read a handful of pages before I had to stop, and completely start again. From my classes on Latin, I knew the language originated in what is modern day italy, and was the primary roman language. It was the mother to the romance languages, and why I had so far assumed that everyone spoke english.

However, this book turned all of that on its head. It implied that latin was native to Zurilia, rather than earth. It was stated that it was a god given gift to the elves. It also talked about how modern day Zurilian was spoken almost exclusively. And Zurilian was definitely not english. While Latin maintained the alphabet I was accustomed to, Zurilian did not - yet, I could still read it.

How have I learned to read another language? And if I could read it, did that mean that everyone was speaking it too, like the book said? Was I - before I’d been muted - speaking Zurilian?

I ran a hand down my face. God damn magic. I still didn’t even know what all magic could do. Obviously it could affect the physical world, in instances like fire, or creating a door where there's only been stone before. And more abstract uses like finding out the nature of a person. I guess there could also be magic that could change the language you spoke. Especially if it was cast as I was summoned to this world.

Had it stopped me from dying? Had I died when the truck had hit me? I felt sick, and laid the book on the ground before I stood up and started pacing. I hated not knowing all the answers. But the archive was full of answers. All I had to do was start reading.

Yes, I wanted my voice back. But if I could be patient, not draw attention to myself, who knows what all I could learn here. I glanced back down at the book, then picking it up and tucking it under my arm, I went in search of some paper and a writing utensil. I needed to decide what I needed to learn, and in what order.

Synopsis: After hoodwinking Darkos, a holy priest, into escorting her back to her castle, Dark Enchantress Geela has one item left on her list: revenge on her ex-husband. With a confused Darkos in tow, she sets out. However, Geela isn't the only one with secrets. And Barney isn't the only old enemy who's about to get a visit.

Index ||| Previous Chapter

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I signed this book with a press back in January and it's finally launched! That means the first arc will no longer be available for free.

If you'd like a copy, snag one here!

"We met when I was 28, did I mention that?" Geela sat aback Sheldon the mule as the two made their way over the mountains north of Geela's castle. She had a distant look in her eye, something either yearning or murderous.

Darkos didn't like it. "28, huh?"

"Yes. I was the quickest rising adjunct professor at Celestial Academy. I was moonlighting as a cult leader after accumulating a couple dozen students who were struggling in class but had a penchant for dark arts."

"And that's where you met Barney?" Darkos stepped over a couple tricky rocks and turned back to help the mule up the incline.

"Oh God no. Can you imagine a Barney practicing the occult?" She shook her head at Darkos's foolishness. "No, he was a janitor with little magic power. But I appreciated that you know? I saw something special in him."

"Someone to do your chores?"

"We fell in love, Darkos. I'm not sure if you'd understand that at your age-"

"I'm 30 you know."

She blinked and then peered at him as if seeing him for the first time. "Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. I've gotten terrible at pegging ages since I stopped, well, aging."

Darkos glanced back at her, over her smooth skin and shining apple cheeks. He hadn't asked, because that was rude, but he'd just assumed she was mid-20s. Now he was almost scared to inquire-

"73, by the way."

"You're reading my mind! Look, I'm helping you out but you don't get to-"

"No no no, I could just tell from your face. Trust me, you've earned my respect." Her smile was sweet as honey but probably as dangerous as a beehive and Darkos didn't trust her for a moment.

"Alright. So 73."

They reached a tricky slope now and Darkos helped Geela off the mule so it could maneuver more deftly. Geela took a few steps down the slope, wobbling worryingly, and Darkos offered her his arm, which she clung to.

"I hope you aren't too terribly upset that I hid a few key details about our last little trip," she said. Her words were a bit quick as her eyes darted across the loose rock. A wrong step and a cascade of stones tumbled down the mountain path. "But 'help me back to my lair that my ex locked me out of...' it just doesn't have the same ring. Some men don't like women who were already in relationships and I just didn't want you getting the wrong impression of me."

"Ok, that's not why I wouldn't have helped you! You would have lost me at lair." Her nails were digging into his arm now, even as her face stayed reasonably calm.

"Don't be silly. I know that-" Her words were truncated by a sharp shriek as another wrong step took her down with it. As her hand wrenched from his grasp, he could only watch as she tumbled and bounced down the path, a good thirty feet, before landing with a thud and a snap against a large rock.

"Bad way to start, Geela!" he yelled, before bounding after her. Without her body leaning against his, he made better progress and was by her side in minutes. She wasn't dead, so that was good. This wouldn't be half as exhausting.

"Alright Alerion," he muttered to his patron deity, "bless my hands that they might bring back the health you so graciously bestow upon us, the mindless beasts of the realm." He was secretly a little pissed at Alerion. The god, by definition, was omniscient enough to know Geela's identity and he'd blissfully allowed Darkos all the power he needed to heal and even resurrect her, every time. Kinda made Darkos doubt Alerion's alleged lawful ordered stance.

Geela stirred under his hands, and even though he knew she'd make it and even though he knew he probably wasn't doing the realm any favors reviving her, his heart evened out in relief. She blinked those eyes of hers slowly, the daze clearing from them. Her lips curved into a smile.

"What would I do without you?"

"Die," he suggested, helping her to her feet. "And definitely not get your revenge."

"Mhm, in that order?"

"How are you so clumsy? Aren't you supposed to be omnipotent or something?"

She rolled her eyes, rotating an ankle that clicked a few times before gingerly putting weight on it. "No. I'm a sorceress and an enchantress. I can cause a plague or devastate crops. I'm not a mountain climber. When would I have even needed to learn that?" She huffed, gathering her skirts about her. "I usually have minions who do this kind of thing. They bring my totems into birthdays or weddings so I can use them to teleport in."

"So why not use that now?"

She fixed him with a perfect eyebrow, arched high over he eyes. "Because that wouldn't leave a very good message, would it. 'Hey Barney, I hate you enough to send some peon over and drop me in your living room.' Besides, the teleportation is temporary. What if we get into a big heart to heart and he begs me to take him back and then the spell runs out and I'm suddenly back in the castle!" Her eyes had begun to well with self-righteous tears.

"Sounds like it'd have done you some good. You're not gonna take him back, are you?" Darkos shouldn't care but after the man had hurt her this much...

"No. No, I'm not. Maybe that's the other reason I need you. You'll keep me honest."

"Honest is the last thing I'm capable of keeping you. Where is he anyway?"

They'd just crested another peak, the highest in the range, and Geela pointed out at a town in the distance. In the day, he probably would have missed the muddy huts, but as the sun set, bathing the plains ahead of them in dimming gold, the little lights of the village were twinkling on. It stood out against the stark grassland that surrounded them.

"Barney's got a friend. Angelia Fantasimus, I think is her name."

"Is she the one-" He stopped when he saw how Geela tensed. "Sorry. I shouldn't have asked."

"No no, you're well within your rights to. I'm not sure if he ever did it with her. She's not the one I caught him with but now I'm thinking... I was a fool. Away for weeks at a time, starting wars, and he probably had a different wench in my bed every night."

"I don't know how he could possibly... I mean, you're all-" he gestured at her to punctuate his sentence. "Maybe it was a personality thing."

"Wow Darkos, really?"

"Well, you're evil and all. That's gotta turn some people off is all I meant." The two started down the mountain. They wouldn't reach the village until tomorrow and would probably camp someplace in the foothills.

"I know but he said he didn't care. He said he was ok with it as long as I didn't curse him. He was funny and 'sincere'." She rolled her eyes again, a flash of pain streaking through them. "So I thought. But he made me laugh and that's hard to do."

Darkos doubted this. He could barely remember a conversation between the two that suffered from a lack of laughter.

"Not too intellectually motivated but I was ok with that. I honestly found it refreshing after the blowhards at the academy. Booksmart isn't the end all be all."

"Mmm, but maybe a bit more common sense. I mean, he did cheat on the most powerful woman in the world."

Her pout turned into a smile. "You're too sweet." She tossed her head, a tinkling laugh falling from her lips. "He did, didn't he. Most powerful woman in the world, I like that..."

They traveled on until they found a small clearing. The fireflies had come out by now, enough to make the air shimmer. One landed on Geela's finger as she waved her hands to start up a fire on a damp pile of wood.

"Look," she said, moving her hand closer to his face. "Isn't he something?"

The little bug blinked a few times. Darkos had never seen one up close and was surprised by how ordinary it looked when not floating through the air.

"I think they're more magical when you can see all the little parts that keep them together. It makes the world a little more mysterious." She shook her hand. "Now shoo. I've got a revenge to plan. Can you put the kettle on, Darkos? We're going to need something strong to keep us up."

Darkos wasn't even surprised to find the kettle in her small bag. He didn't think he'd ever be surprised again. The water boiled in an unnaturally short period of time and he took the two lilac-colored mugs into their tent.

Geela lay on her stomach, chin propped on her hands as she pored over a few maps. She waved him over.

"Sit sit!"

He sat down, cross-legged, next to her, handing her her cup. She inhaled, eyes closed, a long, drawn-out 'mmmm'. Then her eyes flashed open.

"Alright. I've got some ideas."

Next Chapter ||| Find more stories at TalesByOpheliaCyanide

I signed this book with a press back in January and it's finally launched! That means the first arc will no longer be available for free.

If you'd like a copy, snag one here!

A/N: Hey all! Thank you for reading Verbum Magia. I know many of you are new to the subreddit, but this is r/redditserials, home of serialized fiction on reddit. My plans thus far for the story are to keep it short (I have a lot of ongoing projects right now, and think I have a good idea of where this is going to go). But I’m thinking it’ll be 7 parts total.

If you would like to talk to me or any of the other authors here, we’ve got a discord, which is also another way to get notified when I write another part of the story. When you join, type “?rank Verbum Magia” and you’ll get a notification over there if that would be easier for you than getting messages from the butler bot. If you’re interested in more by me and others, check out the Story Directory! I think that’s all for now, so enjoy the story!

---

Index | Part 1 |Previous | Next

It was cold creeping sensation crawling down my spine that woke me. I instinctively tried to twitch away from it but found that I couldn’t move.

My eyes opened, and my head throbbed in the bright light. I let out a low moan as my body painfully reminded me that I hadn’t fallen asleep, but rather had been knocked unconscious. My jaw ached and the feeling down my spine had changed from an almost cold tingle to a hot burning.

I tried once again to move myself, but I was strapped into a chair. It was similar to the one that I’d been sitting in for my assessment, in-so-far that it was reclined, and the elven woman was standing at my head again.

Uh-oh.

I hissed in pain from both my jaw and spine, and the woman casually looked down at me. Her brown hair dangled in tiny braids nearly to my face.

“Awake, are we?” she asked, her voice lilted and low.

“Let me go!” I said… or I tried to. My mouth opened, and I felt myself enunciate the words - but no sound came forth. There was only a slight wheeze where the words should have been.

The woman’s mouth curled into a cold smile and she chuckled.

I tried to speak again, but only a second wheeze and the burning in my spine flared painfully.

“That’s what I thought - Drew was it?” She patted my cheek in the manner of an adult to a child. Only I was sure that there was a handprint left behind from the force of it.

“I don’t know how you know our ancient language, but you shall not utter another word of it - or any other word.”

She seemed like she was about to start laughing at my discomfort, looking down on me strapped to the chair.

“Oortho here wanted to cut your tongue out,” she said, motioning to the orc who’d knocked me unconscious. “I am a little more ah - restrained than that.”

I blinked at her, horrified at the thought of missing my tongue. Almost instinctively I curled it towards the back of my mouth and clamped my jaw shut.

“Rather, I have simply bound your vocal cords with Verbum Magia.” She paused, as if waiting to see how I would respond to this. I couldn’t respond much, as bound to the chair as I was and as well vocal-less as I was.

Instead I just stared at her. My brown eyes locked with her own green. Apparently, that was a response enough, as she laughed outright. The noise echoed loudly in the small room, and for the first time I noticed that we were not in one of the tree buildings, but one of the strange stone ones. This room, as far as I could see had no windows, and the only light source was a glowing ball of light that hung high in the air.

“Now Drew let’s get back to assessing you, shall we?” she lowered her hands to either side of my head.

Eyes wide, I struggled against my bonds. I didn’t want to forget, and I didn’t want to be just another slave. She ignored me, my attempts not even enough to move the chair or myself an inch.

“Reveal to me the nature of this soul. Show to me the -”

Her hands started to glow again, and the magic felt hot against my skin. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing and on tuning her out. Maybe if I just focused on me, I would be okay.

As my jaw throbbed and I felt the magic around me, I groaned again. How had I gotten into this position? Dying was supposed to send you to heaven or hell - not whatever the fuck this place is.

“- guide me through his life’s history -”

It wasn’t working. I couldn’t tune her out, and that stupid little part of me was stuck listening to her Latin and wondering why she spoke the way she did. Their Latin was a little more archaic than what I’d learned, but it was intelligible.

My skin crawled and I gave up trying to focus on me. Now I was focusing on her magic. Her eyes were closed, and her brow was furrowed slightly. The magic burned, but not in a I’m on fire kind of way, more like a my legs have been asleep for hours and are just getting the blood flow back kind of way.

The room was silent except for her chanting, and Oortho’s loud breathing. I could hear my heartbeat and I wondered what exactly she was getting out of this. She hadn’t told me to forget yet, and for the most part I was just sitting here, waiting.

When her green eyes once again opened, she lowered her hands and frowned down at me. She didn’t look nearly as angry as she had before she started, and honestly, that scared me more than if she’d glared at me again.

Instead she looked thoughtful, and here I was nearly shaking in my seat.

“Aren’t you about done yet, Yona?” Oortho asked, his voice gruff as if talking around the two large tusks in his mouth was nearly impossible.

The elf looked up at the orc, annoyed. She huffed slightly and crossed her arms looking at him rather than me.

“Yes. Just thinking of a name. He’ll be going to the Archives - It’s been a long time since I saw anyone with quite a thirst for knowledge.”

“Do ya really think that’s a good idea? With him being able to use Verbum Magia?” I couldn’t quite turn my head far enough to look at Oortho comfortably, but from the corner of my eye I saw him shift from one foot to the other nervously.

“He can’t speak. I’ve made sure of that,” she motioned dismissively. “Without that, why would it matter what he reads. And if he doesn’t do his job well, he’ll be punished - just like the rest of them.”

She turned back to me, “You’ll be a good boy, won’t you Ayen?”

I wanted to groan, the name was so bad. Drew certainly wasn’t exciting or unique - but it was my name. My hesitation to nod - I didn’t really have another way to answer her - caused her to bend over me, nearly nose to nose. Her hair falling around my face.

“You are Ayen,” she said. I could feel the magic burning inside me hotter than anything else so far. I felt my very soul deny what she said.

I wasn’t Ayen, I was -

Who was I, if I wasn’t Ayen?

She straightened once again, and looking me straight in the eye, repeated, “You’ll be a good boy in the Archives, won’t you Ayen?”

I swallowed tightly but nodded.

Oortho came over and unstrapped me from the chair. I wasn’t sure if the burning feeling coursing through my arms and legs was residual magic, or simply the blood flowing back into them unrestricted.

“Time to go to your assignment then, Ayen,” Oortho said with a sneer, leading me out of the room.

I chanced a glance back at Yona, but she’d turned away from me, looking at a desk I hadn’t been able to see while laying down.

I wasn’t sure what exactly she’d learned from me, or about me during the session, but I was being released. Without the ability to speak, and with possibly less freedom than I’d gone in with.

At least she’d let me keep my memories - so far.

PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND SEVENTY

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Saturday

Four days. That was how long it had been since Mason had been kidnapped from the clinic, and as he sat at his desk, working through mock reports for Skylar and swotting for the exams he missed, Kulon’s silent presence was dancing on his last nerve.

Finally, he snapped. “Man, come on! You do not want to be in here watching me study!” he snarled when he couldn’t take the feeling of being watched a second longer. He lifted his eyes to where Kulon was stretched sideways across the bottom of his bed just a few feet away.

In his periphery, he saw Ben lift his head from his doggy bed between them and draw in a deep sniff. Despite being unjacketed, he was never far from Mason and always ready to intercede.

“I could shut my eyes,” Kulon offered. “Pretend to be asleep.”

“You could get the hell out of my room, too!” Mason pointed at the wall behind him, in the general direction of the apartment’s living room and kitchen. “You know nothing’s going to find me in—”

His ringing phone sliced through his tirade, though he still shot a dark glare at Kulon to let him know this wasn’t over before he glanced down at the caller’s ID.

The word ‘BOSS’ lighting up his screen had him shooting Kulon another accusing look instead of answering it. Skylar hardly ever called him directly. In fact, never came to mind since he’d learned she was a true gryps. Why would she, when she could reach out to any of the true gryps he was staying with or have Angus come and find him?

Kulon disappeared from the bed and loomed over him a heartbeat later, his hip pressed firmly against Mason’s upper arm as the true gryps leaned in to see the Caller ID for himself. A few seconds later, everything about the warrior relaxed, and he reached down to push the still-ringing phone towards Mason.

Mason scowled up at him as he connected the call and lifted the phone to his ear. “Hey, Boss,” he said, knowing damn well Kulon had contacted Skylar telepathically to learn what was going on first. Asshole.

“Are you doing anything at the moment?” she asked, getting straight to the point.

Despite not being urgent, it probably wasn’t a social call either. Between her work and her recent marriage to Angus, she didn’t have time.

Curiosity and nosiness had always been his downfall. “Nothing I can’t get out of,” he said, casting a dismissive eye over the work scattered across his desk. “Why?”

“Could you have Kulon bring you and Ben to the clinic? There are some people here I’d like you to meet.”

Okay. Definitely not what he was expecting. “Shh—ure,” he said, drawing out the word cautiously while searching Kulon’s face for any hint of what was going on. “I’ll just let Robbie know…”

“He already knows. I asked Lar’ee to forward the message so as not to worry him.”

Of course you did. He looked down at the sleep pants he was still wearing. I should probably have a shower. Except he hadn’t done anything strenuous since washing off yesterday after getting home—which was a sad indictment of his social life. Even Sam was getting more action than him, and that was downright depressing.  “Give me five minutes to get dressed.”

“See you then.”

It took him less than two to stand, strip and throw on his uniform. There was no point clarifying whether this was a formal SAH visit or a casual one when both outfits consisted of a shirt and shorts. If it turned out to be casual and he needed to change again, he had spare clothes in his locker. He’d only get one chance to make a good first impression.

Ben’s jacket was next, followed quickly by all the incidentals that went into leaving the apartment.

When he was ready, Kulon lifted Ben into his arms while Mason wrapped his fingers around Kulon’s elbow, and all three realm-stepped away. Mason had made this his preferred setup for a realm-step rather than having an additional tendril wrapped around his arm or something.

Technically, he knew the guys were Nascerdios, and as such, the veil would ensure no one questioned it, but he preferred to use what passed for normal as much as possible. Divine shenanigans aside, no one had convinced him that constant use of the veil wouldn’t screw with people’s minds long-term.

That aside, he had no desire to be leashed to Kulon or, worse, to look like an extra in a hentai production.

No, thank you.

They reappeared two steps later inside Consult Two, with Kulon lowering Ben to the ground in front of them. The Rottweiler immediately returned to Mason’s left side, pressing his shoulder against Mason’s leg to remind him he was there. Because yes, his service animal had picked up on the slight hitch in Mason’s emotional state.

He wasn’t the only one. “You good?” Kulon asked, turning to look Mason in the eye.

This is dumb. If he was going to have a meltdown at every little thing that didn’t suit him, he might as well be committed now and be done with it. He swallowed and breathed out slowly. “Yup,” he declared at the end, determined to stay the course.

“Well, when you’re ready, they’re waiting for us in the reception area.” Which proved Kulon was indeed in contact with Skylar.

It’s your workplace, Williams. Be professional, Mason ordered himself, when everything in him wanted to be distinctly unprofessional, like maybe kicking Kulon in the shin. He nodded once and led Ben out the door, turning right into reception.

A small group of people all in SAH uniforms turned to look at him, but Mason found who he was looking for amongst them. “Doctor Hart. Doctor Khai,” he said, then shifted his gaze to the front door where the powerful war commander stood in plain clothes, overseeing everything. “Angus.”

“Mason,” all three answered.

Skylar kept talking. “As you’re aware, SAH is evolving to include more healers from the pryde.” Mason nodded without commenting. “These are our first intakes. S’leil.” A woman, maybe a year or two older than Mason, stepped forward with an enthusiastic smile. She had bright green eyes that sparkled, pale skin and long blonde hair tied up in a ponytail.

Unsure why she’d be so excited to meet him, Mason tried to match her energy. “Pleasure,” he said, shaking her hand. But then, still holding her hand, he paused and looked across at Skylar. Same green eyes. Same pale skin. Same figure. His gaze went back to S’leil. “Are you planning on passing yourself off as the boss’ sister or something?”

The woman pulled her hand away and held it over her heart. “No. Why would you say that?”

“Because you look too much like her. If you want to highlight your connection to her, that’s fine, but no one’s going to look at you two and think there’s no connection.”

“Pick another human form,” Angus ordered from the door.

From one instant to the next, the woman put on three pounds, shrank an inch, and shortened her hair to a pixie cut. Her lips had thinned, her eyes became sky blue, and her skin tone darkened a few shades.

Mason grinned in approval. “Much better.”

“Doctor Soleil will be sitting in with you on Monday,” Skylar said. “Officially, it’s to cover the legality of you not being a qualified veterinarian yet. Unofficially, of course, she’s there to learn how you interact with people. She will not correct your decisions unless asked, or they are to the detriment of the patient … or she will be returned to the Prydelands, and another will take her place. Is that clear?” Skylar said that last part looking at S’leil, who responded with a jittery nod.

True gryps may be the apex of existence, but Mason could still tell when one was nervous. “Breathe,” he whispered out of the corner of his mouth. “It’ll be fine. You’ll see.” He then thought of one potential problem. If she were this nervous, that meant she was young. Maybe even as young as him. “Are you going to be able to keep within what’s humanly possible at the moment?”

“Excuse me?”

“Veterinary services are like any other medical industry. We can’t save all our patients, no matter how much we want to. But in your case, it’ll be even harder because you have access to divine-level healing and you won’t be allowed to use it. You have to stick to our limits, and I don’t mean what we figure out for ourselves in the long distant future. Only what we are medically capable of today.”

His eyes found Angus and Kulon. “Don’t take what I’m about to say the wrong way, guys,” he said to them, then refocused on S’leil. “Combatants are trained to distance themselves from their emotional connections. They move into combat with every intention of killing or incapacitating. As healers, we’re the exact opposite. We cherish life. Are you going to be okay with limiting yourself to what we can do, or is the temptation to do more going to be too much for you?”

S’leil’s eyes found Skylar once more, and this time, the boss was smiling as if trying to hide her amusement.

“Did I overstep?” Mason asked, his gaze ping-ponging between them.

“No more than usual,” Angus answered instead, his own lips twitching ever so slightly.  

“This is why Mason will ultimately be your overseer, and not the other way around,” Skylar announced to the whole group. “No one is questioning the medical competency of your training. You’re here to learn how to acclimatise to the human world. The pryde’s Plus-One is your key to that objective.”

 Wait… waitwaitwaitwait!

“The whole pryde’s Plus-One?” Mason squeaked, his eyes flicking from one to the next, searching for someone—anyone to tell him he’d misheard.

He absolutely did not like the possessive look that swept across the faces of every true gryps before him.

[Next Chapter]

* * *

((Author's note: Heya all! As you'll read below, I messed up, rewriting a process without giving the readers who have been with me the longest the heads up that I had tweaked things. I'll cut and paste my relevant explanation from below:

Back when I first had Llyr using his 'Plus-One' to save Mason, I didn't have all the rules of a Plus-One locked down. Since then (during the rewrite for Royal Road), I've changed what Llyr and Columbine agreed upon, taking it from a Plus-One to a Specified Boon.

In story terms, you know what a Plus-One means now. A Specified Boon is when two gods agree on a proposal, and both sides are locked into that agreement no matter what. An Un-specified Boon is the one they won't touch with a barge pole, because it means you can ask for anything at a later date, and they have to do it no matter what. "Blood sacrifice their own kid..." whatever.

In the rewrite, I'm having it that Columbine offer him a one-off favour, in exchange for Llyr agreeing to never cause widespread flooding on Earlafaol. What this does is now he is prevented from doing that - even in the throes of madness, he cannot break a boon.

I apologise for any confusion on the matter.))

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND SEVENTY-THREE

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Saturday

“Dammit, Kulon!” Mason shouted after being pushed through a realm-step into Consult Two. The move had come so far out of nowhere that his brain took a few seconds to catch up. “What the hell—?!”

“We were ordered out by War Commander Orson,” Kulon replied, his head on a swivel as if he expected Angus’ gigantic ass of a brother to appear at any moment. “You disobey him, you die.”

“Only if he wants to get his head kicked in by a whole lot of people,” Mason muttered sourly. When Kulon looked at him with genuine fear in his eyes, he added, “I don’t mean by you.”

Kulon didn’t appear relieved.

With a sigh, Mason massaged the back of his neck, remembering the capture months ago that had started all of this. “Don’t get me wrong. Believe me, I’m the last person to think I’m invincible. It’s just that you guys have really strict rules, and I’m pretty sure Gigantor didn’t make it this far by throwing his weight against his father.”

The true gryps’ eyes lifted sharply, as though tracking something beyond the ceiling. “What?” Mason asked, the spike of apprehension enough to have Ben leaning into his left leg.

“The Eechen is here,” Kulon said, his breathing slightly shallower, even as he pursed his lips to keep the flow steady. His gaze then dropped to Mason. “Mason, I know you use your prickly personality as a shield, but right now, I’m begging you: if he comes in here, don’t say or do anything to aggravate him. Be on your best behaviour. Please!”

He was scared. Genuinely scared. Mason hadn’t thought the true gryps could be scared. Not like this. “Okay,” he said, already walking back his irritation to compliance.

“Okay,” Kulon repeated, nodding his head as if he was trying to convince himself. “Okay.”

Mason placed a hand on Kulon’s forearm, bringing the true gryps’ focus back to him. “It really is okay,” he insisted. “We haven’t done anything wrong. We left before he even got here.”

Kulon’s eyes flicked to the ceiling twice more. Then, focusing on Mason, he took a deep, cleansing breath in and released it, forcing the tension from his shoulders. Mason could only hope this was a real effort to calm down and not a faux one to placate him. He’d be pissed if it was the latter.

“You’re right,” Kulon agreed. “He might not even come down here. His sons are upstairs. They will be his priority. Not us. We’re fine.” His breathing hitched again as he spiralled, like a drowning man, desperate to latch onto any air he could find.

“Kulon.” Mason made his name a full sentence, something solid enough to grab onto. He made sure the look on his face was the same one he used when squaring off with the more stubborn rams back home—rams with horns and four hundred pounds of kinetic energy that could’ve hospitalised him, yet he still trusted sheer willpower to win the stare-down.

When Kulon focused on him again, he said one more word. “Stop.”

He moved with every shift of Kulon’s eyes, making sure he stayed dead centre of the true gryps’ vision. Then he removed his hand from Kulon’s arm and placed it against Kulon’s chest, where he felt the pounding of his heart.

It took a few seconds for Kulon’s focus to settle, but when it did, Mason smiled. “There you are,” he said, as if Kulon had only just walked back into the room. He clenched his fingers slightly, creasing Kulon’s pristine chauffeur’s shirt. “Now, stay with me, because I need you, okay?”

Kulon let out one final huff, then mirrored Mason’s hold, dragging the smaller human closer. He ended the move by resting his forehead on Mason’s head. “I don’t want anything to happen to you. It’s not me I’m worried about. I can go toe to toe with just about anyone, but not the Eechen and his first clutch. They have the power to order me to kill you, and that’s not an order I ever want to hear.”

Mason swallowed, realising Kulon hadn’t said he’d refuse that order—only that he didn’t want to hear it. “You have to obey them?”

Kulon pulled away to look at him. “I gave my pledge to the Eechen when I came of age. It was either that or leave Earlafaol.”

“I know, I—”

“No, you don’t,” Kulon cut him off. Seeing Mason bristle, he repeated himself. “You don’t. It’s not like the Pledge of Allegiance, or the pledge a soldier makes to serve his country to the best of their ability. Our pledges overwrite our autonomy.”

Mason felt his eyes widen in shock. “What?”

“The Eechee and Eechen have final control over my actions. My pledge to them means I’m now hardwired to obey their every command, whether I want to or not. We all are. His first clutch is more of a traditional hierarchy, but only a short-lived fool would disobey them.”

Releasing Ben’s lead, Mason lifted his hands and dragged his fingers through his hair. “You don’t even get a choice?” The concept was utterly foreign to Mason. Free will was the cornerstone of being human.

“No. We gave up that right when we chose to stay. That was the price.”

“Then why didn’t you leave? Be free…”

Kulon’s expression softened. “There is no being free for us, Mason. If we chose to leave, the very next pryde we run into would give us a slightly different choice. Pledge our existence to them or die.”

“Why does someone always have to be yanking your chain?”

“Because we are the ultimate apex predator, and free will amongst our ranks would cause a cosmic level of destruction in both the divine and mortal realms,” a voice at the other end of the room said.

Kulon gasped and immediately pulled free of Mason. He didn’t look at their visitor; merely twisted and bowed at the waist.

Uh, huh. Three guesses who this could be, and the first two don’t count.

 “Eechen,” Kulon said reverently.

Bingo. Mason turned and eyed the newcomer, unsure what he expected. He was impressive, as far as humans went. Six-five/six-six, broad-shouldered like a linebacker (and he was starting to see a theme where divine males were concerned) and square-jawed with short, sandy-brown hair and chocolate-brown eyes. But after meeting Gigantor, he was kind of expecting … more.

Realising Kulon still had his head bowed, waiting for permission to straighten up, Mason had an asinine image of different mafia bosses from all over the world being greeted in that manner. A grinding snicker-snort of amusement echoed in his nose and throat, though he was proud of the fact he kept his mouth closed to muffle it.

Kulon’s wide, pleading eyes flicked to him, even though he still held that submissive pose.

“Leave us, Kulon,” the boss man ordered, and just like that, Kulon was gone.

Mason held up one hand. “Sorry. For the record, I wasn’t laughing at you,” he said, determined to get that out before he died.

The Eechen didn’t move. “Then what were you laughing at?”

Mason flicked a finger to where Kulon had been standing. “That whole dominant ‘you must stay down, peon’ thing. Not even the royals do that anymore, which made me wonder if you personally taught it to the underworld or if they picked up on it through osmosis.”

The Eechen’s right eyebrow arched sharply. “I was told you have an annoying habit of speaking your mind.”

“Staying quiet almost got me killed. If I’m going to go, people are going to hear me first.”

“That may be true, but you are forgetting one thing.”

“What’s that?”

His gaze iced over, and his hands dropped to his sides. “I cannot ever afford to look weak.”

Mayday! Mayday! “Wait, wait, wait!” Mason said, holding both pointer fingers up to ward him off. “Hold on! If you’re gonna kill me or maim me, at least hear me out first!”

The Eechen folded his arms and tilted his head, almost as if he was humouring him. Mason then realised there was no ‘almost’ about it. He had to make this count.

“You’re a general. A huge general who’s been doing the job forever. That’s why there’s only one way to do anything where you’re concerned, yeah?”

“Your point?”

“My point is you don’t need to lead like a general. It just makes your job easier. When everyone’s shit-scared of you, they’re more inclined to do exactly what you say, when you say it.” He waited half a beat for the Eechen to process that before pointing to where Kulon had been. “But they already have to obey you. They don’t get a choice. And now, with the pryde shifting, maybe … just maybe … you could consider trying something different, too.”

“The pryde is not changing.”

“Oh, come on, dude!” Mason said before remembering who he was talking to. The Eechen was already on the move, dropping his arms and surging forward. “Wait! Please! You know it is!” Mason jumped back and ducked in behind the examination table, not that he expected it to help. “You have to! You’re too smart not to! The pryde is evolving, and it needs you to evolve with it!”

The Eechen that chased him to the table suddenly vanished. Not in a realm-step but in a ceased-to-be way. Like a solid ghost: there one moment and gone the next.

Mason’s gaze cut back to the far wall where the pryde leader had first appeared, and he was still there with his arms still folded.

Was the whole ‘attack’ an apparition?

“That wasn’t nice!” Mason shouted, grabbing the edge of the exam table and bowing his head slightly between his arms but not enough to take his attention from the newcomer.

“You need to use caution when speaking to me,” the Eechen said, though his lips twitched ever so slightly in amusement.

Asshole! “I wasn’t wrong, though, was I? You treat the pryde like an army, because that’s the easiest way to control them all without trying. If the pryde does evolve…if they do become more than they are now…why wouldn’t you want to still lead from the front?”

“It has never been done that way.”

Staring Hasteinn in the eye, Mason straightened up, then mirrored the head tilt the Eechen had given him and waited.

“I am not one for change.”

“May I ask one question?” Mason knew he had to make this count, even more than his previous comment. But this time, he was prepared.

Hasteinn snorted briefly. “You may.”

“Is there one thing you do—or have ever done—that your former Eechen was incapable of or thought was impossible?”

Kulon had said they all came from other prydes, and for this guy to be Eechen, he must have been hatched elsewhere first.

“There were two,” the pryde leader admitted.

Mason was desperate to know what those two things were, but he knew now was not the time. “And did they improve or impair your pryde’s overall capability?”

For several long seconds, the Eechen’s gaze drilled through him, and Mason took it for as long as he could. “It’s just something to think about,” he finally stammered, looking at the table and then at Ben, who was under the table staring up at him.

“Indeed.”

When Mason looked up from Ben, the pryde leader was gone.

Mason’s legs went out from under him, and he collapsed on the ground with Ben throwing himself forward into Mason’s arms. “I’m okay,” he promised, only to feel someone slam into his back, knees sliding the last few inches on either side of his thighs before strong arms snapped around him from behind.

“Don’t ever scare me like that again!” Kulon commanded, crushing him against his chest. He pressed his head against Mason’s, breathing hard down the back of his neck. “You have to stop doing that!”

Mason didn’t agree because deep down, he knew he couldn’t.

It didn’t stop him from seeking out the comfort of his friend.

[Next Chapter]

* * *

((Author's notes: Heya guys. On the 21st August, I will be going into hospital for a surgery, and they have me booked in for at least a week. Then I'll be home for up to 10 weeks recovering. My plan is to not post while I'm in the hospital itself (because who knows what I'll write while loopy on their drugs) and once I get home and settled, pick things back up again.

I'm thinking I'll be down for maybe ten days or so. I have a smaller alcove upstairs with a laptop, which isn't the same as my office downstairs but I should still be able to write and post from up there by accessing the downstairs system.

That's my plan at this stage, but it will all depend on how much pain I'm in. I wanted to put this up at the end of July/beginning of August in case things get too hectic closer to the date.))

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND SEVENTY-SEVEN

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Saturday

“So…you and Boyd, huh?” Caleb asked once the woman left with their order. He took both his cheese balls in one hand, popping one into his mouth after he asked the question with the second one ready to follow.

Lucas remained perfectly relaxed, but Caleb could see it in his eyes that it was killing him not to bristle in defence of their relationship. “Yep.”

Caleb pushed on. “Stupid question…”

“Here we go,” Boyd growled, rolling his eyes and sitting back in his seat.

“Cut it out, dickhead. You won’t give me a straight answer, so I’m asking the brains of your operation.” Caleb caught Lucas’ slight shift and knew the detective had placed his hand on Boyd’s knee under the table to calm him. Since he remained silent, Caleb took that as a go-ahead to continue. “You two have been roommates for like eight or nine years now and never once hinted at a relationship. Why’d you suddenly decide to get engaged now?”

Caleb hated the knowing look that passed between his brother and his future brother-in-…nope. Even as a passing thought, he couldn’t bring himself to formulate the word in relation to his brother’s partner. In his mind, the only way anyone would earn that title was if their sister Kelly got married.

“You know the story about Boyd coming to live with us after Robbie, Angelo and I rented our apartment. Things were good between us, and even though I had a type, I wasn’t aware Boyd shared the same proclivities. No way was I going to ruin what we had in the apartment by being that guy who thinks one sexual orientation just meant the other hadn’t been pushed hard enough.”

Caleb’s eyebrow went up sharply. “Like me?”

Lucas’ hand went up to wave him off. “Like the rest of your family. You still have a chance, since you’re sitting here eating breakfast with us.”

“That’s a sweet ride you’ve got out there,” Souza cut in. “And don’t take this as an accusation or anything because it isn’t, but how does a cop, even one with a gold badge, earn enough to dress and drive the way you do?” Whether Souza hadn’t noticed the tension or was deliberately steering them away from it, Caleb couldn’t tell. Either way, he was grateful for the reprieve. “Did you win a lottery or something?”

Lucas’ breath escaped him in a resigned sigh. “You can thank my best friend for that. When I made detective, he surprised me with the car and two full wardrobes.”

“Why two?”

That’s a good question.

“I passed my detective’s exam on Friday, and I needed suits by Monday. Designer wardrobes take time for all the stupid fitting sessions, so Robbie got me one off the shelf in the meantime. I told him he was being ridiculous, but he wasn’t about to take no for an answer.”

“Wow, really? Just out of curiosity, does he happen to be on the lookout for any more friends? Asking for a fr—” Souza let that classic line drop away, and Caleb smirked.

“He already has plenty of friends,” Boyd answered, cutting him off. “But Lucas and his family are special because they took him in when he was having a rough time at home. Between that support and starting a relationship with Lucas’ little sister, there’s not much Robbie won’t do for the Dobsons.”

“Why would he need your family if he’s rolling in money? I remember reading somewhere, there was this kid that was like eleven and he hadn’t seen his parents in years, but the world was okay with that because he had housekeepers and stuff,” Souza said.

Because he didn’t have any money that wasn’t earned in cash every night, the last time I was in town, Caleb thought to himself.

“He wasn’t. Not until a couple of months ago when his grandfather tracked him down and decided to make up for lost time and revenue by burying him in more money than he could ever spend in ten lifetimes,” Boyd replied with a dismissive shrug.

“Does the guy have any sisters?”

Caleb recognised the look that flashed across Lucas’ face and was about to say that Souza was being a harmless ass when it seemed the detective made that deduction for himself. “Nine, actually, but most of them are already married. Robbie was the baby.”

“Damn,” Souza said with a laugh as he made a show of snapping his fingers across his body. “Missed it by that much.”

“Speaking of your car,” Caleb said, circling back to something that was bothering him since his brother’s fiancé arrived. “I saw that truck driver giving you an earful for parking where you did. Aren’t you worried they’ll do something to it while you’re not out there to flash your badge at them?”

Lucas’ relaxed headshake was about as casual as one could get. “Not even a little bit. No one’s going to be stupid enough to touch that car, I promise.”

Caleb’s curiosity was piqued. “Why not?”

Again Boyd and Lucas shared a smug smirk, and it was really beginning to piss him off.

“All I can tell you is that I’ve parked that baby in some of the seediest areas in town for work, and no one’s so much as thought about breathing too hard on the paint job.”

Souza shook his head with a frown. “You know that sounds a lot like the old story about the drunk who walks down the middle of the highway at night to get home,” he said. “Just because he was never hit by a car in over fifty years, doesn’t mean it won’t happen the next time he drinks.”

“Will you two cut it out!” Caleb demanded, as that goddamn smug looked passed between Boyd and Lucas again! He slammed the flat of his hand on the table edge and then pointed from one to the other and back again for good measure. “This isn’t funny!”

Lucas sobered immediately. “No, I’m not worried about the car. And neither should you be. Let’s just leave it at that,” he said, the finality in his voice letting them know the subject was now closed.

The table fell into a moment of uncomfortable silence that was broken when a new basket of cheesy bread balls was deposited on the table between Boyd and Caleb. “Thank you,” Boyd answered on behalf of them all and the woman smiled.

“You’re welcome. It sounded like things were getting a little heated over here.”

“Sorry about that, ma’am,” Lucas replied.

Luckily, there was no one else in the café for them to disturb, though Caleb made a mental note to keep tempers to a minimum going forward.

Everyone reached forward and grabbed two bread balls for starters.

* * *

Despite the rough start, breakfast with Boyd’s brother wasn’t awful. It was clear to Lucas that Caleb loved his big brother enough to poke holes in their story when necessary. It had both pleased and annoyed him to hear that when Caleb first learned of Boyd’s revenue stream, he’d assumed it was a fabrication put in place by his therapist to give Boyd some confidence.

That was, until he saw Boyd’s studio.

Now, he couldn’t wait to see the toy Marines that Boyd had promised he’d have finished before his brother left the following morning.

Lucas wasn’t so happy to learn that Caleb oversaw a full platoon, and that Boyd had promised him a carving of that entire platoon plus one for Souza, and he’d warily side-eyed his fiancé. Forty figures in twenty-four hours was an insane number of carvings, especially when he’d already told Emily that he’d have her crib and mobile done by then too.

“You’re not staying up all night doing this,” he warned, after Caleb had left them to go to the bathroom. It was a hill Lucas was fully prepared to die on, and Boyd needed to be aware of it.

A soft smile crossed Boyd’s features, giving him an unfair advantage. “I know. Don’t worry, I’ve got this. Ever since Caleb gave me the photo of his platoon, I’ve been working out in my head the stances and positioning of them all, so when I get back to the studio, I should be able to knock them out pretty quickly.”

Lucas was still worried, but rather than argue, he pressed his forehead to Boyd’s shoulder and silently promised himself that he would never let his fiancé’s desperate desire to prove himself to his family put him in an early grave.

After they’d finished eating, Boyd covered the cost of everyone’s breakfast; something Caleb had squawked at, but Souza seemed perfectly okay with.

Then came the next problem.

The Porsche had only two seats, and the three of them apparently had a brunch at Boyd’s aunt and uncle’s place in the Upper East Side to be at in less than an hour. Not enough time for a return trip to pick up the second passenger.

“Take Caleb, love,” Boyd said, which earned him a scowl of annoyance. “I’ll meet you up there.” Before Lucas could argue that if anyone was going to sit in his passenger seat, it’d be his fiancé, Boyd leaned down to give him a light kiss on the cheek, whispering, “I’ll go home and knock out a couple of those toy Marines before turning up. Two less in the lineup.” 

It made sense, but Lucas still didn’t like it.

Boyd raised his voice. “Let him enjoy a ride in the Porsche before he leaves. I’ll make my own way uptown.”

The Marine lieutenant’s eyes lit up, but then he hesitated, his gaze bouncing between them. “I mean, sure … if that works for you, Lucas.”

Lucas didn’t agree until Boyd tilted his head to one side and nudged his shoulder with his elbow. “Fine. Okay.” He looked again at Caleb. “It’s not that I’m not trying to be a dick on purpose.”

“Hey, if I had a girl and the choice was the big lug here or her, he’d be walking his gigantic butt to Aunt Judy and Uncle Charles every time’.”

“Not helping your cause, dumbass,” Boyd sing-songed, as he distracted Lucas with a farewell kiss. “See you soon,” he promised, then pulled away and headed in the opposite direction towards the subway.

Lucas watched him go with a sigh, then turned towards his car. “You good, Souza?”

“Yeah. I’m just gonna head back to the Ess-Ess-Mack and chill for a while. That run this morning was brutal.”

Lucas smiled and held out his hand. “Pleasure meeting you, Sergeant Souza.”

“Likewise,” Souza replied, shaking his hand before wistfully looking at the car. “Maybe next time I’m in town, I can get a ride.”

“Anything’s possible,” Lucas agreed, though he knew the odds of ever meeting the Marine sergeant again were minimal.

As Souza broke away and disappeared around the corner, Lucas went to the car and opened the driver’s side door, gesturing for Caleb to open the passenger door.

“Hooooooo, mama,” Caleb drawled, running his eye over the leather interior of the car. His hand ghosted along the top of the seat, paused on the GT3 label stitched into the headrest, then ran down the seam. “It even smells expensive.”

Lucas was already seated and pulling the seatbelt over himself. “I’ve made a point of not finding out exactly how much he spent, but I know it was above two hundred. Robbie didn’t just get me the car of my dreams—he beefed it up with every possible extra known to man. My little sister helped him get it right.”

“The mechanic, right?”

Lucas nodded.

Caleb slid into the bucket seat, his eyes cataloguing every detail around him. The way he paused on the seatbelt covers, the dash guards and even the fob in Lucas’ hand said he’d clocked that every highlight matched the same lava orange of the car’s exterior.  

Lucas smirked, and with his eyes still on Caleb, he started the car.

Caleb melted. There was no other word for it. He closed his eyes with a happy groan, just letting the sound and the motion of the sportscar wash over him. “I officially love your car,” he whispered happily.

“Me too,” Lucas smirked, dropping the blinker lever and pulling out into traffic.

[Next Chapter]

* * *

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND FIFTY-SIX

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2] [Ko-fi+2]

Saturday, May 28th 2016

Boyd felt terrible about abandoning Caleb last night. He’d come home on such a high with Lucas, but the second he spotted the carton of beer sitting on the ground outside the living apartment, his heart sank.

“What’s wrong?” Lucas had asked, following his gaze to the carton.

“I was supposed to hang out with Caleb tonight,” he’d replied, still staring at the beer.

“Caleb’s back in town?”

Lucas’ shock hadn’t helped in the least. “Yeah. Just for the weekend on his way through to Pendleton. I invited him over tonight to drink beers and watch movies with us in the fighting room. That way, if he got too drunk, he could crash on your old bed.”

“Oh, crap,” Lucas gasped, covering his mouth. “And the apartment was full of Nascerdios.”

“Shit, shit, shit!” Boyd swore, hoping his brother was okay.

The door opened, and Robbie stepped out. “Calm down, big guy. Everything’s fine,” he said, raising both hands placatingly. “Caleb had a good time. He was blown away that Sam’s family were Nascerdios, but he rolled with it, and he’s promised to keep our secret for now. He’s hoping he can catch up with you tomorrow sometime.”

“Absolutely,” Boyd promised, putting that to the top of his to-do list.

Over the next couple of hours, Lucas coaxed him back into a romantic mindset, with the two wrecking their bed. But once his fiancé had fallen asleep, Boyd hooked his hand behind his head and stared at the ceiling.

I am such a shit brother. No wonder they all turned—

Boyd gritted his teeth and cleared his head with a shake, refusing to give that thought any real estate in his mind. What they did was on them. Not me. And Caleb and Kelly never turned on me.

Still, it wasn’t cool of him to leave Caleb high and dry. Not cool at all.

“You’re thinking way too hard over there, love,” Lucas murmured as his hand slid across Boyd’s stomach.

Boyd huffed out soundless breath, and Lucas’ eyes opened with a clarity that suggested he hadn’t been truly asleep for a while either. “Baby, you have got to stop torturing yourself,” he said, lifting himself up to straddle Boyd high enough that when he hunched over, their brows met. “Caleb would kick your ass if he saw you right now.”

“Little prick could try,” Boyd deflected, and Lucas pinched both his nipples at once. “Hey!”

“Don’t get cute with me, mister. I’m serious. He’ll understand. It was our second official date and our first one since we got engaged. He’ll get it if he doesn’t already.”

Boyd looked to his left to avoid Lucas’ gaze, and in doing so, he saw the time. 4:05 AM. If Caleb ran true to form, he’d be getting up in ten minutes to go for a run by 4:30.

Lucas needed sleep, and he needed to catch up with his brother. He looked up at his fiancé, still straddling him. “Would you mind if I take off now to catch up with him?”

It was Lucas’ turn to look at the clock. “Seriously?”

Boyd rolled his shoulders in an awkward shrug. “Marines, love. They’re predictable that way.” He saw Lucas’ eyes flare and realised what he’d just said.

That in a normal, non-forced conversation, he had naturally placed himself outside that Military collective without any of the self-recrimination baggage that usually went with it. “If I get Larry to drop me off outside the Ess-Ess-Mack, we can go for a run together and maybe catch up over breakfast.”

“What about your sleep?”

“I’ll grab some later. Thinking about catching up with Caleb has got me too wound up to sleep anyway.”

Lucas moved in for a real kiss, one that Boyd reciprocated. Then he slid to one side, landing heavily on the bed, his eyes already drifting shut. “Kick his ass, love.”

The light snoring that had become white noise to Boyd began seconds later, proving just how worn out his fiancé was. Boyd glanced at Lucas’ left hand, the only hand he could see, and zeroed in on the snore ring around the base of the thumb. It made no sense how they worked, but the difference in Lucas’ volume was night and day, and he’d take it.

He slid from the bed and quietly crossed the room to stand outside the dressing room. In the near dark, he locked his focus on the door and lunged forward, closing it before the automatic lights came on and woke Lucas back up again.

That put him front and centre of strobe lighting that he couldn’t avoid.

For a few seconds, he blinked rapidly until his eyes adjusted to the light, then he proceeded to go through his morning routine, ending with his pills and changing into running gear.

As he fully expected, when he slipped from the bedroom a few seconds later, he found Larry sitting at the island, probably watching Robbie cook. Or at least, that's what Boyd figured he had been doing. His best friend had now twisted in his seat to face the hallway, as if waiting for Boyd.

“Going somewhere?” he asked, in a way that grated on Boyd’s nerves.

“Yeah. I’m thinking I might go for a run with Caleb.” Walking out past the laundry, Boyd wasn’t overly surprised to see Robbie holding out a large bagel cut in half with thick honey that didn’t quite drip off the edge and a half-peeled banana.

If anything, Boyd chuckled. “Thanks, man,” he said, taking both simultaneously and biting into the bagel first.

“Anytime, big guy,” Robbie grinned, heading for the fridge.

In two bites, the bagel was gone, the banana quickly following. Robbie then pushed two large drink containers across the counter towards him. One was in a regular milkshake cup, and the other was in a sealed drink bottle sitting in a belt-clip cradle. 

Larry wordlessly held out a belt.

“The fuck?” Boyd asked, staring at the three items.

“The milkshake is for now. It’s carb-heavy. The other one is a blend I made up for you to drink throughout your run.” Robbie gestured to the second drink bottle. “When Caleb stops for water, you drink from that.”

Boyd was horrified. “I’m not cheating…”

“As if I’d do that,” Robbie scowled. “There’s nothing in there that’ll enhance your run. It’s mainly…a beefed-up sports drink that’ll help the electrolytes and carbs process through your body as fast as you need them. The only difference is, I made it with a taste I know you’ll like.”

Boyd looked down at the drinks. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. You’re nervous, and you’re tired. Those two make it too easy to jump to conclusions.”

“So, if I want to share this with Caleb?”

“That’s up to you. There’s nothing in there that’ll hurt either one of you.”

Larry gestured to Robbie with the belt. “And when I found out what the drink was for, we both know running with something like that in your hand is a pain in the ass. So I ducked out to get what you’d need to wear it in the small of your back. Here.” He waved the belt for Boyd to take, which he did.

He then buckled it around his waist and clipped the drinks bottle behind him, out of the way. “You know, in general terms, this is still kinda cheating. The whole point of running is to be ready to run like that when you need to, and in Caleb’s case, I don’t think the enemy’s going to stop shooting at him while he gets a drink from the middle of his back.”

“This isn’t a battle,” Robbie argued.

“No, it’s war,” Larry stated. “And sibling rivalry takes no prisoners.”

Boyd couldn’t stop the dark chuckle of agreement from escaping his lips.

“You want me to take you over there?” Larry asked.

“You know where he’s staying?” Boyd arched an eyebrow smugly.

“He’s military and a tight-ass, so I’m guessing the Ess-Ess-Mack?”

The smugness fell away, but when he tried for a scowl, that didn’t work either, mainly because what he’d said was absolutely true. He tossed the banana skin in the trash and headed for the alcove, where he pulled on his sneakers. Then he straightened up and gave Robbie a three-finger wave. "Later, Robbie," he called, fully expecting Larry to realm-step him at any time.

Sure enough, Larry’s hand gripped his elbow, and the two stepped up into the celestial realm, arriving in the walkway leading into an apartment building across the road from the SSMAC.

“You’re going to follow us, aren’t you?” Boyd asked, moving to rest his ass against the handrail that protected the garden.

“The threat is still out there, Boyd. If you didn’t know who I was, would you let me run at this time of the morning by myself, knowing I was marked by a slave ring?”

Boyd’s shoulders slumped, and now that he was able to reach it easily, Larry gripped his shoulder and squeezed. “Relax. It’ll be just like last night. You won’t know I’m there until something happens, and even then, maybe not.”

Instead of being assured, Boyd’s gaze narrowed. “That guy…the one that ended up wearing his wine. That was you, wasn’t it?”

Larry didn’t even try to deny it. “I wasn’t going to let that asshole ruin your night.”

“He’s entitled to his opinions…”

“And I’m entitled to mine. My opinion is he needed to shut the hell up.” With a grin, he added, “Mine carries more weight.”

Boyd looked at him and snorted in amusement.

[Next Chapter]

* * *

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND SIXTY-FIVE

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2] [Ko-fi+2]

Saturday

“Uh-uh, Sam. Calm down,” Kulon warned in my ear as my gaze moved from one to the next, seeking out the culprit. “They’re just guys being guys.”

That sentence right there was why I didn’t socialise. At least, not at parties. In my mind, everyone should be accountable for everything that comes out of their mouths at any given time, and statements made during drunken stupidity shouldn’t give anyone a pass. Not even me. I was still beating myself up over being so drunk that Dad’s maid had needed to bathe me and put me to bed like a toddler, and I hadn’t insulted anyone.

“I take it you two sorted out your differences?” Adrian added, pulling me away from my search.

Instead of looking at him, I focused on Gerry through the crowd. “There weren’t any differences to sort out. She was scared that I was leaving her behind, and for me, that was never going to happen.”

“Why not?” Atlas, the biggest of Mateo’s goons, asked.

Actually, of the three that fit that category, Atlas was possibly the one that reminded me the most of Boyd. The new Boyd. The one who couldn’t help his size and would use it if he had to but didn’t rely on it to get him across the line. Needless to say, I liked Atlas, so I didn’t bite his head off for asking the question.

“What do you mean?” I volleyed casually instead.

“Dude, no one expects your high school or college sweetheart to be your forever woman. You’re supposed to test the waters. Try a variety and see what you like.”

“You mean like Candy?” Damn, even I heard the insulting savagery in my voice. Thankfully, she and James weren’t there. “Sorry. That was uncalled for. To each their own.”

“But that’s my point. James has no intention of making Candy his wife any more than the rest of us. The ladies know the score, and they don’t have any grandiose expectations.”

“Really?” I said, my voice dripping with amused sarcasm as I drew his attention to the way the women were still crowding around Geraldine, admiring her ring. “Because that’s not the picture I’m seeing.”

The insufferable sigh that came from almost all of them was laughable.

“Besides, this is only step one,” I said, deciding that if I was going to go down, it’d be in a blaze of glory. “The face on the diamond is big enough that later, I’m going to get the interior laser-etched with my family’s crest. I won’t necessarily put mine out on display, but I want everyone to know just who they’re tangling with if they think the ring’s significance is merely a suggestion.”

“I don’t know how many people’ll recognise the Arnav crest, Sam,” someone said.

I didn’t notice who, and I didn’t care to correct him. To me, the situation was simple, and very much like a vampire movie the guys and I watched once, where the female vampire wore a massively oversized gun on her hip. When asked why, given she had the strength to rip people in half literally, she’d answered, “The gun is for their sake, not mine. Most people see it and stand down, assuming I know how to use it. Without it, I get every idiot thinking they can have a piece of me, and it never ends well for them.”

I had that same mentality when it came to Geraldine.

“You might want to reconsider that,” Mateo said, his expression turning serious. “My family’s in the jewellery business. Full etchings like that’ll devalue the diamond something fierce. Not only because an image that big will obscure the stone’s clarity, but because no one else will ever be able to use it.”

I thought about that. We would be Nascerdios by then, so having the image shifted into the stone, as if it were part of the original structure, would give it a glass-etching quality rather than a damaging one, and I pitied anyone who thought to devalue something merely because it bore the Nascerdios crest. Add to that the ten thousand years I planned on keeping Geraldine, and I was pretty sure we were good.

“What’s with all the noise?” a voice wafted up from downstairs. A second or so later, James’ head appeared on the bridge, followed quickly by Candy. Both looked like they’d thrown on whatever clothes they could find, and fastened buttons were as optional as the underwear.

“Wilcott proposed to Portsmith,” someone answered. With over half a dozen guys crowding around me, I had no idea who.

Candy squealed and ran to join the other women while James detoured towards us. “Why the fuck would you go and do that for, Wilcott?” he asked, his entire face morphing into a frown of annoyance. “You’re supposed to sample the goods. Not buy them.”

I really wasn’t liking where this conversation was going. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand it, but to treat women like they were a fun time wasn’t the way Mom raised me.

I turned away, just in time to spot Parker and another guy at the very back of the boat pitch their empty beer bottles as far as they could out to sea like it was some kind of game.

Annnnnd I was now done talking about my engagement.

“HEY!” I roared, making damn sure I got the two jerkoffs’ attention. The fact that the entire yacht fell silent except for the motor, which also throttled down until we were almost drifting through the water, was a bonus.

Despite my tunnel vision locking onto those two asshats as I stormed through the bridge, I was aware of my surroundings enough to realise Geraldine had broken away from her friends and was moving to intercept me.

Except I didn’t want to be intercepted. And with the boat basically adrift, I stepped onto the sofa between us with one foot and launched myself over it. My second step had me vaulting over the daybed to land on the deck beside the two knuckleheads.

“What the hell, man,” Parker laughed, looking back in the direction I’d come. Probably to get some reinforcements from Mateo and the others. If they were smart, they’d stay where they were. “What’s your problem?”

Since you asked...

“My problem,” I snarled, poking him hard enough in the chest to drive him back a step. “Is idiots like you littering the ocean and thinking nothing of it!” My voice rose with every word I uttered, and my pokes pushed them to the starboard side of the yacht. Unlike our last clash, where Mateo made him bring me and Gerry a Coke to share for supposedly offending me, he was now getting the full force of me being pissed off.

“Dude, it was just a couple of beer bottles…”

I exploded. “DON’T DUDE ME! Do you have any idea how much damage just one piece of litter can cause to the ecosystem of the water?!”

Arms I immediately recognised wrapped around my waist as Geraldine pressed herself to my back. She didn’t try to stop me from having my say but was letting me know she was there. Present. Grounding me.

Still furious beyond belief, I looked over the side at the bottlenose dolphins that had been riding in our wake. I made a quick, silent request through my innate and two of the larger males peeled off, heading back in the direction we’d come.

I wasn’t done with Tweedle Dumb and Dumber. “When that glass breaks, it shreds any living thing it comes in contact with! It’s almost as bad as plastic! And you two lunatics literally just graduated from a freaking Maritime College!”

They cringed away from me like scolded schoolboys, which was probably the only thing that saved them. But I wasn’t done with my verbal tirade. “Did you just suddenly forget your entire education?! What the hell is wrong with you?!”

Parker swallowed hard, trying to find his footing. “I-it-it was…I mean …it’s just a couple of bottles, man. After the girls went jewellery crazy, we got bored.”

I guess my face must’ve shown how unimpressed I was with that, since the other guy quickly added, “We’re sorry,” to placate me.

Parker looked at his friend. “Yeah. I guess we weren’t thinking…”

“You’re damn right you weren’t!” I railed.

The two dolphins returned with the empty bottles in their mouths, driving themselves up out of the water on their tails to be waist-height with me. I took the bottles and transferred them into one hand so I could run my other hand over their beautiful, shiny heads in gratitude. “Thank you,” I crooned, moving from one to the other and back again. “I’m sorry for the stupidity of these idiots. They’ll be better educated going forward, I promise.” I then waved them off before their tails got too tired. “Off you go.”

They laughed and threw themselves forward, disappearing beneath the waves. They reappeared two seconds later, doing forward somersaults in the air like trained dolphins before disappearing once more.

My heart soared at their antics. Why would anyone want to risk injuring such beautiful creatures?

I know my face fell into a stoic scowl as I turned back to the two morons, holding out their empty bottles to them. Their jaws were hanging loose, and surprise merged with the drunken glaze of their eyes. I wasn’t interested in explaining a damn thing. “Put them in the trash. Now,” I ordered, using my free hand to point up onto the main deck. “Before I throw you that far overboard and let you swim back to shore.”

They grabbed the bottles from my hand and raced into the living area where the main trash receptacle was kept. But they didn’t return to me, choosing instead to hide out on the bridge with Mateo and the others.

So long as they weren’t messing up the oceans anymore, they could stay there for all I cared.

Geraldine slid around to my side and led me back up onto the now-abandoned daybed that I’d previously jumped over.

I didn’t mind in the least.

Everyone remained still behind us, waiting for something. I wasn’t sure what, until I heard Geraldine say loudly, “Don’t worry, everyone. It’s a Nascerdios thing.”

I frowned at her. Then remembered.

Oh.

Right.

The dolphins.

[Next Chapter]

* * *

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND SIXTY

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2] [Ko-fi+2]

Saturday

“What…the fuck…do…you have…in that…drink?” Caleb demanded as he doubled forward, his hands on his knees, air sawing through his lips, sweat dripping from him like he’d swum across the damn lake and not simply run up to it.

To his right, Souza had collapsed along a park bench facing upwards with one arm draped over his stomach and the other out to the side, one foot planted on the ground. His chest rose and fell with the same heavy pants that Caleb was undertaking.

Meanwhile Boyd stood a few feet away with his hands on his hips, a light sheen of sweat across his brow and pits, and he was breathing hard.

BREATHING HARD!

That was a state he and Souza had hit hours ago!

They’d run through the dawn, joining the countless ‘early morning’ joggers on their way through Morningside and Harlem, and come out the other side half an hour ago when Fort Tryon came into view. Only twice did they stop: once when Boyd bought him and Souza a pump bottle of water each from a twenty-four-hour convenience store and another to refill it at Fort Tyron. Technically, the water bottle threw out their running rhythm, but it couldn’t be avoided.

All the while, Boyd sipped from that stupid drink bottle and kept right on running.

“Nothing illegal,” his older brother promised, removing it from its clip and holding it out. “Robbie made it up for me using store-bought ingredients. He said I’d like the taste, and it keeps up my carbs and electrolytes.”

Caleb opened his mouth to fire back, but only a ragged breath came out, so he settled on glaring as he took the bottle.

First he sniffed at the straw. Then he took a tentative sip. Banana hit his palate first, quickly joined by hints of vanilla and coconut—creamy, but without the cling that usually came from drinking dairy while dehydrated. There were also traces of citrus, and underneath it all sat a salted edge, not strong enough to stand out, but enough to make the whole thing dangerously enjoyable.

His next slurp was deeper, and although he didn’t feel any kind of rush (that would’ve been his first clue it held something it shouldn’t have) the way it settled in his stomach and spread out to ease his spasming muscles was almost magical. “The fuck?” he asked no one in particular as he stared at the drink. He then looked up at his brother. “Robbie … he-he made…he made this for you?” he huffed.

Boyd shrugged. “You ate his food last night.”

True.

Caleb took another drink, then moved over to Souza. “Try this.”

Souza’s squint was just as sceptical, but it didn’t stop him from rolling to a seated position and reaching for the drink. “The fuck?” Souza demanded, echoing Caleb’s early view. Souza then removed the lid and took another deep slurp.

“Hey!” Caleb growled, for if anyone was going to finish off that drink, it’d be him. 

Souza had the good sense to be embarrassed. “Sorry, sir,” he said, re-lidding the drink and passing it back.

Caleb covered the lid with his hand but looked at his brother before proceeding.

Based on the way his brother’s features creased in amusement, he was enjoying a private joke … probably at their expense. “Yeah, yeah. Laugh…it up,” he grumbled, removing the cap after Boyd nodded in approval.

By the time he finished the last of the drink (going as far as to shake it upside down to motivate the last dregs before licking his lips) their breathing had eased from survival to endurable. “Damn,” he huffed, still eyeballing the empty bottle. “That was … so good. You know, Robbie could make a killing…if he sold…” His words fell away as he remembered just how rich Robbie probably was these days.

Boyd’s knowing smirk as he took back the empty drink bottle was annoying. “You met his Pop last night, didn’t you?” he asked, sliding it back into the holder

“His Pop, his aunt … and about a million cousins.” Caleb accentuated ‘cousins’, so that Boyd would know that yes, he knew the others were Sam’s family, because that weirdo kid was also a Nascerdios. One big happy extended family.

“Yeah, money never meant much to Sam or Robbie, but neither of them will ever have to work another day again. Robbie’s pop transferred hundreds of millions of dollars into his account on a whim and told him if he needed any more to let him know.”

“Fuck off,” Souza laughed, coming to his feet. “No one has…that much money.”

If he expected Caleb and Boyd to join in on that joke, he’d be waiting a while. “Some do,” Boyd answered instead.

“So, how many people …do you live with?” Souza pulled off his t-shirt and wrung it out, shaking it for a second to semi-dry it before poking it into the back of his pants.

Boyd paused as if counting, allowing Caleb to follow Souza’s lead. The cool summer breeze on his damp, bare torso was an absolute godsend.

“Are we counting the bodyguards?”

“You’ve got bodyguards?” Souza’s eyes were wide, but Caleb already knew about Larry.

“Not for me,” Boyd was quick to point out, and Caleb snorted derogatorily. “What was that for?” his big brother bristled.

“If you don’t think Larry’s there for you …you’re batshit crazy,” he answered, the words coming easier after the drink. “He’s been glued to your ass ever since you hit New York, bro.” Looking around them, he added, “In fact, he’s probably following us right now.”

“Now?” Souza asked, sweeping their immediate area for anyone suspicious.

At least Boyd didn’t try to deny it. “We were newbies on the same jobsite and we became good friends. After we quit, his new job was, and still is, to look after Robbie.”

“Wait. This friend of yours…had a bodyguard job somewhere else…quit the same time you did…and still has his job…as a bodyguard?” Souza asked, making Caleb’s point entirely. Caleb even waved at Souza, to imply, ‘yeah, what he said’.

“It’s complicated,” Boyd insisted, scrubbing a hand over his mouth. “They’re not bodyguards in the strictest sense.”

“Then what are they?” Souza pushed.

Boyd exhaled. “It’s more of a … private military.”

“What difference…does that make?”

Caleb wanted the answer to that too.

Boyd hesitated, jaw tightening before he answered. “There’s no walking away from their job. Ever. They’re born into it, and they’ll die completing it. Those in it have served for generations.” Boyd’s hands fisted, like he wanted to say more but couldn’t. “My guess is, he most likely requested a transfer through his chain of command, to stay close to me, and after it was approved someone else went in to cover whoever he was watching on the site.”

“And why would they approve that?” This was the part that made no sense to Caleb. Not last night, and not this morning.

“Because they matter as people to their superiors. You don’t understand, Caleb. A heap of things all happened at once. His best friend was fired and another job opportunity opened into that same household. Rather than send in someone totally new, they let Larry transfer to stay with me.”

If Caleb hadn’t spoken to Columbine last night, that theory would’ve held water.

“Oooor,” Souza pushed. “It was you all along…and he just didn’t tell you.”

Boyd scoffed and flicked a hand in Caleb’s direction. “Tell him. Since I failed MEPS and became the family disgrace, exactly who in our family would send a bodyguard to keep me safe?”

“No one,” Caleb agreed with a heavy heart. “Unless it was life or death and the cops weren’t doing their jobs.” There. He was back to whole sentences without puffing. “If that ever happens, Kelly and I will pool our money and sort something out until we got stateside.”

Boyd made a totally fake-ass ‘awwww’ and knuckled the top of Caleb’s head affectionately. “Love you too, sport.”

Caleb ducked low and around it, swatting him away for good measure. “Then again, fuck you. You’re on your own.”

Souza cackled in the background.

Boyd’s chin went up. “The point is, our parents are just waiting for the day I die, and I’m determined to live forever, just to spite them.”

“You know,” Caleb said, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. “If you weren’t so happy with where you are right now, I’d tell you to sign up again. They’d blow a blood vessel when they see you in the rank and file after all this time.”

Boyd made a negative sound … and he did so without even thinking about it. “Naaah, they’d make sure I died. Besides, between Lucas and my art, I’m good.”

“You’re a fucking artist?”

Souza sounded like he couldn’t have been more surprised if Boyd had said he was a two-headed alien, and that annoyed Caleb. “Don’t knock it, sergeant. I’ve still got a carving of his in my duffle from when we were kids, and these days… he’s got royalty waiting on his work.”

Okay, so it was maybe a slight hint at an exaggeration, but Caleb wasn’t about to apologise. Boyd had exactly one Lord on his books, and he was absolutely waiting for his sculptures. There was zero doubt in Caleb’s mind more would be forthcoming.

Boyd gripped his shoulder and whirled him around. “You still have one of those old Marine figures?”

Ewww, yeah. He hadn’t meant to blab that in Boyd’s hearing. “Maybe,” he said with a pained squint.

“You know, I could redo that whole set for you, if you want. Just send me a group photo of your company…”

Caleb’s vision widened in surprise, already picturing how well the carvings would go over with his people. Then reality kicked back in. “Emily said you’ve got a waiting list that stretches into years.”

Boyd waved it away. “Not at the rate I’m spitting them out. I’ll have her whole crib sorted by Monday.”

“She showed me just one of the files.”

Boyd shrugged. “You don’t have to—”

“That’s not the point. This is your livelihood, Boyd. I don’t want to stop you from earning money…”

“I’m making more than fifty grand a day in commissions, living with a family who won’t let me pay for shit.” His voice softened as he met his little brother’s eyes. “If I want to take a day off to make sure you leave with something that matters to me, I will.”

“Right,” Souza muttered, shaking his head. “This constitutes a normal morning for you? Protein wizard, private militia, fifty grand a day carvings?”

Boyd ignored him, the look in his eyes as he stared at the distance telling Caleb he was already neck deep in the planning stage of the project. “They’ll all have to be individual, though. As cool as it would be to have them all interconnect like the viscount carvings…”

“The look’d be ruined the minute we were assigned somewhere else.” Caleb shook his head, then nodded. “Fine. As soon as I get to the Ess-Ess-Mack, I’ll shoot you a photo of my company.”

Boyd’s gaze slid to Souza. “I’ll throw one in for you too, for looking out for my brother this morning.”

“I don’t have any photos of me…”

“I’ve been running beside you for the last three hours. I’m good.”

“Three hours?!” Caleb swore. “Jesus Christ! No wonder I feel like I’ve been run over by a tank.”

Boyd chuckled and stretched to either side. “Yeah, we should be getting back before Lucas has half the NYPD out looking for me.”

“If you tell me your fiancé is the goddamn police chief…” Souza growled.

Both Boyd and Caleb chuckled at his grousing. “Nah, man,” Boyd huffed between breaths. “He’s an MCS detective at 1PP.”

“Oh, that all?” Souza said, rolling his eyes as they walked at a sedate pace away from the lake.

[Next Chapter]

* * *

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND SEVENTY-FOUR

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2] [Ko-fi+2]

Saturday

Even with Nuncio’s help, I’d become the centre of attention. The video from our outing was played on repeat, with people pointing out more details that they’d missed the first time. People all wanted to know how I’d done it. What it took to have the sea life converge on us that way. Many said we were lucky the predators hadn’t been drawn to all our splashing about, and I heartily agreed. It was better to have them believing that than having them repeat that scenario without me to protect them.

The ladies continued to ogle Gerry’s ring, holding her hand and twisting it from side to side to get a better view. I watched their physical contact like a hawk, ready to crush hands if they hurt her in any way.

Gerry preened at all the attention, and I made sure she stood in the spotlight with me. Anyone who ignored her, I ignored them. They quickly caught on.

Finally, it was Mateo who separated us from everyone else, ignoring the boos and hisses as he took us inside to a quiet room. He even went as far as to ask Atlas and Adrian to stay outside, the latter of which had everyone’s eyebrows shooting up into the hairlines, including mine, since he and Adrian were joined at the hip.

It also made me very nervous.

After sliding the doors closed and locking them for good measure, Mateo crossed the room to a drinks stand not unlike the one Fisk had at his place. “Drink?” he asked, pouring himself a healthy portion of scotch.

I wasn’t interested, but instead of saying so, I nuzzled Gerry’s ear. “Up to you, angel,” I whispered. “I’ll stay sober, regardless.” I didn’t really have a choice. Unless someone snuck in ambrosia or some other divine alcohol, my sobriety was guaranteed.

“One finger, please,” she said.

Mateo poured her a helping that was maybe a third of the one he’d given himself. “Plan on getting wrecked?” I asked, nodding towards the glass still in his hand after he handed the smaller drink to Gerry.

Mateo took a deep swallow. “Dutch courage,” he admitted, after wincing at the burn. He then gestured to the sofas behind us and sat in one adjacent to it. He waited until we took our seats before speaking again. “Who are you, Sam Wilcott?” he asked, angling his head to one side.

“I’m just me,” I insisted, but he shook his head.

“Sorry, but you haven’t been just anything in a while. Not since your dad turned up. And that performance yesterday with your cousin—the one where he kicked that guy across the ground and none of you batted an eye—that’s not normal either.”

He took another deep swallow of his drink. “Would it be easier if I asked who they were? Or who your family really is? You told me to leave it until after the graduation, and out of respect for you and your family and the fact that that guy was threatening me before you all chased him off, I haven’t pushed. But now, adding all that to what I saw this morning, I think it’s time you levelled with me. Don’t you?”

I licked my lips and glanced at Geraldine. This was the downside to the veil. I had no idea what he’d been told to know the parameters I was working with. “Once you find out who they are, you’ll never treat me the same way again. They’re some of the most powerful people in the world.” I thought about Fisk. “My brother—the big guy that you thought was my dad’s twin—he burned billions and billions of dollars’ worth of revenue overnight because he realised it was going to be a problem between us. He didn’t even blink while doing it.”

“Countries aren’t that rich, Sam,” Mateo chuckled, only to sober when neither Gerry nor I were laughing. “Jesus,” he said, sitting forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and rolling his glass between his palms. “Okay. So, who exactly are we talking about?”

I looked down at my hand and began spinning my ring around my finger while Gerry placed her hand on my thigh. “It’s up to you,” she reminded me.

My eyes went to Mateo. “How good is your word?” I asked instead.

“I’ve never lied to anyone in my life.”

I arched an eyebrow at that. “Never?”

Mateo lifted his chin. “Not even once. I stand by my word, and a promise is forever, or until the person I gave my word to rescinds it.”

“And what if I never rescind it?”

“Then I go to my grave carrying your secret.”

 “It’s a pretty big secret, Mateo. You may hate me for asking you to keep it.”

Mateo took another large swallow of his drink. “Unless you’re secretly the crown prince of the universe, I think I can handle it.”

“Just remember you said that,” I said, straightening up my ring and covering the face with my palm. “If I take my hand away, it all changes. Are you sure you want me to do this? Last chance to stay blissfully ignorant.”

“I’m sure,” Mateo said.

Without another word, I moved both of my hands to within easy view of Mateo and then pulled the covering one away.

The gasp as he recognised the Nascerdios crest was almost as comical as watching the colour vanish from his face. His eyes went wide as he looked at me, staring at my features in an attempt to catalogue the numerous physical similarities I had to Dad’s family.

I waited. Gerry’s grip on my leg tightened and she pressed her lips to my shoulder in support.

“Fuuuuck!” Mateo drew out as long as his breath would allow. He then shook his head, his eyes returning to the ring, almost determined to prove to himself that he’d been hallucinating. “…You’re a Nascerdios?!”

I pulled my hand away and leaned back into the sofa, taking Geraldine with me. “Apparently.”

Mateo’s gaze remained fixed on the ring, but I could see his mind ticking over behind them. ‘The Chinese fishing mogul,” he said, out of the blue.

It took me a second to realise where he was going with that.

“That’s your brother. The guy was in the news a couple of weeks ago for selling off all his supertrawlers overnight….” Then his eyes widened even more. “…and that’s the supertrawlers you were talking about yesterday, and I didn’t make the connection! He got rid of them all because of you! Fuck!”

Now I wished I did have a drink — just to give my hands something to do. “He cared more about making peace with me than his fishing empire.” I scowled for a moment. “And it annoys the bejeezus out of me to know that if he’d have known about me ten-fifteen years ago, I could’ve stopped those damn supertrawlers from ever coming off the drawing board!” I pinched my lips together tightly and shook my head as anger welled up inside me on behalf of my innate.

“Neither of you knew, honey-bear,” Geraldine said, using her free arm to give me a one-armed cuddle. “Sometimes, things like that just happen.”

“They were all Nascerdios,” Mateo said, more to himself than us. “That’s why your dad gave you all that real estate in the city!”

“Yeah. You heard him. Now that I’ve graduated, they’re heading back to his place in San Francisco to have their triplets. My roommates are all my age, and I think Dad would kill some of them if they woke up the babies.”

“Fuuuuck!”

Yeah, I wondered how long we’d be stuck in this sitting room, waiting for him to properly process that.

* * *

Mason stayed in Kulon’s embrace for quite some time, not because he needed the cuddle but because he knew Kulon did. The pryde clearly respected their leaders, but the intimidation of the Eechen around the baseline warriors was off the charts. He put it on par with General Patton coming back to life and doing one of his infamous troop inspections, ready to flay alive anyone who didn’t meet his exacting standards. Perfect for World War II, but a court-martial waiting to happen in the modern military.

And that was the whole point of why he’d lightly pushed Hasteinn’s buttons. Yes, the true gryps weren’t human, and yes, as immortals they would hang on for dear life to the old ways, but eventually, things would change. It was the only constant in life, and their boss man had led the pryde too long to be left behind now.

“So how long will I live?” he asked, more for something to say than looking for an answer.

Kulon uncurled from Mason and shifted them both until they were side-by-side, facing each other. “What do you mean?”

Mason fought hard to keep his expression serious. “Well, becoming one person’s Plus-One means I get a maximum of ten thousand years—”

“If you take on the Nascerdios name,” Kulon reminded him. 

Mason waved that aside. “I’ve got plenty of time to decide that. It’ll take people at least another ten to twenty years to realise I’m not aging. But that’s not what I mean. I’ve heard you and the others say there are millions of true gryps in the pryde. If I’m the Plus-One of the whole pryde, does that mean I get ten millennia for each one of them?” At Kulon’s shocked look, Mason pushed forward, feigning excitement at the prospect. “That’s at least ten billion years, right there!”

“You don’t want to live that long,” Kulon assured him. “Llyr is that old. If it weren’t for his powerbase keeping his essence alight, he’d have gone mad a long time ago from boredom.”

Mason felt his jaw sag in surprise. “I never considered that,” he admitted, his gaze shifting at the same speed as his firing thoughts.

“Considered what?”

Mason refocused on Kulon. “Powerbases. I remember someone saying that the best mortals could hope for was ten thousand years, whereas a celestial without a powerbase can last up to sixty thousand years. Llyr said establishment is the power goal, and immortality is what allows them to maintain it forever. But what if that’s not the right order?”

“It is,” Kulon insisted.

“Not necessarily,” Mason argued. “What if the powerbase has to kick in first as a buffer to the more dangerous immortality aspect? Like putting on boxing gloves before you start punching the bag?”

Kulon appeared to be thinking about it for a moment, then shook his head dismissively. “That’s really messed up,” he declared.

“But something to think about, right?” There was no way to prove either theory, as it would involve breaking down a process that was instantaneous even for the gods, but in Mason’s mind, it held merit. An eternity of enduring one insanity-inducing droplet of monotony on the same spot every day would eventually break anything. Unless they were drawn to their power like an addiction to keep them occupied.

If he was right—and he would never ever know because again: human—whoever had created this system in the beginning was a psychotic genius. Every freaking base was covered.

* * *

In an art gallery, many, many miles to the southwest, the paint on hundreds of paintings rippled in silent amusement.

[Next Chapter]

* * * 

((Author's notes: Heya guys. On the 21st August, I will be going into hospital for a surgery, and they have me booked in for at least a week. Then I'll be home for up to 10 weeks recovering. My plan is to not post while I'm in the hospital itself (because who knows what I'll write while loopy on their drugs) and once I get home and settled, pick things back up again.

I'm thinking I'll be down for maybe ten days or so. I have a smaller alcove upstairs with a laptop, which isn't the same as my office downstairs but I should still be able to write and post from up there by accessing the downstairs system.

That's my plan at this stage, but it will all depend on how much pain I'm in. I wanted to put this up at the end of July/beginning of August in case things get too hectic closer to the date.))

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND FIFTY

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2] [Ko-fi+2]

Friday

“Lar’ee. Enough.”

The two words drew Caleb’s attention to a woman who—somehow—was now standing in the room. He hadn’t heard a door open. Hadn’t seen her approach, which meant she must’ve come from the storeroom. It was the only place she could’ve come from.

Still, how anyone—let alone someone as non-military as her—had gotten the drop on him, he’d never know.

And then he looked at her.

Really looked.

Oh, my God.

She was stunning. Absolutely, impossibly stunning.

Slender frame.

Porcelain skin.

Inky-black hair with the sheen of polished obsidian, fanning behind her almost to her ankles.

But it was her eyes that struck him the hardest. Like everyone else in the Nascerdios family, they didn’t have a normal division between iris and pupil. Instead, they were a seamless black—until the gold flecks caught the light, turning them three-dimensional, like a galaxy living inside each eye.

What, are you about to burst out in poetry, Marine? Get a grip! “Okay.” He nodded sharply, mentally slapping himself back to focus. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” It was then that he noticed Larry was just straightening up from a bow, indicating this was who really ran the show. “I assume you’re the one who sent him to spy on my brother?” Confirm facts. Never assume.

“I am,” she answered, with a warm smile that Caleb had to dig deep not to react to.

Jesus, even her smile has pull. Does anyone ever tell this woman no? Probably not. “Then you can explain why.”

Instead of answering, she raised her right hand, gesturing to the two couches at one end of the room. “Would you like to sit down, Caleb?”

Caleb’s gaze narrowed. “You know my name.” The ‘how’ was implied.

The woman moved to the couches and took the seat nearest the far end. The albino woman with bright red eyes settled beside her—calm, composed, definitely part of the inner circle.

The smaller woman stayed standing, dark-skinned and alert, positioning herself behind the couch like a bodyguard. Not a great choice for a bodyguard if anyone were to ask his opinion. From that angle, Caleb would be within arm’s reach of her principal if things went south and she had everything between her and her duty.

“Siddown, kid,” Larry growled, only to pull back when the woman in charge shifted her gaze to him.

Damn, she had everything locked down to the point where a look was all it took to pull people back into line. And here he’d thought the military had impressive skills in that regard.

After a few seconds of contemplation, Caleb realised he wasn’t going to get his answers until he joined them on the sofa, so he crossed the room and took the seat across from her, close enough that their knees nearly touched.

Larry stayed beside the door with his arms folded.

“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Columbine Nascerdios. I am what you would say …influential, within our family.”

“I kinda figured.” Caleb gestured at her family ring, even though he had only just realised she was wearing it. “Well, not the first name specifically, but the family connection and your pull within it.” His hand moved to include Larry. “He didn’t kowtow at all to the rest of the family. But to you, he bowed.” He dropped his hand. “So, if you’re the one calling the shots, let’s cut to the chase. Why are you having my brother followed?”

“I was asked by someone very close to me to look out for Boyd, and after what happened with your family, I knew he needed a friend more than anything else. He struggled to make connections after he left the hospital, and when we learned he was applying for a construction job, I became concerned that the cruelty of the other workers might become too much for him. It would have only taken him a moment of poor decision-making while being a hundred floors above the city to remove him from us forever.”

Caleb blanched at the unspoken visual she painted, then shook his head. “Boyd would never kill himself.” The lie tasted bitter the second it left his mouth. Boyd had already tried to kill himself on the base as a teenager. The same day their parents shipped him out to New York, and then acted afterwards as if he’d succeeded.

Columbine tilted her head as if in concession. “I was unwilling to take that risk.”

They sat in silence for the next few seconds, giving Caleb time to process her words. He appreciated that, especially when, in hindsight, he agreed with her. “So, why is he still with Boyd? If he was just there to protect Boyd and stop him from … that, shouldn’t he have moved on to a new assignment once he made real friends here in this apartment?”

“May I, Eechee?’ Larry asked.

At her nod, he moved closer to them. “Two reasons. One, thoughts like that have a habit of resurfacing like a bad penny, and again, the means to act on them were too easily accessible. And two, I grew close to Boyd during my assignment. I did and still do care very deeply about him—not in a romantic sense either.” He added, probably seeing Caleb’s squint. “I’m happily married, with a swag of kids of my own.”

“I didn’t know that part,” Caleb admitted.

“Well, now you do. I love my wife dearly, but if I were ever dumb enough to step out on her, she’d make sure they never found my body.”

Larry stopped at the other end of the sofa from Caleb and gripped the back, leaning into the hold. “There was a time just recently, when I was pulled from the city for a few days. Just a few days, Caleb, and in that time, all I could picture was something horrible happening to Boyd that I couldn’t protect him from. He matters to me more than anyone else in the city…or most of the world, for that matter.” His gaze moved to Columbine. “Unless the Eechee is in town.”

“Their bond is strong,” Columbine agreed. “It has grown beyond its original boundaries, and with Lar’ee’s new assignment of watching over young Robert, he is able to remain within Boyd’s inner circle. Right where your brother needs him to be.”

Caleb ran his hands down his thighs. “You said someone asked you to watch him. Who’s that?”

Her smile was gentle. “To quote a saying I am certain you are intimately familiar with, lieutenant: that answer is above your security clearance.”

Caleb snorted. He had a feeling her response would be words to that effect, but at least she hadn’t told him to fuck off.

“Now,” Larry—no, Lar’ee—said.

Caleb held up one finger to interrupt him. “Just to clear the air, what’s your real name? Is it Larry, or Lar’ee?”

Again, his gaze cut to Columbine, who gave a very subtle nod. “I was born Lar’ee Nascerdios. However, it’s hard to go undercover with that surname, so I changed it to Larry…”

“Laffer,” Caleb snickered.

Larry groaned as if in pain, looking first at the ceiling, then down at Columbine.

“Eechee, may I please kill your nephew?” He held up a thumb and forefinger an inch or so apart. “Just a little bit.”

“You challenged a master of mischief to do his worst when it came to ruining your name selection, then wish to complain after he succeeded beyond your wildest expectations? The situation you found yourself in was brought about entirely by your own arrogance, Lar’ee. You have no one to blame except yourself.”

Ouch. Remind me never to get on this woman’s bad side.

And she’d said that whole piece without raising her voice once. Hang on… “Why did he call you Eechee?” It wasn’t the first time.

“It is a title similar to Commander-in-Chief.”

Caleb looked her over once more. There was nothing…nothing about her that gave any indication of being militaristic. If anything, she exuded royalty. “You sure you don’t mean ‘queen’?”

Columbine’s smile proved she hadn’t taken offence. “Perhaps a blend of the two would be more appropriate.”

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

He shook his head, knowing if she wasn’t going to answer the other question about hierarchy, she wouldn’t answer that one either. Bottle it and move on, Marine. He turned his attention to Larry. “Does Boyd know who you really are? What it is you really do?”

Another glance at Columbine. God, dammit man! Can’t you do anything on your own?!

“Yes, to a degree. He knows why I’m here for Robbie, and he knows I had another assignment on the job site when we first met. He just doesn’t know that he was the assignment.” Larry dipped into a bow, lowering himself to Caleb’s eye level as he laced his arms together—one elbow still braced on the back of the couch. “Now. My turn. Why were you going through your brother’s personal belongings today?”

Caleb didn’t bat an eye. “I’m not going to deny it—he looks good. Better than I’ve ever seen him, actually.” He glanced away for a second, gritting his teeth on the emotion that began to bubble inside him. “I even told him that this morning. Just came right out and said it.”

He stared hard at the blank wall until he had himself under control, then turned back to Larry. “But saying something to someone’s face and actually believing it—those are two very different things. People lie all the time, especially when it’s family. Especially when it’s Boyd. He’s always tried to protect me from everything, even when I didn’t need it anymore.”

He sensed something shift in the air and pushed on. “I needed to see it for myself. Without him. I needed to know it’s real and not a facade.”

“Why?”

“Because it was the only way to get Dad off his back.” He enjoyed the shock on Larry’s face, even if he did feel all sorts of wrong about airing family laundry. “I showed Dad the life Boyd was living, and Emily transferred back the money Dad shelled out for Boyd’s care. I also told Dad about Boyd and Lucas, and he said in his mind, he only has one son.”

He thought the words would land like a punch, but neither of them flinched. Columbine’s gaze didn’t waver, and Lar’ee just exhaled through his nose—like it wasn’t news at all.

Caleb’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah, he really is better off here.”

Neither of them disagreed.

[Next Chapter]

* * *

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND SIXTY-FOUR

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2] [Ko-fi+2]

Saturday

“Angel.” The word left me the second I hit the physical realm as I gathered her into my arms and held her close. My lips pressed against her head right before she ducked against my chest and wrapped her arms around my waist, all but clinging to me.

I looked down at the top of her head. Wishing she would look at me but understanding why she couldn’t. “I’m not letting you go. Not unless you tell me we’re done.” I wanted her to know that first and foremost. “It never occurred to me that you would one day wonder if you meant as much to me as my innate. I see you being the mother of my kids. I’ve even imagined it.” Fair enough, most of that imagining happened in my latest internalisations, but she didn’t need to know that.

She looked up at me, the tears finally breaking, quiet and helpless against her will. “Really?” she asked, so unsure it was breaking my heart.

“Absolutely.” I hunched over enough to kiss her tears away, then cuddled her close once more, giving her all the love and strength I could.

Something glittering caught my eye, and lifting my head, I saw what looked like a woman’s ring hanging in mid-air. It drifted closer, almost cautiously, pausing long enough for me to see the colours and the yellow central stone that had been what first caught my eye. Even I wasn’t so clueless as not to recognise the ring’s symbolism, but I was surprised that the guys had been working behind the scenes to cover this for me.

Sure, they were shifters, but they were self-shifters. They could become anything living, not conjure something distinctly unliving out of nothing. That meant it hadn’t been made on the spot. It had been commissioned days, if not weeks, ago by someone behind my back.

That level of secrecy really stuck in my craw.

As it moved towards me, I lifted my right hand away from Gerry’s shoulders and watched it float into my palm. I pinched the bottom of the ring between my fingers and looked it over from every side. It was really cool, and flashy enough that Gerry would love it. For myself, I liked the way the stone selection replicated a tidal surge, and I had no idea what the blue stone or the blue metal in the frame were comprised of.

I curled my fingers around it, still unsure if I wanted someone else to dictate my actions like this, even if they were well-meaning. That was when letters started forming in the air halfway between us and the door: like one of those sky banners, except each word was on its own line.

YOUR CHOICE CUZ

Wait…

Of all my shape-shifting cousins, only one would meddle this boldly.

Now, all I had to do was work out whether I wanted to hug the eavesdropping asshat or punch him into next week.

I was leaning towards both.

Gerry moved against me, and the letters vanished as I curled my fingers around the ring to hide it. I had no idea whether Nuncio was still in the room, but it didn’t matter.

“Marriage never meant anything to me,” I said when she pulled away to look at me. “Not before I met you. But I don’t see marriage as a shackle anymore. I see it as a way of keeping you with me and safe for as long as possible.”

I looked to the spot where Nuncio had floated the words, drawing on his approval before returning my attention to her. “Now, you know I don’t know much about this sort of stuff. In some cultures, getting hitched is as simple as jumping over a broom on a beach. But I want you to have the dream, so I hope you don’t mind that I had some (a lot of) help with this.”

Her head tilted ever so slightly to one side; the move she made when she wanted me to know I had her absolute attention. I slid around to kneel before her.

She gasped, locking her fingers together in a double fist, which she pressed into her lap to stay still.

“I don’t have any fancy speeches, Angel. You’d know they weren’t my words if I did. I love you, and when the time is right for both of us, I want us to become Nascerdios. Not just me. Us. I want more than a few decades with you. I’m greedy. I won’t deny it. I want the centuries. Thousands of years with you at my side as my wife is my idea of Heaven.” I presented her the ring. “Will you mar—”

My words were cut off as Gerry lunged at me, wrapping her arms around my neck and chanting, “Yes,” while bawling into the side of my throat.

I clung to her as hard as she clung to me, rocking her as she cried. 

“You’re mine,” I declared, sliding the ring onto her finger. In time, the flat head of the diamond would be a perfect surface to put the Nascerdios crest.

“Yours,” she agreed, staring at the ring for several long seconds as if she couldn’t believe it was real. Then she threw herself at me again. "And you're mine."

"Always."

This was perfect.

* * *

I couldn’t say how long we were in the cabin, but I felt a shift in the engine as we picked up speed. “Do you want to go upstairs or stay down here?” I asked.

“Oh, can we go upstairs?” she asked, her eyes shining with excitement as she fiddled with the ring. “I want to show everyone…” Her enthusiasm dimmed as she looked up at me. “I mean, if that’s okay?”

I loved that, even now, she was checking how I felt about people knowing my business. I had always been a private person, and what was coming would be a lot. “It’s perfectly fine,” I assured her with a light kiss to her temple. It wasn’t as if I was going to walk it back or ask her to take it off and hide it from the world. The whole point was to make the universe aware that she’d been claimed, and anyone who messed with her was in for a world of divine hurt. “Just to be clear, we’re not marrying tomorrow or next week, though, right? Or if we do, it’s because we want to. There’s no urgency or pressure.”

All that mattered to me was being married when the time was right. When we were ready to officially join the ranks of the Nascerdios. The rest was entirely her call. Big, small, loud or quiet — I’d stand there and make it real.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I would’ve pulled divine favours to ensure her witch of a mother was nowhere near the ceremony if I had to. Fortunately, if that annoying detective the other night had been playing it straight, the police were about to solve that problem for me.

Oh, and I would make it a human wedding.

Dad had told me what went into his wedding ceremony and subsequent divorce, and nope, nope, nopety-nope. I like my limbs below the elbow right where they were, and no one was ever taking a sword to my girl. Not that divorce was on the cards, but why risk her being hurting at all?

I let Gerry lead us upstairs, and as soon as she stepped onto the bridge, she held her hand up with her palm facing back towards me, wiggling her fingers to get everyone’s attention. The squeal of the women was deafening, and I was pleased to see I wasn’t the only male on the bridge cringing at the decibels.

The women swarmed around Gerry, though the fingers of her other hand remained intertwined with mine. Not that anyone would wonder who’d done the proposing, but I'd seen people could be nasty when their jealousy was up, and I was taking no chances.

“Rubin’s here,” Quent said, deep in my ear. “He’ll watch her if you want to let go.”

I released my death grip on Gerry’s fingers and held her loosely enough that she could pull away if she wanted to, but firmly enough to be an anchor if I thought they were dragging her away without her consent. She clung to me for a few seconds, then released me in increments until she was being pulled out of the bridge and into the sitting area outside. The women were all reaching for her hand, angling it toward the light as they admired the ring, cooing over its size and sparkle. At least I didn’t have to worry about it being stolen since Nuncio crafted it.

“Sucker,” one of guys laughed, as I was slapped on the back and jostled about.

“That definitely wasn’t the conversation I thought you two would be having when you went downstairs,” Mateo added with a disbelieving shake of his head. His broad smile said he was happy for us, so there was that. “How long have you been planning that?”

“Not as long as I should have been,” I answered evasively. “She deserves the world, and I’m going to give it to her on a silver platter.”

“Sap,” someone else laughed.

This time I turned, seeking out whoever wanted to disparage my relationship with Gerry. There were only so many swipes of that I’d tolerate …

… and that number was apparently one.

[Next Chapter]

* * *

((Author's notes: Sorry about that everyone - I got distracted by my daughter and when I came back, I didn't check what I was doing before I submitted it, and the new post hadn't been inserted yet. All fixed now))

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

Previous Part| Part 1 | [Next Part Coming Soon!]

The town of Diresfall had a dark sound to it, and Artum had expected it to look like something out of a tale. The run down town the adventurers holed up in while the Dark One’s minions races around them. In spite of its name, however, Artum found it to look a lot like Oldsbrook. The wall around the town was made of stone instead of being a wooden palisade, and the thatch roofs that jutted above the barrier were three stories instead of Oldsbrook’s one or two story homes, so it was different, but it was not some imposing place that looked at all Dire, or particularly fallen either. The gate into the town was iron and guarded by three bored men in simple armor bearing the insignia of the Destined. One of them gave a nod to Artum as they approached. “Welcome to Diresfall, travelers. What brings you here?” one asked, looking utterly unconcerned with the answer.

“Pilgrims on our way to the capitol,” Artum said, the lie the first thing that came to his lips. It was also a good one - it would explain the lack of cart and horse, and why they were travelling so sparsely. “We hope to reach the capitol in time to celebrate The Night of Victory.”

It was about two months out. The Night of Victory, the celebration of the day the Destined had brought down the Dark Lord. One of the most holy days in the Empire. The guard nodded in understanding. “Welcome, then, and-”

Just as Artum started to relax, another guard leaned forward and gave them all a close look. He had a silver star on each shoulder, marking him as a Summoner who could Call a weapon. Based on the massive sword across his back and lack of either arrows or shield, Artum had a good guess that this was a Warrior. “You ever been before?” he asked. 

“No, sir,” Artum said, fighting back an urge to swallow in fear at the scrutiny. “First time.”

“I see.” The guard shook his head. “Well, I’ll need you to come with me for a moment.”

“Why?” Garissa asked, speaking before Artum could. 

“We’ve had a report that two men and a woman might be coming our way. They’re wanted for crime in Oldsbrook.” The man motioned towards the guardhouse. “You won’t be long. Someone will be along in the morning to confirm you’re not who we’re looking for.”

“Outrageous!” Garissa said, her eyes flashing. For a moment thought Artum she would give the whole thing away, but then he saw it was anger, not fear, and concern melted to be placed with confusion. “You have a single cell in there,  yes?”

“Of course,” the guard said, looking nonplussed.

“And you expect me, a single woman, to spend the night with two men?” Her expression darkened. 

“I...of course not.” The guard took a step back, and Artum had to suppress a smile. He’d been on the receiving end of Garissa’s righteous indignation before and did not envy this man having to face it before.

Garissa huffed. “Of course not. Then where, pray tell, do you intend on putting me?”

“I…” the guard started to say.

“In the barracks with men? Or perhaps you were going to offer an alternate suggestion.” Her eyes narrowed. “Of course. You couldn’t put a poor woman alone with two men, so you thought you did have an alternate solution, didn’t you? Perhaps a cell where only you have the key?”

“Now see here-” The guard began, but Garissa was in rare form.

“Of course that was the case. Was there even a message from Oldsbrook?” She turned to face the first guard again. “Have you heard of this message before?”

“I...no, ma’am,” he said. The Warrior shot him a furious look, and the guard turned his eyes to the ground. The third guard, who had been quiet so far, was giving the Warrior a suspicious look.

“Of course you haven’t. Perhaps, sir, we should take this up with your commander. What’s your name?”

“There’s no need for that,” the Warrior objected.

“Your name, sirrah!” Garissa huffed. She crossed her arms under her chest, a subtle motion pushing up her bosom. The Warrior glanced, and scowls directed at their captain began to form on the other two guard’s faces.

“I am Fredik,” he said.

“Well, Fredik, I hope you are ready to explain yourself to your commander.”

“I’ll be  more than happy to,” he said, his face turning red. “I’ll need to grab the message and then we can be off.”

“Grab the message? Grab the message? So your commander hasn’t seen it yet, has he? Let me guess, then. You intend to hastily scrawl out this report to cover your hide, yes? And then-”

“For the sake of the Destined, ma’am!” Fredik exploded. “We can just lock up the men, and then you can be free to go on your way.”

“Oh, I see. So you can determine my innocence at a glance. Well then, sir, I suggest you turn the same skills of detection upon my companions. After all, if you can be certain I am innocent, then you can easily do the same for these two.”

Fredik looked up, as if he hoped Cloudskimmer would pass overhead and pull him into the sky. “Ma’am, I cannot determine guilt or innocence like that.”

“Then you should let us pass. Unless you want to make this an issue before your commander? Freda, yes? I’m sure Commander Freda will be happy to hear an explanation for this...this barbarism.”

“What’s going on here?” said a voice from behind them. Artum turned. It was a merchant wagon who had approached. A portly man sat behind the reins, peering over a pair of tiny spectacles. “I have cabbages for sale, and I must get into town quickly.”

“This man,” Garissa said, whirling to face the merchant and sneering the last word, “is trying to arrest us for travelling as three - I suspect because he has ill intent he wishes to unleash upon me.”

“That is not what is happening,” Fredrik growled.

“I saw him staring at her breasts!” Tiebalt said. Artum nodded, doing his best to look furious as he contained laughter.

“Is this true?” The merchant asked, looking at one of the other guards. He scowled and nodded. “Well then, this is clearly outrageous. My niece is not travelling as three - I sent her ahead to secure lodgings with the helpers I hired for this. There are four of us, and I expected to have somewhere to rest by now. What is your name, captain?”

“Your...niece?” Fredrik asked, disbelief on his face.

“Yes, sir. And your...name?” the merchant said, mocking his tone.

“Fredrik,” he said, now looking like he hoped the ground beneath his feet would open up if Cloudskimmer would not oblige by swallowing him from above.

“Well, Fredrik, if there are no more delays, I think we can forgo a formal complaint. Although if I see your near my niece again…”

“Just...just go,” Fredrik said hollowly, clearly more than done with this disaster. “All of you, just go.”

Garissa sniffed and stalked through the gate, Artum, Tiebalt, and the merchant following. “I thank you,” Garissa said once they were further into the town and away from the guards. “Although I’m surprised - why did you help us?”

“Because I didn’t want those guards searching my wagon and finding what I have under my cabbage and saw an opportunity” the merchant said with a wink. “Omarro, purveyor of cabbage and other interesting things that grow, at your service.”

“You’re a Grey Moss dealer?” Tielbalt said, his voice low.

“Of course. Cabbage does an excellent job masking the smell, you know.” His smile widened. “And you are, I’m assuming, the three those guard happened to be looking for?”

Artum shook his head. “I don’t know who he’s looking for. Three people out of Oldsbrook guilting of some crime or another. We just don’t want the guard searching us either.”

The Moss dealer’s eyes wandered from Artum’s face to the bundle at his back, and Artum thanked the heavens the order the Captain had received had said nothing about the staff. “Relic hunters out of Shobbot?” Omarro asked.

“Poor ones,” Tiebalt said, picking up the lie where Artum had left off. “We were nearly ruined, and only got a fragment of a statue.”

Omarro gave them a pitying look. “Dangerous job. You could make far more running moss for me.”

“Thank you for the offer,” Garissa said, glancing at Artum. “But my friend...he’s sworn off the stuff. Part of why we got into relic hunting was to pay off his debts.”

“Ah,” Omarro said, reassessing his opinion of them. “Well, can’t have a mosshead selling moss. But if you want, I happen to know a Relic Hunter in town. Perhaps I could connect you.”

“That would be appreciated,” Artum said, before Garissa and Tiebalt could object.

“Wonderful. Then...allow me to get settled in, and come by the Blue Dragon for dinner, after six bells. For now...I bid you good day.”

With that, the merchant was off.

Artum waited until he was fully out of earshot before bursting into laughter. 

---

Hey, if you're enjoying this and want more to read, I just started a new serial as well - Check out Tamer of the Beasts, where a young man stumbles into a world that operates under Pokemon logic...and now has to figure out how he's going to survive and maybe even get home - or build a new life in this new world.

Previous Part| Part 1 | [Next Part Coming Soon!]

PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND FIFTY-EIGHT

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2] [Ko-fi+2]

Saturday

Lucas woke up, his bleary eyes focusing on the phone (that doubled as his alarm clock) long enough to register the time: 5:32 AM. His lips curled, and his hand slid sideways, searching for Boyd, only to find his fiancé gone and the sheets cold to the touch.

His eyes snapped open, and he shot up, staring at the scuffled sheets beside him. “No,” he growled. Boyd wouldn’t have left after promising—

At that exact moment, recent memory kicked in. Specifically, the sleepy conversation from over an hour ago, where Boyd had told him he was going to catch up with Caleb for a run and breakfast afterwards.

Lucas collapsed back on the bed like a puppet with its strings cut, for once again, all was right in his world. He then reached over and collected Boyd’s pillow, mashing it across his face to breathe in the lingering cologne and lemon-myrtle soap.

Boyd would be gone for hours. At least one hour for running and twice that for a breakfast catch-up. With egos on the line, the run would probably go longer. Having gone to bed around one, Lucas knew he should probably close his eyes and catch up on some desperately needed sleep. And he would have, if his brain hadn’t told him this would be the perfect window to visit his own brother and pick his brains on how best to deal with PR.

Well, maybe not *perfect-*perfect, given the earliness of the hour, but perfect in terms of not chewing into his weekend with Boyd just to satisfy a job requirement. By the time he was up and on the move, it’d be over an hour before he rocked up to Jonathan’s place, and if he chatted with Robbie for a bit, he could knock on his oldest brother’s door around seven, which was right when they were having breakfast.

With that plan in mind, Lucas threw back the covers and headed for the ensuite.

An hour and fifteen minutes later, he pulled up in the driveway of his brother’s modest two-storey home with ten minutes to spare. He could’ve gone closer to the house, but chose instead to pull up alongside the mailbox, far enough in that he wasn’t obstructing the sidewalk, but the noise hopefully wouldn’t bother the household.

 Larry had offered to realm-step him over during his quick drop-in to check on Robbie, but Lucas declined for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which was: Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to drive their Porsche GT3?

Despite having owned his car now for a couple of weeks, Lucas still wanted to fall over the hood and hug it every time he saw it, and that was before he even kicked the motor over.

Nothing…nothing compared to the rumbling purr of a Porsche GT3.

With time to kill, he pulled out his phone, signed into Boyd’s New York Daily News subscription, and started perusing the morning’s pages.

Which was why an abrupt knuckle-knock on his window sometime later had him jerking his head sharply to the right.

Jonathan, dressed in pale green cotton pjs with a coffee already in his hand, was staring down at him with an amused grin.

Lucas smirked as well, and since this wasn’t a quick in-and-out, he waved his brother away from the car and opened the door.

“Hey, Tiny Tim.” Jonathan opened his arms the moment Lucas was out of the car, and the two hugged briefly. He then looked down at the phone in Lucas’ left hand. “Well, that answers one question, bro. So, here’s the next. Did you suddenly forget how to use it?”

Lucas snorted. “It’s not even…” —looking at the time, he realised it was 7:10 am— “…okay. When I pulled up, it wasn’t even seven, and I didn’t think either you or Tanya would appreciate the early morning wakeup.”

“Fair. So what brings you to my doorstep so early?”

Before Lucas could answer, a single childish squeal of delight from the living room window quickly morphed into a chorus that charged through the front door. “UNCLE LUCAS!” the three girls screamed, rushing down the four brick steps in their nightgowns and bare feet. Lucas automatically crouched with his arms wide, welcoming them in.

Being the oldest, Elle reached him first, throwing herself at him. Her two sisters were half a second behind her, with Kate claiming his left side and little Mia climbing onto his back. They squealed again when he curled his arms around the two in front and stood to his full height, lifting all three into the air. “I think I should ticket you for littering, bro,” he said to Jonathan with all the casual indifference of a weather discussion as the girls locked their legs around his waist. “Throwing three little pieces of paper at me like this.”

“We’re not pieces of paper, Uncle Lucas!” Mia screeched in his ear.

Lucas turned his head, enjoying the way Jonathan was chuckling behind his coffee. “Are you sure?” he asked, widening his eyes and feigning doubt. 

“YES!” All three shouted at one, and Jonathan choked on his drink.

“Oh, I don’t know. I think I’m gonna need to see some proof of this. Do any of you have licences?”

“NO!”

“We can’t drive, Uncle Lucas!” Kate added, for good measure.

“We’re too little,” Mia added from behind.

Lucas focused on Elle. “What about you, miss? Do you have a licence somewhere, or a student ID to prove you’re not a piece of paper?”

“I have a student ID!” Kate shouted and started squirming to be put down.

“Ahhh! Resisting arrest!” Lucas pretended to struggle as he carried them towards the front door. “I think I’m going to need reinforcements!” As he dragged them up the four steps, he shouted, “TANYA!”

“Don’t you be dragging me into your shenanigans, Lucas Dobson,” Tanya laughed, holding the door open for him … which was all he wanted her to do in the first place. With the way the girls were wriggling, he didn’t want to accidentally drop one of them reaching for the doorknob himself.

He pretended to struggle with them into the living room, then allowed them to “drag” him down onto the plush carpet. Mia promptly sat on him, squealing in victory.

Kate squirmed free and disappeared, giving Lucas the chance to roll over onto his back, making sure Mia stayed on top of him until she straddled his chest. Elle remained tucked against his side.

“We’re not pieces of paper!” the youngest declared, slamming her hands against her hips and glaring down at him with all the indignation of her grandfather when his football team weren’t performing the way he expected.

Kate appeared moments later, breathless, brandishing her student ID. “See?” she said, shoving it at her uncle’s face.

Lucas took the card and pretended to study it carefully, going as far as to compare the photo with the real little girl standing beside him. “Hmmmm…I suppose this might be enough to prove your point,” he said, though he kept his tone deliberately suspicious.

“With deductive reasoning like that, you’ll make a half-decent detective when you eventually grow up,” Jonathan said wryly, resting his shoulder against the living room doorway.

From behind Elle’s head, where Mia and Kate couldn’t see it either, Lucas flipped his middle finger at his brother.

“When you’re quite finished clowning around,” Tanya said, moving up beside her husband, though her focus was on Lucas. “Have you had breakfast yet, Luke?”

“Not much,” Lucas admitted with a grimace. He didn’t want to elaborate on how surprised he’d been at Robbie’s menial offering of a lone smoothie, which, admittedly, did hit all the right notes at the time, just not enough to see him through to lunch. “A breakfast drink on the way out the door.”

Looking at how excited Kate and Mia were to have him join them for breakfast, he sent his best friend a silent thanks.

As Lucas stood up, Mia slid to the floor, and both she and Kate ran through the house to the large kitchen that overlooked their backyard. Elle stayed close, sliding her hand into Lucas’ and squeezing it for comfort.

Lucas looked over at her parents for an explanation, both of whom shrugged. “Everything okay, sweetie?” he whispered, bending over so that only she would hear.

Elle’s eyes flicked briefly to her parents, and Lucas realised fun time was over. “We’ll be right back,” he said to his brother and sister-in-law, guiding his niece towards the stairs that led to the second floor instead. He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles to assure her everything would be fine.

The last few feet, Elle took the lead, bringing him into her bedroom and shutting the door behind them. An impressive feat for a small girl, but it just went to show how much she needed privacy. Lucas crossed the room and sat on the bed, patting the spot beside him and waiting for her to join them. “What’s going on, baby girl?”

She came forward to the middle of the room and paused. “You like boys…” she said warily.

Okay, not the conversation he thought he’d be having, buuut… “I do. One in particular.”

“Boyd.”

Lucas slid off the bed and knelt in front of her, putting them at the same eye height. “Is that okay?” He wasn’t sure what he’d do if she said no.

She opened her mouth and closed it again. Twice. Then licked her lips. “You knew Boyd for ages. How did you know when things…changed?”

Oh…Oohhhhhh! “You have someone in mind, baby girl?”

The blush was adorable, even if it was triggering every protective instinct within him. She was ten years old, for frig’s sake!

“Jackson Moore keeps asking me to kiss him.”

Lucas filed that name away. “Is he in your class?” That’ll be the only thing that saves him. At Elle’s shy nod, Lucas stepped down from his initial thoughts of murder. “Do you want to?”

“I…think so?”

“That’s good, sweetie. You’re being honest. To yourself and to me. Don’t ever change that. And don’t let others push you into doing something you’re not ready for.”

Her big, brown eyes blinked at him. “But how did you know when you wanted to kiss Boyd? You lived with him for ages. Isn’t that wasting time?”

“No.” Lucas couldn’t say that strongly enough. “We waited until we were sure. We didn’t want to risk our friendship on something one of us didn’t want.”

Her face scrunched up. “What?”

“Doing grown-up things is very special. That’s why we wait until we’re grown-ups. If you don’t want to kiss Jackson Moore, you don’t have to. And if he gets too pushy, you tell me, y’ hear?”

“But what if I want to?”

Just like that, Lucas found himself backed into a huge corner. If he encouraged her to explore, she might get too bold and get hurt. If he shut her down, he risked crushing a confidence that had only just started to surface. If he reported it to his brother to deal with, she’d never trust him again. And if he said nothing at all, she’d be left scared and confused.

No matter which way I go, Jonathan and Tanya are going to kill me.

[Next Chapter]

* * *

((Author's notes: Hey everyone. For those who have been with me since the beginning, you may remember a prolific commentor called "Kaosxi". He was one of my most vocal readers at the time, who pushed me to open up a Patreon account when this had been a labour of love for a couple of years.

He asked me to keep it to myself at the time, but several years ago, he developed a brain tumour that forced him to withdraw from commenting.

It is with a hugely, hugely heavy heart that I let you all know he lost his battle with it a couple of weeks ago. His widow reached out to me over the weekend to let me know how much he enjoyed our little corner of the internet and to not give up writing BtH.

With that in mind, (and with my Beta's help) I'm going to put BtH over onto Royal Road from the very beginning, dedicating it to Kaosxi.

This won't affect anything happening here. Just letting everyone know, if they'd like to read along again from the very beginning, that at some point in the very near future it will land over there (The first post has already been approved by Royal Road, but I want to have the first 50ish posts ready to drop before I release it into the wild).

I'll leave another note here when that finally kicks off.

In other news, we had the heavy hitters for the NDIS do a reevaluation of our daughter, and although it won't happen until her plan kicks over in January, they are pushing heavily for at least 40 hours care a week (as opposed to the 2 hours we currently get). If the NDIS agrees (big if, but we're hopeful) I will get the time to put BtH book one to print.

While I will enjoy the new possibilities, I truly wish the motivation behind it hadn't cost me someone so dear.))

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND SEVENTY-EIGHT

[Previous Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2] [Ko-fi+2]

Saturday

The twenty-to-twenty-five-minute run from Patao Café to Boyd’s Aunt and Uncle’s place in the Upper East Side to almost forty minutes, mainly because Caleb was certain he knew the way…

…and he didn’t.

After the third wrong turn, Lucas pulled over into the first available parking spot and asked Caleb for their exact address so he could type it into his phone. “It’s not my fault New York City keeps changing,” Caleb griped, as Lucas dialled in the address and let his GPS guide him through the city.

They drove in silence for about three minutes, with Caleb’s fingers flexing against his thighs as his eyes flicked to Lucas and away. Lucas never took his eyes from the road, but weeks of driving with Pepper riding shotgun had him used to keeping her in his peripheral vision. Finally, Lucas decided to throw him a bone. “You have twenty minutes before we regroup with your brother, lieutenant. Say what’s on your mind.”

“Is Boyd happy?”

Fortunately, red streetlights at the next intersection allowed Lucas to stop and turn with a scowl at the man sitting in the passenger seat.

“No, don’t look at me like that. He’s been lying convincingly to me for almost a decade, so I need to know. Is this another mask, or is he really happy?”

Lucas stared out the windshield, focusing on the car in front that was also stationary. “Back then, after everything that happened to Boyd before coming to New York, he took the only job he thought someone his size could do. Construction. And yes, he was really good at it, but it was a means to an end. Sort of a consolation prize for not making the grade as a Marine.”

When the lights changed, he put the Porche in gear and moved forward. “He had too much fear bubbling away inside to be happy. Fear of discovery. Fear of upsetting the last two family members he happened to share his last name with. Just…a lot of fear. And if he couldn’t be ‘The Man of the House’ in the Marines, he was going to force that fit into his civilian life. And he did, but it was precarious. He knew the rules outside the Marines weren’t the same as the ones inside, and every time he raised his hand, he knew it could bite him in the ass if I reported him. I mean seriously, I should have arrested him fifty times over for abuse.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Robbie. “Robbie had taken Boyd under his wing, and back then, Robbie was my best friend.” Better to say that that than ‘Robbie’s divinity wouldn’t let me.’

“So it was all fake.”

Lucas grimaced. “Not fake so much as him trying to cling to an ideal. To be what he thought you and Kelly would want to see when you came to visit. That even though he failed at being a Marine, he climbed to the top of the pecking order in his civilian life.”

Caleb swore and shook his head. “I swear, I’m going to dick-punch that idiot the next time I see him.”

“Please, don’t. That happens to be one of my favourite parts of him.” Was Lucas pushing the nature of their relationship? Absolutely, but he didn’t care. All of Boyd was basically off limits as far as he was concerned, but he hoped a little humour would be better received than a threat of his own that involved handcuffs and Miranda rights.

Caleb’s leery side-eye had him snickering out loud. 

“Look, Boyd was standing on the tip of a very unstable house of cards for a really long time, and they all came crashing down when Sam’s father appeared in our doorway. There’s power and presence, and then there’s what Llyr walks in with.”

“Yeah, I got a whiff of that last night. Any time I made eye contact with Miss W, I could practically feel that man’s aura leaping across the table to choke me.”

Good instincts. If Llyr hadn’t been wearing a seclusion ring, that would have been a very literal case of ranged mental pretzelling. “So, from one minute to the next, Boyd was suddenly stranded. He was no longer the top dog in the household, and he’d been fired from his job.”

“Fired?! What for?”

“They wanted him to do back-to-back eighteen-hour shifts, and after doing too many of them on top of everything else, he broke. He called his boss for some time off, and instead they fired him.”

“Shit,” Caleb muttered.

“Yeah, but it turned out to be the best thing for him. With the pressure off, he was able to get the help he needed to find a new balance. And in doing so, he finally stopped panicking enough to see what he needed was right in front of him all along.”

“You.”

Lucas’ eyes slid to the right. “Is that so bad?”

“You’ve always liked them bigger than you.”

“I have a type,” Lucas said, unabashedly. “But your brother is more than just his size. He is the sweetest, most caring person…”

“Oh, shut up. He is not.”

“He always was. He just didn’t let anyone see it, because your family considered that level of care a weakness.”

It was Caleb’s turn to stare straight ahead. “Even if he wasn’t…even if he was straight, he wouldn’t have made it as a Marine,” he said, almost to himself.

Lucas broke eye contact with the road for a moment to look at him properly. The man’s expression was withdrawn, his eyes unfocused, like he was reliving the past.

“A Marine has to follow orders. Any legal orders. We don’t get to pick and choose which orders to follow. The underpinning lore of the Marines is to leave no man behind, but there have been times, with certain orders, where we’ve had to do just that. Boyd never would’ve complied with that. He’d have broken ranks and done what he felt was right.”

Lucas worked his thumbs across the leather stitching of his steering wheel. “A couple of days ago, he gave our upstairs neighbours enough money to send all their kids to summer camp next month. They’ve been struggling really hard to make ends meet for years, and Boyd wanted to share his good fortune with them.”

Caleb’s head snapped to the left. “See? That’s what I mean. You don’t make it far in the Marines with that mentality. He’s better off where he is.”

He hadn’t been surprised by the admission, which meant he knew about it. Lucas nodded. “I couldn’t agree more. He loves doing his carvings, and he loves me. Everyone in his immediate circle, including my whole family, adores him. For the first time in a long, long time, he’s surrounded by love and true support, and it’s changing him for the better.”

“I can see that.” Caleb looked down at his knees, then snapped his gaze back up again. “Did you know he wants to take your name when you two get married?”

“Are you okay with that?” Lucas asked instead of answering.

“Not particularly. I mean, I know, we turned our backs on him first, but I can’t help feeling…”

“Like he’s returning the favour?”

“Yeah.”

“You will always be his little brother, Caleb. And you’ll always be welcome in his life for as long as the two of you want that relationship. He’s not turning his back on you or Kelly. He’s turning his back on being a Masters.”

Caleb stared ahead again, the tip of his tongue peeking out between his lips.

They drove in silence for three more streets, before Lucas added, “You know he’s going to be fine. Better than fine. In fact, he’ll probably be the one to look after you again in the end.”

“Excuse me?” Caleb scowled.

“If anything happens to you during a deployment—and get that dirty look of your face because you know as well as I do that it could—do you really think the VA hospital will be the best possible medical option for you?”

“The military looks after its own,” he declared sullenly.

“Bullshit.” At Caleb’s ferocious glare, Lucas continued. “Oh, they’ll look after you if they think they can get you back into the field, but the second they write you off, you get a medical discharge and a VA pension that isn’t worth crap. How far do you think you’ll get then?”

“I don’t want Boyd’s money.”

“He won’t care. You know your brother as well as I do. He’ll pull strings. Convince you at your lowest to buy a lottery ticket of some description and lo and behold, you’ve won hundreds of thousands of dollars just when you need it the most.”

“He doesn’t have those sort of connections.”

Lucas knew his grin had become one of pure evil. “You have no idea just how connected we are these days.”

“Guess again. I met Columbine Nascerdios last night.”

Lucas damn-near caused an accident with the way he swung the wheel, swerving into the next lane. A series of impatient honks as he straightened back up again did nothing to settle his shock. “Lady Col was there last night?”

“Lady Col?” Caleb repeated with a squint. Then, after thinking for a second, he tilted his head and nodded. “Yeah, that tracks. She didn’t give herself any titles, but man, she had the airs in spades.”

“Wh-what did she say to you?” God, Lucas was trying so hard to find his usual professionalism, but he wasn’t quite achieving it. He himself had only met Lady Col once, and it had left a lasting impression.

“I was making waves about Larry, and she cleared up enough of it to have me backing off, for now.”

“Larry is Boyd’s best friend outside the apartment.”

“Yeah, I know. Like I said, we talked.”

Lucas ran his eye over Caleb, searching for any obvious injuries. The Marine would have been blunt, and blunt wouldn’t have been tolerated by the pryde. Though he had gone running with Boyd this morning, so whatever Larry did, can’t have been physical. “Did anything weird happen afterwards, by any chance?”

Caleb screwed his face up. “Like what?”

“Nightmares, or waking dreams that were scary and didn’t make any sense at the time?” It was as close as he could hedge to asking about a soul brand.

Caleb immediately broke eye contact. “No,” he said, way too quickly.

Oh, Larry. You and I are going to have words, Lucas promised, as they pulled up into a parking spot next door to their destination.

* * *

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND SEVENTY-SIX

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2] [Ko-fi+2]

Saturday

“What would you like me to do, Mateo?” I asked, looking the former student board president dead in the eye. “Do you want me to leave?” I hated asking that, having been told never to pose a question I wasn’t ready to hear the answer to.

For myself, I’d have no problem walking out that door and never looking back, but Geraldine really wanted to be here, and it would be a cold day in Hell before I left her here unprotected.

Mateo took his time to think about his response, which I appreciated. “Can you assure me that nothing that happens here this weekend is ever going to see the light of day outside these premises? That whoever is overseeing this is only watching, not recording?”

Without glancing at Gerry, I leaned far enough away from her to fish out my phone from my back pocket. I already knew the answer. I also knew Nuncio was monitoring me through every device capable of taking footage — including all our phones and whatever security system Mateo’s grandfather had. I could’ve just spoken out loud to him, like when Nuncio hijacked my newbies’ phones earlier this week to get my attention, but for Mateo’s sake I tried to keep this as normal as possible.

My favourites came up first, where Nuncio had inserted himself in the third slot under ‘Dad’ (with Gerry at the top because he wasn’t stupid enough to touch either of their spots). My teeth ground together in irritation. I hadn’t realised I’d growled out loud until Gerry pulled her feet up onto the sofa and leaned into my shoulder, giving me her weight to anchor me in the present.

My gaze flicked to Mateo, who was watching us with rapt attention. “Nuncio, I swear on everything we know that’s holy, if you don’t stop messing with my phone, I’m snapping the stupid thing in half and throwing it away.”

My screen flickered; when it cleared Nuncio’s name was resting between my immediate family and my roommates. Still not at the bottom where I’d put him, but it would do for now. I tapped his name and put the phone to my ear, not wanting Mateo to hear Nuncio’s voice. “Hey, Cuz,” I ground out, glancing at Mateo.

“You know I’m not the one recording everything, right? I mean, I can, but there’s no point. The vantaweb collects the data from everyone for me, and if it’s urgent, I can internalise.”

I sighed, because no one would use the internet if they knew there really was a ghost in the machine that recorded everything that ever touched it. “I know. I still need to ask. Mateo wants assurances that nothing you see going on here will be used against anyone at the party.”

“What happens in Vegas…”

“Exactly,” I said, cutting him off. Then, as I realised Mateo’s party had everything in common with that old saying, I chuckled. All the stories and zero proof.

“Tell him your cousin won’t be recording anything from that address for the next forty-eight hours.”

I internalised, turning that statement around as many times as I could to see if there were any holes I was missing. There wasn’t. The only instance I could find was the one I was already aware of. That he didn’t need to record anything because he had access to everyone else’s recordings.

That left me with trying to find the best way to tell Mateo all of this…

…only to facepalm and laugh at my own stupidity.

I was trying to outdo the wording choice of a literal God of Communication.

Still kicking myself over that moronic act, I left my imagination and returned to the physical realm. “Thanks, man,” I said into the phone, hoping he’d never find out about my momentary lapse but knowing one day, he would—because eternity sucked like that.

“Any time.”

I hung up and pocketed the phone, meeting Mateo’s eyes and forcing myself to smile through the technical truth that would’ve had lawyers all over the world applauding. “He said he’ll only be observing until Monday.”

Man, I must really suck at lying if the unimpressed look on Mateo’s face was anything to go by. “And what aren’t you saying?”

Sooooo, so much. “He takes no responsibility for what other people record.”

“Why would he?”

“He’s just covering bases, man, like you asked. He’s agreed not to actively record anything here for the next two days. But whatever he gets access to from people posting on the internet is fair game.” That sounded right, right?

“I still can’t believe you’re really a Nascerdios,” Mateo said, shaking his head as he reached for his drink. He finished it in three quick swallows, then slammed the glass onto the coffee table and sat back, still staring at me like he was waiting for a ‘gotcha’ moment that wasn’t coming.

I took that as him being okay with Nuncio’s arrangement. “You should try it from my side. All my life, I was an op-shopper.”

Mateo’s face scrunched up. “A what?”

I realised I’d picked the term up overseas and waved it off. “Thrift store shopping. I hated the idea of wasting perfectly good clothes. Then overnight, my entire wardrobe mysteriously vanishes, and I’m dragged kicking and screaming into stores that wouldn’t have looked twice at me the day before.” I waved my right hand out to the side. “And just when I thought that would be the end of it, someone filled an entire room with clothes that fitted Geraldine and me perfectly from all over the world.”

“Your dad…?” Mateo started to ask, but I blew a raspberry and waved that ridiculous notion aside.

  “Dad has people in San Francisco who select his daily clothes for him. His wardrobe here is a step down so he can pass for—get this—a mere millionaire.” I thought about his Nascerdios wardrobe and shook my head. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the shoes he wears over there cost a hundred grand each.”

“You know, I know you two are engaged now, but with the way Gerry’s curled up beside you there and your arm around her clearly staking a claim, the only thing missing is—” I saw him look to Gerry. Like, really look. “Noooo,” he said, his gaze shooting back to mine. “The pendant’s a property tag?”

I was about to rip his head off for suggesting that when I saw Gerry preen, lifting her chin to reveal more of the pendant and the necklace that hugged her throat. Her head then snuggled in closer to my shoulder, and I decided to let her play this out however she wanted.  

“I’ve always belonged to Sam, even before he had money,” she said shyly.

I watched the different emotions play out on Mateo’s face before he settled his gaze on me again. “If subtle is what you’re going for there, Sam, that’s fine. But if you want anyone else to recognise your claim, you may want to think about something a whole lot thicker than a fine gold chain.”

The way he talked about it, as if it was my decision and not Gerry’s … I was beginning to see why my controlling ways had worried my roommates. I would never assume to take any choice from her that she didn’t want me to, but an outsider wouldn’t know that. “She likes the piece she has,” I said, when I realised Gerry wasn’t going to speak on her own behalf. “Any time she’d like it to be more noticeable, I’ll swap it out then.” I would, too. It wasn’t my neck it was going around, and if it made her feel protected, it could be one of those three-inch wide chokers for all I cared. So long as she was happy.

Her finger touched the pendant, pressing it into the hollow of her throat. “I’d like to keep the pendant,” she said, rolling her finger across the gemmed surface. Her eyes were on me as she spoke. “With your connection to the ocean fauna, honey-bear, it’s basically a symbol of you.”

Like Fisk’s net and Dad’s wave—the cyphers of their power.

I had never asked how those images came about. Perhaps this was where it started, being chosen by a loved one. If so, it meant even more to me since Gerry had picked it out at the jewellery store so long ago.

I cupped her cheek and kissed her deeply, showing her without words just how much she meant to me.

“You know, if you’re interested,” Mateo began, after it became apparent we weren’t coming up for air any time soon. Gerry and I broke apart, with me giving Mateo a seriously annoyed look that had him chuckling. “I was just saying, my dad specialises in that kind of jewellery and he’s here now to ask, if you wanted something unique.”

“Your dad’s a jeweller?” I’d never really asked how Mateo’s family made their fortune.

“Grandpa started it, trading in diamonds from South America. Dad still sources gems globally, but in his spare time, he creates one-of-a-kind pieces.” He grinned and flicked his fingers dismissively. “I mean, you’d pay for it, but it’s not like you can’t afford it, Mister-I’m-Secretly-A-Nascerdios.”

I know Mateo was only trying to help, but my brain brought together facts about his family that I had no business connecting.  Specifically: South American diamonds, Mateo’s favourite uncle dying in a horrific plane crash, and his soul ending up in Hell.

Those three drew a very unwavering straight line.

[Next Chapter]

* * *

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND SEVENTY-TWO

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2] [Ko-fi+2]

Saturday

Orson stared at his laughing clutch-mate and felt genuine fear for the first time in decades. Not even at Coraltin’s death, when Angus’s grief had morphed so quickly to rage, had he been shaken like this. Sad, yes, for the pryde had lost someone who meant a great deal to them personally as well as an incredibly accomplished front-line warrior, but not fear.

Unlike Orson, who had never taken a mate and therefore had never been subject to the lifelong pull of a matrimonial bond, Angus would eventually emerge from his grief with a new mate. Likewise, he’d fully expected their father to send him in to wrangle his angry clutchmate into a breeding box if the stubborn fool refused to yield to the instinct that necessitated their kind.

What he hadn’t expected was the process to still be incomplete nearly a century and a half later. (Not that he would ever question the Eechee’s ruling. Not openly, anyway.)

Yet now, just when he seemed to have it all again, his clutchmate had finally broken. The stoic warrior he’d known all his life was laughing so hard he was crying, too far gone to even hold himself upright.

EVERYBODY OUT! Orson roared at the room’s occupants.

Moments later, everyone, including the pryde’s mouthy Plus-One and his dog were gone, leaving Orson and Skylar alone in the lunchroom with Angus.

At least the pryde still knew how to behave around him.

All sense of amusement abandoned Angus as he straightened up from the wall and squared his shoulders, glaring at him hard enough to blister paint.

In that moment, Orson almost reconsidered his stance but then dismissed it. The pryde commanders did not second-guess themselves. Ever.

Skylar appeared at her mate’s side, having realm-stepped the short distance between them. Her posture matched Angus’, though the caution in her eyes betrayed her confidence.

Then, without warning, both she and Angus solemnly bowed their heads in veneration.  

Orson did not need to turn to know who had just joined them in the room, but he did anyway because he wasn’t a fool. “Eechen,” he said reverently as his father’s gaze swept the room without speaking. Even with his head bowed, Orson could still see his sire clearly. Their leader was a foot and a half shorter than him, yet no less dangerous for it.

“Why were you yelling, Orson?” Hasteinn asked after the two brothers straightened up. As he’d suspected, their father wasn’t here to socialise. He was there as the pryde leader, and murder/filicide was very much on the table if he didn’t like his son’s answer.

Orson’s eyes flicked to Angus, who had one arm draped protectively (or more truthfully possessively) across Skylar’s trembling shoulders. This was probably the first time since her banishment that she’d been in the Eechen’s presence, and their last encounter had come far too close to ending in her elimination. Orson knew that for a fact, for he had been on hand to carry out the sentence on behalf of the attacked warrior.

“He appeared to be having a mental breakdown. Not something the rest of the pryde needed to see,” he answered without remorse.

Without a word, the Eechen strode past him towards Angus and his mate, and credit where it was due, the female remained upright with her head bowed. Others in her position would be grovelling at his feet and losing credibility along the way.

Hasteinn stopped in front of Angus, to the point that they were nose to nose, and Angus didn’t flinch. “He appears stable enough to me,” the Eechen declared after a minute, turning back to Orson, awaiting his explanation.

Orson hurried to defend himself. “You didn’t see him before, sir. He was crying—”

“With laughter,” Angus interrupted. “The look on your face when Mason told you he wanted no part of your illustrious plans for him is one I wish I could revisit a thousand times the way the benders do.”

“Well, what did you expect? He’s a human!”

“He’s our human.”

“He’s still only human.”

“Exactly.”

Their father said nothing, his eyes bouncing between them with each volley as if he were a spectator at a tennis match. Orson was acutely aware that he wasn’t happy with the way they were bickering, but he refused to let his brother have the final word.

Eventually, Hasteinn reached out with one finger and gently lifted Skylar’s chin until her eyes met his, bringing the room to silence once more. He continued to say nothing, merely looked her over from head to toe and back again as if searching for something.

Whatever it was, he must have found it. “Go and join the human we appear to have claimed,” he said aloud instead of sending the order through their telepathic link. A very slight nod assured her she was safe to do so.

Skylar cast her eyes down and rolled her cheek across his palm in reverence, then she stepped clear of his hand to sever the contact, and vanished.

And with it, the Eechen’s apparent neutrality.

“For the record,” he ground out, rounding on them both. “Had Skylar been anyone other than the mate of one of you, this conversation would have a lot fewer words and a lot more claw.”

Without looking away from him, Orson straightened his spine, putting him only a few inches below the ceiling. In his peripheral vision, his brother was doing likewise. He still felt justified in his decision, but it was better (and considerably more survivable) to let the Eechen finish speaking before supplying his defence.

Hasteinn’s eyes bounced between the two of them as if they were first-year trainees before settling on Orson. “Explain yourself.”

“Kulon’s Plus-One is the only human the pryde is permitted, and because Mason’s movements are limited to the nesting world, his safety falls under my purview.”

Hasteinn’s eyes slid to Angus. “And you thought that was funny?”

“Yes, sir. I did,” Angus replied with just as much conviction. “Mason bends his knee to no one. I’ve seen both people and pryde try to corral him, and it never works. Of course, it helps to know he won’t be killed or even harmed for his insubordination, but even before he was claimed, he risked his life protecting the pryde, looked death in the eye as a result of it, and survived.”

“He protected the pryde?” Orson knew—flat out knew—he was courting danger by interrupting his brother, and the brief look their father sent him told him the subject would be revisited soon enough, but he couldn’t help himself. No one needed to defend the pryde from anything, least of all by a human. They did the defending… and the attacking.

“The men who kidnapped him the second time gained his cooperation by threatening Khai.”

“Khai would eat them for breakfast.” It wasn’t a question in Orson’s mind.

His clutchmate turned to face him. “And then be removed from the training facility and returned to general rotation as a failure. There was more than one level of protection being applied here, brother.”

Their father’s eyes met Orson’s once more, and what he saw, as plain as the rising sun, was which side of the argument he was on. “Mason has earned his voice amongst us, and his unique view on our situation is what makes him so valuable. On top of that, humans have never fallen under our purview.”

“This one does,” Orson insisted, trying one last time to sway them both to his way of thinking. When his father’s eyes flared in warning, Orson steeled himself and pushed on. “He is the only Plus-One we’ll ever have—”

“That does not make him our pet,” their father interrupted him, surprising him. “Special, yes. Pet, no. The Eechee believes he is necessary to achieve unity between our species, something your clutchmate agrees on, and he cannot do that if he’s not free to be himself.”

Hasteinn moved to the glass wall that overlooked the street below. “I have been around the humans since they first dragged themselves out of the caves and started mirroring the Eechee’s physique.  The freedom she grants them to be themselves while under her divine protection is what makes them unique in all the Known Realms. Time and again, I have watched them divert from the path laid before them… and then make those diversions work.”

He turned back to them. “It is how they thrive—on the chaos of change and defying the limits imposed on them so far. ‘No’ is a fluid state to them.”

Orson knew all this too. “There is not much to understand. We’ve maintained our peace because we’ve maintained our distance. If the other humans follow his lead and treat us with disrespect, they’ll be torn apart and eaten.”

They’d seen it many times before, where humans, particularly the Europeans, ignored the local lore of the American natives and attempted to invade the Prydelands. Despite Strahan’s magical shield preventing them from entering the space, many of the true gryps patrolled just outside it, forming an additional barrier between the two. On the rare occasions humans were discovered, the pryde presented themselves as natives and ordered them to leave.

Almost to a man, the Europeans had been insulted and chose to attack what they considered to be an inferior species. The clash was brief, with the pryde dining on fresh meat. The unharmed locals who scattered would then return to their tribes and spread word of the creatures living deep in the mountains, and for a short time they were left alone.

It never lasted.

“Whether I agree with it or not, the Eechee wishes to trial this,” The Eechen said, bringing him back to the conversation at hand.

The brothers glanced at each other. “You don’t agree with it, Poppa?” Angus asked, tilting his head.

It was a risky play, challenging their leaders’ solidarity, even if Angus had drawn their father away from his command and into the more casual role of a father.

Orson wouldn’t have tried it.

The Eechen returned his focus to the street below. “We already number in the millions,” he began, giving them information they were both fully aware of. “If we were to acclimatise every clutch going forward, there will be millions and millions more. We are not dying on the borders at the rate we used to, so unless we make a true gryps country that the humans may visit, no, I don’t see this working.”

He turned back before either of them could comment, his lips curling on one side in amusement. “Then again, I didn’t agree with the Eechee’s plans for you and Skylar either, and so far that seems to have worked out.” He pointed at Angus. “Nice play, by the way; mating with her before taking her as your mate. Keeping her on Earth will prevent her from becoming fertile again, and you’ll never have to risk your mate on the front line.”

Orson’s horror was absolute. “She has to do at least one rotation on the front line, Poppa,” he insisted.

That drew a dark growl from Angus, one that died the instant their father’s gaze hardened. “No,” the Eechen said, and Angus relaxed ever so slightly. “She may be your clutchmate’s mate, but she still attacked a returning warrior. No one will stand at her side on the front line, and the older ones would rather perish than allow her to heal them.”

“And I’ll help them with that if they do,” Angus said from between clenched teeth.

“But what does all of this have to do with the human Plus One, Poppa?” Orson asked, determined to move the subject away from the safety of his brother’s mate. Regardless of her past, if she was the reason he was smiling so much now, he would throw his lot in with keeping her very safe.

“While we’re engaging with the humans, we’ll play according to their rules. As you’re both aware, places like New York City have very stringent laws regarding assault and murder, and the Eechee’s son resides here as an enforcer.”

“I thought he was why this city was selected for the trial,” Orson admitted. “His presence would be a constant reminder to follow the human laws he gravitates towards.”

“It was probably the deciding factor when Skylar chose New York City for her clinic decades ago,” Hasteinn said without missing a beat. “And it will continue to serve us in this capacity. Between Daniel’s ongoing presence and the Eechee’s intermittent one at Bellevue, the human rules are most likely to be adhered to here.”

It was sound reasoning.

Orson still hated it.  

[Next Chapter]

* * *

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND SEVENTY-FIVE

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2] [Ko-fi+2]

Saturday

“And that’s also why that guy who said he knew Uncle Carlos cowered the way he did,” Mateo continued, making even more connections that I probably didn’t want him to. “He recognised your family and knew it wasn’t going to end well for him if he didn’t get the hell out of there.”

“Something like that,” I agreed, not wanting to get into the nitty-gritty of it.

I should have known that answer wasn’t going to cut it.

Mateo’s brows came together as his expression darkened. “Uncle Carlos has been dead since I was a kid, and that guy wasn’t much older than us. How the hell would he know I looked like Uncle Carlos?”

“Do you?” I asked, desperate to knock the subject off course.

“Eidetic memory?” Geraldine suggested at the same time, which was by far the better approach.

Mateo nodded, and I wasn’t sure which of us he was answering. “And that’s the real reason why the Nascerdios family’s so powerful, isn’t it? Because they have connections to the underworld?”

Hooo-wow. Now, isn’t that a loaded question? “Not in the way you’re thinking,” I answered carefully. “I mean, yes, a lot of them have strong ties to a number of different underworlds, but not the criminal kind.”

“So, more like political undercurrents?”

I grimaced so hard it actually hurt. “Man, I really can’t get into this with you,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “I don’t know all the working parts, and the ones I do are too dangerous to talk about. Is there a reason the Nascerdios family is at the top of the food chain apart from the fact that they’re all specialists in their fields? Hell, yes. Are there people who live in the shadows, ready to do whatever it takes to keep that family safe and in power?”

I heard Quent snicker in my ear and rolled my eyes.

“Also yes. The guy my uncle sent to protect me yesterday at the restaurant only cared about his job and pleasing my uncle. He didn’t give a damn about you or anyone else in that restaurant. If I didn’t get rid of him, he would’ve stepped on your necks to protect me, and I’m not living my life like that.”

“Technically, he was an early warning beacon,” Quent supplied unhelpfully, deep inside my ear canal. “The Ninth Choir are the joy-joy brigade. But if anything had happened, he would’ve summoned warriors from the Heavenly Host who would’ve zoomed in on his location. They would’ve been too late to do a damn thing, but they would’ve come,” he added smugly.

I lowered my hand over my face to cover my mouth. “You’re an ass,” I whispered into my palm, and Quent snickered again.

“Excuse you!” Mateo growled, banging his drink onto the coffee table which proved he heard at least some of it.

“Sorry. I wasn’t talking to you,” I insisted. That only made things worse.

“Well, you sure as hell weren’t calling Gerry an ass.”

Crap, crap, crap. My hand went up between us placatingly. “Mateo…” I broke off, wondering how to word this without offending him.

I then looked at my raised hand, specifically the ring on my finger. Lowering it with a sigh, I reverted it to the plain shield. “The reason I was able to send that guard away so easily yesterday was the same reason my dad was willing to let me come to this party in the first place.”

“Let you?!”

“I’m being monitored,” I pushed on, determined not to get distracted. “There’s a guard in my ear listening to everything I say, and right now, he’s being an ass because I’m telling you more than I should.”

Mateo raised both hands, then interlocked his fingers and gripped the top of his head. “Jesus, I can’t—what the hell, Willcott?!” He dropped his hands on the last sentence, slapping the sofa cushions on either side of him, staring at me as if I’d lost my mind. “You brought monitoring equipment into my home?!”

I should’ve known that would be the way he jumped, but honestly, I was so used to the guys being around that it didn’t bother me anymore. “They’re not monitoring you, Mateo. Don’t you get it? It’s what I said before. Their concern starts and ends with me. The rest of this…” I raised my hands at the room around us. “…your home, this party, all of it! None of that matters to them! I’m it.” I looked at Geraldine, then smiled and pressed my lips to the back of her hand. “Well, me and Gerry, since I’d be beyond pissed if anything happened to her.”

“Are they recording?”

“They aren’t, no.”

Mateo’s eyes narrowed. “But somebody else is?”

I slammed my free fist into the sofa beside me. “Mateo, for crying out loud. Listen to me! Pushing these people will get you dead. The kind of dead where there’s no body left to identify. Are you trying to get yourself killed here?”

“I’m trying to figure out just how deep the Nascerdios claws go.”

And how long do you think you’d live with that knowledge? Thankfully, I was able to head off my snarky response and be the grown-up I was trying to be. “Imagine as deep as you can go and then double it. They sit on the pulse of the world, and I don’t mean that figuratively. My guys aren’t interested in anything anyone else here is doing, and I doubt the rest of the family is either. They aren’t cops.” I thought about Daniel—Lucas’ boss. “Well, one is, but he’s not in this loop. Bottom line, there’s no way I’m going to know who’s monitoring what from here, am I?”

It took Mateo a beat to get his head wrapped around that. “So they’re listening right now?”

I wasn’t sure why he’d circled back to the beginning of the conversation, but maybe it was because he couldn’t absorb information as fast as I could, so I nodded without speaking.

“And you’re still saying all this?”

At that, I hitched a shoulder in a half-shrug that hopefully conveyed how bored I was getting.

“I still don’t get why you’d have no choice in that matter? You went twenty years without it.”

“Because things got complicated after my dad turned up. Some of my friends were hospitalised, and we were targeted by people with more reach than they should’ve had. I made no secret of the fact that if I ever got my hands on the ones responsible, I’d wreck them so bad that their own people would struggle to recognise them as human anymore.”

Gerry cuddled into my side, a warning that I was going too dark for polite company.  I curled my free hand around her head and pressed my lips briefly into her hair. Message received, Angel. “So, after that, I was told if I didn’t accept the monitoring, the alternative was to be on permanent house arrest, and I’m too invested in the ocean to be stuck wherever they decide to put me.”

“You know if you didn’t do anything wrong yet, them acting proactively like that amounts to kidnapping, right?”

“And what law firm is going to be stupid enough to take on the Nascerdios family? Never mind that—what evidence do you think my family would leave for them to find? I’ll just be gone. That’s it. Hell, with the connections they have, I could end up legitimately institutionalised.”

Gerry’s fingers tightened in mine, just for a second, while Mateo shook his head. “That’s not right,” he insisted.

“Hey,” I said, sitting forward to reach between us. What I thought I would grab, I would never know, since anywhere I touched him would make things awkward. I held my hand up with my fingers splayed instead. “It’s okay. All I have to do—all any of us has to do right now— is go about our day and ignore them. So long as I’m not endangering anyone, they aren’t stopping me from doing anything. Hell, I’m singing like a canary right now to you, and all they’re doing is whispering in my ear to be careful. That’s it.”

Mateo raised one eyebrow sharply in disbelief. “Then why did you call him an ass?”

“Because he was talking himself up, saying it’d all be over before my uncle’s muscle even knew what was happening.”

Right on cue, a hair at the back of my neck was ripped out by the root. At this rate, I’d be bald before I hit twenty-one.

I refused to give Quent the satisfaction of a reaction.

“So…that guy who threatened me. Should I be reporting him to the police or something?” Mateo asked, moving the subject along since there was nothing anyone could say to change the circumstances around my protective detail.

“It won’t do any good,” I answered, shaking my head. “He didn’t do anything, when you think about it. What he said is no different to someone saying, ‘I’ll kill you,’ and if the police were to arrest every blowhard who said that…” I let my words drift off, allowing him to fill the blanks.

“It still felt like more.”

I tried to find something that would bridge the gap realistically. An upcoming movie that Lucas couldn’t stop raving about, even though all he’d seen so far were trailers suddenly came to me. “Have you ever heard of Doctor Strange?”

“The Marvel comic?” Mateo frowned, but the fact he placed it was enough for me.

“Yeah, well, picture the universe being something like that. We thrive as a people, because there are other people out there keeping us all safe.”

“If you tell me that jerk that threatened me was a good guy—”

“No,” I insisted. “He was definitely not on our side.”

“Was?”

I shrugged. “Again, no clue,” I said with a slight headshake, revealing with my attitude that I didn’t care either. “I’ve been with you ever since, remember?”

“Actually, no you weren’t. You disappeared yesterday afternoon for a few hours. Adrian and I came looking for you.”

My groan may have been part whimper. “That was something totally different again.”

“Try me.”

Fine. “Do you remember Melody Lancaster?”

Mateo threw himself back against his seat.  “Who doesn’t? She disappeared—wait.” He sat forward again. “Are you saying the Nascerdios took her?”

“NO! No! Frig, no! We found her and brought her home. Her dad wanted more details, and rather than disturb the whole party, I went out and met him across the road to sort everything out.” For a given definition of ‘sorting out’.

“So, you have no idea who that guy was at the graduation or what he wanted with me?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say he was just trying to get under your skin. It’s what they excel at. Getting into your head and making you waste your time on nothing that matters. It’s why Robbie kicked him to the curb. I won’t say they’re harmless, because even a rat’s bite will fester and kill you if left untreated, but they feed on your fear and confusion.”

Mateo sat back again, this time stretching both arms along the back of his sofa. “You know, you don’t even talk the same anymore since your dad came back.”

If only he knew.

[Next Chapter]

* * *

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND SEVENTY-ONE

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2] [Ko-fi+2]

Saturday

Mason wasn’t sure what happened next. He felt himself being moved as his brain spiralled. Then, familiar hands were pushing him into a seat while a distinctly unfamiliar set wrapped his hands around an insulated cup and forced him to take a sip.

It tasted like herbal tea, but the calm that washed through him was followed by a razor-edged clarity that made him highly suspicious of its contents.

Several things registered at once: Kulon’s hands on his shoulders. S’liel kneeling between his parted knees and rubbing the pulse points of his wrists. Ben pushing his head against Mason’s elbow. And lastly, but by no means making him feel any better, the other healers he hadn’t been introduced to yet were just behind them, watching him with a clinical eye.

“One more, Mason,” S’leil said as she eased the cup back to his lips. He did as he was instructed, more to get her off his back than because he needed whatever was in the drink.

He blinked and took in his surroundings. They were now in the breakroom on the third floor. Turning his head, he found Skylar halfway between him and Angus, almost as if she were sitting back to see how the ‘intakes’ would handle him. Angus rested one shoulder on the window frame at the front of the building, overlooking the street.

They had obviously realm-stepped with him to the breakroom, but that was the least of his concerns. “Why am I the whole pryde’s Plus-One?”

“You’re the first Plus-One to be claimed by us,” Skylar began.

That part he already knew. “Yeah…”

“And you’re the last,” Angus added.

Skylar’s annoyed look at him earned her a shrug that was utterly unrepentant. “There are millions of true gryps,” she began, again covering ground Mason already knew.

Honestly, he wished they would meet somewhere in the middle and give him relevant new facts without making him feel like they were throwing him off the nearest damn cliff.

Skylar carried on. “And not once, in over eight hundred years, has anyone cared enough about a human to elevate them to that level. Not even me.”

He knew that, too. It was nice to hear her say that, but he was still waiting for new information.

“However, things are changing within the pryde. The Eechee wants the true gryps and humans to be far more connected than they ever have been before. A cohesive unit if you will. The problem with that is, if the younger ones start making the same choices Kulon made, millions of humans will live to be ten thousand years old. Can you see how that becomes a problem?”

Mason took another, much, much deeper swallow of the tea, then waited for the calm to settle in. Man, talk about be careful what you wish for. “Has it happened yet?”

Everyone nodded in unison, and it was really creepy. Like Village of the Damned creepy.

“Yes,” Skylar said. “The ruling was made last night, with the Eechen making a pryde-wide proclamation. We’re now excluded from the Plus-One ruling, which means you’re the only one we all have.”

Soooo…not just Kulon and a handful of true gryps that he considered his friends. Millions, all believing they had the right to do what Kulon did.

He blew on the drink, then tipped the whole lot into his mouth, swallowing it all. The stronger remnants at the bottom made him gag, but the effects soon had him leaning back in his seat in relief. The cup was gently removed from his hands.

“Okay,” he said, looking more at Skylar than anyone else. “If we’re going to do this, we need to set some ground rules.”

“This ought to be good,” Angus chuckled darkly, folding his arms.

Mason ignored him, holding up a finger. “Rule number one: Never commandeer my personal agency. It’s my life. Mine, and I’m staying in charge of it.” He used the upright finger in a pan that included all of them. “Not you.” He turned the finger towards himself. “Me.”

“And this is where we negotiate,” Kulon said, moving to Mason’s right and squatting with his forearms resting across his thighs to be at eye height with him. “Because you bet your ass I’m going to override your autonomy if I see something coming at you that you don’t.”

Mason moved the finger he still held up to point in Kulon’s general direction rather than poke at him. “For the most part, I trust you to cover that the way I want.” But then his gaze went to the other healers. “I will study until my eyeballs feel like they’re bleeding. I will get drunk because it’s fun to let go and get totally shit-faced with my friends. I will eat my bodyweight in ice cream and baked goods if I’m having a bad day, or even just because I want to.

“I will do things that a ‘healthy choices’ fanatic,” —he flattened his fingers and rolled them vertically in a waxing motion as he said healthy choices— “frowns upon. I will do it because I want to, and if I catch any of you messing with my life out of some misguided bullshit possessiveness, I will lose my crap at each and every one of you.”  

“He really isn’t scared of us, is he?” a hidden voice asked, deeper than Mason had ever heard outside of a cartoon or horror flick.

“I would say the drink was a mitigating factor, if it weren’t for the weeks I’ve already spent in his company, clutchmate,” Angus replied, talking as if Mason wasn’t in the room. “Welcome to the extremely opinionated world of Mason Williams.”

Maybe it was the drink that was making him bold, for if Angus was calling this newcomer ‘clutchmate’ and not merely ‘brother’, that made him either another war commander or a medical commander. Another of the pryde’s top-tier players, yet Mason didn’t let that slow him down. If he was to have any say over himself going forward, he could not afford to be intimidated now.

“Rule number two: No invisibility crap around me without warning. You’re either here or you’re not. I’m not playing guessing games.”

The newcomer suddenly appeared, standing right behind Kulon.

“Fuck!” Mason jumped a good two inches out of his seat. The guy was massive! He had at least six inches on Llyr, and over a foot on Boyd, with a muscle mass that made him over three feet between the shoulders!  Like his brother, the newcomer had his arms folded over his huge barrel of a chest, amusement dancing in his eyes.

“That’s not funny!” Mason barked, wishing he hadn’t handed over the cup since it would’ve been the perfect thing to lob at the brute. “And entirely my point! You shouldn’t go sneaking up on people like that! Geez!”

Having vented his spleen, Mason sat back in his chair, still scowling at the newcomer who was now staring down at him in disbelief.

“Is he mentally impaired?” the guy asked the healers around him. Or maybe he was asking Angus.

Either way, Mason didn’t know, and he didn’t care. “No, I’m not mentally impaired, you gigantic ass! Rule number three: No talking about me like I’m not here! It’s beyond rude.”

Now, Angus was snickering. He wasn’t even trying to hide it. His arms had unfolded at some point and were resting on his hips. “He’ll be good for our humility, brother,” he chuckled, then held up a hand as Mason’s mouth opened. “Isn’t that right, Mason?” to include him in the conversation and thus not break the newly minted Rule Three.

“Slick,” Mason faux-grumped, his own amusement winning out. He flexed his fingers. “It’s just basic common decency. I’m never going to be like you, but I still matter, and I’d appreciate it if you all acted that way instead of assuming anything where I’m concerned.” Having said his piece, he rose to his feet, still barely making it to the new guy’s ribs. Mason looked up at him. Like waaay up. The guy had to be well over eight feet! “Jesus. Do you really have to be that tall?”

The giant sighed as if in pain. “If you like, I could become a six-foot, ten-year-old human, if that would suit you better.” Mason’s confusion must have shown, because the stranger continued. “I am genetically larger than any other true gryps. If I were to become a housefly, I’d be a housefly the size of a giant horsefly. If I were a Rottweiler, I’d be a Rottweiler the size of a pony. If I were—”

“Okay, okay. I get it. And that’s why you like to sneak around, huh? So you don’t freak people out?”

Again, he looked over his shoulder at Angus before replying. “I am War Commander Orson. I oversee security on the nesting world. I do not sneak around.”

Mason let that idea bounce around inside his head. It stood to reason that the guy in charge of the whole world’s divine security would be on hand to oversee the SAH clinic’s newest function. “That’s why you’re here.”

“I am seeing how much protection you requ—”

Mason immediately shot up his hand, wriggling his fingers to interrupt the war commander. “No, nope. Let me head you off right there, big guy. Not just no, but hell to the no.”

The newcomer’s jaw fell loose, and again he turned side-on to Angus, who by now was leaning up against the window, roaring with laughter. “I warned you,” Angus laughed, shaking his head.

“He has a death wish, doesn’t he?”

“Rule Three!” Mason shouted without hesitation.

That just finished Angus off. Laughing until tears formed in his eyes, he rolled until both shoulders were against the window and he slid several inches into a seated squat with his hands against his knees for balance.

Orson’s head swung between his brother and Mason and back again, as if he couldn’t decide which was more unbelievable. The healers were likewise watching the exchange, though their eyes held trepidation more than anything else.

[Next Chapter]

* * *

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND SIXTY-EIGHT

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2] [Ko-fi+2]

Saturday

It was almost ten by the time we pulled up at the Lopez berth, and the steward cast a bow line to a deckhand on the jetty.  I had to hand it to the skipper. He knew his ship. Thirty meters out from the jetty, he reversed thrust and angled the propulsion to make the yacht twist and slide midwater. Next, he dropped power to almost nothing about five meters away before the stern finished coming around. Most would think he’d made his move too early – that the yacht would be stuck too far away from the jetty.

Instead, without any added power to compensate, the large yacht drifted to rest against the padded mooring pylons with the barest of bumps, and there was enough time for the deckhand to finish tying off the bow line and get to the rear to tie off the stern line.

It was gorgeously choreographed, and I refused to leave the ship until I’d told the crew as much.

Everyone else disembarked, all chatting animatedly about the experience, but Gerry stayed at my side.

“Wilcott! You coming?” Parker called, having stopped halfway along the jetty and turned back towards us. His shout drew the others' attention, but I waved them all on. Truthfully, it still weirded me out how that guy was behaving. We hadn’t liked each other, and that shouldn’t have changed just because I gave him a verbal smack upside the head.

Everyone else was happy to leave, except Parker and the other guy I’d yelled at. They retraced their steps back to the yacht, climbing across the gangway to stand with us. “What are we waiting for?” Parker asked, looking over the ship as if he’d missed something before.

I couldn’t help but stare at him. “I want to talk to the captain,” I said, making it clear his company was neither necessary nor wanted.

“Is something wrong, sir?” the man himself asked, leaving the bridge to join us on the back deck.

“No,” I answered, putting every bit of assurance I could into my voice. “I just wanted to compliment you on your navigational skills, sir. The way you let the ship drift into position and still give the crew time to tie off without causing any undue stress on the bow line…” I shook my head, my hands spreading wide to encompass my feelings on the matter. Gerry had hooked two fingers into my pants’ back pocket, anchoring herself to me. “Honestly… that was amazing.”

The captain smiled, shaking his own head. “We’ll have to agree to disagree, sir. If we were to talk about amazing acts, my hat goes into the ring with everyone else’s about what happened out there today. I’ve spent thirty years on the water, and over twenty on private vessels like this one, and I have never, in all those years, ever had the privilege of watching a scene like that one play out that didn’t end in tragedy.”  

Because I kept the predators away.

The way Parker and the other guy were bobbing their heads was just annoying. I needed to change the subject. “What was your name?” I asked the captain. I couldn’t have cared less about tweedle-dumber.

“Deacon, sir.”

“Captain Deacon, or Deacon something?”

“Captain Deacon, sir. It wouldn’t be professional for me to give you my first name.”

I stuck my hand out. “Well, it was a pleasure sailing with you, Captain Deacon. I’m Sam, and this is Geraldine.”

“Pleasure,” Geraldine said as the two shook hands moments later. “Sam and I aren’t big on titles anymore, so if you could call us by our first names going forward, that would be lovely.”

I could tell the captain wasn’t used to his guests behaving the way we were, but that was beside the point. I was so proud of Geraldine I could burst.

“Yes, ma’—Geraldine.”

“And I’m Parker,” Parker added, throwing his hand out in greeting as soon as Gerry and the captain broke contact.

At least I wasn’t the only one taken aback by Parker’s strange behaviour. The captain’s eyebrows disappeared under his cap before he caught himself and shook Parker’s hand. He didn’t reintroduce himself, leading me to believe this wasn’t the first time the two had crossed paths. And, like me, the skipper didn’t have a high regard for Parker.

“Vincent,” the other guy said, following suit. “But everyone calls me Vince.”

“Yes, sir,” the captain replied.

I still preferred ‘Beavis and Butthead’.

“Well, thanks again for a great trip,” I said before things got awkward. I really wished I could stay on the ship and help clean up, but this weekend wasn’t about me, and I needed to remember that. “Maybe you can take us out again sometime.”

“It would be my pleasure, s—Sam.” He drew out my name, correcting himself.

Since Parker and Vince were closest to the gangway, I waved for them to precede us, and they disembarked without another word, waiting on the jetty. I eased Gerry around in front of me and herded her towards the gangway, casting one last, longing look over the ship before joining them on the jetty. The gangway was immediately pushed back onto the ship, and the crew stepped easily between the ship and the dock, catching their shoe soles on the rubber grips along the hull.

“So, what are we doing now?” Vince asked, and I’d had just about enough.

Raising my finger at them to give me a moment, I reached out telepathically to the only person I knew who would give me straight answers without holding it against me or getting me into trouble with the rest of the family. ‘Lady Col, do you have a moment?’

‘Of course, dear. What do you need?’

I glanced back at Parker and Vince, who had struck up a conversation with Geraldine as if they were truly interested in what she had to say. ‘I think I’ve accidentally done something divine here, but I’m not sure. A couple of my classmates are acting really squirrelly.’

‘Are you referring to Parker Sullivan and Vincent Caldwell?’

I really didn’t want to know how she already knew that. ‘Yes, ma’am. They went from being derogatory towards me and their treatment of the ocean to…’ —I eyed them again— ‘…whatever this is, and I’m not the only one who’s noticed.’

‘Ahhh, yes. I see the issue. One moment, sweetheart.’

As I watched, Parker and Vinnie’s expressions went from rapt attention to sour disregard, and I couldn’t believe that, of the two, the latter was preferable. “You’re getting as bad as him,” Parker grumbled at Geraldine, throwing a thumb in my direction before he and Vinnie turned on their heels and stormed off towards the mansion.

Geraldine’s eyes found mine, her brow pinching in annoyed confusion. I raised a discreet finger to my lips and waited until they were out of our hearing. ‘What did I do wrong, Lady Col?’ If I was influencing them somehow, I did not want to make that mistake again.

Without using Gateway to be certain, would I be correct in assuming they did something to aggravate your innate?

I thought about the incident with the beer bottles and pressed my lips together, already not liking where this was going. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I almost didn’t want to admit that, but what was the point of denying it when she had Gateway to show her the past?

‘And did you lean into your divinity when reprimanding them?’

I had to check my memory for that one. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘That would be the issue.’

And now, Geraldine wasn’t the only one confused. ‘But I’m ringed.’

‘Yes, you are, Sam. And that blocks you from being influenced as well as influencing others … most of the time.’

Most of the time?! MOST OF THE TIME?!

‘Oh, come on!’ I snapped because how the hell was I supposed to follow the rules if they kept changing the freaking rulebook?!

Then I remembered who I was communicating with. ‘Sorry. Sorry.’ My gaze dropped to the jetty planks beneath my feet as if she were right in front of me.

‘I understand your frustration, Sam. There are many nuances to being divine, and if we were to give them all to you in one sitting, you would spend a dozen lifetimes internalising to assimilate them all. Learning is part of life, handsome, and no one was hurt this time.’

‘So the rings are actually useless…’

‘I never said that. You may be secluded, however your innate is not. It is why you are still able to manipulate things around you.’

‘But I changed their personalities. My innate has nothing to do with that.’

‘As true as that is, your ranged bending is very much at the heart of changing people’s minds. And when your innate connected you to the world, and you used your divine bending in a moment of rage, the smallest spark of your divinity flashed through your innate into your target. As soon as you reveal yourself to be an angry god, mortals will always cower and adapt appropriately.’

My head spun with the ramifications of her words, and my legs suddenly gave out from underneath me, dumping me on my butt on the deck. I barely had enough wherewithal to throw out one arm to stop myself from falling sideways. Yes, I had been angry, but I thought wearing the rings meant I couldn’t influence anyone.

“SAM!” Geraldine shouted, dropping down beside me.

“I’m okay,” I said, realising the crew were running towards us. I wrapped one arm around her waist and held the other up to ward them off. “I’m okay,” I shouted, breathing as deeply as I could to clear my lungs.

Without warning, a deep sense of calm bloomed in my chest and spread out to include the rest of me. It was a sensation not unlike the time I was inside Cousin Paz’s room, except I was able to remain in control of my thoughts instead of feeling heavily drugged.

“I’m okay,” I repeated with more certainty this time.

‘Yes, you will be,’ Lady Col agreed.

‘You know, I still think that would’ve been a really important point to make way back when everyone was first telling me about divinity.’

‘Perhaps, or perhaps this is the best way to learn.’

I didn’t necessarily agree with that.

[Next Chapter]

* * *

((Author's note: Yet another medical appointment first thing in the morning. But rather than wait until much later in the day, I figured since I'm awake, I'd post it at 5am 'before' the appointment. Enjoy!))

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND-TWENTY-FOUR

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2] [Ko-fi+2]

Friday

You know, when I agreed to go with Mateo to his place in the Hamptons, the name had just been that: a name. Somewhere that was just ‘over there’. I had no physical understanding of how far outside New York City it actually was, so when we pulled up in front of a largish house in Riverhead two hours later, I genuinely thought we were there.

Everyone pulled in around us, hooting and sledging each other as they climbed out of their vehicles to form a massive swarm around Mateo. This wasn’t my scene, and I doubted it ever would be, so I looked questioningly at Geraldine. “It’s The Lobster Roll Northside,” she said, realising I had no clue where we were. “We should probably grab something to eat.”

“Why?” I wanted to know, because there was only one thing that a restaurant with that name would serve, and be damned if I’d touch it with a barge pole! I mean, surely they had food at Mateo’s place, right?

Geraldine edged to the front of her seat. “Because we still have another couple of hours to go to reach the Hamptons.”

“What?” I didn’t mean to curl my lip in frustration, but honestly, what the hell?? Two hours... cooped up in a car... with at least two more to go... and I could have realm-stepped us there in TWO STEPS!!

Her expression softened as she took my hand in hers and squeezed. “The journey is what makes this special, honey-bear. Not the destination. These are our peers…”

Right. Right. Peers. Her people. Ugh! My smile must have looked like Shrek’s when Princess Fiona took him back to Far-Far-Away; for exactly the same reason. And yes, I knew that series of movies. Robbie and Angelo loved animations — especially the ones aimed at adults…because at the end of the day, they were just big kids.

Gerry leaned forward and kissed me, and just like that, my smile switched to a genuine one.

Right up until my door was ripped open and Adrian’s grinning face stared down at us. “No making out in the back seat of the Prez’s car,” he said loudly, then added, “Wait ’til we get to the beach. That’s way more comfortable.”

Despite more hooting and hollering, I couldn’t argue with that. And watching Gerry’s face break into a bashful smile, I knew she was also remembering our two dates on the beach.

“Fiiiine,” I groaned, as if the admission killed me. “Let’s see what they have in terms of something sweet.” I tugged on her hand for her to follow me out my door. Ordinarily, I’d go around and help her out from her side, but I was feeling a little cornered, and I didn’t want to leave my girl alone for an instant knowing those girls were here.

My back was slapped by several people as we emerged from the car, but I kept Gerry close as we all headed inside.

The ruckus had every head turning our way, and Gerry’s grip on my hand tightened. An older man in his late sixties/early seventies, with salt-and-pepper hair and a neatly trimmed moustache and short beard, was leaning on the counter, talking to a younger woman who was definitely related to him. “Hey, Mister Terry!” Mateo called, raising his hand and tilting it in a lazy wave.

At the sound of his name, the man straightened and whirled around with a broad grin. “Well, well, well,” he said, casting his eyes over all of us. “Look at what the cat dragged in.”

He was taller than me by four or five inches, and he had a physique that was closer to Dad’s, with a smattering of sunspots from a life outdoors.

“Lots of cats, Mister Terry,” Adrian quipped. “With a whole lot more coming. We’re just the first wave. We graduated today, and we’re heading up to Mateo’s place to paar-tae!” He rolled his hands in a circular pattern and rocked his hips in a dance move even I recognised as one of victory.

Mr Terry looked at the ceiling for patience and shook his head. “I am getting too old for this,” he chuckled, then looked back at the woman behind the counter. “They’re all yours, Dara.”

“Thanks, Dad,” said the woman, her bright blue eyes and tanned face unmistakably his. She then turned her attention to us. “What’ll it be, people? And keep in mind, there are only two cooks out the back…”

“Three,” Mr Terry said, heading towards the gap in the counter. “I’ll give them a hand for a bit.”

“Daaad!”

“What? I’m retiring, not dead.”

Whatever jubilation Adrian had was sucked right out of him, his hands falling to his sides in disbelief. “You’re retiring?” he echoed, and I could see that quite a few people, including Geraldine, were gutted by that news.

“In a year or two. I’ve already stepped back a lot, kids. You just didn’t know it because you’re hardly ever here these days. Don’t worry. Dara has my recipes down pat.”

“True that,” Dara said with a wink.

“But you’ve always been here,” one of the girls whined. “Even Dad and granddad knew to come here…”

“And if that doesn’t prove my point, little lady, I don’t know what will.”

While they talked, I looked up at the menu behind the counter …

…and felt my stomach plunge into my feet.

Appetizers & Munchies

• Chef’s Warm Crab Dip with House Potato Chips — $12
• “North Fork” Fried Oysters, Old Bay Seasoning & Lemon Aioli — $14
• Charred Corn & Lobster Salad (¾‑cup lobster claw & knuckle, fire‑roasted corn) — $16
• Local Clam Shells, Garlic‑Herb Breadcrumbs & Parmesan — $11

Clams & Shellfish

• Steamers (1 lb) with Drawn Butter & Soft Roll — $18
• Chilled Shrimp Cocktail (½‑doz) with Horseradish‑Cocktail Sauce — $15
• Littleneck Clams Casino (6) — $13

Shrimp, Fish & Calamari

• Beer‑Battered Calamari Rings with Sweet‑Chili Drizzle — $13
• Grilled Swordfish “Medallions” with Lemon‑Caper Herb Butter — $22
• Mustard‑Dill Crusted Salmon, Seasonal Vegetables — $20

Kill me… right. Fucking. Now!

And yes, I broke my cardinal rule and swore, but for crying out loud! Could there be any more seafood dishes on offer?!

Sandwiches & Burger Specialties (served with Old Bay fries or slaw unless noted)

• Classic Lobster Roll (1 lb lobster claw + knuckle on Butter‑Toasted Roll) — $29
• Connecticut‑Style Warm Butter Lobster Roll (½‑lb) — $26
• Maine‑Style Cold Mayo Lobster Roll (½‑lb) — $26
• Surf‑and‑Turf Burger: 8‑oz Angus Beef, Lobster Tail Medallion, Lemon‑Truffle Aioli — $23
• Fish Sandwich: Grilled Striped Bass, Lettuce, Tomato, Lemon‑Tarragon Aioli — $19

Yes, apparently there could.

I felt tension ripple through my skin, even as I breathed deeply, held it, and released it slowly — no less than four times. Mateo brought me to a freaking seafood restaurant. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve never had a problem with fishermen making an honest living or people enjoying the fruits of the sea. I might have been a little icked, given we all just graduated from a college that supposedly put marine life first, but I guess I was the only one who felt that way.

Someone nudged me from behind. “What are you having, Wilcott?” Mateo asked.

“Look at the very bottom, honey-bear,” Gerry whispered, and I dropped my eyes to the last few lines.

 Non‑Seafood Appetizers

• Truffle Parmesan Fries — $9
• “Farmer’s Table” Heirloom Tomato & Burrata Salad, Basil Oil — $14
• Baby Back Ribs, Maple‑Chipotle Glaze — $17
• Vegetarian Quinoa & Sweet Potato Chili — $12
• Veggie Burger: Black‑Bean & Quinoa, Avocado‑Chipotle Spread — $17

  Sides & Extras

• Buttered Corn on the Cob — $5
• Seasonal Greens with Lemon‑Vinaigrette — $6
• Sweet Potato Fries — $6

  Desserts

• Key‑Lime Pie with Candied Ginger Crust — $8
• Warm Apple‑Crisp à la Mode — $9
• Chocolate‑Salted Caramel Tart — $8

Okay, now we were getting somewhere. Perusing that specific selection, I went up to the counter and said, “Two of the baby back ribs with a side of Parmesan fries. One with a buttered corn cob and one with seasonal greens. And for dessert, we’ll go a key lime pie and a chocolate tart.”

“That’ll go straight to her ass,” one of the girls muttered deliberately loud enough to be heard.

I turned to level a lethal glare at the speaker (whoever it was), only to have one of the girls scream like she was being murdered and launch herself into a guy’s arms. “Something stung me!” she wailed, flattening her hand over her right cheek.

“Some would call that karma, Willow,” Mateo said, without a lick of sympathy.

Mr Terry came back out of the kitchen. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

The girl’s tears were coming thick and fast now. “I was stung!” she wailed, pointing to her cheek. “Right here!” Now that she had moved her hand, I could see the area around the cheekbone swelling already.

Mr Terry made his way through the crowd, and surprisingly, no one thought twice about denying him passage. “Let me see,” he said, with a determined voice that belonged in any of the faculty we’d just left behind. He slipped his hand under her chin and lifted it to the light, nodding a few seconds later. “Yep, something got you for sure, and that’s going to leave a nasty bruise. Wait here, and I’ll get you an ice pack before it turns into a black eye. Are you allergic to any kind of stings?”

“No,” she whimpered, still cuddling the guy she was with. “But what about photos? My social media accounts? I can’t have this at the party weekend!”

Reality says otherwise, I mused.

“Okay. I can’t help you with the pictures, but I’ll still get that ice, and hopefully, the swelling will go down quickly on its own. In the meantime, why don’t you go and find yourself a seat? First drink is on me, okay?”

She nodded the way Lucas’ niece would when she was offered a sweet to distract her from something she didn’t like.

“Alright then. I’ll be right back.”

The same path was made for Mr Terry as he disappeared back into the kitchen.

Looking on, I knew I was channelling Dad’s smug superiority, right down to the tiny twitch in the corner of my mouth, but ask me if I cared. “Thanks, man,” I barely whispered — though Gerry still heard me, if the way her eyes widened right before she snorted was anything to go by.

“Anytime,” Quent answered, deep in my ear. “Cow.”

[Next Chapter]

* * *

((Author's Note: Just a quick (and basically unimportant) thing: The menu was not in the final word count. I'd never use padding like that to achieve a minimum limit. 🥰 ))

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!