Charon simmered until they left the gargoyles in the foyer in order to collect what few possessions they had. As soon as they stepped into the little office that they had been using as their room, he closed the door behind them, as if that fragile final division between the gargoyles and them was significant.
“Verity,” he said heavily. “They do not know what I am.”
“I know,” she whispered it. “I know, Charon.”
“What do you think is going to happen when they find out?” He demanded. “I am their enemy.”
“You are not, though, Charon, are you?” She pointed out. “Not really. You don’t believe as your people do, that my people are slaves. I have seen you give water to the injured, tend their wounds, offer comfort and take from your own plate in order to feed a hungry child. Those are not the actions of someone who does not see us as people.”
Charon closed his eyes and rested the back of his head against the door. “It is not that simple Verity. My views. My position. The future.”
“What are your views?” They had never discussed them, but she had assumed from his behaviour that, like Cael, he had chosen this realm over his own.
“Verity,” Charon groaned it out from between his teeth. “That answer is not simple to give.”
She crossed the room and put her arms around him, pressing her cheek against his chest, the posture reminding her of how she had woken that morning on Dior, and the things she had done in the night with the triad. As she leaned into the warmth of the winged man and he hesitantly put his arms around her in return and dropped his face into her hair, she felt her pulse race beneath the force of her desire.
“Charon,” she leaned back and lifted her face to his in invitation. His pupils dilated, and he lowered his mouth to within a hair of hers, his breath touching her lips, but then he lifted his head and released her, stroking his hands through her hair instead. “Charon,” she repeated, an unspoken question between them.
“I serve you,” he said it softly. “My life is yours. I am your friend.”
“That is not all you are,” she had not released her grip around his waist, and she could feel the throb of his hard on against her stomach. She deliberately and with a boldness she had not possessed the day before, pressed closer against it and felt the moan pass through him.
“Verity,” he stroked his hands along her arms, to her wrists, easing her hold away from him. “I want you,” it was a confession dragged from him. “More than I have wanted anything or anyone before in my life. I have wanted you since you touched me through the bars of our cages and healed my wings.”
“But because of the gargoyle triad,” she said. “You won’t act on that.”
“No, not because of the triad,” he released her hands at her sides and stroked the palms of his hands back up her arms. “My life is yours. I serve you Verity, and I am your friend, but sex between us would not just be sex and if I take you as mate, it goes against every rule that my people have regarding the slave races. I will never be able to return to my home or see my family again.
“At the moment, in the games, I am considered a prisoner of war, and as such, the rules of survival apply. But once the games are concluded, I will be expected to return home, and I cannot take you with me,” he explained gently. “I don’t want to close my door to home by taking you as a mate.”
“Games,” she repeated her mind sticking on the word. He had never spoken what had come before they had met in the cages in the vampire’s prison. The simple, innocent word was loaded with so many disturbing connotations that her stomach curdled. “These attacks are… games to you?”
He flushed. “Do not be upset, Verity.”
“How can I not be upset?” She was horrified. “Your people have torn our world apart, torn our lives apart, I don’t even know how many people have been killed or maimed, and you consider this a game?”
“Our realm is very different than this one,” he stepped back from her. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Try explaining it to me, Charon,” she demanded.
“It is…” He gestured with a hand and sighed. “Not simple to explain.”
She waited, and after a moment he leaned back against the door in surrender. “The games don’t normally take place like this,” he said. “They changed the rules to include the forbidden realm this year for the first time since it was closed to us, and it has added to the challenge.”
“For us as well,” she pointed out grimly.
“The way the games are played, the players gather at the gates,” he ignored her comment. “And you do not know where they will open. Some realms, there are no sentient beings. We might fight whatever monsters or creatures that line there, or it might be a battle of survival against the elements.
“There is an entry point and an exit point set, and a time period that you are given to travel between. If you return through the entry point, you are disqualified and dishonoured. If you do not return, you are considered a prisoner of war and must survive the remainder of the games where you are.
“Only when the games conclude, can prisoners of war return.”
“So, you just go from realm to realm, terrorizing the people and creatures there?” She stared at him, appalled.
“It is part of the annual cull,” he replied. “To keep the lesser species subdued and our own numbers under control.”
“Oh, god,” she closed her eyes. Cull was the word the vampires had called it. Did they know that Cael’s people considered this cull to be some sort of a sporting event or had Cael kept that detail to himself? “This just gets better and better.”
“It is different,” he barely breathed it. “To be here, now, amongst your people. It changes how you think about things, how you see the people here. I think they made a mistake when they opened the forbidden realm to the games. There was a very good reason that it was forbidden.”
His attention shifted to the door. “They have come, seeking you. The gargoyles.”
“Seeking us,” she corrected. “You might not want to take me as your mate, Charon, but you are still mine. You are still my friend, and you will come back to the gargoyles’ home with me.”
“I want to take you as mate,” he told her. “So much that my body aches with it.”
“Good,” she finished gathering up their possessions and shoved his at him, glaring up at him. “I want you to ache for me. And tonight, you can sleep in your lonely room, and know I am f-king the gargoyles in their nest, and you won’t join because you think your species superior to ours and that it is fun to kill us.”
“Verity,” Dior said from the other side of the door. “Is everything alright?”
“Charon and I were just having a little chat,” she replied tightly, still holding Charon’s eyes.
“We are coming. Aren’t we Charon? Or, at least, I will be, many times tonight,” she added cruelly.
“Verity, you misunderstand. We will have to discuss this more, however, at another time, or we will be overheard,” Charon dropped his eyes and stepped to the side, opening the door for her.
Dior met her eyes as she stepped out, his strongly boned face wearing its habitual expression of calm thoughtfulness, but she was beginning to realize that beneath his composure, the lion gargoyle was assessing and observing all that occurred around him and planning how to lead his triad accordingly.
“I will take that,” Blaise grinned as he took the small bundle of clothing that were the results of her and Charon’s scavenger hunts through abandoned shops and homes around the city.
The goat gargoyle draped his other arm over her shoulders, and not-so-subtly sniffed the healer as he led her towards the staircase, casting Charon a puzzled glance over his shoulder.
Dior did not immediately follow, letting Blaise take the healer into the stairwell before turning to Charon. “You did not take the opportunity to take her as mate,” he commented, knowing that to be the cause of the goat’s puzzlement – that he had not scented the other male on her after they had found them in a closed room together.
Charon sneered slightly. “I am not a beast. I can control my desire.”
Dior raised his eyebrows and shrugged. Verity and Charon were keeping secrets, he thought, but he was confident that time would reveal them. “As you wish,” he turned and strolled towards the stair well, aware that Charon followed. “Though why you would want to refuse your mate, I do not know.”
“No, you don’t,” Charon replied, his voice hard.
“Is it because she has taken my triad as mates in addition? Gargoyles do mate as a unit, but that does not mean you have to do so. It will be unusual, but then, there is very little about this situation that is not,” Dior offered with slight discomfort. He did not know how such an arrangement would work.
The thought of sharing Verity between the nest and this other man’s bed felt wrong, but he accepted that humans usually mated in pairs.
Charon was silent for a long moment, deep in thought. “No,” he decided. “Though your triad adds another level of complication to an already complicated situation.”
Dior could not imagine what would be complicated enough to prevent someone from claiming a mate. He had taken three, himself, and each had been a complicated addition.
Etienne had been a hard seduction, griffins by nature being more reserved, and it had taken a lengthy courtship to persuade him into the nest, whereas Blaise had been an easy woo, but the addition of a prey-species of gargoyle with two predators was unusual and had presented all three with some hurdles establishing the triad’s dynamics.
Verity was extremely complicated – a mate taken during war, with the vampires wanting her blood, the threat of her coven, and then this enigmatic human man…
Well, Dior decided as they joined Blaise and Verity in the foyer where she bid farewell to people whose names the lion gargoyle could not remember, he would leave Blaise to watch over the healer and the man whilst he and Etienne set out to deliver bags of soil from the gardening centre that Etienne had earmarked to supply their initial efforts.
The goat gargoyle could work his charms over the course of the afternoon. If the sulking human man could withstand the object of his desire and a seductive goat, Dior would be impressed.
As they stepped out into daylight, he saw Etienne circling overhead, guarding them from the sky as was his preference.
Although the sun was yet to reach its zenith, a human phlebotomist stood between Jacinta and Rebecca waiting on the pavement in front of the gargoyles’ building. Dior saw Verity’s body language change when she saw them, and Charon’s hostile reaction.
Jacinta’s lip curled in the corner. “Ah, you,” she said to Charon. “Cael was crushed when we lost you. You were becoming his favourite meal.”
Dior suddenly recalled where he had heard the phrase: Stone bodies, stone hearts, stone heads. Cael had said something similar to him at least twice, as if it were a common saying amongst his people.
That Charon used the same phrase would imply that Charon was not a human, but one of the Nephilim devils/angels that were attacking them.
Dior would have to consider the impact of that discovery in depth, but one problem at a time. “You are early,” he reproved the vampires ignoring the blonde vampire’s barb at Charon.
“It is a priority,” Rebecca replied.
“Verity has just healed a large number of people,” Charon said to Dior. “She needs to eat and rest.”
“As our mate says,” Dior said to Rebecca. “We will eat our midday meal before you may collect blood.”
“Damn it, Dior,” Rebecca was irritable. “We don’t have time for pointless power plays, we are fighting a war, and vampires are losing their lives.”
It was, he thought, possibly the most he had ever heard her say. “I will not sacrifice a mate’s welfare for your timetable,” he replied. “But you may wait in the foyer if you wish, whilst we see to her needs.”
“Fine,” Rebecca ground it out. “Hastily, please, Dior.”
Dior did not bother answering, opening the glass door into the building, and waiting until the vampires, their phlebotomist, and his mates had passed through it.
He pointed to the seating area, noting that it was a little dusty from disuse. “You may wait there,” he told the vampires as he continued to the elevator.
“You should not be allowing them to take Verity’s blood,” Charon complained as soon as the doors to the elevator closed.
Dior observed with amusement as Blaise backed Verity into a corner and nuzzled under her chin, stroking and kissing – sex being the goat’s solution to every upset.
It was also promising, Dior noted, that Charon did not object to the goat’s seduction efforts taking place directly behind him, as it implied that the man had accepted the gargoyles as her mates.
“They do not deserve it,” Charon added.
“It does not harm her to give it, and it will aid them,” Dior replied reasonably. “Verity does not object to its giving, and it keeps the vampires from causing issues.”
“Any fool could see that she does not want to give them blood.”
“It is the vampires she objects to not the giving of her blood.”
The elevator doors opened, and Dior crossed the hall to open the door into the apartment. He saw Etienne in man-form dressing by the dining table having flown in to land on the balcony.
Once Charon, Blaise, and Verity had passed by him, Dior closed the door and slid the lock into place.
“Est-ce que tout va bien?” Etienne asked.
“Cela reste à voir,” Dior replied. “Verity is yet to explain how it is that our mate is one of our enemies.”