The Goblin King (20 page)

“What was that, sweetie?” Chloe asked teasingly. “Did you
just try to insinuate that we did this on purpose? You mean filling the table with all sorts of freshly magicked up, warm and tasty morsels that vampires can’t normally eat just to see how long it took you to cast up your spell and dig in?” Her grin was a mile wide and bright white. “An Akyri would never do such a thing.”

“Nor a warlock,” added Siobhan with an equally wicked grin.

Lily laughed and Danny put her hand over her mouth.

Diana took a bite of her carrot cake, licked the cream cheese icin
g off her upper lip, and couldn’t blame Evie one bit.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“She’ll fight you,” Thane told him, crossing his arms over his chest. “One look,” he said, shaking his head as he leaned back against his parked motorcycle. “One look was all it took and I could tell she was just like my wife. She’s got her own head, Damon. And that head has its own mind.”

Damon ma
de a derisive sound. It was one of agreement. He was already well aware Diana was not going to take kindly to his insistence that she remain at the castle with him. But that was tough. She’d already been under attack once, and she’d passed out on him twice.

They needed to figure things out.

“She
may
fight you,” said Jason Alberich, who’d come up on Damon’s other side after completing a series of warding spells to reinforce the shields around the Caige’s cabin. “But there are ways around that.” He glanced over at Damon meaningfully and smiled one of his infamously dark smiles. “Some of them not entirely unpleasant.”

The Warlock King turned back to face the line of trees around the perimeter of the cabin – and began casting more spells. There were occupants inside the house that Alberich was very keen on protecting.

His queen, Chloe Septeran had already come out, said her goodbyes, and transported away. As an Akyri, she obtained her magic one of two ways. Either she made a trip to the Astral Plane and “loaded up,” or she took magic from her husband.

Roman D’Angelo had taken Evie to one of their
safe houses not too far down along the west coast.

Daniel Kane had also left with his wife. He was the police chief of Baton Rouge, and his job never rested, so neither did he. Damon had a feeling he could empathize.

Things were winding down upstairs in the cabin by this point. With any luck, Diana had taken his advice and eaten. If not, he could always force feed her at the castle.

Either way, it was time to go home.

Damon turned up his collar against a cold breeze of oncoming evening that shot through the clearing around the cabin and its land. With a nod to each of the other two kings, he made his way back up the stairs to the cabin’s front door. There, he steeled his nerves, preparing himself to do what he knew he had to do – and went inside.

It appeared that
Lalura had also taken her leave, probably transporting away with Septeran. Siobhan, Dannai Caige, and Diana were the only three women left sitting around the dining room table. Dannai was breast-feeding, a small blanket thrown over one shoulder, hiding herself and her child. The other infant made soft mewling sounds where it rested in the bassinet Dannai gently rocked with her free hand.

But when Damon entered,
all three women looked up.

****

Diana took in the Goblin King’s appearance, all flashing green eyes, wicked scar, and wind-tousled hair, and she swallowed hard. He looked like a pirate fresh off the sea and determined down to his blood.

Siobhan
slowly pushed out her chair. “Well I’m off, lovelies,” she said, placing a gentle hand on Diana’s shoulder and squeezing. Then she turned to Dannai, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and left the room, heading through the same door Damon had used.

Dannai
gave Damon an odd, sort of
knowing
look and stood as well, turning her back to him as she gently maneuvered both babies back into their bassinet. Diana stood at once. “Can I help?” she asked.

Dannai shook her head. “Believe me, my friend, you’ll be helping me more than you can imagine in the coming years – with any luck.”
She adjusted her clothing with the ease of experience. Then, having buttoned back up, she pulled the baby blanket off her shoulder and nodded in Damon’s direction. “And besides,” she whispered, speaking now just between the two of them. “It’s me who should be offering you help right about now. You’re going to need it.”

With that, she turned back around and pushed the bassinet out of the room, closing the adjoining door behind her
to leave the two of them alone.

Diana
at once spun to face Damon. “I know what you’re gonna say,” she spouted. “But you have to understand, Damon. I’ve already been missing for a full night and half a day. No one put a sign on the clinic’s door; no one is there to help the animals coming in. I can’t just be expected to abandon one group of beings in favor of another.”

Damon
had that look that said he hadn’t planned on discussing the matter here. He’d probably figured that whatever Diana had to say, she could say it to him when they were safely sequestered in his castle at the center of that labyrinth that he never put in.

But
surely he
had
to know that her words made sense, and that if he ignored them and played hardball with her, he would look like a royal ass. Because he would
be
a royal ass.

“By the g
ods, you’re as bad as Fluttershy,” he said, blowing out a heavy sigh. He ran a hard hand through his black hair and strode to the cabinets in the kitchen, turning his back to her. “There’s got to be some liquor in here somewhere. Knowing werewolves and what it takes to get those bastards drunk, it’ll be nice and strong too.”

Diana just stared at him. Had he just called her
Fluttershy
? As in the
My Little Pony
Fluttershy
? Maybe she was losing it. Maybe she was still knocked out and was dreaming all of this. It
was
rather surreal.

“Ah,” he said, pulling out a clear bottle with
equally clear liquid inside. “Thought so.”

Diana
still stared at him. He grabbed a glass from the cabinet, turned it over in his hand, and then put it back where he’d gotten it. Then he unscrewed the cap of the bottle and upended it, downing several long pulls and swallowing loudly.

After almost a full
minute of silence on her part, Diana asked, “You mean the My Little Pony?”

Damon glanced back at her as he lowered the bottle. “What?” he asked, wincing a lit
tle from the pain the alcohol caused as it went down.

“You called me
‘
Fluttershy
.’ As in the
My Little Pony
, ‘
Fluttershy
?’”

“Oh.” He looked a little taken aback for a second. “
Yeah.” He sucked in his lips, pinched them between his teeth, and then shrugged. “What can I say? You’re just like her. You care more about animals than you do your own safety. I’m gonna have to kidnap a rabbit and threaten you with bunnicide unless you come quietly back to the castle with me.”

“What?” Diana felt her eyes go wide.

“You heard me,” he said before he took another long swig and swallowing hard. He lowered the bottle and leaned up against the kitchen counter. “And you know I’m right.”

“About kidnapping a bunny
?” She felt bewildered.

“About refusing to look after your own safety.” His look was deadpan as he screwed the cap back on the bottle and placed it none-too-gently on the kitchen counter.
She didn’t know why he bothered. It was empty.

“You can’t return to your house. It’s been besieged by spell spiders, Bookas, and vampires once already – who knows what Kamon and his winged monkeys will plan next? And you can’t return to your clinic. That’s the ver
y next place they’ll look for you.”

Diana didn’t want to reply to anything Damon was saying. Mainly b
ecause she
did
know he was right, and she didn’t like the sound of it. But also because he was becoming distracting…. There was something so mouth-watering about his tall, strong silhouette against the kitchen windows. About the way he was looking at her…. And even about the way he’d just upended a bottle of Ever Clear like it was water.

He was every fevered, masculine dream every lonely woman had ever had that left her sheets tangled and her brow soaked with sweat.

So she changed the subject instead.

“What about Selene?
” she asked, swallowing and placing her hand on her forehead to cool it a little. “What happened to her?” She lowered her head and straightened, trying to give herself strength. “Is she okay? Will they go after her too?”

“They’ve no reason to go after her
on her own because she’s not you, and she’s under protection due to her association with you.”

Diana latched on to that and ran with it. Anything to keep her from staring at the strong line of his chin and that scar on his lip that she sort of wanted to….
“What exactly does that mean – ‘under protection’?”

Damon took a deep breath as if he were trying to draw back in some patience that had inadvertently slipped out of him. “She’s being watched. Ri
ght now, I believe by werewolf enforcers. She’s in good hands.”

Diana cleared her throat. It had become a little cluttered with something. “I
f…. If she’s ‘in good hands,’ then surely I would be just as safe under the same kind of protection?” she challenged, feeling proud that she’d managed something coherent.

“You neglected to give proper credit to the ‘they’ve no reason to go after her on her own
because she’s not you’ bit, my lovely,” he told her, his tone a touch lower than it had been.

Diana’s heart rate increased.

“
You
, on the other hand,” he continued, “they have every reason in the world to go after.”

Well hell
, she thought witlessly. He sort of had her there.

“And they
will
come after you,” he added, pushing off the counter to come toward her. There was something in the green of his eyes that hadn’t been there a minute ago. As he drew nearer, she realized what it was. Those flames were back, burning a bright and warning yellow-orange at the center of his pupils.

“
So where do you want to be when they come for you, Fluttershy?” he asked, forcing her to move back as he slowly closed in on her, each step of his boots on the kitchen floor echoing in her ears. “In your clinic surrounded by innocent animals, children, and their parents?” he asked. The threat hung in the air, and Diana couldn’t help but imagine the possible bloodshed that would occur if those monsters attacked an office full of innocent people… the loss of lives. Which was probably the point.

She took another step back and came flush with the wall, the boot of her heel bumping the polished wood of its base.
She inhaled sharply when her palms instinctively pressed to the smooth surface behind her. She jerked them away, but then didn’t know what to do with them, so she curled them into fists and kept them at her sides.

Damon took another step,
closing the distance between them to a handful of charged air. “Or at your house? Alone and under virtual lock and key?”

Diana was finding it
very hard to think now that she had to crane her neck to look up at the incredibly tall Goblin King. Her heart was racing. Blood rushed through her ears. But she was pretty sure that what he’d just said didn’t sound good either.

“Or walking free through an entire kingdom where nothing I that I don’t personally let in can
come anywhere near you?”

Diana gazed into those fires, spreading through the emerald green of Damon’s eyes, turning them to stained glass. As she stared… she lost track of time
, slipping back through it. She felt a gentle, warm breeze against her cheek and heard the music of an ancient lullaby as Damon flew her over the lands of the Goblin Kingdom. She felt a beating heart under fur beneath her palm and felt the pride of changing a life for the better – forever as she healed the xenobe goblins.

And then she
heard thunder somewhere in the distance, and fire crackling in a hearth. And she remembered a gentle, soft pressure on her lips… that became a hungered kiss that opened her up and delved deep.

N
either she nor the Goblin King had moved. In fact, she wasn’t breathing.

All she could really manage as she stood there
against Dannai’s kitchen wall, her heart racing, her eyes locked in the pull of his immortal gaze… was stutter a few short words.

“Th
e… the l-last one,” she managed, “sounds best.”

Chapter
Twenty-Four

“
Wise choice,” he told her as he braced his arms against the wall on either side of her, effectively caging her in.