“Cole.”
“Liv, don’t make a big deal out of it. If I felt bad or guilty or whatever, not only would you be able to pick up on it, I would tell you.”
Well, that is true, I suppose but… “You killed, Cole. Not once, but twice. That changes a person.”
“Just once,” he says.
“What?” I ask, now confused.
“I killed just the one. I drained the other one, but it was your sire who killed him. I didn’t know you could drink from a dead person.”
Huh, knowing CK’s tactics as I do, I can imagine a swift snap to the neck before he passed him onto Cole, incapacitating the second one with his claws while going after the third with his fangs, leaving Sebastian and Devon to handle the other two. A skilled and graceful killer, my sire.
“As long as the kill is fresh,” I mutter and then shake my head as we are getting off topic.
“I think he gave that first one to me to get me used to the draining,” he muses. “Who knew he cared?” he sneers.
That doesn’t sound like my sire, he is a firm believer in just getting on with it, but maybe he took it easy with Cole as I wasn’t there to guide him.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “I should have been there.”
“Stop it,” he chides me. “I will try to do better next time.”
“No, you don’t have to do that, Cole. You should be who you want to be. Not who I am trying to be. It’s your decision.”
“It’s our decision,” he says with meaning before he kisses me.
“Very well,” I say and as far as I am concerned then, case closed.
He sighs as he senses the closure and changes the subject. “I want to live here. Can we? After the movie is finish
ed, instead of going back to L.A., can we come back here?”
“Here? You like it here?” I ask in surprise.
“I love it here. It’s gorgeous. So peaceful. We could just be, here.”
“If that’s what you want. We can live here before we have to move on.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” he says.
“We’ll just have to run it past everyone first, though, make sure they are on board.”
“Fuck’s sake,” he mutters. “Just once I would like a decision to be just ours. We can’t even fucking decide where to live without everyone else agreeing to it. Does it have to be that way?”
“You know that it does,” I say patiently.
“No, what I know is that I don’t want anybody else included in this decision,” he says, standing up. “I don’t give a rat’s ass if they stay or go, but you will tell them we are coming back here to live and that’s final. There will be no agreeing to anything.”
I stand as well and face him square on, about to put up a fight about equality and all that, when it strikes me. He is right. “You know, you are absolutely bloody right. We are married and we get to decide where we want to live and to Hell with everyone else. I am their Queen and if I tell them to stay, then they have to stay.” I am triumphant in my decree but his shoulders sag.
“Not quite what I was going for, Liv. I don’t want you to tell them anything other than we are staying. What they do is up to them.”
I think that over. No, it won’t do. I can’t have them all running around the globe without me, looking for trouble. We are all going to stay together. I open my mouth to say that when he beats me to it.
“You don’t have to look so concerned, it’s not like any of them will argue with you. Devon will want to be wherever you are, Jess will be wherever he is, Constantine won’t leave your side and Sebastian won’t leave his. Lincoln needs you so he won’t be going anywhere and Xane has a crazy fixation with you that, quite frankly, makes me uncomfortable, so he probably won’t leave either.”
Well, when you put it like that…but oh, crap, that does throw a rather large spanner in the Pack works. I chew my lip and give Cole what he wants, trying to figure out a way to also give Lincoln what he wants.