Aurelia looked at me like she wanted to give me a serious response but was afraid to start going there. Too much pain. I really did get it.
"Hey, blind guy, can I ask you a question?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you ever just like shove someone 'on accident'? I think it would be cool to be blind and just mow people down on the sidewalk."
"Oh yeah. I have done that more than once. I like this little punk," Waylon said. "But...call me 'blind guy' again and I'll jam your crappy modern music up your ass."
"Ohokay," she chuckled in an awkward teen way. "I better watch these kids, so..." She got up to chase a toddler who turned into a lion cub.
"Wow, I forgot how annoying teenagers are already," I laughed. "Hopefully she got the message somewhere deep down."
"If we ever had kids you know they'd be just that annoying,” Waylon said, with a grin. "I'm sure she got the message loud and clear."
It was right then that Michelle called us over to watch the militias coming down from the valley to the north, where the forests stretched away from Eden Park.
I seriously didn't know what to expect, but it was a military parade in my honor, with armored vehicles and a few tanks, and uniformed soldiers walking in file, like something I'd see on TV, but out here in the woods.
"Esther wasn't kidding," I breathed. "Eden Park really is just a front at this point..."
"Yes," Michelle said. "Eden Park is the future border of Istara's western territory. We will take it by force... when the time comes.”
She also showed us an arsenal, stocked with every familiar weapon I could imagine and others that were meant to enhance a shifters' abilities and other devious new objects developed on site. Waylon called dibs on some small explosives.
"I can keep them with my magic stuff," he said. "I want to blow things up once in a while."
"Those better not blow your face off."
"They are very safe," Michelle said, although I was a tad skeptical. Waylon's face was too important to risk, but he'd already confiscated some of them.
Alistair shook his head. "She hid a lot of this even from me," he marveled. "How could she seem so little and sweet and then operate on this scale?"
"I hope your mother was right to place her trust in you now," Michelle said, in a tone of warning.
"I am on your side," Alistair said. "I swear that on my life."
"I imagine you will be offered a lot of money and power to turn on us someday."
"And I'll say no."
"Merryweather is all right," Waylon said. "I vouch for him."
The tension broke slightly. I watched the hundreds of soldiers passing by below me, my hands on the railing, looking down from the rocky outcropping. I felt like the Queen of Cats, perched high, watching it all go by...wondering where it would all lead.
Chapter Fifteen
Frankie
We settled in to our new home and got a much-needed breather. Ian and Florian were both fascinated by the military parade and went back to dig into the operations more. Waylon worked on his study of magic. And I cracked open some books on leadership. I started with Esther’s books intended for CEOs and managers, even if this went far beyond running a company. People were going to die based on the decisions we made, but I felt like the first thing I had to do was learn how to project and instill confidence and make difficult decisions in general.
Wellp, it quickly became clear to me why a queen needed her consorts, because this was some heavy shit, and the thing that kept me going was knowing I could choose either of my sexy companions for comfort or scorching bed sport at any time.
And then I had the Florian puzzle to crack. As the days went on, even Waylon and Ian started to seem a little bothered by his coolness.
"Who would--" Plink plink-- "--not want to be the consort of the sexiest, sauciest, most impatient and mouthy little hellcat--" Plink plink dun dun don-- Waylon was trying to learn to play the piano in his bored moments. "Fucking pianos. How long do you have to practice before you stop sounding like you work at a shitty saloon?"
"More than a week," Ian said, glancing up from The Fellowship of the Ring. (He went back to the beginning again.) “That goes for all instruments..." He looked at me. "Is this how he always talks to you?"
"Pretty much."
"Well, at least I pay my lady some attention, unlike Flor," Waylon said.
"Flor has...some stuff to deal with," Ian said. "I think that's all it is."
"Like...something to do with that Shaw guy?” I asked.
"Yes, but he really doesn't like talking about it."
"Have you ever seen him with someone, Ian?"
"Yeah...nothing serious,” he said.
"He hasn't come on to you even once and he's been with other women recently?" Waylon said.
I laughed nervously. "It's weird for you guys to get upset that he's not coming onto me..."
"I'm wondering if this connection we're supposed to have is between the consorts too," Waylon said. "It's clearly messing with my head."
"Me too," Ian said. "I feel like I just...know we'll always be together. So there isn't any of the usual insecurity I'd feel if I was with you and I saw you checking Waylon out."
"That also makes me wonder how Flor could resist our girl if he feels it too," Waylon said.
"He did come onto me, sort of," I said, squirming a little. "He just said he wants complete control in the bedroom or something like that..."
"And you've thought about giving it to him," Ian said, raising his eyebrows at me, as he ran a hand down my thigh. "I can smell it."
His touch made my skin absolutely burn, and the conversation was making me feel confused but also desperate for even more than I'd been getting. I wanted...all of them. Or at least both of these two...at once.
After days of hard thinking, I was craving more and more blissful oblivion to balance it all out.
"Giving up control is exactly what I keep telling you you need to do," Waylon said. "Maybe Flor is the one to teach it to you."
Flor strolled quickly into the room at the end of the sentence and I stared at him, my skin burning as Ian kept stroking my thigh, doing me no favors.
Flor had heard Waylon. I could tell. His lovely mouth stayed an impassive line but he gave me one of those looks of his.
"Darius is on the phone," he said. "He wanted to ask you something, Ian."
"Sure." Ian took the phone. "Hey, what's up?"
I heard the voice on the other side say, "I don't know how much you've all been paying attention to the news today, but a rumor went out all over social media that the shifter queens have awoken and that they're in Manhattan, and a mob came over the bridge with guns and shit, grabbing people on the street and asking if they knew where the queens are. Anyway...you told me you had parents and a little sister in Brooklyn when we were on break at our gig..."
"Yes," Ian said. "I do. I guess I need to call them. Friends, too. Are you safe?"