“You aren’t allowed to fuck me, are you?”
Chayton dropped his eyes and cleared his throat, then laughed. “No. No, we aren’t. Did Gray explain that to you?”
“Stuart, actually. But I think it just hit me why. It’s because I can’t rationally consent, isn’t it? Not with all the…” I wiggled my fingers around my head, “…magic, right?”
They exchanged glances, then Tate sighed and took my hand again. “There’s a lot more to it than that. You want to come in and let us lay it out for you?”
“Yeah, preferably with a stiff drink. It’s a bit involved and a little scary, if you ask me,” Eddie said, crowding in behind me as he let Gray enter, the screen door swinging shut behind him.
“It’s already been a bit scary even without the constant need for dick,” I said. “But let’s see if I remember where Dad stashed the good stuff.”
I headed back through the house, past the kitchen, through the wide arch into the library. I was struck again by the presence of all the handmade knick-knacks of mine my mother had collected over the years. This room felt like all the love I’d missed from her growing up, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. If she’d been alive, why hadn’t she come around? Why stay away, when she clearly cared?
I went to the built-ins to the left of the fireplace and squatted, pulling open one cabinet, then reaching in and around to the corner section that was too tough to access to bother storing anything important in. Stretching back blindly with one hand, my knuckles bumped a dusty bottle, and I pulled it out, grinning proudly.
The blue glass gleamed, and I tilted the bottle, the liquid clearly near the top. Cracking the lid, I sniffed, and my eyes immediately watered from the strong aroma of vodka. I took a quick swig then handed it to Chayton and plopped down in the center of the oversized twill sofa that faced the fireplace.
Chayton eyed the bottle then stared at me. “Um, maybe you shouldn’t drink this stuff. It’s not meant for humans.”
Stuart leaned in to look when Chayton held the bottle up. The room filled with soft curses and deep chuckles, and I glanced around, waiting for someone to share the punch line. Gray took mercy and sat down beside me.
“It’s turul vodka, which is distilled from a magic berry that only grows inside turul enclaves. It tends to be highly effective at getting our kind drunk. It’s stronger than human vodka.”
“I’m a bit more than human though, so I should be fine, right? Now, who wants to start explaining the whole ‘no fucking’ thing?”
I looked around the room. Tate had disappeared, but the others just stood around looking uncomfortable.
“This is your territory,” Stuart said, gesturing to Chayton.
A moment later, Tate returned with an armload of firewood and proceeded to stack it in the fireplace. “Go ahead,” he said, glancing up at Chayton.
The dark-haired ursa pursed his lips and raked his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, well, consent isn’t actually a factor…”
“Of course, it is,” Eddie interrupted. “You want something, you have to ask for it. Explicitly. Ursa law.”
Chayton scowled at his friend. “I didn’t finish. You’ve already felt how the magic builds when you’re having an episode, right? Well, without a way to offload that power, you could actually self-destruct. Unmated females typically don’t leave the Sanctuary until after their first estrous is complete, because they need to be near males who can help get them through it. We just act as conduits to funnel the magic back to Gaia.”
“So if we were mated, it’d solve the issue?”
“No, you’d still go through it every four years. Being mated just means you’d have easier access to a couple male ursa.”
“And then we could legally bang, right? I don’t quite get why we can’t do it now, as long as you’re available.”
Tate stood and brushed off his hands, leaning against the side of the mantel while Murdoc knelt and breathed flames into the fireplace.
He speared me with a grave look. “Because the only thing more dangerous than an unmated ursa female in estrous is an unmated ursa female who is pregnant. The power generated by the new life inside her is potentially catastrophic without having mates who are committed to helping her manage it. Consent is crucial, of course. We require all our females be explicit with their needs and desires because it is so delicate a state for her to be in, whether pregnant or just in estrous. But the bigger worry is avoiding the destruction that would result by not managing the magic.”
I blinked up at him and took another swig from the bottle that had made its way around our circle. “Destruction? Like, how dire are we talking?”
“Atom bomb level catastrophe,” Stuart said.
I sat in silence, staring at the odd characters painted on the bottle as I absorbed all of this. “So, I don’t suppose you guys have ever heard of condoms, have you?”
Eddie laughed. “Honey, I’m flattered that you want a taste of us so badly, but those don’t work. Something about our body chemistry just destroys the latex, and the higher races don’t exactly have an R&D division to invent a prophylactic that works. Or, we did have a science division of sorts, but not by choice. We spent centuries trying not to get caught by them. Besides, they were more about breeding us in captivity than keeping us from breeding.”
“Yeah, the last time someone tried doing research on us, their intentions weren’t exactly good,” Chayton said. “But I suppose something good came out of the Ultiori’s experiments in the end.” His voice lowered, and he smiled at me.
I lifted my eyebrows. “What? Am I the good thing? How am I connected to your ex evil mastermind?”
Chayton grimaced, shooting a pleading look at the others. The fire crackled brightly as the other men suddenly decided the books and artwork around the room were more interesting than the conversation. Gray remained a comforting presence at my side and let out a soft laugh. “Brother, you dug yourself into this hole,” he said.
With a sigh, Chayton sat back, rubbing his palms against the tops of his thighs. “You already know you’re Bloodline, but did you ever wonder whose Bloodline that meant?”
I looked into the fire, trying to remember the night of the strange midnight message that woke me out of a sound sleep a little more than a year ago. But it hadn’t included an in-depth explanation.
“Um… I don’t suppose you’re going to say Targaryen, are you?”
Somewhere behind me, someone snort-laughed. Chayton smirked. “No. Though you do have a trio of dragons happy to kill or die for you, but that’s all you. The Bloodline are creations of the Ultiori. Or, more specifically, the leader of the Ultiori, a woman we knew of as Meri, but who went by hundreds of other names over the course of history. She stole people’s lives, possessed the minds and bodies of wealthy intellectuals to carry out her experiments on the higher races. She stole our blood, infused her human subjects with it to see what kinds of effects it would have. She always included a drop of her own blood, because all it took was ingesting a drop of her blood and a human would become her mind slave. Over the centuries, those humans reproduced until she had an entire army she could control with a thought.”