"That I can do, though mine was so long ago I doubt I can recall it with any true clarity. I will try for you, though, Lilly. Just be warned, it wasn't as happy as Gavriel's. So perhaps I will share my story first before I tell you one of his," he said, walking her toward their office. He shut the door at their backs and nudged her forward. "Settle on the sofa while I get the blinds."
Lilly forced herself to talk to the sofa. "If this is what you say it is and I'm not going crazy like I am sure that I am, will we be able to do something about it?" she asked and looked up with him, agony in her gaze, mental and physical pain both warring inside of her. "God, I bet that you are just really hating life because you were settled with not only a defective human, with my diabetes, but also one that's crazier than a june bug."
"You are not defective, and I have no idea what a june bug is," he told, her moving around the office. He turned off all but one lamp before he joined her on the sofa. Grabbing a blanket, Artaxias shook it out. "Wrap up in this and snuggle in. You are perfect as you are, Lilly. You are not crazy, no matter what they might have tried to convince you of. I will bet everything I have that while you were unconscious, they planted something in your head. A program of sorts that is controlling you in these situations. Something not your fault."
"I don't know." She wanted to believe, with all her heart, she wanted to believe that he was telling the truth, but she wasn't so sure that she truly could believe. She was defective, and she knew it. She snuggled up close to him and sighed. "I like that you think that I'm not, though. It gives me hope." She had only just met this man but already he meant far more to her than she could ever have imagined, and it was frankly terrifying.
He pressed a kiss to her hair as he squeezed her closer. "When I was perhaps just a few summers old, before I began my training, I was on an outing. The woman who gave me life passed me off to one of the nursemaids for the day, thank the Gods. She took me to a pond near my place of birth. I won't say my home, because it never truly was. We went for a picnic and for a swim," he said softly. "It was the best day of my life, full of sunshine, laughter, and fun. It was also the last day of my childhood."
"What happened?" Lilly found herself wrapping in closer to Artaxias. She found herself needing to be closer to him, to feel him and know that he was actually there with her. "After your day full of sunshine and laughter, what happened, Ax?"
"I was sent to be trained in the ways of the Vhampires before me and after. We are soldiers, mercenaries, killers by trade. We hire ourselves out to those that have a war they want won yet don't want to waste their own men. I was placed in a warlord's home and trained hard, brutally hard, to be the best or to die." He gave a shrug, "I obviously learned well. I survived many a skirmish on many a world within the realms. Then I got my rather cushy job of watching after the precocious Gavriel and keeping him, or rather, trying to keep him out of trouble."
"Wow," she whispered and shook her head. "Does he know that you refer to him like that?" she asked with a grin. Moving so that she could lay her head on his shoulder, she asked, "Does it always feel like this? This comfort, the way that I feel with you two? The attraction and I don't even really know you?"
"He knows, I've used the term on him more than once." He chuckled softly. "The rest-" He shrugged. "Mates are naturally comfortable with one another. Even when they know next to nothing about one another, the level of awareness is there. It's a visceral knowledge of the soul of the one that belongs to you."
"And that is something that I feel. The awareness, the knowledge that you guys are mine. It's weird, but I know it. I know that you are mine and I am yours. I like that feeling. It helps the pain in my head lessen to know that you are here with me, too." Lilly liked it, too. She liked the comfort, the feeling of well-being with being there with him. "I have no idea what happens next, but in this moment in time, I'm happier than I have ever been in my life."
"First we figure out what's happening with you and who is messing with you. I know you think this is medically explained. But I honestly believe that someone is screwing with you. I don't know why, I can't explain my feeling on this, but I know it, deep down. I've seen a lot in my time, Lilly, and this is not outside the realm of possibilities, at all."
"I don't know. I really did lose my marbles there for a time, Ax. I know that I did. Hell, why else would I wake up in a padded white room in a straight jacket?" She barked out a laughter born of sorrow, filled with pain. "I'm crazy as a loon, Ax, and I'm so sorry you have been stuck with me as a mate."
"You are not crazy," he said softly, his fingers holding her chin tightly. Not painfully, but he wasn't letting her look away from him. "You are a sane woman in the middle of something you do not have the defenses for. A war of sorts, where you are the casualty being hoisted about. Someone is using you, Lilly, and when I find them … " His eyes started to glow and his next words sounded harsh through his lengthening incisors. "I will tear them limb from limb, piece by piece, as they beg for mercy they will never get."
That had her shivering, but she nodded. Licking her lips, she looked up at him and said, "I trust you. I know you would never, ever do anything to hurt me."
Artaxias looked away and let out a slow breath. "Sorry," he murmured a moment later when he looked her way again, his eyes and teeth back to normal once more. "The idea that someone is hurting you without you even realizing makes me angry. I don't tend to get angry very much. It's a mostly useless emotion for my people since it shows a lack of control. But for you, I'm more than willing to go through angry to homicidal."
She nodded and then frowned. "I find it odd"-she moved so that she was once more leaning into him-"that I am not wanting to tap into my phone at my ear. I find it very strange that I only want to go to a hard line, not the one that I have inside of me." She didn't understand that. At all. Why was it that she only wanted to do a hard line?
"Personal lines can't be traced unless you have the identification codes that are over sixty characters long. The only people that have them are one representative from the realms and one guy in an AEDA office in California. Hard lines can be traced, new tech can't be." He was pointing out the obvious. "They instructed you to call from a landline because, depending on the information you pass, they then know where to come and grab you if needed. I'll bet they even have a code word they can throw into the conversation to put you out and leave you just laying there waiting."
"I don't like this," Lilly admitted. "At all. I hate that I might be someone's mole into operations here. Please promise me that if I am unsavable you will stop me? If I try to hurt you or Gav, you will make sure that I never do just that? Promise me?" she whispered softly.
"You won't hurt us, little mate. And you are going to be just fine, we'll figure this out, there is no other outcome acceptable." He shifted slightly and the lamp went out. Then his arm wrapped around her again. "Close your eyes and rest, darling."
Lilly did just that. She closed her eyes and relaxed into him. She sighed happily. "I think that I can do just that," Lilly whispered and then dropped off into a very uneasy sleep.
Chapter Five
"Hi." Gavriel smiled down at her as she woke. "No, you're not crazy. Yes, you fell asleep on Ax, but he had to go and do a few things so I sat in for him." He gave a chuckle at his own words and shook his head. "How are you feeling, Lilly?" Those words were serious and concerned.
"Like I have been hit by a truck," she admitted softly. "I do not have any idea what's going on, but I do feel slightly better, so that's a good thing, right? At least I am not all but climbing out of my skin to make a phone call," she muttered, more for herself than for him.
"Artaxias mentioned that, and as often as it pains me to admit, he was right about it being a compulsion. We don't know who did it, so we can't undo it, not yet. I've made some calls to fellow Spirytes and we're hoping that, with your assistance, we can figure out what they did."
"I don't know how much help I can be, but I will try. I want to try because I want to be free of this … well, whatever it is." She wanted to be free, she wanted to live her life with the men that she thought she might be able to one day love. She already felt a bond with the two men, and wanted more.