“Place needed cleaned up anyway,” Vivian joked. “Just wanted to test you out for myself.”
“How come that didn’t happen before when you touched me?”
“It wasn’t the right time to do that to you, to let my magic move with yours. I seriously felt it, though. I couldn’t wait to give something like that a try.” She paused, looking around her at the mix of frowning and astonished faces. “What? Cleaners are coming anyway.”
After a shaking of heads, someone griped about the loss of the pizza and walked out claiming they’d get more. As the guy left, one from the hallway added for him to grab some ice cream from the little store down the street, as well. A growl and a grunt later, the guy was gone.
The next hour passed in friendly chatting and gorging on more food. I took the handful of bites I could manage. Mostly, I indulged in those around me, some blood, some magically created, but all family. I hadn’t had such a thing in over a decade myself. We’d lost touch with extended family in the years after my mother died, when they’d one by one given up on my father, and thus the hard-headed girl I’d grown to be.
“You better eat up,” Vivian stated to me. “You will need your strength tomorrow.”
“For what?” I asked.
“To meet the Royals. They don’t wait. We’ll all crash in various apartments here tonight. No one is getting a call to come back until the cleaners are done. So, you two can catch some sleep, but then we leave early in the morning. You should be excited instead of fearful, Christina. What we did together tonight is nothing like what you will be able to achieve under their direction.”
After twenty minutes of working out the logistics of the night, followed by goodbyes, Lex took me to our assigned apartment for the night. A giant sleeping bag had been handed to us as we left. These people thought of everything, though I was sure this wasn’t their first time having to sleep wherever their duties had taken them.
I’d gotten a glimpse of the cleaners moving in and out of my apartment as Lex drug me to another. After he placed the bag over the bed there, he pulled me under the thick cover of it, to him.
“How can I possibly be expected to sleep?” I hissed through a giggle as he snuggled my body into his. “After all that has happened? Knowing what will happen, or more, knowing the gist of it but having no real idea how it will go? Really, I’m supposed to sleep? Sounds like I’m going on the trip of a lifetime instead of into work tomorrow. Work! I’m going to lose my job!”
“Seriously, you are worried about that job that you hate?” he teased, his hands moving over my body as his chest rumbled his appreciation, his approval, as well as his need.
“Well, I need to make a living, don’t I?”
“Christina,” he said, sitting up until his face towered over mine. “You are Royal. You are going to go live with the Royals to be trained. You will never need a job again. They live in a mansion, a practical castle, on an island all its own. You will want for nothing, and get more than you can possibly imagine. And, that is just stuff, not to mention the training and how you will learn about the bloodline you come from.”
“Family. I can’t get over it. I went from an orphan, a loner with one good friend, to having a man I love more than I can say and a family bigger than I know.”
“I know. I’m so happy for you. And, I love feeling yours.”
“Crap, what about Chloe? I’m surprised she hasn’t called or shown up here.”
“Oh, right. Actually, Riker said she did when we chatted in the bathroom. He didn’t know who she was, but he asked to see if she was a problem. He said that, with your phone destroyed in the first attack, they’d checked into your calls at the time. A general precaution in learning about you. When Chloe had not gotten an answer, she did try to show up here. But, the other pack had men stationed outside to inform any visitors of the gas leak, I think it was, or whatever lie they’d concocted. She was told you had been relocated, and to go home.”
“Wow, she has to be so pissed at me. But, even when I can call her, what am I going to say?”
“You are going to tell her a version of the truth, that I swept you away to an exotic land. Tell her that you will see her soon.”