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By Root 6945 0

door to reveal Cookie with his blue spiked hair, and the brunette werelion. Cutting—no, Pierce. His name was Pierce. Cookie was smiling as he came through the door, wearing nothing but jeans, with a gun stuck inside the waistband. As if the reason for the pants wasn’t modesty, but a place to put the gun. Pierce glowered as he came through the door. He was completely dressed, though his shirt was buttoned crookedly, and his jacket tucked badly on one side to flash the shoulder holster. The gun looked like a Beretta. Not my choice for concealed carry, but then I have small hands.

I wasn’t surprised to see them. I’d called them. I was surprised to see Octavius, Augustine’s human servant, at their heels. He was dressed as impeccably as he’d been earlier except that he had no tie, and his cuffs were loose in the sleeves of his elegant suit jacket. If the cuffs hadn’t been loose, he wouldn’t even have looked like he’d rushed.

“This is outrageous,” he said. “First you insult and humiliate my master, then you try to steal his lions. Did you think that since Augustine is asleep for the day you could simply take them?” He got a good look at me on the bed. He stopped, I think, because some of the people in the room had moved so he could see me on the bed. Me and Nathaniel. I don’t know what he thought we’d been doing, but I suddenly saw it through an outsider’s eyes. Me, nude on the bed covered in clear, sticky liquid. Nathaniel nude and excited in leopardman form cuddled in my arms. Other men in the room already nude. What would I have thought if I’d walked in on all this? Probably the same thing Octavius was thinking.

The look on Cookie’s face showed that he was thinking the same thing, but he was happy about it. He started toward the bed, but Pierce grabbed his arm, held him. Cookie growled at him, and that one trickle of sound made the lion inside me tense.

“Don’t let her mind-fuck you,” Pierce said.

“You heard her call, too,” Cookie said. “You couldn’t say no, either.”

“But I don’t want to go to her. I don’t want her to use me.” He turned the other man so he was facing away from the bed. Cookie had a tattoo of Cookie Monster, as in Sesame Street, on his right shoulder. A happy little Cookie Monster eating cookies. So the hair color wasn’t an accident.

“I want her to use me.”

“Fight it,” Pierce said.

“I don’t want to fight it,” Cookie said.

“If our master were awake, you would not dare do this,” Octavius said. He walked around them both, walked closer to the bed. Claudia and Lisandro stepped between him and the bed. But it was when he saw Jean-Claude stepping out from the wall that his face fell apart. Fear, fear and confusion, chased over his face. He was totally shocked to see Jean-Claude there. He fought, and finally mastered his face. But the first look was enough, the first look and his remark that Augustine was asleep. For the first time I figured it out. It wasn’t that we’d slept the day away and Claudia and the rest were back on duty. It was that we’d barely been asleep at all, and Jean-Claude had not died at dawn. He, like Damian, did not die at dawn if he slept touching me.

Octavius gave arrogance, but shelved the anger, as if he didn’t want to start the fight. He bowed. “Jean-Claude, I did not think you would be up. I did not see you standing there. I do have better manners than this; my anger made me forget myself. Please, forgive me.” His words were clear, but he said them a little too fast. I think it was his version of babbling nervously.

“There is nothing to forgive, Octavius—if you do not hinder us, that is.”

Octavius faced him, and nothing could keep the discomfort out of the set of his shoulders. “Hinder you in what way?”

Jean-Claude stood before the man, still nude, but as comfortable as any of the shapeshifters. He wore his body as if it were the most costly robe in the world, or as if he were not aware he was naked. “Augustine said that these two werelions are supposed to be pomme de sang candidates for ma petite.”

Octavius gave a small nod. “That is true.”

“We may have been too hasty with