Osiris City Streets

[XCandy and LunacyX]

“Pity?” For a moment as she drove, Antha’s eyes couldn’t help but flicker in Rynn’s direction, a little wide with surprise. And then, without warning, she began to laugh. She did her best to stifle it, finally biting her lips to stop it, and clearly it was more relief than anything, grateful that the tension had been eased. “Rynn, have you even met me? I’m not big on pity. For the first nine years of my life, I was the most pitiful creature in the world and I didn’t get any pity, and for years afterwards that’s all I got from anyone, pity, and I loathed it. No, I don’t do pity.” Unable to help herself, she gave another half-laugh. “But you’ll understand it, in your own time. My point is…” She didn’t seem utterly certain how she wanted to phrase it, pausing momentarily to think over her words. “You and me….we’re like this.” One of her hands came up, her fingers crossing over one another. “However it was supposed to turn out, whatever did happen, we’re tied. That’s the reality of the matter, that from the minute we met, we can’t escape each other. So far it’s gone, well, badly. But maybe that’s just because it took us too long to accept each other, to stop working against each other. Maybe it’s because we’re just too ******** alike.” If she had any doubts, other people had said it enough. “I don’t regret the way things went that night. I love Cian, and our children…I would do anything in the world for them. Maybe that’s why I don’t blame you, because I know I’d sacrifice you or Courtland or anyone for them without a second thought, never mind strangers. And if you hadn’t left, we might not have Liesse. And god knows the family needs her, she’s the little sister they all wanted me to be before I started setting things on fire.” Tactfully, she didn’t mention Malakai. He needed Liesse most of all, but she didn’t think Rynn needed to hear that.
To spare him, she reached out and turned up the volume of the stereo until the idea of not talking wasn’t awkward, rather it was impossible to do so. Meanwhile, if he were paying attention, he might notice they were backtracking, zooming through the mostly empty streets until she pulled back into the parking lot of Full Moon. There were considerably more cars present than their earlier visit, due mostly to the later hour. Like most hole-in-the-wall establishments, the werewolf bar didn’t begin to see many clients until after midnight when the other bars died down.
“Hey.” After standing still beside the car for a minute, lost in thought and staring peculiarly at Rynn, Antha came up behind him and all at once closed her arms around him in the kind of powerful, familiar embrace she and the cousins were usually locking one another in. Her forehead leaned gently against the back of his head, an oddly reassuring gesture that was more innate than calculated. “Don’t explain yourself, and definitely don’t apologize. Maybe we don’t understand you now, but we’re getting there.” Her head moved, her chin resting against his shoulder. “ That’s just…part of being human, I guess. Figuring each other out. We don’t always like each other and we don’t always do the right thing, but that’s just the way it has to go sometimes.” And she gave another half-laugh, mostly to herself, before pressing a fleeting, innocent kiss to the base of his neck. “Come on, little brother,” she said in an absolutely uncanny imitation of Cian, dropping her arms and sweeping past him towards the building, “Let’s get drunk.”

The first thing Antha heard when she opened the door was the screech of her own name. The second thing she heard was a whoosh of air, followed by her own short scream of surprise and a thud as she hit the ground, accompanied by another body. It took a moment then to orient herself, pinned down on the floor, until finally she burst out, “Trajan, I will ******** kill you!”
Above her, the werewolf gave a toothy grin, ducking his head to bury his nose in her hair. Across the bar, Wyatt was warning the other wolf to back down. When that didn’t work, Antha thrashed, kicking and hitting until the boy was off of her. Then, as if it came naturally to her, she rolled over and hit him again, and again, until the two were outright tussling in the floor. The other scattered patrons, few of whom were wolves but all of whom were regulars and at least vaguely aware of how things worked around there, shuffled around to give them a wide berth. This carried on for several moments, until Wyatt finally seized Trajan by the scruff of the neck and Courtland had Antha around her waist, lifting her off her feet.
“Careful there, Evie,” the boy murmured, grinning amusedly as he laid a kiss on her cheek in greeting, “Before you forget that he only looks human.”
Wyatt glanced briefly in their direction, eyebrow quirked, trying to gauge if Courtland was joking. “What, you’re serious?” he said with a little snort, then finally bursting out into a full laugh, “Don’t let her fool you. She used to spar with us all the time.”
Flashing big, curious eyes, Courtland looked from his cousin to the wolves. “Evie did? My delicate little Evie?”
In his arms, the girl went still and tilted her head back to look at him. “I’m scrappy,” she said simply, giving a little shrug of her shoulders.
To illustrate her point, Trajan lifted his shirt to reveal several long streaks of claw marks on his side. “I’ve been trying to beat her for years. She actually ranks higher in my pack than I do. It’s just not right.”
“Honorary, of course,” Wyatt amended, grinning, “No wolf forms involved. Well…that one time…”
Across the bar, Jack fell into peals of laughter. “Antha Mayfair---honorary werewolf. Why doesn’t that surprise me?” He toasted her with the bottle of whiskey in his hand, the one Fenrir had earlier offered her, before taking a drink.
Antha blinked at him, then turned to look at Wyatt and Trajan who were trying not to snicker. “Do you want to tell him, or should I?” The boys looked at each other, grinning mischievously, but said nothing. So Antha sighed, turning and going over to where Jack and Cian were planted at the bar, taking the seat by the latter and grabbing the bottle from the former. “It’s wolf whiskey, Jack. They distill it with deer blood.”
He spit it out so quickly it gave him a head rush, grabbing up bar napkins to wipe off his tongue. Though, even as he did so, Antha was taking a particularly long drink from the bottle. “It’s not so bad once you get used to it,” she said, first wincing from the burn and then shrugging.
Courtland licked his lips, brows furrowed. “I thought it tasted kind of coppery…”
“It’s initiation,” Wyatt explained as Antha set about lining up seven shot glasses and pouring out the wolf whiskey, “You have to drink it before you can hang out with us.”
“They’re supposed to be aware of what they’re drinking, Wyatt. It doesn’t count if they don’t know.” That being said, Antha took up two of the shots, handing one to Rynn and the other to Cian before picking up her own. The Mayfair boys and the wolves followed suit, each taking up their own shot, automatically waiting for their cue from Antha. She only cast them all a strange look, hopping up on the bar with her feet on the edge of Cian’s seat. “What? Do I have to do everything?” The girl groaned, rolling her eyes, but nonetheless held her shot out. “Fine. None of us ******** up tonight. Cheers.” Around her, the boys snickered as she tapped the glass on the bar top and then threw it back.
“I’ll drink to that,” Courtland said with a little careless shrug, taking the shot. He paused momentarily to steel himself against the burn, made a little worse by the knowledge of what was in it, and then seemed to think the better of it. “Evie, that’s not even fair! We did excellent work. We got his scent and didn’t even incite a vengeful mob of opium peddlers. I think I deserve a reward---nay, I demand a reward.”
Antha’s eyes narrowed at her cousin, the shot glass clattering as she cast it aside. And then slowly, threateningly, her lips sharpened into a frightening plastic smile. “You want to tell me about the other woman’s perfume that’s all over my husband, Court? Because I’d bet good money that was your doing.”
The boy froze, his eyes shining with a distant panic as he tried and failed to form words. Eventually, when he couldn’t think of a way out, he turned and ran screaming across the bar, “I had no choice! No choice, Evie!”
Judging the fight ultimately pointless, Antha simply sighed and watched him dive beneath Jack’s chair, peeping out at her from between him legs. Meanwhile, Trajan had made a small sound of revelation, glancing between Cian and Antha. “That’s your husband?”
“They didn’t tell you?” She cast a fleeting glance over at Courtland and Jack, both of whom merely shrugged as if to say it didn’t come up.
Then her attention was drawn back to Trajan, who had descended upon Cian with all of a canine’s invasive, determined curiosity, pulling at the collar of his shirt to inspect his neck and shoulders. “I knew it, you didn’t mark him. How is he your mate if you didn’t mark him?”
“Because we’re not wolves, Trajan. Will you stop that!” She hastily kicked the wolf boy away from Cian, sliding down into his lap and possessively draping her arms around his shoulders.
“You have to mark your mate, Antha. How are we supposed to know this stuff if you don’t follow the rules?”
With a brief sigh of resignation---which Courtland and Jack found odd because Antha wasn’t one to simply give in, not knowing that she had realized long ago not to argue with werewolves, they didn’t have the same kind of logic as humans---Antha rolled her eyes and pulled aside Cian’s collar, briefly biting down at the junction between his neck and shoulder, just enough to leave an imprint of her teeth. “There, I marked him, he’s mine. Satisfied?”
“…you have to bite harder, it’s supposed to leave a scar.”
With a clatter, Antha was immediately out of Cian’s lap again, chasing after Trajan who had bolted at her first sign of movement. By the time the crowd parted, he had fallen against a table and Antha was already hitting him as he struggled to fend her off. “It’s nice not to be Antha’s punching bag for a change,” Courtland sighed contentedly as he watched, taking a glass from the bartender, “But still…it’s a little surprising. I never thought Evie could take a werewolf, even in human form. You guys are crazy strong.”
Wyatt, who had taken Antha’s vacated chair beside Cian and was now lounging in it, sprawled out with all the carelessness of the animal he was, gave a faint chuckle. “Eh, Trajan’s a pushover. I used to beat her. Well…not all the time. She’s like ******** liquid, you think you’ve got your hands on her and then she’s on your back, choking you. Strength doesn’t matter if you can’t get your hands on your opponent.”
As if to illustrate his point, the table across the bar fell over and several chairs crashed, Trajan yelping. Amidst the wreckage, Antha hopped to her feet with a little huff, sweeping a hand back through her hair. Trajan stirred, beginning to rise, but Antha pointed a stern finger at him, ordering sharply, “Stay! That’s a bad werewolf, you stay!” He obediently froze as Antha carefully backed away, watching him for disobedience.
At the bar, Wyatt howled with laughter. “Poor little brother,” he cackled, taking a beer from the bartender and downing it in one fell swoop before motioning for another.
“Trajan’s your little brother?” Jack asked, as if it surprised him, “I thought you were an only child?”
Wyatt shook his head, taking the new beer and downing it as he had the last. “I’m my mother’s only child. That’s why she’s always bitching about me competing in the Moon-struck ceremony in two years, so I can go off and lead my own pack and she can brag about it. But why the ******** would I do that? I like it here. A third of the goddamn city is supernatural, half the city knows about it, and I’m the Ulfric’s son.”
“How many offspring does Fenrir have, exactly?”
The werewolf shrugged, reaching for the bottle of wolf whiskey. “In this pack? Five. Two more have gone off in other packs since I was born. But my old man’s ancient, he’s probably had a hundred pups since the Viking days.” The boy sighed, lulling his head back. “It must be good to be the wolf king.”
Courtland only shook his head, laughing. “I don’t get your wolfy ways.”
“And we don’t get your human ways. Don’t even get me started on the whole Mayfair thing. Antha and I sat down and tried to explain it to each other once, we just ended up screaming.”
“Well how ******** hard is it to understand?” Antha cut in, coming up behind him and smacking him squarely in the back of the head.
“Ditto,” the boy grumbled, rubbing irritably at his frothy golden hair.
“Oh shut up, I get your werewolf stuff,” the girl said, sliding with practiced grace into Cian’s lap when Wyatt wouldn’t give her back her seat, “I lived with you guys for like three months, it was learn or die.”
Courtland turned his head rapidly, eyes narrowing and brow creasing. “Three months? Where was I for all of this?”
“Drugged.” The girl grinned, just a bit mischievously, leaning back against Cian’s chest and taking a swig of whiskey. “Actually, I remember it very specifically. I met Wyatt three days after we broke Jack and you guys barely came out of your room for air. And Dorian was shacking up with that stripper, remember? And Pierce had already gone to Paris. I got bored, so I moved in with the werewolves for a while.”
Her cousin snickered while she shrugged her shoulders, hunched over his glass of clear, fizzing liquid and cracking a capsule open into it. “An Evie answer if I ever heard one.” It was while he was upending his glass that he gave a start, turning with wide, eager eyes towards the jukebox as it started up an old eighties tune. “Guys, guys!” he exclaimed, tugging on Jack’s sleeve, “I love this song!”
“Of course you do,” Jack sighed, rolling his eyes at the cheesy love song. Courtland paid him very little mind, dashing off into the sparse crowd to dance. Jack chuckled, very lowly, leaning against the bar and watching him. “You know…” He paused, casting Antha a thoughtful sidelong glance. “In all these years, I never thanked you, did I?”
The girl tilted her head, staring curiously at him. “For what?”
Across the room, Courtland had incited most of the other customers to dance and had finally climbed atop a table himself to do so. Jack was still watching, with a little smile that was equally embarrassed and charmed. “I hated you so much for it back then,” he murmured finally, his eyes flickering distantly, “The bait-and-switches, locking us in rooms together when I wouldn’t talk to him, all the stunts you pulled. You just kept pushing me to the edge of sanity and finally threw me over on the other side, and I really hated you. But looking back, I don’t even know why I had such a problem with it. I don’t know why I was so scared of being any less normal than I had to be. But…” He chuckled, his quiet smile stretching from ear to ear, affection glimmering in his eyes as Courtland made an utter fool of himself and gave absolutely no ******** about it. “Well, you brought me around. You did it as cruelly as possible…” His eyes flickered at his cousin, who glanced innocently off, briefly stern before softening all over again. “But you got us here. So…thanks, Evie.”
The girl turned her gaze back on him, briefly startled out of words. Before she could find any again, Courtland had resurfaced in frenzied excitement, pulling her out of Cian’s lap. “Antha, you have to dance!”
She protested in whines, grabbing hold of the bar as he tugged on her arm. “Court, no, it’s too cheesy!”
“You have to!” he declared, pulling her loose and dragging her off into the crowd.
Jack just laughed, shaking his head and turning to Cian. “It’s very important to give Evie and Court their bonding time. Just trust me, we can’t keep up. And besides, those two…” He chuckled again, watching as Antha visibly surrendered, letting Courtland take her hands and move her arms for her, spinning her around. “They have their own bond, and it’s probably closer than ours with either of them.” The song dwindled into the ending, the jukebox whirring and clinking until a new song started out, and Antha gave a great sigh of relief. “But really…” the boy murmured, sipping idly on his beer as he watched his cousins across the bar, laughing as they spun and bounced expertly across the floor, perfectly in sync, “You have to admire that kind of charisma.”
He watched for a few more minutes---or long enough to get a few more drinks in him anyways---before suddenly grabbing Cian’s arm, a broad and mischievous grin spreading across his face. “I just had a wicked idea,” he purred, standing and offering his hand to Cian, his eyes flickering to the dance floor, “Let’s make them jealous. They won't be able to stand it. Come on, it'll be loads of fun.”  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn let his head fall back against the seat for just an instant, closing his eyes.
He knew all of that now, of course.
“It doesn’t matter what you want to call it. Generosity, I suppose, or selflessness. However you want to name it— all I could see it as was ‘pity’. We had no home, so you opened yours up to us. You tried to give us a place to go. I didn’t understand it for a long time—I still don’t. I could only imagine that you were trying to be kind because of how pathetic the situation had turned out. I could only imagine that you were trying to—assuage your own feelings, in some way, and I didn’t want to be a tool that allowed you to do that. I thought…Every night in her home will only be a reminder of how mine has disappeared. And I won’t lie—it still gets to me, sometimes, when I think about it too much.”
Rynn fell silent. He didn’t like to admit how often he thought about that night, but he’d never tried to explain himself to her before. It was harder than he expected, trying to put his emotions into words. How he had thought, how he had behaved, and why…he knew all of the reasons, but he didn’t want to say them aloud. In a way, he was embarrassed by how he had reacted. It was the way a child would behave, not the head of the Calais household.
“For most people, it would be something like that, you know? Most people need an ulterior motive to be kind. When they give a dollar to a homeless man begging on the street, they walk away patting themselves on the back and saying, ‘What a nice person I am.’ It’s not because they actually care about the man who they gave to.” Rynn’s voice was purposefully dulled, the words all spoken in monotone. It was the voice of someone who was trying to pretend that they didn’t care, who’d long ago reached these conclusions and couldn’t see the point of getting worked up about it again. Why waste the energy when there was nothing he could do about it?
“Anyways, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t make those assumptions. I just tend to think…that’s how everyone works, right? All humans have a spark of evil in them. We’re all ultimately greedy, selfish, and heartless. We pretend to be heroes as best as we can, but it’s not in our nature. We’re all animals.”
He didn’t realize it, but he was gripping the band of his seatbelt so hard that the strip of woven plastic was cutting into his hand. When Rynn finally noticed the pain, and forced himself to let go, there was a bright red stripe of constricted flesh across his palm.
“That’s why I thought maybe it was better to be a villain, at least to the rest of the world. If I didn’t care whether anyone else suffered or died because of my actions, I didn’t think anything could stop me.”
He was talking too much, he knew. Rynn didn’t need Antha to tell him to shut up, he did it to himself, right then; he was grateful, in fact, when the neon lights flashing by began to slow, and the car pulled into a parking lot filled to the brim with other vehicles.
Getting out, he turned around to shut the door and briefly met Antha’s eyes over the roof of the sleek sports-car. Flashing a rueful smile, he said, “I’m glad you got to meet Liesse, too, really meet her, not just when she was sick.”
It wasn’t only the Mayfairs who needed her. But Rynn wasn’t going to say that aloud—even after the shots he’d taken tonight, the liquor loosening his tongue, it sounded too saccharine for his tastes.
Old habits made him stiff when she wrapped her arms around him, but after a second in Antha’s embrace, Rynn’s shoulders relaxed. His hand came up to clasp her own.
“I like the way you think about humans, you know that?” he said quietly. “I guess that’s why—everyone would follow you to the ends of the earth, because you say things that we all want to believe in. You say this stuff like it’s true, and even if we know in our hearts that it’s not…when you say it, it makes me think that we could make it that way.”
When she called him little brother, though, his head jerked up. For a moment, there was shock in his eyes, looking after her, as she swept by on a gait made unsteady by the uneven paving of the parking lot.
Rynn wouldn’t have admitted it, especially not to Cian, but there was a part of him that had always longed to be invited out with his brother, into what Rynn had imagined was a dazzling nightlife of the city proper. It was a lot more dimly-lit than he had thought it would be, but there was still a thrill to be had in the midst of it. Antha couldn’t have known how weirdly rewarding it was: hearing his brother’s approving tone, here and now, coming out of her mouth.

They didn’t get much farther than a few steps inside before something rushed towards them. For a second, Rynn thought they were under attack—it wouldn’t have been a bad spot for an assassin to wait, in Antha’s own bar—and for a second he readied himself—even if physical prowess wasn’t his forte of expertise, he could at least distract the assailant long enough to let Antha get away—before he heard the name come from her lips.
Blinking down at the pile, he shuffled back and tried to pretend that he hadn’t been balling his fists up to throw a punch. “Oh. So you know this guy, after all?”
Inside, Cian sat up straight and grinned like a predator. “Antha, you darling.”
Jumping off down the stool, he headed with an arrow’s precision for his little brother, jumping over the flailing tangle of limbs with the expertise of one who had been in the midst of many bar-brawls. Admittedly, most of them hadn’t started out on the floor, but Cian was good at adapting.
He threw his arm around his sibling, exclaiming: “You got Rynn in here? You really are a miracle-worker. I thought we’d never get him loosened up enough.”
He didn’t try to go back the way that he’d came, but kept Rynn’s shoulder clamped beneath his arm as he walked him around the radius of the commencing scuffle. Cian was surprised that they didn’t leave marks on the hardwood beneath them, when they popped back up again. Antha wasn’t even breathing hard. Directing Rynn to a seat, he climbed up on a barstool next to his brother and put his elbows on the counter, giving the boy a hard look. “You didn’t give the lady any trouble, right?”
“I didn’t give anybody any trouble,” Rynn grumbled resentfully. “I know how to behave myself, OK?”
“Sometimes, anyways.” Cian responded, cheerfully. When Antha pushed the shot glasses towards the two of them, he passed on the second to his little brother. “If you hold your nose, it’s not so—“
Rynn had already thrown back his head, lips to the little glass, before Cian could get out the advice. He came back utterly red-faced, and biting his lips to hold in the sputter.
“Well,” Cian raised one eyebrow, smiling fondly at the scene. “Color me impressed.”
(And by which he meant, ‘You didn’t spit it out immediately! Good job.’)
Rynn stuck out his tongue, if only to momentarily remove it from his own mouth, and Cian roared with laughter at the expression on his little brother’s face. “No, really! I’m proud of you. Come on, it gets better.”
He didn’t have time to explain how, though, before Antha suddenly made herself a much more interesting diversion. The bartender discreetly passed off a cup of water to Rynn as Cian clasped his hands around Antha’s waist and jumped up, whirling her around without once letting her feet touch the floor, and then slid back into position. “Did you miss me?” he teased, cocking his head to one side and briefly adopting the expression of an abandoned puppy.
When she tilted his head back to lay a bite upon his throat, he couldn’t keep up the pretense any longer, though. His groan was one of genuine pleasure.
Next to them, Rynn couldn’t help but stare, a little wide-eyed. He still wasn’t used to seeing displays of intimacy like that one, despite spending more than enough time with the Mayfairs. He should have developed a tolerance by now, and it was that thought that made him snap his head down and blink at the counter as though examining wood grain was his favorite hobby in the world.
Antha wasn’t there for long, though. Wyatt wasn’t joking about her being like liquid; slithering out from his hands, she pounced on Trajan like a cat who’d found her favorite toy. Cian watched, genuinely impressed--as well as a little jealous. There was always a niggling fear in the back of his head that he’d hurt his darling if he was ever too rough with her. Apparently, her dainty appearance was more deceptive than he realized. Someone who scrapped with werewolves could probably take on an MMA fighter. And that was the joke, wasn't it? Antha was the most powerful witch in the city, backed by ancient spirits that could have easily passed as gods, wealthy enough to place her in the top 1% of the nation, a prime example of beauty and charm in a family which was renowned for their seductive qualities, beloved by all who knew her, even werewolves, and could beat them at their own games, to boot. Add into the mix her luridly exciting past, and it was little wonder that Parker guy had been so put out at dinner. In comparison, Cian was a high-functioning alcoholic with a reputation built on his taste in women and drugs, who also coincidentally happened to dabble in hedge-wizardry. Sometimes he really had to wonder what Antha had seen in him.
Draining another shot-glass (Rynn unwillingly gave his up, with a hiccup of protest) Cian tried to put these thoughts out of his head. It wasn't like him to question himself, not even for an instance. The warm glow of liquor settled into his stomach--it seemed like ages since he'd last drank, not counting wine. He was trying to prepare for fatherhood, after all. Had to be a responsible adult now.
Or at least, he had to be a responsible adult tomorrow. Tonight, he was off the hook. He had worn the fancy dress-clothes, he had behaved himself at dinner, he had managed to escape notice (or rather, critique) throughout the entire evening, he'd even managed to avoid giving into temptation while that asian courtesan had been wriggling around in his lap like a worm on a hook. He deserved to cut himself some slack, now.
Cian didn't recognize the tune on the jukebox, but he had never been much of one for pattern dancing in the first place. He tended to trust in his instincts, laugh off his mistakes, and have faith in his dance partners not to mind too much. Besides, he was getting a little jealous himself, watching Antha whirl around without him. When the opportunity was offered, he hopped up, grabbed Courtland's hand, and threw a mischievous smile his way. "Why admire when we can give them some competition? Reveal your plan, I'm already in."

Rynn, for his part, was faced with two options. He could either drink, which seemed to be a recurring theme of the evening, and hope his constitution could keep up with his decisions...
Or (and at least part of this idea was fueled by liquid courage), he could take the opportunity to gather some information. He'd heard rumors that a clan of werewolves had made the city their home, but had always dismissed it as nothing more than over-active imaginations and over-eager gossip mills. But to find them here, hanging out right in the middle of Antha's bar....well, he couldn't say he was surprised, honestly. If he was a werewolf, he would have wanted good connections with the upper echelons as well. Cian probably hadn't even batted an eye, but this was the first time Rynn had ever seen a werewolf, much less been within arm's length of one. He caught himself staring at the golden-haired man without realizing it. To an outsider, it probably would have looked like the a simple case of boyish infatuation with the muscle-bound Nordic giant, but Rynn barely noticed. His mind was swarming with questions. Was Ulfric's pack the only in the city? What did Moon-struck ceremonies involve? Were the relationships between werewolf packs and vampire clans as strained as he'd heard, and why? How had Antha ingratiated herself with yet another of the major supernatural factions of the city?  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

At the bar, Wyatt drained the last of yet another beer, slamming the glass down before glancing sidelong at Rynn with a heavy groan. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you want to do me, kid. But I do know better, because ********, you reek of questions.”
“He does that,” Antha said with a hint of a laugh, popping up beside the bar and reaching for the whiskey that was automatically handed to her.
Wyatt, irritated at being left behind and not attempting to hide his sulky expression, said simply, “He’s not one of you political puppet masters at all. He has no subtlety.”
But Antha shook her head, pouting slightly, and closed her arms tight around Rynn. “He’s learning! We all have to learn things, Wyatt. And if you keep insulting little brother, I’ll tell your wolf buddies some of the things you had to learn.” Her eyes narrowed, darkly suggestive and equally taunting. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t even pretend you don’t.”
The werewolf quirked an eyebrow at that, a little intrigued. “So he’s ‘little brother’ now?”
“He is technically my little brother,” Antha said, shrugging slightly and taking a long swig of her drink, “Besides, he’s such a model little brother---sulky, obstinate, spoiled, and so very easy to read.” Grinning, she took a moment to lay a kiss on Rynn’s forehead, her eyes bright with a teasing glimmer. “Really Rynn, lighten up. You want to know about werewolves? Hang out with them. You’ll never learn anything sitting around staring at people like a creep.”
As she traded out her emptied glass for a new drink, Wyatt snickered over his newest beer. “Seriously. You’re kind of killing my buzz.” While he spoke, he climbed expectantly out of his seat and stepped out of the way moments before Courtland all but fell on Antha, tugging frantically on the hem of her shirt.
“Evie, I don’t like this!” he whined, pointing emphatically to where Jack and Cian were dancing.
“I thought we were in agreement that it was kind of hot?”
His eyes narrowed, his hands closing on her shoulders and drawing her close enough to put less than a centimeter between their faces when he hissed, “I changed my mind.”
“Court, get off or I’ll kick you,” she said, seriously enough that he did, and irritably readjusted her shirt, “You realize you’re doing exactly what Jack was hoping you would, right?”
“But---but---!” The boy whined, helplessly, grabbing her by the front of her shirt and shaking her like he didn’t know what else to do, “He’s gonna’ take my Jackie!”
True to her word---at least partially---Antha stomped hard enough on his foot that he yelped and fell into the nearest seat, shooting her his most hurt, betrayed eyes. “First of all, you tear this shirt and I’m seriously going to hurt you.” She adjusted her shirt again as she spoke, glancing sharply at him. “Second, as dearly as I love Jack---he’s cute and all, and surprisingly disarming---Courtland, look at me.” Her fingers cupped his chin to make sure he was. “You’re insane if you seriously think Jack is about to tempt someone away from me.” Oddly, that seemed to do the trick. Courtland calmed down and Antha turned back to Rynn, gesturing at the room as she continued from earlier. “You want to know how to get information? Forget all of your questions. Get up, pretend to be a sociable person, and make friends with the wolves. When the moment’s right, slip in the questions. It’s as easy as that. Now, if you’ll excuse me---” She set her empty glass down with a clank, her eyes gleaming mischievously. “---I have to save Courtland from himself.”
The boy brightened, not entirely sure what she meant but with utter faith in her intentions and ability. He had barely turned around to get another drink when he heard Jack yelp and, turning back, found him alone and bewildered, no Cian in sight.
When she was gone, leaving Courtland fresh and bubbly and blissfully drunk, murmuring what seemed like nonsense to himself, Wyatt sat irritably sipping his beer and occasionally casting the Mayfair a wary side-eye. Eventually, growing restless, he hopped over a couple of seats until he was next to Rynn, slouching down and pulling his legs up into the bar chair in what seemed like the most ungodly uncomfortable position but seemed to put him at ease. It probably had something to do with the faint outline of extra muscles beneath his skin that weren’t normal on humans, long and lean. “If you want to ask, just ******** ask. It’s hella annoying having someone fuming with curiosity, I can smell it halfway across the room.” He paused, casting Rynn a narrowed sidelong glance and a brief wolfish grin. “Unless I just really don’t get you and you are giving me bedroom eyes. Either way, go for it.” Truth be told, he might have preferred the latter. Antha’s rejection stung his pride a little more than he was willing to admit, he could’ve used a good romp. And if there was one thing werewolves weren’t picky about, it was sexual partners. It was all the same in the animal kingdom.
MEANWHILE, ACROSS THE BAR---
When Courtland couldn’t see him anymore, Cian was, in fact, on the floor. Antha, collapsed on top of him, had looked down in surprise for a brief moment and then burst into laughter. “I forgot I wasn’t dealing with a werewolf for a moment,” she said, grinning a little guiltily, and kissed him in place of an apology for practically tackling him. “And for the record,” she purred in his ear, in response to his earlier unvoiced thoughts, “It’s the vampire blood. I’m unbreakable.” It was one of the earliest tactics she had developed---little Antha Mayfair, a slip of a girl, made delicate by the abuse from her early years locked in the attic…no one ever expected her to be physically resilient. Besides, there had to be something she wasn’t good at, some shortcoming, some c***k in her armor.
No. Antha was pretty much good at everything, she had made damn sure of it.
She was still laughing as she returned to her feet, taking Cian’s hand to help him up. “Being around the wolves gets to me a little,” she explained, with just a hint of guilt in her grin, “It’ll get to anyone really, if you spend enough time with them. There’s something primal about it all.” Her eyes had turned sharp, glittering dangerously as she closed the bit of space between them, grinning like she would eat him alive. “That reminds me…” Her fingers closed in his collar, pulling him close enough to kiss, though she was still playing the wolf. “You tried to make me jealous. That can’t possibly go unpunished, don’t you think?”
“Give him a break, Evie,” Jack called nearby, happily dancing in twirling circles with Courtland, “It was my idea anyways.”
“I wouldn’t volunteer that information so willingly, Jackie,” the girl purred, dangerously enough to make a chill shoot down her cousin’s spine. In contrast, her fingers trailed tauntingly down the front of Cian’s shirt, emphasizing the latter half of her sentence. “Cian might like his punishment. You won’t.”
“Punishment, huh?” Courtland was murmuring meanwhile, his eyes lighting up as if an idea had just struck him as he pulled his arms around Jack from behind, tucking his chin on the other boy’s shoulder. “I like that idea. You wounded me, you know. You should definitely be punished.”
“It was Cian’s idea,” Jack said abruptly, quick enough to turn around and literally point the finger at Cian. And then, flashing a regretful gaze on him, whispered as if Courtland and Antha wouldn’t hear, “Court’s punishments are way worse than Antha’s, you’re going to have to take the hit here.”
“No way.” Courtland intently shook his head, growing every bit as devious as Antha. “It’s too late, I’ve already decided and you have to be punished. I think the only fitting thing is…” He paused, mostly for effect, grinning for a few moments just to make Jack sweat. “Marry me.”
That brought the other two Mayfairs to a grinding halt. Jack froze, every muscle in his body turning to stone except for his lips, which fell open in surprise. Antha, who had gotten indecently close to Cian with full intentions of stealing him away when no one was looking---though people were having trouble reading Rynn’s vibes, there was no mistaking the sharp, smoldering glint in her eyes---turned rapidly on Courtland with big, shocked eyes, murmuring automatically, “…come again?” Jack just nodded emphatically, pointing to Antha to imply agreement.
“What? It’s legal now.”
While she gave him a few minutes to speak for himself, when Jack seemed unable to form words, Antha jumped in on his behalf. “Doesn’t marriage kind of stand for everything the two of you are against, Court? Monogamy, religion, respectability…the law?”
Sighing---and clearly agitated that things weren’t going his way---Courtland turned Jack around to face him, growing very serious as he began to list off his reasons. “We’re adults now, right? And if Antha can make the leap, we sure as hell can. Besides, I’m about to have a son, and you know you’re going to end up as the other parent, so shouldn’t we just start him off as our son? Really Jack, I don’t know why you’re acting so shocked about this. Just say yes already.”
Another few minutes passed in silence, Courtland’s cousins staring at him like he’d finally snapped. And then, while Jack was still immoveable from his starting position, Antha’s brows knitted and, without warning, she slapped him. “What in the hell is the matter with you?” she demanded, throwing her arms tightly around Jack, “That’s not how you propose to someone!”
“I was nervous, so sue me!” Courtland retorted, pouting fiercely and clutching his reddened cheek, “I’ve never done this before! Cian, back me up, this s**t is terrifying, right?” He instantly wrinkled his nose at the narrowing of Antha’s eyes, sighing helplessly in frustration, “Ahhh….right, Antha forced the proposal out of you. And you were in your refusal to speak phase…damn it, nobody knows how I feel right now!”
“Christ, Court---” Finally, Antha could only shake her head and groan her frustration, giving up on Courtland and turning to Jack. “If you accept that weak goddamn proposal, I will lose all my respect for you. All-of-it.”
Jack, who looked no less stunned but had at least recovered to the point of moving, gave a little shake of his head. “No way. That was…god, Court, that was just terrible. Terrible.”
“Fine!” Courtland declared finally, throwing his hands up irritably in surrender, “You want spectacle, fine! Romance, fine! You just---” He walked away then, backing very quickly through the crowd and motioning emphatically for all of them to stay exactly where they were.
“Antha, I suddenly have a bad feeling. A very, very, very bad feeling…”
She, on the other hand, was wearing Courtland’s usual Cheshire Cat grin, eyes sparkling with infinite amusement. “Oh, this is going to be spectacular.” Mockingly, she threw her hands together and turned her eyes up towards the ceiling, saying fervently, “God, please, let him find someone in this bar who’s in possession of fireworks. I’ll never ask for anything ever again, just let him find fireworks.”
“Evie---!” Jack hissed, genuinely terrified that that was a possibility, “Do you want him to burn your bar down?!”
“I don’t care, I can buy a new bar. I can buy fifty new bars and remodel them all to look exactly like this one. But how often do you get to see Courtland profess his love with fireworks? Really Jack, you should be the one praying for this.” Jack was poised to retort when Antha abruptly shushed him by way of her hand over his mouth, glancing across the bar at the jukebox. “Jack, ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You’ is playing.”
The boy’s face went instantly pale, his jaw dropping and eyes going wide. “He wouldn’t…”
In fact, he would. This was proven some moments later when the lights in the entire bar cut, with the exception of the runner lights over the bar which flared to dazzling intensity just as Courtland climbed atop it. Taking a deep breath, he struck a pose and belted the lyrics out with all his might, shuffling down the bar in a dramatic little dance. By the chorus, Antha had laughed herself utterly breathless, still laughing as she gasped for air and clung to Cian’s shirt to keep herself from collapsing. Jack was back to petrified silence, jaw dropped and eyes big as saucers with shock.
It was then, in a break from the lyrics while the instrumentals revved up, that Courtland stood still on the bar, pointing a finger at Jack and demanding with deadly seriousness, “I’ll keep singing. I will. Say you’ll marry me or I swear to god I’ll keep singing. I’ll sing for-ev-er.”
Jack scrambled to regain his wits, glancing wildly around at the sea of people that were suddenly staring at him expectantly. He looked briefly to Antha for help, but she was still incapacitated with laughter. Finally, with one threatening glance, Courtland took another deep breath and began belting out the chorus. “I-love-you-ba-by, and if it’s quite alright---”
“Alright!” Finally, Jack broke, throwing his hands up in surrender and screaming over Courtland’s singing. “You mad, sadistic ********, alright! I’ll marry you!”
Courtland was at once infinitely pleased, smiling blindingly before he grew briefly serious and pointed first at Jack and then over the crowd, stating very seriously, “You all heard him, you’re witnesses, that is a binding verbal contract. Binding.”
“Court!” Rather than let Jack get any more flustered, Courtland scrambled hastily down from the bar and bolted across the room, seizing Jack’s face in his hands and pressing a long, ecstatic kiss on his lips. The crowd cheered for that, wildly, and Jack blushed as badly as Malakai, hurriedly burying his face in Courtland’s chest to hide.
That was when Antha’s laughter finally faded out, followed by a few moments of gasping to replace the air before she calmed and turned to Cian with a broad wicked grin. “I think Courtland has you beat on this one, love. And everyone else, for that matter.” Finally, with a deep, contented sigh, she turned to the boys and said with palpable satisfaction, “Julien’s going to be piiiiiiiiissed.”
Throwing back a congratulatory shot one of the wolves brought him, Courtland smirked. “Added bonus. Next round’s on me!” The entire bar cheered even louder at that, the bartender scrambling to gather up glasses.
“I think we may be in for one of the longest nights of our lives,” Antha murmured meanwhile, leaning in towards Cian’s ear, “Court’s never going to let us go home after this. And when we’re awakened by screaming infants ten minutes after we get to bed, I want you to remember that feeling because by god, you’d better pay him back when Adair is born.” Which was admittedly better than the alternative, sitting at home wringing her hands until Alistair returned. She trusted him of course, he could take down nearly anything that she could and he had Nicolae for backup, but he was her baby brother and she retained every right to worry herself sick about him. Especially since there was a bit of a point on the ‘baby’ part.
But she didn’t let on to any of this. No one else knew where Alistair and Nicolae had gone, what they were doing, and she didn’t intend for them to know until her brothers returned safely. Or until they took too long and she descended upon the creature, but she had promised him she wouldn’t. He wanted to prove himself, and anyways she had to learn to let go a little. Soon she wouldn’t be around to deal with the things that went bump in the night and he needed to have the hang of it before then.
“The only wedding present I want is for the news to give Julien a heart attack,” Courtland sighed with longing, leaning back against the bar with one arm flung around Jack’s shoulders.
“Fat chance,” Antha scoffed, rolling her eyes, “That b*****d will outlive us all. You’re stuck with him for life, Court. Our children are probably stuck with him for life, and our grandchildren.”
“I refuse to accept it! That son of a b***h owes me the seat of the head of the family. If he never dies, I never get it. I’ll stick a knife in him in front of everybody before I let that happen. And if I have to go down for it, at least Sebastien will get his rightful place as head of the family.”
That little bit made Jack pause, glancing curiously between Courtland and Antha. “Wait…now that Alistair’s in play, shouldn’t he take over as Julien’s successor? I mean traditionally, doesn’t the position go to sons of the designee when there is one?”
“Usually,” Antha consented with a little thoughtful nod of agreement, “That’s why Nicolae was the original successor. But just like Malakai, Alistair’s passed on the position. He prefers to follow his own path, and maybe play the puppet master on the side.”
“Not me,” Courtland declared intently, slamming his glass down on the bar, “I’m going to be head of the family if it kills me. And I’ll make everyone call me Emperor Mayfair and demand family rules that make our ancestors turn in their goddamn graves.”
“First you’ll have to get Vanessa’s permission, Court…”
The boy just scoffed, cutting his eyes at Jack. “I’m going to be her absolute favorite uncle in the entire world, I’ll bring her around. Besides---” He brightened, brimming with enthusiasm. “If Julien dies in the next sixteen years, the family caretaker will be the only one with power against me until Vanessa turns sixteen. Think of all I could do, Jackie!”
Finally, Antha gave him a sound slap across the back of the head, glaring sidelong at him until he all but wilted. “Don’t think Laurie and I didn’t prepare for the governance of the family. Airi and Malakai will take on her veto power until she’s of age. Otherwise, the governing of the family would be entirely in Julien’s hands until then. Did you really think I was going to let that happen?”
Courtland shuddered, intently shaking his head. “Mon dieu, no. I pray you don’t hate us that much.”  

[Okimiyage]

Wyatt was not far off the mark with his initial assumption, but Rynn would have rather died than admit to it. “I wasn’t staring,” Rynn snapped. “I was observing. It’s an essential part of gathering data, like—when scientists observe rats, or whatever.” When he couldn’t think of a good defense, Rynn tended to fall back on arrogance.
The bartender had the kindness to pass the boy a mug of beer to bury his face in, noting his distaste for the harder liquor (as well as recognizing that, as with any member of Antha’s party, Rynn was damn well worth being extra-attentive towards.)
To tell the truth, Rynn didn’t really know how to ‘loosen up’. He was fine at parties like the one tonight, where all one had to do was look good in a tux, be cordial, and not overdo it on the champagne, but this was the first time he’d been in a scene like this. He’d never thought it was important to learn how to pick chicks up or crack jokes. He’d been more interested in raising the dead and keeping his older brothers more-or-less in line.
Cian caught a snatch of the conversation over the music, just long enough to divert his attention from his dance partner. Glancing across the floor towards the bar, he gave his little brother a somewhat pitying smile. He’d really have to hook the kid up with a fake I.D. one of these days. There was no excuse to be sixteen, in prime partying condition, pretty as Ryan, and not out on the town.


But that could wait. Cian might not have known how to dance a foxtrot, but if you had the kind of frequent sexual encounters that Cian’s reputation was built on, you developed a pretty good sense of rhythm. He could feel Courtland glaring daggers into his back, watching Jack revolve around him, before he dashed off whimpering to Antha.
Well, that was what Jack had wanted, right? Cian was simply there for a good time.
Still, as fun as playing with the cousins was, he couldn’t help but be delighted—his grin was a flash of white in the dimly-lit club—when he felt a small, familiar hand close around his arm, and pull.

At the bar, Rynn found himself rejoined by Wyatt, much to his astonishment. He tried not to show it, burying the expression in a long sip from his mug. Most likely, the werewolf was just trying to curry favor with Antha, but Rynn didn’t care enough to let this opportunity pass without taking advantage of it.
What did people talk about at a bar?’ How about that local sports team?’—yeah, like that would go over well with a werewolf. He couldn’t imagine Wyatt as a football buff. Definitely more of the MMA type.
Scooting his bar-stool closer, Rynn gave Wyatt a long once-over. It was a little unsettling to be stared at by an angel-faced pup with that kind of intensity—maybe ‘hunger’ would be a more fitting term—but he had to take a moment to organize his thoughts before the questions began.
He decided to go with his initial instinct, which was to be blunt.
Rynn refused to acknowledge Wyatt’s latter comment, though. It would have given Cian too much joy to witness his little brother’s feeble first attempts at flirting, and with another man, no less.
“Alright, so—I figure weres have the same social hierarchy as wolves, or similar, at least. Alphas, betas, all that. Yes? From what I gathered, you’re of direct descent from your pack leader, or king, or ‘Ulfric’, or whatever. I can’t imagine you as a follower, in particular, but that only means that your king has to be worth his salt. Either that, or your family—pack—whatever—simply places high value on loyalty. Are you a family, by the way? Is it all hereditary, or is what they say about people turning into werewolves by being ‘infected’ by a bite, or drinking water out of a wolf’s footprint, or sleeping with the full moon on their face—is any of that true? And do you have to turn every full moon, or could you just stay out of moonlight when ‘that time of the month’ comes around? Do gibbous moons have any effect or just perfectly full ones? What if there are cloudy skies that night and you can’t even see it? Can you change at will? How much control do you have over your actions as a wolf? Are there other kinds of ‘weres’, or just wolves? Are there other packs in the city? Where’d your pack come from, before Osiris? And how do you know Antha so well? If you’re alright with witches, what about the vampires here, like Nicolae? What about your own family? Like—if you have offspring, do you mate for life or just a little while? If you even can impregnate a human, would the child come out mostly crying or howling? How long is your lifespan, that your father—Fenrir?—has been around since Viking days? What's a Moon-struck ceremony? Is silver as unpleasant for you as the legends say? And finally—” leaning in, the gold flecks in his hazel eyes all but glowing with excitement as they caught the light. “—what does it, the change, what does it feel like?”
Finally, Rynn paused. A moment passed, whereupon he realized he had maybe—just a teensy bit—overdone it on the interrogation. With a embarrassed cough, he leaned back onto his seat and took a sip of the mug on the counter again.
“That’s for starters. You don’t have to answer everything, of course. It’s just—well. You told me I could ask.” His shrug was anything but apologetic.

ACROSS THE BAR…

Cian wasn’t surprised to find himself flat on his back with Antha on top of him, he just hadn’t expected it to happen while they were still in the bar. His grin never faded as she helped him up: “Ow. Come on, I thought that the back problems were supposed to come after the kids got a little older.” But he couldn’t be mad at her. Nobody could be mad at Antha, not laughing like that, her hair more than a little mussed (and by god, he’d probably make it worse by the end of the night) and those green eyes dancing. When she came in close, playing the predator, he couldn’t even pretend to be scared. “Well, I wouldn’t expect you to allow me to get away with it,” he murmured, leaning in close to nibble at her ear under the pretense of whispering to her. “I’ve been up to absolutely terrible things tonight, in fact. How quick can we get home?”

It looked like Antha’s ‘punishment’, whatever it was, would have to wait. When Courtland joined in on the game, he seemed like the type that didn’t like being outdone. Rolling his eyes, Cian wrapped his arms around Antha’s shoulders and pulled her briefly into his chest, burying a kiss in her hair before releasing her. “If Courtland wants a punishment, he can go first. I’ll be patient.”
But none of them were prepared for what Courtland’s idea of ‘punishment’ consisted of.
There was a moment where all of them went silent, half-expecting Courtland to follow up with ‘just kidding!’ and a laugh, but as seconds ticked by, it became apparent that he was serious.
Cian had to bite his lip to stop himself from chuckling at the look on Jack’s face. It was like he couldn’t make up his mind whether to be elated or horrified. Or maybe he was just trying to figure out which mental institution left in the city would take a Mayfair. Crossing his arms, he masked his own amusement with the pretense of serious consideration. “Well, you have to admit, it does make a sort of—logical sense. You both already know one another’s faults to a T, there’ll never be a dull moment, and once you’re hitched, you’ll actually have good cause to get jealous and possessive whenever you see one another dancing without you.” He couldn’t stop himself entirely from smirking. “You’re absolutely right about the importance of presentation, though. Come on, you only do it once--”
It seemed Courtland might have taken their ribbing too seriously, though, as he proceeded to flounce off all in a huff. Cian paused, wondering whether he should follow and give counsel...
…
But in a moment, Courtland revealed his own plan of action with aplomb.
Seated at the bar, Rynn was deep in conversation--at least until droplets of beer flew into his face, the wood countertop suddenly vibrating with impact. "Hey! What the--?" Involved in interrogating a real-life-werewolf, Rynn hadn't bothered to give his attention to Antha or any of her entourage. Now, it was being demanded. The lights dropped, and Rynn's eyes grew round as he recognized the figure striking a dramatic pose at the end of the bar. "Oh god," he muttered. Like all sixteen-year-old boys, he was prone to second-hand embarrassment, and this definitely qualified. Hardly anyone else could be arsed to care--they all recognized Mayfair antics when they saw them, and they were always good for a laugh--but Rynn slumped deeply into his seat. He had been trying so hard to play it cool in front of the werewolf, and then this.
After Courtland's song ended, the bar filled with drunken whoops, applause, and laughter. Rynn covered his eyes with his hand, clutching his forehead, and peeked out between his splayed fingers at Wyatt. "Anyways."
Cian was one of the applauding members of the audience, although he couldn't quite resist the initial cackle of delight--at least, not after seeing the look on Jack's face.
“Oh, Jackie-boy, that wasn’t a proposal, that was blatant coercion.” Then, after a moment, he acknowledged: “Although, hell, it worked. Damn. Why didn’t I think of that?” Turning to Antha, he adopted a reprimanding tone. "You let me get away with too much. There should have been...I don't know, showers of rose petals, or a moonlit gondola ride, or copious amounts of wine at the very least. You didn't even have a honeymoon." Eyes twinkling, he reminded her, "And I'm still waiting for that punishment, dear. Absolutely on the edge of my seat. Tenterhooks."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

For several moments, Wyatt sat hunkered in his seat staring a little wide-eyed at Rynn, blinking at the extensive list he rattled off. The boy tried to hide his twinge of embarrassment, which was kind of charming in its own right, and all of a sudden the werewolf threw back his head and fell into peals of laughter. “Goddamn,” he sighed, still snickering to himself as he leaned his head forward, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, “You are ******** just like Antha. Not as smooth---not at all---but she did the exact same thing when she first turned up in here, with that same intense gleam in her eyes.” He laughed for another moment, joined briefly by a murmur of similar amusement from the bartender as he polished glasses, before giving a contented sigh and leaning back in his seat, his arms resting on the backs of the chairs next to his, head tilted back and gaze on the ceiling. “When I was a kid, this bar was ours. My pops used it as a gathering place in the city, and to support the pack. Most of us don’t function well in society, we live by the animal in us. But times got tough in the city and Antha bought it out from under us. Everyone was furious at the time---it’s a standing rule amongst supernaturals that all factions hate each another. We weren’t aggressive about it, we just had our territory and no walking corpses or magic men better ******** bother us. But that little psychopath, sixteen years old and well aware of the politics, just came prancing in here one night with her big, intense eyes, rattling off questions. My old man was stunned. Stunned. You’ve met him, do you think he’s the sort of guy to be taken by surprise, much less show it? Well he passed her off to me, because we were the same age and he didn’t even know what the ******** to do about her. My mother and uncle told me to bite her throat out, because everyone was appalled that she was in our territory, and we knew what she’d been doing to the factions of the city over the last two years. We were all enraged and terrified. But you can’t hate Antha, not when she wants you to like her. It just can’t be done. Especially not then, when she was running around drunk and drugged, seducing half the city, setting fires, blowing up yachts in the harbor just for the hell of it. You can’t hate someone that charming and that much fun. So I gave into her pretty quickly, and all the other guys followed, and then eventually the girls, and finally pops.”
Setting down another beer in front of Wyatt, the bartender quietly cleared his throat, interjecting, “It wasn’t that easy. She lived with us for weeks before Fenrir decided not to wage war with her. He’d rather die than let an outsider take our lands.”
“We can be that way,” Wyatt conceded, grinning, “Stubborn, headstrong, recklessly protective of what’s ours. Like I said, we like to live by the beast. I could sit here for days trying to explain it to you, and you still wouldn’t really get it. Our societies don’t intersect enough, and our kind of thinking is part human and part wolf and something totally different above all that. We’re mostly a giant family, we all live together in the same den, taking care of each other. Pretty rustic stuff, by human standards. We don’t have marriage, that’s human stuff. We’re pretty casual about the whole breeding thing---anyone, anywhere, any gender, for any number of reasons. Sometimes we do pick mates. You have to mark them---a massive bite right here, like Trajan was talking about, just enough to scar.” Craning his head, he traced an oval at the junction between his neck and shoulder to illustrate. “But that’s only until you’re sick of each other, and you just kind of part. When a werewolf falls in love with a human, the mark is used to turn them---oh, right, you asked about that. Humans can be turned, but only from a bite. Usually it just causes a fever and they go really weak until their body fights off the infection, and you have to try again. Sometimes it’s too much and they die, but that’s just a risk you take. We can reproduce too, which is how most werewolves come about, but that’s a ******** hassle. Only really powerful werewolves can manage not to turn at the full moon, and once a pregnant woman turns, the baby is pretty much toast. Really strong wolves that rank high in the pack can help, exerting their power over the woman to kind of push down the transformation. No one ever really understands that dynamic, that just by ranking high in the pack, one wolf can physically affect another. Antha compared it to her power as Designee of the Legacy, all those magic bonds that give her control over her cousins, how they can share feelings and thoughts and power through them. Mostly that happens in wolf form, but the alphas always have control over the rest of the pack. My uncle, he’s third in the pack and if he told one of us to go chop off our fingers, I don’t think we could resist doing it. But my pops? The Ulfric’s will is a ******** law of science. That’s any wolf king in any pack anywhere all throughout history. Usually, we just don’t ******** ask questions. It is what it is. We didn’t even know why some of us live for so long and others don’t until about a year ago, when Antha finally got my dad to break down and let her test some of our blood and hair and stuff. I don’t totally understand it---I mean have you ever heard her talk science? It’s like she’s a goddamn textbook and I swear half the time she’s speaking Greek , and she doesn’t even notice because she’s so ******** absorbed in the excitement of it---but the gist was that our werewolf genes cause endless regeneration, which is how we can turn. Stronger wolves have stronger werewolf DNA, so none of their cells ever age and they stay exactly the same.”
Setting another beer down in front of the boy, the bartender gave him a wry glance. “Mother have mercy on us if you got the strength of your DNA from your father.”
“Here’s to hoping,” the boy growled lowly, grinning, with a tip of his glass before taking a deep gulp of it, “I want to live forever. But anyway…what else were you asking? Oh, right…the change. It’s awesome and terrible at the same time. It hurts like hell, like nothing you humans will ever know short of being burned alive. Every last cell in our bodies except for the brain cells split, the human part from the wolf, and the wolf ones multiply rapidly while the human ones die. Our bones break, shift, and then morph and mold back together. The fur rips apart our skin, our organs start moving around and squishing together, our blood gets really hot and pumps really fast…it’s hell. But at the same time, I don’t know, as soon as it’s over and the pain stops, it’s like you’re free. You can run and jump and fight and ******** and do whatever the hell you want because you’re a giant goddamn wolf, with brainpower between a human and a wolf. You’re made of the earth and the forest and you’re part of this one big creature made up of lots of minds and bodies all working together. You belong, you know?”
He had a few more details he could have added to fill in the gaps, though admittedly not many before he was lost for words on the matter, but was interrupted by the shift in lighting, blinking wildly around until he saw Courtland. He was immediately all wild laughter, cackling and jeering, watching on with intense interest. When it ended and the Mayfairs all returned to the bar, he grinned and ruffled Courtland’s hair, his conversation with Rynn completely forgotten. “You always know how to make a scene.”
“I like being the center of attention,” Courtland responded firmly, glowing smugly with self-satisfaction. Jack still had a hand over his face, mortified, but couldn’t quite help but to smile beneath it.
“I still don’t get it, though,” Wyatt continued, his expression all at once turning serious and perplexed, “This whole ‘marriage’ thing. It’s so much easier just having mates.”
While Courtland and Jack just shrugged, not entirely sure how to explain it to him, to the great shock of all those present, it was Antha who answered him, with an alarming amount of ease. “Of course you don’t get it. You couldn’t possibly, because you live in a community where everyone is involved---all of the adults take care of the children, all of the young take care of the old, everyone lives together and works together their entire lives. We live in a completely different world---a hard, disconnected world. Your system of mating is more or less our system of dating, attraction and then attachment and some level of intimate involvement until you have problems or lose interest. Marriage is a step beyond. It’s a hard commitment. It’s the binding promise of being together and sharing your lives in a world where we don’t otherwise do that. Your way is easier, that’s true, but…well, it’s not supposed to be easy, is it? There’s always going to be hard times, disagreements, what have you, but where mates can simply walk away, a married couple has at least some obligation to try and work through it, to tough it out. Failing all else, there’s divorce, but that’s a long and difficult process. But at the end of the day, werewolves generally go through at least several mates in the course of a human lifetime, and most humans only marry once, and the majority of them are for life.”
While her cousins stared at her, a little astonished, Wyatt furrowed his brow, briefly deep in thought, before demanding irritably, “You couldn’t have told me any of that the first time I asked? What was it you said---‘I don’t ******** know, politics? Suicidal boredom and a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction in life?’ I can at least kind of understand this explanation.”
But Antha shrugged, paying his outburst little mind. “I was sixteen and the idea of marriage made me physically ill, so sue me. And as I recall, I was running from the police at the moment.”
Beside her, Courtland gave a little sputter of laughter, murmuring nostalgically, “That’s right, you blew up a boat. Ahaha…classic.”
“Hey!” Antha snapped, quickly rounding on him, “You’re the one that wanted some weird Russian vodka at two in the morning and decided to spray-paint your name on the deck of the ship. I was cleaning up your mess.”
Courtland’s eyes went wide, giving a long ‘o~oh’ of recollection. “I thought I dreamt that.”
With the smallest twitch, Antha finally simply kicked him and let it go. “Ow! Come on, Evie, it’s my engagement day! Be nice to me! Just because my proposal was waaaaaaaay better than yours---”
“Courtland, I will eviscerate you right here and not give a damn about witnesses.”
Shrieking fleetingly, Courtland dove behind Jack and murmured in a low whine, “That’s not fair, you can’t kill me until I get to see Jackie in a wedding dress! If I miss that, I’ll haunt your kids forever. I’ll hide all their stuff and scare all their friends and tell them it’s your damn fault.”
As Antha’s eyes narrowed dangerously, Jack had turned to stare at Courtland as if he was utterly mad, demanding intently, “What in the hell makes you think you’re going to get me into a wedding dress? If anyone is going to wear one---which is never going to happen, because Julien will murder the first one who tries---you’re the drag queen here, Court.”
“Lies! Lies and slander! I try on a couple of Antha’s dresses when I’m eleven and suddenly I’m a drag queen?”
Quirking an eyebrow, Antha pointed out flatly, “You put on one of my dresses and tromped around the garden three months ago.”
“Slander!”
Giving up, Antha rolled her eyes. But, not quite willing to let an earlier comment slip by unaddressed, began tauntingly, “Everyone does proposals according to personal taste. You were loud and dramatic and embarrassed the hell out of Jack. Cian and I got wet and muddy and had sex in a gardening shed in the middle of a storm. I’ll take my lot over Jackie’s any day.” Solemnly, his cheeks still rosy, Jack nodded in agreement.
“Oh, I know,” Courtland purred, a wicked grin spreading to his lips, “Dorian and I were in the treehouse. You know, you can see right through the little window into the shed, even if it is a little hazy---” Expectantly, Jack dove out of the way split seconds before both of them were gone across the bar, knocking a few chairs over on the way, Courtland screaming, “Antha, not before my wedding! Evie, no---!” A massive clatter of overturned chairs and tables followed, their forms disappearing to the floor but for the frantic flailing of Courtland’s limbs.
“I told him not to tell her about that,” Jack sighed, reaching for a shot and downing it, “He knows better than to spy in the first place, he’s gotten so many beatings for it.” He sighed again, shaking his head, but could not help the hint of an affectionate smile. “God help me, I’m marrying a masochistic ******** idiot.”
“Can I come?” Wyatt questioned eagerly, eyes narrowing intently, “I’ve never seen a wedding before.”
“If I have my way, we’re eloping. I’d rather get this done before Julien finds out and castrates us. Besides…I don’t like this whole center of attention thing, and Courtland’s going to plan theatrics in abundance if he gets his way. My nerves would be worse than Antha’s were.”
“Oh?” Wyatt seemed just a little too pleased by that bit of information, a smirk breaking out across his face, “Antha was nervous before her wedding?”
Even Jack, as little as he usually noticed anything, picked up on the werewolf’s tone and gave a fleeting frown of disapproval, rendered slightly defensive in his response. “Anyone would have been in her place. She was the center of a media circus, in a lavish dress she didn’t want to wear, in a church, miserably pregnant, with everyone around her freaking out and Julien still mulling over the idea of killing her fiancé. Oh, and her crazed evil minion of a soon-to-be-brother-in-law lurking ominously around.” He put a hand on Rynn’s shoulder with the last part, squeezing it affectionately as if to assure him it was nothing personal.
Quietly, Wyatt gave a little laugh, shaking his head at the Mayfair boy’s tone. “Alright, don’t get snarky. I just like to hear stories where she’s a lowly mortal like the rest of us. They don’t happen enough and it makes me feel better.”
Across the bar, Antha and Courtland had risen warily to their feet, suspiciously staring one another down. They spoke for a few moments, their voices lost in the music from the jukebox, before Antha pulled her knife out and ran it over her palm before offering both to Courtland. He likewise cut open his palm, in a much more shallow wound, clapping his bloodied hand down on top of Antha’s. They stayed that way for a few brief moments, nodding surely at one another, before returning to the bar as if they had never left at all.
Jack, bemused, asked, “Aren’t you guys getting a little old for blood pacts?”
“You’re never too old for a blood pact,” Antha said very certainly, grabbing up the drink that was set before her as Courtland began wrapping napkins around his hand. Hers had already stopped bleeding, a thin film of new skin creeping along the incision.
“What was this one for?” Jack continued, turning and helping Courtland tie the napkins together.
“No more voyeurism,” Courtland muttered, with clear disappointment in his pouty voice, “She said she wouldn’t stop kicking me unless I agreed.”
“Speaking of which.” Jack was immediately his usual carefree, mischievous self in the blink of an eye, turning to smile suspiciously at Rynn. “We should induct him, don’t you think?”
“Rynn doesn’t want to be part of the family,” Courtland reminded his new fiancé, just a little sharply, “He’s said it a dozen times. Remember when we inducted Cian? I thought he was going to attack him for it.”
“Speaking of Cian’s induction, we didn’t even do that one right.”
“I was upset,” Antha defended herself sharply, leaning back against the bar with drink in hand, “First the whole Sleet thing, then I found out I was knocked up, then Uncle Stefan died, and---Cian, darling, I love you immensely, you know that, but I didn’t trust you at the time. I didn’t know him, and I thought I’d have to break our pact and set up a fake father. And I love you Courtland, but we were never meant to be married.”
“We would have killed each other,” the boy agreed cheerily, without a trace of doubt, “We didn’t even make it through a year of implied engagement without bloodshed over the matter. No, we were fantastic lovers and we’re the greatest of friends in history, but any sort of formal union was a terrible, terrible idea. Which explains why Julien was the one who thought of it.”
“At any rate,” Antha continued, as if she wanted to change the subject, “The matter is up to Rynn. I’m content that we have him legally, whether or not we induct him by blood is his decision.”
“What do you say, Rynn?” Eyes gleaming intently, Jack leaned across the bar to look at the boy, grinning. “Want to be one of us?”
Beside him, Courtland grinned as if something had amused him, looking at Jack and beginning to chant slowly, “One-of-us. One-of-us. One-of-us.” Soon they were both doing it, beating their fists on the bar in rhythm to the chant, and could only be stopped by Antha.
“Don’t pressure him,” the girl sighed, exasperated, like she’d been dealing with children and just couldn’t take their dumb, harmless s**t anymore, “You’re likely to push him the other way. If you don’t know him at least that well by now, there’s no help for you.” And with that, she took her drink and Cian and crossed the bar to the jukebox, determined to override the 80’s pop Courtland had queued up.
“Fiiiiine,” the boy sighed, disappointed, and went to apologetically pat Rynn’s head, “No pressure, your choice and all that. But if you decide you don’t want to be part of the family, I’m going to be very, very, very hurt and you can’t have any cake at my wedding. And there’s going to be marzipan, Rynn. Marzipan.”
With that, the boys drifted off towards the dance floor again, taking an entire bottle of gin with them, and Wyatt sat back in his chair, simultaneously laughing and scoffing. “Pushy little bastards, aren’t they?”
Behind the bar, the bartender gave a heavy murmur of, “You have no idea.”
But that just made Wyatt laugh again, sipping on his beer before finally casting Rynn a thoughtful sidelong glance. “You do want to do me,” he said after a moment, cracking a wolfish grin, slightly smug at having been right, “I thought the pheromones were just for Antha at first, but you’re still giving them off.”
“Strong ones,” the bartender again contributed, from a little further down the bar, “Virgin hormones, I’d stake my skin on it.”
“Butt out, Mercer,” Wyatt interjected sharply, and with the slightest tug at the corner of his lips the bartender turned and went to the other end of the bar. “He is right, though. That’s the tricky thing about us wolves, we can smell every single feeling that passes through you for even a split second. Desire and anger come off particularly strong, and repressed people always have their own distinct smell. But we grow up around it, we’re used to it. Besides, we’re beasts, we don’t care, so don’t get so defensive about it.” He laughed briefly, as if the boy's blatant embarrassment over everything was amusing. And really, it was. Wyatt hardly knew the meaning of the word, nor did the other wolves. It was a novelty to him, adorable and kind of sad in the way of a child's irrational fears. "You're not a straightforward kind of person, though," he said after a moment, curious and serious all at once as he leaned forward in his seat, his face inches from Rynn's as he stared intently into his eyes. "You and Antha don't have that in common." And then he grinned, in his crooked, wolfish way, endlessly charming. "It's kind of cute, but not manly at all."  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn’s mouth opened, ready for a snarky comeback—a vampire’s keen ears might have heard his heart skip a beat, then begin to race. He couldn’t think of anything to say—or rather, he could think of too much to say, and none of it appropriate to reveal to Wyatt. He shut his mouth again.

If Rynn had been a tad bit drunker, he might have found his tongue looser. With this in mind, he took a deep gulp out of his mug, nearly draining it, clunked it back on the counter, and tried again.

“It probably won’t make much sense to you, if you don’t get the idea of ‘marriage’. I’m not going to lie. You’re handsome, that’s undeniable, and you probably ********—“ The curse was unfamiliar, but somehow savory in his mouth, “—like an animal, and not in a bad way.”
He took a deep breath, attempting to steady the next sentence before it left his mouth.
“But I can’t—I mean—I don’t know how—and—“
Dammit.
Even in his head, it sounded stupid. He’d just been a witness to Courtland and Jack’s engagement a few minutes ago. Everyone had cheered, and laughed. But it wasn’t about everyone else, was it? It was about the family. The heirs. The bloodlines. The ghosts. Rynn found himself shaking his head, over and over again, as if he could clear the thoughts out by jostling them enough.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s really stupid. It’s a human thing. Whether the idea is enjoyable or not doesn’t matter. I have to keep the bloodline going. Everyone’s depending on me—all the ancestors—my brothers—and I won’t let them, they can’t have died, not for nothing. Cian—hell, who knows if the kids are even his—he’s Mayfair now, not Calais. Liesse isn’t even in her own body anymore, they won’t recognize her. I’m the last.”
He couldn’t describe the fear. It wouldn’t have made sense to a werewolf anyways.
But why did it matter? Wyatt wouldn’t get it anyways. And the worst thing that could happen was that the werewolf would merely think him a fool.
Rynn stared at his beer, his hands wrapped around the tankard’s base, the amber light reflecting back into his own eyes.
“If the Ulfric is your father, then maybe you know what it’s like to have…expectations…for what you’ll grow up to be. The greater your predecessor, the more you have to live up to. My family placed a lot of emphasis on ‘lineage’. The ancestors, they were the source of their—our—power. Are the source. I can hardly hear them anymore, just at night—and only sometimes—but they’re still there, buried beneath the rubble. They sing.”
Some nights, the music was beautiful, like a lullaby. Some nights, their awful siren shrieking kept him awake until morning light crept through the curtains.
The family had existed for centuries. The ancestors were comprised of countless generations. The older brothers had told him that once, when the library had still stood, there had been shelves upon shelves devoted to the map of their genealogy. So many names, now lost. Each of the ancestors had died to support the family. They had gone to the grave knowing that they would be honored, immortalized, that their death would serve a purpose. And here it was, ending with Rynn.
“The only thing I can do for them now is to pass on the blood,” he said, his voice terse.
“Which means, I can’t go around ******** whoever I want. We’re not like wolves, at all. Want has nothing to do with it, it’s not about ‘attraction’ or ‘desire’—sex isn’t a game. It’s to pass on our gift, our legacy.” Our burden.
He found that his body had become rigid, despite the loosening effects of alcohol—his spine and shoulders ached—but as he realized it, he tried to play it off: “Ha-ha-ha.”
Even to his own ears, the laugh sounded false, but that was how little the boy cared. He couldn’t bother to put in the effort to feign a genuine response right now.
“Anyways—“ he got to his feet, and only staggered a little bit. Rynn’s frame was slight, and it was no wonder that the alcohol went straight to his head. “—I’m flattered, I have to admit, but you’re right; I’m nothing like Antha. If that’s what you’re looking for, sorry. I’m no fun. That’s not what I’m here for. ‘Preciated the answers, though.”
The closest comparison he could make was that of an intern, shadowing a higher-up in their natural environment. But it would be wholly unprofessional to sleep with one of their clients, no matter how desirable the man was.
No, it was better not to get involved. Rynn always had his eye on the long game. And for Wyatt, the younger boy would be just another short-term one-night-stand. He couldn’t stand being made into that kind of cheap entertainment, then discarded and forgotten like one of Cian’s old ******** seen how quickly they were exchanged, and how little they mattered.

Cian, dragged along to the jukebox, leaned over Antha’s shoulders as she flipped through their options. He couldn't help himself--as the pages turned, he reached out and tapped, 'Ain't No Rest for the Wicked'.
It was funny how his protective instincts had made themselves known so abruptly over the past few months. He’d never given two shits about Rynn’s well-being, he never had thought about the possibility of children before, he’d never figured any of it would matter to him.
But now, one eye on Rynn’s unsteady gait, he couldn’t help but feel a vague sense of unease. ‘Worry’, he supposed.
Rynn had always been such an a*****e in his own house that Cian could never imagine him in a situation where he was the one who needed protection. He had to wonder now how much of that had been a facade, and how much had been Rynn’s genuine, childish whim.
He was handling his first night drunk better than Cian had, anyways.
(And with a lot more reserve. Cian had finished off his first encounter with hard liquor by dragging his date into a closet and ******** her up against the coats until they both passed out. Neither of them had regretted it too much.)
“Think we ought to take him home?” he murmured into Antha’s ear. She knew who he was talking about, if she was paying attention. “I don’t think he’ll be able to stand much longer. Either that, or we ought to shove him in the car to sober up for a bit. I know Courtland and Jackie-boy are still most likely in the mood to celebrate—it’d be a shame to end the evening here.”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

For several minutes, Wyatt sat laughing to himself like he just couldn’t help it, trying to drown his voice in a pint of beer. “You take yourself so, so seriously,” he said finally, laughing amusedly and shaking his head. “No, I don’t understand. But I think that’s more to do with you than being a ‘human thing’. I know enough humans to know that. Hell, even I’m at least half human. Because all of that goes against human nature. Sex is just part of being alive. Eventually, yeah, we all have to breed and continue our lines, but what harm is there in enjoying it until the time comes? Don’t worry, I won’t push you. But more importantly---” His eyes flashed, his smile briefly hardening as his voice dropped and he said quietly so that no one else would hear, yanking Rynn back into his seat, “You do realize your fatal mistake just now, don’t you?” No, probably not. He seemed considerably drunk and had kept talking for a while afterwards. “Not everyone in here is a wolf, you know. Some of these people are just humans, leeching onto the excitement of something otherworldly. Humans who all just heard Antha Mayfair’s brother-in-law doubt the paternity of her children, and I doubt they’ll spare a second thought taking that to the gossip columns.”
Taking yet another beer from the bartender, he cast a slow, considering gaze around the bar, several sets of watching eyes flinching away from his. “The rumor mill isn’t that hard to understand. The Mayfairs have to keep everything within themselves, in the family, because everybody loves to jump on Mayfair scandal, to try to bring them down. I’ll be shocked if this isn’t all over the city tomorrow, and those kids will have to deal with it for years, that their uncle thinks they’re bastards. Not to mention Antha…ooooh, she’s going to kill you. She’s ******** sensitive to that kind of thing. Haven’t you ever heard of her oath?” He tapped the bar, bringing a wary gaze from Harlan before he waved it away and the bartender set another drink in front of Rynn. “Drink up. There’s no taking it back now, and you have to decide if you’re going to warn her now or let her find out later. Either way, you’re gonna’ want to be drunk.”
Wyatt was right, of course. Two such eavesdroppers had already slipped out of the bar, both racing to be the first to the newspapers to tell the story and claim a reward for it. Lawrence would read it freshly printed at dawn and choke on his coffee, eyes wide and mouth agape. Julien would see it over the family breakfast and be rendered mute with rage, passing it silently over to Antha and everyone else would read it from her mind and go still, waiting for her to rain down the apocalypse on their house. None of them would blame her. The whole city was going to be talking about what might as well have been concrete proof that the Mayfair heirs were bastards, and Vanessa and Sebastien would at least slightly resent Rynn for it for the rest of their lives.
But at the moment, at least, Antha was across the bar and paying no attention to her brother-in-law. She was casting Cian a roll of her eyes over her shoulder, a taunting smirk spreading across her lips. “You’re not much better than Courtland,” she purred, slamming her hand down on the glass case until the current 80’s pop hit wavered and scratched and stopped, the next song flaring into life, and she grinned like the devil himself, pleased with her work.
“Rynn will be fine,” she assured him lowly, casting the boy a fleeting glance, “Even if we have to drag him home unconscious. Nothing some sleep and Tori’s hangover elixir won’t fix. Give him the chance to loosen up a little.” Lord knows he needed it. She didn’t think she’d met someone as tightly wound since Lawrence had come back from Harvard.
Her thoughts, as well as her fingers plucking at the front of his shirt, drawing him closer, were interrupted by the front door sliding open with a bit of panache. More than a few heads turned, watching the tall, slender figure stride in on sleek boots, poured into leather pants with a stylish sweater on his thin torso, walking in time to the music. He paused halfway into the bar, smirking with self-satisfaction and running a practiced hand back through his silken, vivid curls. It was only then, when he had the entire bar enraptured and was confident in his impressive entrance, that a childish grin broke out on his face and he outright ran at Antha, grabbing her hands excitedly in his as he laughed and demanded, “Evie, did you see? Wasn’t I cool?”
Antha smiled affectionately, smoothing back her twin’s hair. “Pierce could never hope to compete.”
The boy beamed, admitting with a wry grin, “Let’s not tell him. I might have stolen his clothes…”
“We’ll have to get you your own. Nikki and Court’s castoffs don’t do you justice.”
“Oh don’t worry, I’ve already taken to the internet. I’ll be getting boxes for weeks.” He gave a little laugh, idly ruffling his hair. “But anyways, did I miss the revelries? I want to get in on this before our wise and cautious elders lock them in separate insane asylums, never to be seen again.”
The twins both glanced across the bar where Courtland and Jack, unabashedly drunk, were dancing wildly on tabletops, sloshing liquor in a wide circle around them. “I think you’ve got time.”
Another of those little, easy laughs, crossing his arms and just watching them for a few moments with equal affection and amusement. “I envy them. Not a care in the world.”
That brought a thoughtful hum from Antha, casting Alistair a narrowed sidelong glance. She seemed to ponder her words for a moment, finally saying them with care. “You did well, mon cher. Don’t doubt yourself on that count. You weighed the risk and you removed those under your protection from danger.”
Alistair gave a low cluck of his tongue, returning his sister’s gaze with a rueful glance. “But I didn’t remove the threat. Leaders get rid of the danger. You would have eliminated the threat.”
“I’ve been doing this professionally for nearly a decade, Airi. No matter how you’ve watched it, all you’ve seen and heard, you are not me and it will take time to get the hang of it.”
“I don’t have time,” Alistair reminded her sharply, the tone directed mostly at himself, “I have little more than a month to learn to be King Regent, to make this city fear me enough that they don’t rise up in revolt against us.”
Finally, Antha could only sigh in exasperation, sliding an arm around Alistair’s shoulders and pulling him towards her so that his head fell on her shoulder. “You worry too much, baby brother. You won’t be alone, we have allies to keep my kingdom secure. You have a whole family behind you, and two vampire covens. And tomorrow we’ll deal with this damned demon, and we’ll figure out what’s happened to Dorian, and we’ll bargain with the enmortal, and soon you’ll be able to handle it on your own. But tonight, mon cher, it’s a party.”
Illustrating her point, Courtland began screaming from across the bar, drunk and exhuberant. “Airiiiiii~! Hey, hey, hey!” He toppled off the table, yanking hard on Jack’s hand and clamoring over to his cousins. “Alistair, we’re getting married!”
“So I heard,” the boy laughed, affectionately kissing his cousin’s cheeks, “Congratulations. I mean, the adults are going to kill you first, but congratulations.”
“Ah, let them try,” Courtland said easily, brushing the concern aside, “More importantly, Rynn gets no marzipan. No marzipan!” Quietly, Antha and Jack exchanged a curious look and then simultaneously shrugged, not bothering to question what he meant. “But really, Evie,” he continued, giving his best effort at being serious despite his slightly slurred speech, “I know he’s a Calais first, he’s the heir almighty and all that but don’t you think…I mean seriously, don’t you think he should be one of us? Cian is.” Lovingly, he squeezed his arms tight around his cousin-in-law, pouting. “I know you told us to cut him some slack but we’re not that kind of family, Antha. Either you’re with us or you’re not, and Rynn keeps insisting on…not.”
Exasperated, Antha groaned, leaning back against the jukebox and reaching out to flick Courtland in the forehead. “Must we really discuss this now?”
“You never want to talk about it,” Courtland countered, his face still marred with a pout, “And damn it, it’s my engagement night, I don’t want to have to deal with the disappointment of Rynn spurning us.”
Finally, Antha could only sigh, casting a glance around herself before her gaze landed on Alistair and he began pleasantly, as natural as could be, “Were you leaving, Evie?”
As Courtland made a screech of protest, eyes big and pleading, Antha answered thoughtfully, “Perhaps. I think Rynn might be done for, and---” Her eyes flickered at the clock nestled on the furthest wall, bringing a little groan from her lips, “---god, it’s nearly four in the morning.”
“So?” Courtland demanded, “We’ve stayed out for days before! Days! Entire drunken, drugged bundles of days!”
“I will be awakened by screaming infants in roughly two hours, Courtland,” she reminded him exhaustedly, “Infants that will not be soothed until I have spent hours assuring them that I am at their complete and utter mercy, their every beck and call, until it’s nap time and it starts all over again.”
Courtland rolled his eyes, saying hastily, “They’re babies. How hard can it be to make them sleep?”
Before he had even finished, Alistair and Jack had both taken wide steps back, watching the distinct twitch on her face before she seized Cian’s arm, turning to look at him with frightful severity. “Cian, you’d better remember that word for word, because god help you if you don’t throw it back in his face one day.”
(Not that there was any chance of anyone letting it go. In six months he would be in the nursery at dawn, sobbing helplessly over Adair’s cradle and begging him desperately to just go back to sleep---“I don’t understand, what do you want? What else could you possibly want?! ”---while Alistair and Jack both hovered over his shoulders, reminding him with taunting grins that it was ‘just a baby, how hard could it be?’)
Alistair laughed, sealing a hand over Courtland’s mouth as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Poor Wyatt, his pride must be terribly hurt tonight. Maybe I should go comfort him?”
“How kind of you,” his sister murmured meanwhile, a smirk spreading across her lips, “How utterly kind and selfless.”
His usual smile going a little more conspiratorial, the boy put spread his hand across his chest and replied humbly, “I live to serve.”
In reality, his reasons were less selfish than he pretended. Of course he did fully intend on seducing Wyatt---not that there was much effort in that, the wolf had been watching him with big, intent eyes since he’d entered---but first he went to Rynn, with his usual carefree smile, and said in his cheery tone, “You know, it was the strangest thing, I passed a girl on my way in running to sell a story to the newspaper about something you said. I’m sure it was a misunderstanding---a terrible, heartless misunderstanding---” He said it almost like he believed it, like Rynn could deny it and he wouldn’t ever question him. “---but regardless, even hearsay can lead to ruin. I was going to warn Antha, but then I thought the only way anyone in the family might ever forgive you is if you told her yourself.” He smiled just a little more sweetly, looking for all the world like he was simply trading pleasantries, before softly patting Rynn’s shoulder and then turning pointedly towards Wyatt, shifting effortlessly into flirtation. The werewolf’s eyes narrowed, a surprised, pleased grin sliding across his face to behold the pretty little creature turning the force of all that charm on him. “Now…I don’t think we’ve been introduced. Alistair Mayfair.”
Meanwhile, he was watching his sister in his peripheral vision. She had kicked Courtland and claimed Cian and was now inching towards the door, laughing at something or another. He could barely make out Courtland’s drunken whine of, “You can’t take Cian, you just can’t! I need him, leave him!” before she hopped lithely onto her husband’s back, clinging possessively onto his shoulders with a sharp look at her cousin.
He was really hoping he didn’t have to be the one to tell her of the impending crisis. She actually seemed to be having fun.
As he reached to pick up the drink he’d ordered, he was suddenly aware of someone running past him. Not a real person, with the weight and warmth of a body, and not a ghost. A shade, a slip through time that brought with it the sudden flashing of colored lights and a distant roar of cheering and thunderous applause. Wide-eyed, Alistair looked towards the sound and was more than a little surprised to find the stage against the back wall inhabited, and the pretty boy from Courtland’s dream standing on it with microphone familiarly in hand, dressed not unlike himself in leather pants and an oversized ripped sweater, a black rosary hanging around his neck. No less surprising was the distinct figure of Adair near the boy---Ciel, he knew it as innately as Courtland had, so named for the color of his piercing icy-pale blue eyes---with his mismatched eyes and cloud of white-blonde hair, a guitar clasped in his hands, trying to yell something over the adamant crowd to his cousin. And then, most startlingly of all, the teenaged twins in the front row, Sebastien calm and observant in the wild crowd with his hands in the pocket of his sleek leather jacket, Vanessa beside him bouncing adamantly and waving her arms, giggling and then blowing dramatic kisses at Ciel. Briefly, for the space of maybe two heartbeats, the blank mask of his lovely face---and truly, he was the prettiest boy Alistair had ever seen, even prettier than himself, absolutely cherubic---broke, a crooked, affectionate smile quietly touching his shapely lips as he looked down at her, his head tilting forward and a lock of glossy curls sliding over one kohl-rimmed eye, chocolate-colored with gleaming threads of red and gold all at the same time.
Despite the anticipation of the crowd coming to the boiling point, Adair striking a few chords to test them, the drummer doing a quick round, girls in the crowd screaming wildly for Ciel to his very usual utter indifference, Sebastien turned. It was idle at first, a half turn as his gaze swept the room like someone looking for the source of a sudden breeze, curious and innocent. And then, surely but shockingly, his gaze landed on Alistair and locked. He really did have his mother’s eyes---the same shape and hue like Vanessa, flecked with gold now that he was nearly grown, but where she had such bright, cheerful, innocent eyes, Bastien’s eyes were really and truly Antha’s to the very core. They were as sharp as hers, as piercing, as brimming with keen intelligence and constantly shifting with his every illusive thought, barely veiling the massive, complex world of his mind. It was those eyes more than anything, their sudden flicker of recognition, that made Alistair certain his nephew was looking back at him and actually seeing him, through space and time.
And then he did the neatest little magic trick. One moment he was nearly Rynn’s doppelganger, his features only a little softer and his eyes his mother’s, and then suddenly he gave a small, vaguely amused little smile and for a moment he was Cian. Not perfectly, not a little doppelganger, but his features shifted enough with the expression that the resemblance was striking.
The boy looked down briefly, taking up the chain of a gold pendant strung around his neck in his nimble fingers so that it turned in the air where Alistair could see it. A new trinket rather than an heirloom, the first side branded beautifully with the Mayfair family crest of roses, and then it turned and there was the Calais crest on the other side, as excellently well-crafted as the first. “Do you think the Lancasters and the Yorks lived happily ever after in the end, Uncle Airi?” he asked softly, thoughtfully---he even spoke like his mother, that self-assured velvet purr---the noise of the band and the crowd melting to silence around him.
Alistair didn’t answer. He didn’t think he was actually supposed to. Instead he just stared wide-eyed at the boy, his regal bearing and easy confidence, and very suddenly he realized exactly why Antha had only ever referred to her son as her successor. Vanessa was the family heiress of course, the Designee of the Legacy, perfectly powerful in her own right, but she was just a teenage girl, dancing and laughing and soaking up the world and that was all, no ambition and no grandeur. She was an heiress, but their mother had been the self-made queen of the city and now Sebastien was king, all on his own, secure and singular on the throne by his own two hands.
The world shifted and Sebastien was gone, along with the band and the crowd and the flickering lights, and Wyatt was only two syllables further along than when he’d vanished into the void of time. Alistair, dazed but not particularly shaken at the inexplicably vivid premonition---no, he would call it what it was, a goddamned hole in the fabric of time---barely even noticed it himself when he murmured affectionately, “That kid is going to put us all to shame…” He was more powerful than Courtland or Nicolae or any of the other cousins or Rynn. Only Alistair could have matched him, and only Antha was more powerful.
But the really important question---and his cousins would all agree with him on this---remained unanswered: Who the hell was Ciel?  

[Okimiyage]

For a second, Rynn couldn’t help but feel a flash of annoyance. He held his tongue, however, at least until he had started on the next proffered drink.

“Is that what you’re worried about? Really?”

He set the glass down hard, not quite enough to call a slam, but definitely giving away his state of mind.

“Maybe Antha’s ego can’t take the ribbing from a couple of gossip rags, but if it really matters that much: take a paternity test.”
Rynn shrugged, being purposefully callous. Weren’t Mayfairs supposed to be used to being at the center of scandal? What was the big deal?
“Wouldn’t it simply give the rumor credibility if she did kill me, anyways?…People don’t get pissed enough to off their brother-in-law over mere speculation.”
His eyes flicked sideways to Wyatt, and he tilted his head.
“Besides, with their records? I’m surprised Cian’s bedpost didn’t fall apart before he was twenty, for all the notches carved in it—and if I’ve picked up anything about Antha’s checkered past, it sounds like she had more than a fair share of casual flings. You can bet your a** that I’m not the only one who’s wondered.”

He laughed—the noise had a hard and brilliant tone, ringing over the buzz of the crowd around them— and drank again.

“I’m just the only one stupid enough to say it out loud, I s’pose.”
With that, Rynn’s ramrod-straight posture slumped. He set his chin atop crossed arms and stared moodily into the amber dregs remaining at the bottom of his glass.
Cian wouldn’t care, even if it was true. He was head over heels for Antha. He’d probably be glad, in fact, if they were—that meant they didn’t get his share of the family obligations. The Calais curse.
And if they did have Calais blood running through their veins, well.
There would be evidence.
The ancestors didn’t like to be forgotten. Even if the catacombs beneath had collapsed, and the house itself lay abandoned, the bodies were still there, carefully arranged at crucial points beneath the enormous, living sigil which was the ancient hedge maze. It would be years before the spirits became so weakened as to withdraw into dormancy.
To be honest, Rynn could very nearly pity them for it.

But he didn’t have time to brood for very long, as the door behind them opened, and heads turned to stare as if pulled by strings.

Cian, at the jukebox, swung around as the bar went abruptly hushed, and gave a low whistle when he saw what was going on behind him. “Well, whaddaya know.”
Leaning in towards his wife’s ear: “The girls in this town are going to tear him apart,” he murmured to Antha. “At least, assuming they can get him out of his pants. Did he paint those on?”
Cian had to give him credit, Alistair already had the kind of flair that most 16-year-olds could only dream of. Hell, most movie stars didn’t exude charisma like that boy could.

At least, until he got within range of his sister, and then totally relapsed. Cian burst out laughing; he couldn’t contain himself. “A little advice, Alistair? Never admit that you know it when you look cool. Totally kills it.”
Courtland scampered over as soon as he noticed Alistair’s presence through the haze of inebriation, though, and quickly distracted them all from the faux-pas. Cian smiled when he heard his suggestion, a wry little grin that flickered over his lips and then vanished. “Don’t rush him, Court—Rynn will come around when he’s ready. He just needs time. Don’t remember what it’s like to be sixteen, stubborn as ********, and constantly high on your own sense of self-importance? Now take that and turn it up to eleven. That’s basically my little brother.” Patting Courtland reassuringly on the back, he continued, “Anyways, tonight isn’t about him. This is supposed to be about you—incredibly drunk—and your eternal devotion—loudly declared—etched on the memories of all present so we can tease you about it for the rest of your life. Enjoy the moment.”

Rynn was just about to call for another drink when he felt Alistair approach. He didn’t have to look around—the Mayfair boy radiated a very distinct sense of self in the same way that Antha did.
“Hello, Alistair.” he said, before he even turned around. Then, glancing over his shoulder, he started. Admittedly, he didn’t know the other boy that well, but well enough to notice something off about the smile. It didn’t reach his eyes. Something was up. Rynn tensed instinctively; luckily, Alistair didn’t hold him in suspense for long.
Weirdly enough, Rynn felt more disappointed—ashamed, even—than anything. At first.
Slowly, though, the shame metamorphosed into frustration, even anger. And when he opened his mouth, that was what came out.
“Is that why you came over to talk to me?” he demanded, in a low, venomous hiss. “You just wanted to chastise me like I’m your ******** kid? Fine, fantastic. I get it, I ******** up. Why is it such a big deal? Why the hell would a newspaper care what I say? Like anyone thinks that I know jack s**t about Antha’s sex life? I don’t care about who she, or Cian, chooses to ********, I just know that they both had their pick of this whole goddamn city, and the wedding happened awfully quick. Put two and two together. I know I’m not the only one who’s thought about it, but there’s no goddamn evidence either way, so why waste time wondering?”
Drunk as he might be, at least Rynn had the sense to keep his voice down. It felt right to say, though—the words flowed all the more quickly as he continued, until his stream of consciousness became a sibilant torrent, until there was nothing to do but slam back the remainder of his drink and glare.
“I’ll ******** talk to her, but not here, not now. If she’s going to kill me, she’ll want to do it where there aren’t any witnesses, right?”
Rynn got to his feet, and only staggered a little bit. Fishing around in the breastpocket of his jacket, he found a wallet, and threw down the first bill that he pulled out—a fifty—at the bartender’s tip jar.
His intent had been to stalk past Alistair, grab Antha, and drag her off to wherever he needed to in order to have a second alone. But unexpectedly, as he shouldered past the red-headed boy, Rynn found himself wheeling around, grabbing the other’s shoulder to steady himself. “Look,” he started off, and the word slurred, and he had to repeat it again. “Look. Here’s the thing—why does it matter? Even if they weren’t, they have a mom, and a dad, that love the <********> out of them. They’re gonna grow up—grow up in a home. Like, a nice home. With a family, a whole ******** clan that’s gonna give ‘em everything that they—they could ever need. The lineage doesn’t matter, they’re not goddamn horses. If they aren’t Calais, hell, great—they dodged a ******** bullet. They don’t have to deal with all the bullshit that comes along with it. But if there’s any question of paternity, ******** it—let’s drop ‘em in the maze and see whether the ancestors eat ‘em or embrace ‘em.” Rynn realized at that point he was still holding on to Alistair’s shoulder, and quickly dropped his hand; his ensuing step backwards was too unsteady to be planned, but was either that or pitch forward and headbutt Alistair. Or kiss him. And Rynn quickly wiped that thought out of his mind, and hoped to hell that the other witches hadn’t been paying attention.
Then, unsteadily, he headed for Antha and enacted the original plan. Scooting up between her and Cian, he wormed his hand in-between them and seized her arm. “WE SHOULD TALK.” he announced, with unnecessary volume. Rynn didn’t wait for her to respond; just started tugging as hard as he could (not very) towards the door.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Alistair said nothing at first, only smiling as pleasantly as ever and listening to Rynn rant. But when he dropped his hand from his shoulder and went to move away, he caught the boy fluidly around the waist with one arm, holding him gently back. Still smiling, his voice calm and quiet, he said so that no one but Rynn would hear, “Vanessa and Sebastien are, without question, Cian’s children. Vittorio administered the paternity test as soon as they were born. Not that it matters to the rest of the world, they’ll always suspect that it was forged or rigged. But Antha didn’t want a shred of doubt, because…” He hesitated for the span of several seconds, blowing air through his lips like he couldn’t stand to say the words that flashed with distant, painful horror in his darkened eyes. “Because when you grow up in an attic for nine years, tortured physically, emotionally, and psychologically all because your mother lied about your paternity…it matters a lot.” He himself had had, as their legal father put it, the grace to wither away and die quickly under the poison of their mother’s lies. But he had watched everything---nine years of Antha, unnaturally small and sickly, curled up in a corner of the attic, Leon drunk and screaming about her lying b***h of a mother, yanking on her hair while the child hysterically sobbed out apologies for a matter in which she’d had even less choice than he had. Nine years of perpetual starvation, of lungs that had never encountered fresh air. Nine years of being chained to a rusty radiator in the dark when he was particularly angry, of stinging cheeks and pulled hair, until finally even Alistair couldn’t provide the slightest sense of comfort and she had snapped completely. All because their mother, carrying another man’s children, had convinced Leon they were his and tricked him into marrying her. It was literally the last thing in the entire goddamn world Antha would ever do, whether Cian minded or not.
“But besides all that---” The boy gave another little sigh, sliding his arm back from around Rynn’s waist and clapping his hands down on his shoulders, staring very seriously---but gently, he was always strangely gentle in everything---into his eyes. “It’s a hard world for our kind out there, Rynn, and it’s about to get a whole lot harder. The only way we get through it is by sticking together, because we’re family. Turning on Antha and Cian is one thing, but our infant niece and nephew? They’re helpless, Rynn. They are completely vulnerable and they depend on us utterly to protect them, and no matter what you meant, you just sold them out.” Another sigh, and with this one all of the fire drained back out of him, leaving him again as calm as ever, moving his hands up to Rynn’s cheeks. “Antha won’t kill you, just like she’d never actually kill Courtland. Seriously, you tried to kill her and she actually went out of her way not to have to fight you. The only consequence of your actions is that you’ve hurt her. If you don’t care, then no, it’s not a big deal. But…I think you do.” When he smiled then, there was something relentlessly loving and affectionate about it. Like he trusted utterly that deep down---deep, deep down---Rynn was actually an okay person and loved them like they loved him. Alistair was nothing if not a creature of absolute faith.
Finally, he planted an unabashed kiss on Rynn’s forehead, whispering with a teasing edge, “And for the record, you can accidentally kiss me any time. I won't mind.”

Across the bar, caught between the jukebox and Cian, Antha was still laughing. “You’ve got Airi all wrong, darling. He doesn’t care about being cool, he’s just pleased with himself that he can. It’s like learning how to make fire with rocks---more or less pointless, but it’s nice to know you can.” Casting her little brother a glance, batting his eyelashes at everyone and grinning like a cat with cream, the girl gave another laugh and turned back to the electric lights of the jukebox, pressing buttons and then hitting the glass until the record turned over, switching for the next one. “Ah, nothing works in this damned place. You know, the first time I came here, the lock on the cellar door jammed and Wyatt and I got stuck in there all night.” She paused, turning to look thoughtfully back at Cian with feigned innocence in her big eyes, only the vaguest suggestive glimmer buried beneath the farce. “Come to think of it, darling, we should really check on that lock.”
Antha had dragged her husband all of three feet towards the cellar before Rynn appeared like a staggering jack-in-the-box, cutting clumsily between them and announcing loudly that they needed to talk. A little taken aback, Antha could only blink at him in rapid succession, glancing wildly back over her shoulder at Cian as she was pulled towards the door. Courtland and Jack, watching the front door clang shut behind them, pursed their lips and both leaned against either of Cian’s shoulders, the former murmuring suspiciously, “What do you think that’s about?”
Jack, hmm’ing to himself, said lowly and certainly, “Dramatic, drunken declaration of love or war. Hard to say which, with Rynn.”
“Neither, actually,” Alistair sighed, sliding up next to Courtland and dropping his chin on his shoulder with a sigh. “Someone heard him questioning if Vanessa and Sebastien were actually Cian’s and ran off to the papers.”
Simultaneously, Jack and Courtland paled, turning rapidly to look at Alistair in alarm. When he only gave a rueful little smile to confirm it, they both groaned, Jack murmuring thinly, “Oh god, Rynn, no.”
Courtland, on the other hand, sparked with irritation, stamping his foot and hissing, “I told her she should have publicly released that damned paternity test. What good does it do anyone filed away in some drawer at the hospital?”
“No one would trust it anyway,” Alistair sighed, shaking his head, “We could have it done a thousand times in sterile conditions and they would still assume we found some way to tamper with the results.”
“Then I don’t even know why she had it done,” Courtland said, throwing his hands up in defeat, “Taking vampires out of the equation, those kids only could have been Cian’s or, by a very slim margin, mine. And Antha and I can only make death and monstrosities together, we knew for certain they weren’t mine the moment they weren’t deformed beyond recognition.”
“It was important to her,” Alistair reminded him firmly, “Having the hard evidence in her hands. It’s important to me, and it should be to you. The last generation ******** all of us over with murky paternity, the least we can do for the next generation is give them concrete proof.”
With that, Courtland relinquished his irritation, trading it for a heavy sigh and a hand idly ruffling his hair. “On the bright side, Dorian will be pleased. We all know exactly who’s going to jump on this story and never let it go until Antha pries it from his cold, dead hands. And Dorian’s been wanting him dead for years.”

While her cousins were inside speculating on the fate of a spurned reporter, Antha was still blinking curiously at Rynn outside, eyes narrowed and head tilted to the side as she watched him. “What’s wrong, are Courtland and Jack rubbing off on you? Don’t tell me they slipped you something?” she groaned, only less than half joking, taking his face in her hands and leaning very close to inspect his eyes, “I warned them I would burn all their manga if they drugged you, the shameless beasts.” She gave a half-laugh, judging by his pupils that he hadn’t been drugged. “I suppose their yaoi is safe for now, then. So what’s the matter? Wyatt? He’s harmless, scout’s honor. Or did he tell you something you’d rather not hear?” But rather than relieved, staring into his eyes as she spoke, her teasing smile finally melted into quiet concern. “Rynn…” she began slowly, seriously, his face held firm between her fingers on his cheeks, “What’s the matter?”  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn blanched under Alistair’s kiss, blood draining from his cheeks. He jerked back as though the other boy’s lips were a flaming hot brand, and half-raised a hand as though prepared to scrub at the spot—then stopped, and a pained look flashed over his face, there and gone again in a fraction of a second. What was the point? To Alistair, the kiss was just a joke. It would only be all the more humorous if Rynn was to give his audience the reaction that they were looking for.
He shook his head twice, hard, as if to clear away fog that encircled it, and lowered his arm.
Then he turned, and left in search of Antha. No point in arguing any longer. Alistair would always take her side, regardless of logic, because they were twins. Rynn understood that kind of devotion—you could even say that he respected it.

On the floor, his hands cupped around Antha’s waist like the stem of a wine-glass, Cian smiled and leaned in against his young wife’s shoulder, inhaling the perfume made fragrant by her body. “Pointless? Oh, don’t say that. After all, how would I have ever caught your eye without perfecting the art of the dramatic entrance?”
When you came from a staggeringly pretty family like that of most witches, developing your style early on was important. It was similar to the way that the youngest birds had to develop the loudest voices to compete against their siblings for food. Except that, in this world, the voice was ‘glamour’, and your bread & butter was your reputation.
Although Cian had never given a damn about his, good or bad. Which was one of the reasons that it didn’t take much prompting to lead him away from the group—in fact, if Antha had listened closely, beneath the busted jukebox’s blare, she might have heard a faint, delighted ‘wheeee~’ from behind her.
Cian could’ve strangled Rynn for intercepting the two of them, but he didn’t have a chance before Rynn had seized hold of Antha’s wrists and started hauling.

Outside, Rynn started to lean towards a bench (placed conveniently next to a garbage bin, for the overly inebriated) but seemed to change his mind at the last minute, and swung around like a swaying spinning top to seize both of Antha’s hands. He looked at her for one long, earnest moment, the lights of the bar catching flecks of gold in her eyes, making her hair glow, turning the mass of curls into a beautiful, bloody halo.

“I ******** it up.” he said, quietly. It was almost too softly spoken to hear.

Rynn seemed determined to experience all the stages of extreme drunkenness tonight. First elation, then anger, and finally…
His brows knit, and he took a deep breath.

“Y’know something? Even when I’m trying—even when I really, really wanna do something, like impress you, or your friends, or just—avoid embarrassing all of you— somehow I always end up <******** it up.” He wanted to look anywhere except at her face—he didn’t want to see the disappointment— and so he raised his chin and stared resolutely at the glowing neon sign above them. His eyes had started stinging, and he didn’t want her to see them wet.
Crying was for girls, and little kids, and the dead.

He leaned back a little too far, and staggered a step, but he didn’t let go of Antha’s hands. In fact, if anything, his grip tightened.

After a moment, Rynn swallowed hard, and the knot in his throat seemed to ease somewhat. His voice, when he spoke, was a little hesitant, a little low with shame, a little hoarse with the effort of suppressing emotion.
“I did something really stupid, and everyone says that you’re gonna hate me for it.
I…said something in the bar, just in passing, and I guess someone was eaves-dropping. Alistair said they’ve already probably gone to the papers with it. Dunno why anyone would take anything that I said seriously enough to report, but…gossip rags must be pretty desperate, in this town.”
Not that Rynn knew anything about how the media. The closest he’d ever gotten to it was glancing at the newspapers that Aleric had occasionally asked Cian to bring home for him, and the idea of a ’society column’ was absolutely alien to him.
Nevertheless, apparently it was important to Antha.
“I wanted to talk to you about it in the car, but…Wyatt says you’ll probably kill me, so I think I have a higher chance of survival here, when you’re not driving.”
It was a weak smile, but it was an effort.
“So…the article you’re probably going to see tomorrow in the paper is going to look like this.”
And for that, he let go of her hands, for nothing else so that he could illustrate the idea of headlines and then follow a cupped hand along the invisible newspaper in the manner of laying out text.
“Da-Da-DUUHHH: Breaking news! New Mayfair babies’ pattern—paternity called into question! All caps: WHO’S THE FATHER? Something, something, something…Source? Some a*****e I overheard in a bar says ‘if’! Blah blah blah, speculation, etc.”
He lowered his hand and dropped his head into it—partially to hide his laugh, which might have been considered in poor taste, but also to covertly wipe his eyes.
“I’m sorry, it’s not funny. But it’s also—“ he lowered his hands, stuck them in his pockets so as to resist the urge to fiddle with something. “…I don’t know.”
Rynn risked a quick glance upwards, just to check her expression, and then dropped his head even further. “…Alistair thinks it’ll probably haunt them—Vanessa and Sebastien—for years to come. I can’t take it back now that it’s out there, but…believe me, I’ll write in to whatever paper puts it in print. I’ll make whatever claims I have to so that they have to withdraw it, and issue an apology. And—I’m sorry, too. For saying it.”
He kicked his feet against the concrete, anything to avoid having to look up. And then a thought seemed to strike him, and without thinking, he met her eye. “A-anyways! The people who’ll ever hold it against the ********> them.” His voice had renewed passion; he continued: “It’s not important where they come from. They’re yours. Everyone in the family is going to love them just as much for that reason alone. Even Cian…say whatever else you want about him, but he’s not petty—and he’s going to give those kids the world, and—for your sake, too. I’ll hold him to it.” As Rynn had spoken, his cheeks had grown steadily redder and redder, until his face had gone a somewhat worrying shade of scarlet.
“So…don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of everything. Just don’t—freak out if you hear anything.”
He hiccuped once, before Rynn realized that the rising nausea in his stomach wasn’t just nerves.

He was going to puke.

Inside, Cian reluctantly rejoined the cousins, sighing, and collapsed against Courtland, on the other side of Alistair. “Comfort me. Mon amour has been absconded with, into the cold and unforgiving night, by a heartless knave whom I once named ‘brother’—“
The melodrama was abruptly ended, though, as Cian’s ears caught up with his brain and the contents of the previous conversation actually registered.
“Wait, he said what?” Cian demanded. Then, with a hiss, he swung around and glared at the door through which Antha and Rynn had exited. “That drunk little idiot.” Glancing back at the group, he asked. “What do you think, guys? Ten, fifteen minutes? Then we go and peel Rynn pâté off the sidewalk? Or should we give her a little longer? I could do with another drink if I’m going to have to wake up to this fiasco in the morning.”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha said nothing for the longest time. Probably a minute, but that was enough in silence to feel like an eternity. Alistair, huddled with Courtland and Jack at the grimy window peering out at the figures partially obscured in darkness, looked in his sister’s eyes and for a moment---just one split second---he saw all the distance between her and Rynn that had closed so steadily and quietly that no one had even noticed, and he saw her waver. He saw the hurt in her eyes, the betrayal, and he saw the urge to rebound back across that distance, further than ever, until they were total strangers again. Which was colder than enemies, he thought.
And then, quietly, Antha sighed and took a step forward, cupping Rynn’s chin in one hand and taking a little vial out of her pocket with the other, flicking open the cap and pouring about half of it through Rynn’s lips. “It’s Vittorio’s mixture,” she murmured, as if the world had just sucker-punched her and she was utterly exhausted, laying a gentle hand across the top of his head, “It’ll settle the liquor, just give it a few moments.” She set him down on the bench as gently as possible, dropping down beside him with a heavy sigh. His performance had been...well, a little confusing honestly, but she'd gleaned the specifics from Alistair in the moments since. “Sometimes, Rynn, I think you're so completely focused on yourself---your own image of yourself, anyway---and your ruined legacy that you don't see anything past it. You're so intent on the past that I'm afraid you haven't actually thought about the future.” It was sad, really. Cian had moved on, and Liesse, but Rynn was still in constant mourning for the Calais legacy with no hope of ever getting it back. Not the way it was at least, which was probably for the best. “Listen to me,” she said then, firmly but without anger, “You’re not the first drunken idiot to say something stupid in this family. Hell, Courtland once blurted out to an entire bar that I was sleeping with Nicolae. I never thought I'd get that one under control before it leaked to the papers, I could have killed the damned fool. And I don't think you actually meant any harm---for once, amazingly, I think you're actually sorry for your mistake. But for this...if you want me to forgive you, you’re going to have to do something for me. When you get home, I want you to go into the nursery and I want you to look at Vanessa and Sebastien---your brother’s children, blood of your blood, I’ll show you the ******** DNA test if you really, truly don’t believe me---and I want you to realize that you’re their family, they’re going to love you, and you have a duty to them as their uncle. You talk and talk about how Cian loves them, how he's going to take care of them---no one's ever questioned that in the slightest, and whether or not he'd love them if they weren't his by blood isn't even an issue, because they are---but have you even stopped for a moment to actually consider the fact that they're your family, too? You can shun the rest of us all you want, but you can't escape Vanessa and Sebastien, they have your same blood running in their veins. Have you realized that? That they're Calais, they have it in their blood and they're keenly aware of it? You obsess over the future of the Calais legacy but right now, at this moment, Vanessa and Sebastien are the only future for the Calais legacy. Not for the old ways, that is dead and no one is going to let it come back, but you have a little fight left in you yet, you have the chance to build something out of the ruins and they're the only way forward you've got. Hell, even without you, they're not content to let half of their heritage smoulder and die in disgrace. And I want you to remember how close you just came to losing their trust before they could utter their first words. Forget what interest the rest of the city has in what you think and imagine how they would feel one day reading a story about how you think they’re not your family, denying that their father is actually theirs, and calling their mother---their dead mother, by that point---a liar. I can’t blame you for not knowing how that feels, but try to empathize a little. It would hurt them so much they'd never look at you the same.”
“Fortunately---” She came back to her feet with the scrape of loose gravel beneath her boots, halfheartedly raking back her thick curls. “You told me before it was too late, so you don't have to face the consequences.” Leaning over, she pressed a brief, reassuring kiss against his hair, murmuring confidentially, “Don't ever hesitate to admit your mistakes, especially to me. It's far more admirable than letting them quietly wreak havoc, and you're only human after all. You're going to make mistakes so long as you live, and you can't fix them on your own.” Inside, the boys were preparing to leave and the clock was ticking down the time, drawing nearer and nearer to the presses flaring into life. Standing in front of Rynn, her eyes dark, unfathomable pools, she said finally as if it was the last word on the matter, “You can't go back, Rynn. You can never go backwards. Everyone else is moving forward, you can only go with them or get left behind in the darkness with no hope of ever catching up.”
As if on cue, the door swung open and Alistair came out, quietly handing over Antha’s jacket as she returned to her feet. “Shouldn't you call Lawrence?”
The girl shook her head, shrugging on her jacket and taking out her car keys. “There’s no reason for anyone who wasn’t here to ever know about it. Everyone just keep your damn mouths shut and let me handle it, there's still an hour before the paper goes to print.”
With a little laugh beneath his breath, Alistair laid a quick peck on Antha’s cheek and shooed her off, calling pleasantly after her, “Try not to assassinate anyone if you can!”
“I can't imagine a need for it. This is slander, and I have an entire firm to throw lawsuits at any fool who tries to print it.” Turning the corner towards the parking lot, almost as an afterthought, she called, “Make sure everyone gets home safe!” and then vanished. Alistair waited patiently, watching her car turn the corner moments later and speed away like lightning, before turning to Rynn with his usual smile.
“I'm not going to say you give in too easily---rather, you're oddly selective about accepting defeat---but I will say you're awfully down on yourself.” Taking Antha's vacated spot on the bench, he laid the back of his cool hand against Rynn’s forehead. “Feeling any better? Tori’s elixir should set you right in no time. It’s too bad half the ingredients are illegal, he could make a fortune off of it.”
The door clattered open again then, Courtland and Jack tromping out with Cian in their jackets, grinning as if nothing was even slightly wrong. “Oi, kids, you about ready to go? Jackie and I have some serious engagement sex to start on, we don’t have time for you two not to handle your liquor.”
Alistair gave them a small pout, his eyes full of accusation. “You’re going to be loud, aren’t you? Have some pity on me and Pierce, our room is right beneath yours.”
“You have nothing to complain about, we’re right across the hall from Antha and Cian. The sounds that come out of that room every night are just beastly.”
Jack, meanwhile, glancing down the street where Antha’s car had disappeared, murmured, “Is she going to be alright? She goes a little berserk where her children are concerned…”
“It’s fine, this is just a social matter, not vampires or demons or any of her usual concerns, just slander. She just needs to stop the story before it goes to the printer. It’s not worth it to even the greediest reporter to deal with the lawsuits and the wrath of two generations of Mayfairs, not when Evie’s generously agreeing not to kill them if they just pretend they never heard a thing.”

Courtland laughed at that, as if the entire thing was a massive joke. Leaning forward, he nearly pressed his forehead to Rynn's, eyes glittering with humor as he asked teasingly, “Have you learned your lesson? Let's hope so, because lord knows I haven't learned mine, and there's not room for two careless blabbermouths in this family.” He withdrew cackling wildly to and at himself, shrugging his shoulders as if there was no help for it and then taking Rynn's arm to steer him towards the car. “Mon dieu, motherhood’s made her soft. The old Antha would have just dumped the informant and the reporter in the river and been done with it.”
“Now that that’s not the case,” Jack murmured thoughtfully, tumbling into the back seat of the car, “I think we can acknowledge that Antha’s old methods were extreme, even by our standards.”
“We’ll do no such thing!” Courtland countered, clapping a hand over Jack’s mouth as he scooted in beside him and Alistair took the driver’s seat, “When someone threatens family, you eliminate them. Really Jackie, this is why you’re never going to be a power player. Everything for family, because if we don't look out for each other, nobody ******** else will.”
“Why don’t I leave that part up to you,” Jack answered dryly, rolling his eyes and prying Courtland’s liquor-soaked fingers off of his lips, “And I’ll stay home and learn how to sew or something. If Adair’s anything like you, he’s going to rip every piece of clothing he puts on every day of his life. Including the sweater I gave him for his birthday!”
While the drunken couple bickered in the back seat, unknowingly invading Cian’s personal space and pushing him up against the door, Alistair whistled to himself in the front, driving very easily along the streets so as not to upset Rynn’s liquor-filled stomach. One could almost forget it was his very first time driving, he handled it like a pro, this slim boy behind the wheel of such a sleek, powerful beast. “What do you think, Rynn?” he asked quietly, casting him a glittering sidelong glance, “We've got less than three hours to sleep, should we skip school tomorrow? We could stay at home in our pajamas and order pizza and watch Julien and Aunt Suzette tear Courtland and Jack to pieces.”

When the drunken party pulled back into the driveway of Mayfair Manor, they were a little surprised to see the lights in the parlor on. Doing their best not to make a racket as they stumbled in, Courtland threw open the closed parlor doors and had to choke back a laugh, leaning on Jack as he gave the strained whisper, “They're so innocent it's disgusting! I don't even know what to do with them.”
Alistair, giving a bemused smile, whispered back, “For now, let's just get them to bed.”
Quietly, he and Jack crept across the large room to where Malakai and Liesse were passed out like children over the piano keys. They took the greatest care not to disturb them, lifting each one gently so as not to press one of the keys. While Alistair woke his older brother just enough to walk him to his room, Jack draped one of Liesse's arms around his neck, hoisting her up without waking her to carry her to her room.
It was while they were in the upper hallway between their three separate rooms, Jack slipping into Liesse and Rynn's room to tuck the sleeping girl into bed, that Courtland was struck with a sudden idea, turning and putting a hand to both Rynn and Cian's chests. “Wait here a moment,” he whispered, darting into the study and rifling around before returning with a sheet of paper that he held before the Calais boys. The letterhead marked it as being from Mayfair Medical, with a stamp in the corner that read 'Official Copy'. Most prominent upon it was a complicated graph marked with four columns---Mother: Antha Evelyn Mayfair, Child One: Sebastien Calais Mayfair, Child Two: Vanessa Calais Mayfair, and Alleged Father: Cian Calais---followed by a great jumble of numbers and finally a brief paragraph, the last few sentences of which had been decisively circled with red pen. 'The probability that the alleged father of the tested children is their biologic father is 99.9996% due to their shared genetic markers. These results are considered conclusive and final.' At the bottom, it was signed by Vittorio and two non-Mayfair doctors as being valid.
“Just to confirm what we already knew,” he said with a somewhat forced kind of cheer, pressing the piece of paper into Cian's hand, “You can keep it if you want, the original is filed at the hospital. And I wouldn't ask any questions about where she got your DNA sample to test. Antha steals DNA samples to keep on record, it's just sort of her thing. She filed yours a week or so ago, Rynn. Even after she promised us---promised!---she would stop stealing people's DNA.” Turning, he paused long enough to clap a hand on Rynn's shoulder, smiling thinly. “Speaking of which, you should apologize when you've sobered up, for calling her a liar and all. She'd never say it, but I think you really hurt her feelings.” With a little pat on the shoulder in parting, he started after Jack into their room, continuing a little more naturally, “But it's been a long night, we should all hit the hay. And I wouldn't wait up for Evie, if I were you. Extortion is time-consuming.”  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn sputtered and choked on the potion which she gave him, but he swallowed some, and it seemed to help.
It did seem to help. And when she sat down beside him, it was all he could do to stop himself from laying his spinning head down in her lap. He settled for swaying gently into her shoulder, and shut his eyes.
“I have thought about the future,” he mumbled. “I don’t see one for myself. Aedan was always the best at augury. He read the entrails of all the little creatures that the maze strangled—rabbits and squirrels, sometimes birds if the thorns caught them.”
He fell silent. Then, faintly:

“Maybe my only other choice is to get left behind in the darkness, but haven’t you imagined that somehow, that’s comforting to me? You ought to know. After a while, it just feels…natural.”

“All that shadow and ash. The ghosts that we made, and fed, even loved— like treasured family pets.

Rynn was staring at his hands, but there was a strange blankness in his eyes, as if he was looking at something very distant instead.

“If your legacy, everything you’ve defended since being named Designee, your family name, your witchcraft, your heritage, the future you thought you had…if all of that was taken away from you tomorrow, don’t tell me you would let it go so easily. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t grieve, and don’t ask me to put my own grief aside like—like you’re distracting a kid from losing a favorite stuffed animal by giving them a shiny new toy.”

But Antha wasn’t listening, and Rynn realized only too late that her taillights were disappearing into the distance with a screech.
Part of what had confused him was that Alistair was there, without warning. He hadn’t heard the boy come out. For just a second, he thought it was Antha still, their faces were so similar, but then he remembered that Alistair had been wearing the sweater.
“…any better?”
There’d been a question, hadn’t there? Rynn blinked, then decided it was best to keep his eyes shut for just a second. “…getting there. How much of that did you hear?”

He pressed a hand against his head. Everything felt fuzzy, the hard lines all made soft, all blurred. When he tried to stand, he could feel the world rocking underneath his feet.
“Steady, there.”
A familiar voice, amusement masking concern. Rynn blinked up at a mass of shadows and shapes that, after a moment, resolved themselves into Cian’s face.
Rynn seemed to make a half-hearted attempt to pull himself together, straightening his jacket and spine—and then, after a second, flung his arms around Cian and collapsed against his brother’s chest.
“I’m sorry.” he gave out the muffled, barely intelligible wail. “Idinntmeantodon’hateme—”
Cian’s expression was one of distinct alarm. Gingerly, he patted Rynn’s back, “Now, now, you’ll be fine. I mean, you’re alive, so clearly Antha’s forgiven you…er. I’m sure everything will be alright.” He shot Alistair a look that meant only one thing: help me.
If nothing else, Rynn’s viselike grip on his waist was going to make walking incredibly difficult.

Eventually, his brother managed to prize his clasped hands apart and support, half-carrying, his little brother along to the car. Inside, Rynn slumped over into the leather upholstery and fumbled at his seatbelt until he heard a ‘click’. Reaching forward from the back, Cian gripped his shoulder reassuringly, and Rynn’s own hand crept up to clasp it. He was feeling oddly sentimental tonight, and the liquor had unleashed his ordinarily well-trained tongue.
Cian had always been the lucky one. He wondered if that’s all that this was—his own petty jealousy.
“I wish’d that they’d had no witching blood in them at all.” he mumbled faintly, letting his eyelids droop closed. “That they weren’t—Antha’s, or yours, at all. That would be easiest, if we were all ********> No obligation d’sang. No ancestors, or powers, no ghosts, no promises haunting any of us.
But at least, with you, they’ll have a good future. A good family. A good home. Parenting will be easy—all you have to do is the exact opposite of how we grew up.”
But me? I try not to think about it, too much. The best part—of my future—would be fixing my mistakes.”
Rynn hiccuped, and his mouth filled with the taste of Vittorio’s elixir. Then, he went on.
“I’m just sorry that your kids had to be born in the wake of all of them. My mistakes. Can you imagine what they would’ve been like, if the ancestors had even half their old strength? They would have conquered the world. All would love them, and despair.” he quoted, with a strangled kind of chuckle.

His laugh broke halfway through, and turned into a kind of breathless, guttural sob. “I know it’s never coming back. I know they don’t understand why it’s so important. But I can’t just forget about it, I won’t, and I won’t stop trying, either.”

There was something in Cian’s expression, as the streetlights sent shuttered light flashing across his features, that was difficult to read. A certain tenseness in his ordinarily smiling mouth, something in his eyes that suggested withdrawal.
“Rynn.” he said, carefully. It was pointless to use telepathy in their current company, even if this was something that he’d rather have shared privately. “You realize it’s never coming back, right? It’s over. And let’s be honest—maybe it’s better this way. So many lives were ruined, shackled, forsaken. You can’t tell me you’d rather go back to that monstrosity and feed it more.”
Rynn’s eyes flew open, although the streetlights stung to look at, and Cian felt the shoulder beneath his hand grow rigid with frustration. “That’s the point. So many lives, so much of our bloodline. You can’t tell me that we should ignore their sacrifice, or allow it to become meaningless!” He had raised his voice without realizing it; ‘meaningless’ was almost a shout.
But he still hadn’t let go of Cian’s hand, and after a second, Rynn felt it give a reassuring squeeze to his shoulder. “Hey, hey-hey-hey.” In soothing tones, and then with a little laugh: “Calm the ******** down, you little spitfire.”
Rynn’s eyes had already drifted back shut again, but he still found the energy to frown and mumble something unintelligible in a distinctly uncomplimentary tone.
Cian glanced in the rear-view mirror, meeting Alistair’s eyes briefly. “I’m kind of amazed he’s still talking at this point, actually. I owe you one…Thanks for putting up with this pain in the a**.”

If Vittorio’s potion meant Rynn woke up tomorrow with anything less than a killer hangover, forget patents and copyrights. He needed to be negotiating with the federal government, or maybe just making a killing on the black market for the sakes of college students everywhere.

When they got home, and after Rynn was bodily hauled into the house, he tried to make a staggering break for the nursery. He nearly got there before Cian grabbed his collar: “Uh-uh. You are not going in there and waking up the twins.” he hissed.
Rynn groped in the air for a second longer, then tried a different tactic: turning around, he opened his eyes as wide as possible, tucked his chin, and swept Cian with his most disappointed look. It was very nearly a pout.
His brother hesitated, wavered, then caved. With a deep sigh, Cian let go of Rynn’s shirt. “Give me an hour’s worth of a nap first.” he mumbled. “We’ll see after that.”
Despite his feigned reluctance, Cian couldn’t prevent the slow smile from creeping across his face.
Courtland cut the exchange short, though Cian was a little more grateful for the distraction than he’d care to admit. It felt weird to see Rynn in anything beyond ‘stiff upper lip’ mode…although the method of distraction wasn’t what he would have chosen. He took the sheaf of papers a little carelessly, glanced over it once, and let his hand drop. “You know…” he said, slowly. “I’m not sure how to explain this, but you don’t need to show me. This…this whole debacle, I know Evie wanted this kind of proof to avoid it, but I’m not…I don’t want to say that I don’t care, because I do, but not like this. They’d be mine no matter what, you know? Family isn’t just about your—your bloodlines or your genes.” He glanced over at Rynn, who was swaying slightly. “Not to me, at least.”
Then with a sigh, he took his younger brother's hand. "Come on, let's put you to bed. We'll help you write out a formal apology in the morning." Knowing Rynn, he would probably want it on the best letterhead, in his finest script, preferably notarized and with at least one witness.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

The Mayfair boys had been drinking hard for seven hours, and it showed. They had closed out the last strip club and been boisterously relocated at Courtland’s insistence to an after-hours bar, all jammed into a circular booth in the corner with an impossible amount of empty glasses stacked up on the table between them.
“Court, you’re going to kill him.” It was visibly wearing on Pierce, who was exhausted and dizzy, only able to keep his head up by propping it up on his fist.
“I’s fine,” Courtland assured him thickly, his words marred by a marked slur. He was currently engaged in trying to rip the tie from around Vittorio’s neck (he not being used to more than a glass of scotch after a long shift, making him the first of the night to put his head on the table and pass out) but was having massive difficulties, and nearly strangling him in the process. “S’gonna’ be sooo funny…”
Jack was the only one who still appeared functional out of the group, with a little help from his little yellow pills. And a loose interpretation of ‘functional’. For the past few moments he had been on his knees on the seat, turned around and talking loudly at the group of people in the next booth over. Though no one could be entirely sure, he seemed to be asking how they felt about reptiles and whether or not a garden snake could evolve into a boa constrictor. The last part Armand understood, but he only sat laughing uncontrollably as he listened to him.
Like his younger cousin, Cyrus had passed out a while earlier, sunk into his seat and occasionally twitching as if he couldn’t get comfortable. Lawrence, as he tended to do after enough drinks, had become overwhelmingly affectionate, an arm around Cian and his head on his shoulder, occasionally poking him as he spoke to make a point. “You are a good man, you know that?” he was muttering thickly, doing his best to be very serious, “You---you haven’t been arrested once. And I didn’t have to track you down for paternity, or so Courtland could kill you---”
“I would never kill Cian!” the boy protested, loudly and deeply offended, fumbling to knot Vittorio’s tie around his forehead.
“You would’ve if he’d run off,” Lawrence shot back, making a gesture of his arm towards the door, “Probably with a shotgun, like some hick older brother.”
That made Courtland crack into a wide, delirious grin, cackling as he thought about it. “I totally would’ve.” Just then, as if remembering after a very long time where they were, glanced wildly around himself and then at the cousins. “Jus’ how drunk are we?”
Armand, who like Pierce was on his absolute last leg, struggled to sit up straight, muttering, “What am I, your liver? Look at the table.”
This seemed to startled and fascinate Courtland, his eyes going wide as he prodded at a tower of stacked shot glasses. “Oh man, guys, I know you’re lame and you don’t party…but this is impressive.”
“If I don’t go to sleep soon,” Pierce moaned, rubbing the backs of his eyes, “I’m going to lay down under this table and die.”
“Chump,” Courtland said, harrumphing snidely.
“You’re getting married tomorrow,” Pierce said instead, loudly, throwing his arms down on the table with a rattle, trying to make a point, “Do you want Antha to have to drag you down the aisle?”
“Ha! I can keep going for, like…eternity.” He paused briefly, turning and tugging on the hem of Jack’s shirt. “Baby, you’ve still got Tori’s magic fix-everything pills left, right?”
The boy blinked at him, briefly with incomprehension, before sliding back down into his seat and counting off on his fingers. “I gave Evie one---no, two, I gave her two---and you took one, and I took one, and I gave Lucy five, so that leaves…eleven? No, no, it leaves seven. Seven and eleven. The rhyme confused me.”
His head in his hands, the skin on his face stretched back, Pierce groaned, “That doesn’t make any sense. You don’t make any sense.”
Pouting like he’d been offended, Jack banged his fist on the table and shouted, “You’re drunk, bus, go home!”
No one quite knew what to make of that, so they said nothing. Courtland just laughed, though it was anyone’s best guess if he had any idea what was going on.  

[Okimiyage]

Behind the mountain of empty glasses, Cian leaned into his seat, spreading his arms across the back of the booth, and regarded his handiwork with no small satisfaction. The mountain was a pile of precariously balanced glassware. It was a masterful bit of engineering. It shouldn’t have been able to hold together without the aid of superglue. Beer steins balanced atop martini glasses, tumblers teetered at precarious angles, and one particularly tricky tower of empty liquor bottles (at some point, the bartender had given up in the face of their demands and just started letting them pour their own drinks) was balanced atop a single upturned shot glass.
Dorian would have been eying the thing like a cat eyes a favorite toy, if he hadn’t been wrapped around one of the strippers that he’d convinced to follow them along. She was entirely too tan, with a mane of blonde, artfully tousled hair, and she stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the pale Mayfairs. Still, Dorian had insisted that they couldn’t just abandon such a nice girl to the perilous night, although now the trick looked like it would be figuring out how to shake her off when it came time to deposit her clingy a**.
Still, for the time being, she was a good distraction for Dorian. Between the two self-absorbed blondes, they were too busy batting their eyelashes at one another to annoy anybody else. Dorian hadn’t even picked a fight with Jack, yet, although it was probably overdue.
Lawrence wrapped his arms around Cian like a scarf, and the man found himself affectionately ruffling his hair as if he was a good dog. Cian hadn’t been this drunk in a while, and it was starting to have an effect on him. He hadn’t even had that much to drink tonight, but his fatherly responsibilities had prohibited him from keeping his tolerance at customary levels lately. “Now, just because I haven’t been arrested doesn’t mean I’m a good man.” he warned. The words felt thick in his mouth, and he was almost on the verge of slurring. “Just haven’t been caught.”
Dorian raised his head briefly. His voice was clear as a bell, despite the copious amounts of whiskey that he’d indulged in that night. “As for the paternity, well. You saw what happened to the last person who so much as questioned it…don’t be the next. Besides, it’s Antha’s right to kill him now, not yours—”
“—And while I never claimed to be good, I’m not stupid enough to piss her off.” Cian finished for him, raising his glass in what was partially recognition of this truth and partially just to interrupt Dorian before he could say anything too bitchy. Dorian cackled at this, then turned back to bury his face in the stripper’s cleavage.
Cian rubbed his jawline ruefully, feeling the developing stubble starting to roughen his skin. The sun would be coming up in a few hours. “You might not need the sleep, but keep in mind—you are going to be the center of all those wedding photographs. And the aunts will give you hell if you turn up with raccoon eyes.”
Dorian re-emerged from his female companion’s clutches, this time to drag a gold-tipped cigarette out of his jacket pocket and light it with a lazy smile. “That’s what makeup artists are there for, you sweet innocent thing. And Photoshop.” He gave the two prospective grooms the side-eye. “Plus, you didn’t invite the aunts. Did you? If they show up, I swear by all that’s holy, I’m walking out. I’ve been avoiding those nosy biddies for weeks now, I want to keep my winning streak going.” Cian tipped his glass towards the other man. “You shouldn’t swear by what’s holy, Dorian, it doesn’t suit you. With the way things have gone tonight, you’ll be lucky if your feet don’t burn off once you set foot on church ground.”
Dorian exhaled a cloud of smoke, and shrugged. “I’ll confess eventually. That’s the beauty of Catholicism, isn’t it? They’ve no choice except to forgive me.” Especially considering the donation records of the Mayfairs. Witches liked to be in good standing with their priests.