For the second day in a row, Kain woke up in Valentina’s bed. And for the second day in a row, he woke up alone.

For some reason, it didn’t surprise him. And he couldn’t help but chuckle when he found her almost illegible note on the counter.

-Went out. Back at dinnertime.

He shook his head at nothing and tucked the note into the drawer with the first. Half of him was tempted to get dressed and head out, see if he couldn’t track her down. He did have shifter senses after all. But the other half of him knew it was a blessing in disguise.

He had some things to cross off his list today. Namely an extremely important conversation with Alec. His stomach tightened in anxiety at the thought. He loved Alec as a brother. And he’d just done unspeakable things to Alec’s sister.

Kain paused and looked in at the rumpled sheets of Valentina’s bed. His stomach tightened for a different reason. He could admit to himself that it was probably good she wasn’t here right now for a different reason as well. She’d scrambled his brains like an egg.

He thought about her the entire time he showered and ate breakfast and he still had no idea where to put her in his mind. What the hell was that last night? It couldn’t even be classified as sex. Well, yeah. Of course it could. But what category was he supposed to put that in? What did you do with sex so good it made all other sex look like dry wheat toast?

Maybe he wouldn’t have cared about classifying it if he weren’t driving to Milla and Alec’s on a Sunday morning to attempt to explain what had happened. He figured Ansel was right. No man wanted to hear ‘I fucked your sister and I wanna do it again’. He definitely had to come up with something better. But he was having trouble. Blame it on the scrambled egg brains.

He pulled into their driveway and prayed that Milla and Alec had partaken in some lazy Sunday nookie. Because he really wanted them to be in a good mood.

Hitching his black hat low on his brow, he bounded up the stairs of their tiny porch and knocked a few times before poking his head into their even tinier house.

He really liked that Milla had gone from a spacious and luxurious high-rise condo in Manhattan to this one-room cabin that hadn’t been updated since the early eighties. It was outdated and had about two inches of paint on the walls. But somehow, it really suited them.

“Hey!” Milla said in surprise over the back of the couch. “What brings you here so early?”

Was it early? Shit. Kain looked at his watch for the first time that day. It was only 7:15. And he’d been up for an hour already. When was the last time he’d woken up at the buttcrack of dawn and hadn’t felt like rolling over and dying?

Scrambled. Egg. Brains.

He shook his head. “Just wanted to talk to you guys about something. Alec in particular.”             

Alec came out of the bathroom shirtless and scrubbing a towel over his face. “Are you making breakfast or are we?” he asked, dryly, tossing the towel back into the bathroom.

“Hang that towel, you caveman,” Milla called from the couch, but she had a dopey little smile on her face.

They’d been together for years now, but sometimes it still shocked Kain to see his sister all flirty and soft the way she was sometimes with Alec. Inka? No surprise there. She was a sweetie to the core. And Matt reaped the benefits. But Milla? No way. She was a bad-ass, hard-ass, kick-ass chick who’d met the exact right guy that exposed that little bit of sugar she usually kept hidden away.

Kain sat down at the breakfast table and Milla and Alec joined him.  He caught just the tail end of the couple doing some sort of silent eye communication thing. Alec had a strange look on his face. One that Kain had never seen before. The man looked distinctly uncomfortable. Nervous maybe?

“So, what’s up?” Milla asked. Alec rose and started pouring coffee for everyone and Kain was glad to have something to wrap his hands around.

“I needed to talk to you guys about something important.”

“Us, too,” John Alec said as he slid back into his seat. He made meaningful eyes at his wife.

“Really?” Kain asked, looking back and forth between them. His mind traced back to Ansel dropping the pregnancy bomb yesterday, but that was not the vibe he was getting right now. No, he was not getting a thrilled, excited vibe.

“Yeah,” Milla traced a hand over her blonde cap of hair and looked at her husband for a second. “Alright, I’m just gonna say it.” She slapped a palm down on the kitchen table. “John wants you to fuck his sister.”

“Milla!” John Alec’s face went flat as he shook his head into his hand. “I knew I should have handled this by myself.”

Kain’s heart wasn’t beating. And his scrambled egg brains couldn’t process, nor even understand, English anymore. And he certainly had no chance in hell understanding whatever the hell had just happened here at this breakfast table. He opened his mouth and let words come out. “That’s… a first.”

Milla snorted. “I’ll bet it is. That some dude actually wants Kain Keto sniffing around his sister? No offense,” she added. “Because obviously you’re a catch. But you have to admit you do your fair share of sniffing.”

“Milla, you’re making this much worse,” John Alec told her point-blank, with just a hint of affection in his tone. “I’m starting this over. Kain, I’m worried about my sister. You know that. She hasn’t been the same since I left Herta. And that’s my cross to bear. But my life is here now and I can’t change that.” He laced fingers with Milla under the table. “That doesn’t mean I don’t wish for happiness for her. I’ve seen you with her. And I thought that if you… got closer to her… it might make both of you happy.”

Kain pulled his sweaty hands off his coffee cup and adjusted his cap. “Ah.” He scratched at the back of his neck and squinted his eyes at the couple across the table. He had no idea what to say. “Uh.”

Slowly a light turned on behind Milla’s eyes.

“Oh my God, look at his face! He already did!” She pointed at him across the table, her finger just a foot from his nose. “Kain, you dog!”

He knew shrugging wasn’t the right move right now. So he didn’t do it. “That’s actually what I came by to talk to you guys about.”

Alec was frozen, his arms crossed over his chest. “You fucked my sister.”

“You fucked my sister!” Kain pinched his nose. “Sorry, that was immature. And totally not the same thing. I get it. You didn’t know me when you got with Milla. I should have talked to you before anything happened with Val. I just wanted to make sure there was something to talk about before I talked to you about it.”

“So talk.”

Damn. Alec could be a little scary sometimes. Like right now. His brown eyes burning a hole into the side of Kain’s face. Well. Skirting around it wasn’t going to make this easier on anyone. He just had to tell the truth.

“Look. I’m all scrambled up. I don’t really know what’s going on. She keeps disappearing on me right when… Well, I’m sure you know she’s not the easiest person to communicate with. She’s prickly and stubborn. And, sorry, I’m off track. I just want you to know that I’m being respectful with her.”

“Of course,” John Alec scoffed. “You’re always respectful, Kain. I wouldn’t question that.”

“Oh. Right.” That threw him off a little bit. “I can’t define for you anything that she and I haven’t defined ourselves. But yeah. I’m, uh, I’m into her.” He scratched the back of his neck and glanced at Alec.
“Wow. John. This is like your dream come true. John’s been thinking that— mmmph!”

Alec clapped a hand over his wife’s mouth before she could say anything else in that blunt way of hers.

“I’m hoping that this will work out with you two,” Alec supplied.

Kain blinked. “What do you mean ‘work out’?”

“I just think it would be fine if you gave her a reason to want to stay on Earth instead of go back to Herta.” Alec had the grace to look at least a little uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry. I’m not firing on all cylinders right now. What’d you say?”

Alec refused to repeat that statement again. So he went with a different version. “I came to live on earth for Milla. And maybe Valentina would do the same for you. And even if what you two have isn’t on the same… track as what Milla and I have, then maybe you keep that to yourself for a while. And by then, maybe Valentina is used to Earth.”

“Uh,” Kain rose from his chair lithely and paced to the counter. He leaned against it for a second before he turned around and held his brother-in-law’s eyes. “Ah, no. I’m sorry, man. I’m gonna give you a super respectful but very firm no.”

“What?” Alec leaned back in his chair, his eyes burning. “You’re saying that you’ll fuck her but you don’t want what’s best for her? You’ll mess around with her but you won’t be serious with her?”

“John!” Milla cut in, but Kain cut past her.

“Don’t insult me, Alec, don’t pretend that this is a conversation about whether or not I’m committed to her. Or whether or not I care about her and her happiness. Which I obviously do. Because I’m a decent human being, by the way. This is a conversation about whether or not I’m willing to deceive her! Manipulate her. Which I’m not. I’m not willing to do that.”

He swiped a hand through the air and forced himself to sit down at the table instead of walk out the door.

Alec held that same fierce, war-like expression on his face for half a minute before he deflated little by little. “You’re right. It was disrespectful of both of you for me to ask that of you.”

“For the record, I don’t want her to go back to Herta either. Don’t you know it makes me sick to my fucking stomach that she was alone when she got attacked? When I think about what might have happened?” He lowered his hands from his face and looked Alec in the eye. “But it’s not for me to say whether she stays or goes. That’s her, man. That’s all her.”

Alec gritted his teeth. “You don’t understand the way we grew up. The duty we were raised with. The code of honor. It was the set of rules by which our family lived. And then when our father died, fighting for the enslaved became the only way we knew how to honor him. How to have a family. It is the only purpose for us. She’s going to go back. Even if she knows she’s going to her own death, she’s going to go back.”

Kain’s stomach dropped out. But he stood. “If that’s what happens, Alec, if that’s really what she wants and there’s no stopping her? Well, we’ll figure something out then. You and I, we’ll— we’ll take Herta in turns. A few days on and a few days off. Or something like that. I don’t know. But seeing what happens is all we can do. We can’t control her. And what’s more, we shouldn’t try.”

Kain held Alec’s eyes. Tried to convey how wrong he thought he was while also showing brotherly love. He didn’t want to fight with him, but he thought Alec had some massively screwed priorities right now.

When Kain couldn’t read Alec’s face, he started to lower himself back down in the chair. He wasn’t leaving until they’d sorted this out.

“No,” Alec waved a hand at Kain, realizing that the kid was gonna stay and duke it out. “No. You’re right. I’m pissed off that you’re right. But you’re right. I’m scared for my sister and I’m sick and tired of being scared for her. It was selfish of me to ask that of you. To try and get everything wrapped up nicely so I wouldn’t have to worry anymore.” He scowled. “But I really wish you’d just said yes.”

Kain couldn’t help but laugh. The corners of Alec’s lips twitched.

“Alright,” Kain rose. Milla and Alec thought he was going to leave but instead he opened their refrigerator. “Looks like I could do omelettes. Oh, and check it out. You guys sprang for that fancy bacon.”

“You’re making us breakfast?” Alec asked, a little bemused. If it had been him, he’d have needed to cool off a bit. But then, Kain was Kain.

Kain shrugged, a frying pan in one hand. “I mean, I guess it’s the least I can do.” He widened his eyes and exaggeratedly shrugged. “I am the guy who’s fuckin’ your sister.”

He was ready for the headlock he immediately got put into, and accepted it gladly.

 

***

 

 

Valentina was alone in the woods. She might have been on Herta for how familiar this stretch of mountains was to her. There were small differences between Earth and Herta, of course, noticeable to the trained eye. She could see, on many of the older plants, where the pollution of Earth had taken its toll. Herta’s air was sweeter, flavored with all the herbs and plants that she’d grown up with.

She wished, not for the last time, that she hadn’t left her shoulder pack when she’d run from the hunters. She’d left behind so many of her creations. Tinctures and medicinal pastes. She’d had a small pharmacy in her bag. It was an indulgence, she knew, and part of her believed all hobbies to be selfish. But she’d used this little passion of hers to help other people. Especially after skirmishes with hunters.

She wandered through these woods now, in a way she’d never done before. She never wandered or meandered. Her entire life was spent on a mission. Getting from one place to the next, freeing enslaved shifters here, battling hunters there, organizing other freedom fighters when she could.

Free time was non-existent, and in her eyes, shameful. Any time she spent relaxing was just another minute that Herta brought shifters to their knees.

But she wasn’t on Herta. She was on Earth. And these weren’t her woods. They were Kain’s woods. And somehow, that small knowledge, his ownership over the space, gave her a brief permission to take the day slowly.

She’d never needed a slow day more in her life. Each step she took was steady and strong, but inside, she was spinning.

She couldn’t explain what had happened yesterday with Kain. She only knew that his sweetness with her, his attention, made her feel fragile.

And she hated feeling fragile.

Anger for him, and his little white smile, and his blunt fingers, and his happy demeanor, grew inside her. Valentina intentionally nursed it. He was wrecking her. And he was probably doing it on purpose! She was sure it was all part of some twisted game. All his jokes and all his sweetness, it was just a big game to him. He got what he wanted, a puddle of a woman at his feet, and she got destroyed. Yeah. That’s what he wanted. To destroy her.

Valentina parked herself in a huff on a log and watched ants race over one end. She picked up a stick and fished around in the racing highway system of the little insects and a few of them scrabbled aboard.

She set down the stick and sighed, pressing her cheek into her upturned knees.

Who was she kidding? Kain didn’t want to destroy her. He was just a nice man. And the sad truth was that Valentina had little to no experience with nice men. Not that Williams had been cruel to her. But there’d been nothing soft there either.

What scared her, truly, about Kain was not the ridiculous idea that he wanted to destroy her. It was that he wanted to love her. And he’d destroy her in the process. Because Valentina wasn’t going to stay here on Earth. She did the hateful math in her head. There were only so many ways this thing could end. And all of them ended with Valentina alone again.

A stick cracked and had her attention swinging to her left, though she didn’t move an inch.

“You cracked that stick on purpose,” she called.

“Just trying to give you a little warning. Not trying to get my neck snapped by a jumpy warrior,” Kain called back. He came out of the brush in a pair of jeans and a blue T-shirt, his cap tipped back on his head and a smile on his face.

Any fight that Valentina had left in her for resisting him just rolled right over and died.

“Is it okay that I came and found you?” he asked, sitting on the log next to her. She wore his blue hoodie and it had tightened his breath when he’d realized that just now. He liked how often she wore it.

She shrugged. “I thought there was a chance that you might.”

He took her hand. Because he had to and because it was a perfect little hand. There was a trace of some green herb on one of her palms and dirt under her fingernails. “You keep leaving before I can wake up.”

She furrowed her brow. “You sleep too late.”

“So wake me up.”

“Why?”

His expression softened, like he found her ornery little self pretty dang cute. “So that I can roll over and put my face in your hair in the morning. And get all warm with you. And say sleepy stuff that I wouldn’t say if I were more awake.”

She blinked at him for a minute and then just looked away. He watched her stir the ants with her stick.             

“I’m overwhelming you, aren’t I.”

“Maybe we should go to the movies.”

They spoke at the same time and then looked at one another like they’d gone bananas. “Did you just ask me on a date?” Kain asked carefully.

“Of course you’re overwhelming me,” she answered, her huge honey eyes staring him down just like her brother’s had earlier that day. “I’m used to focusing my whole self on survival. Every moment. Even when I’m asleep. And I’m used to wanting. Hunger, thirst, loneliness, those are just a part of my life. But then you come along and you shove raviolis into my mouth and kiss all over me,” her cheeks went the tiniest bit pink and completely charmed him. “At least before I knew what I wanted! Food. Drink. Somewhere safe to sleep. But now I have all those things and still I want and I don’t even know what it is I want!”

She was standing at this point, glaring down at him. He looked up at her with her complicated braid over one shoulder, those honey eyes flashing, his hoodie all loose at the shoulders.

“You just asked me on a date,” he confirmed. “How do you even know about the movies?”

She pursed her lips at him. That was the part he was fixating on? “Ruby told me that’s where she and Ansel go sometimes. But she wasn’t sure I’d like it.”

“You’d like it,” Kain nodded. “You are definitely gonna like it.”

 

 

***

 

 

She did like it, as it turned out. They’d gone to a small movie theater that apparently showed old movies. And there was a bar in the lobby area so most people had a glass of wine or a beer.

“Wanna share one?” Valentina had asked Kain as they’d waited in line for popcorn. She was thinking of the night before. The sips of wine they’d had from the same glass.

“Oh, sure. What kind of beer do you like?”

She surveyed her options. “The dark kind. We have that kind on Herta.”

She frowned while he pulled out his wallet and paid for the tickets, the beer and the popcorn.

“I always forget about that.”

“Money?”

She nodded.

“I never mind paying for you. Since you don’t have a job or anything.” He grinned down at her and tipped his hat back.

“Wait?” she asked as they found their seats in the theater. “Do you have a job?”

“I work with Ansel whenever he needs a hand on the job site. And I’ve worked a few places around town.” His eyes were forward and Valentina got the impression that he was purposefully looking away from her.

“So how do you have money?”

“Ah,” he shifted in his seat and a small pink flush worked its way up his neck.

She blinked at him. He was embarrassed about something! She’d never thought she’d see the day when she could embarrass Kain.

“When I was younger, like a teenager, I was,” he coughed into one hand, “a model.”

“What’s a model?”

Definitely blushing now, he fought the urge to adjust his hat. “It means that people paid to take pictures of me. To make advertisements and stuff like that.”

“Like on a billboard?” She hated billboards. They were probably her least favorite part of Earth.

He shifted again. “Uh, yeah. There were some billboards. And I was in some magazines. And,” he coughed again, “on TV now and again.” He waved a hand. “It’s not important.”

She wasn’t quite sure she understood. “And now you don’t have to have a job?”

“It paid me a lot of money at the time. And Milla helped me invest a lot of it. And yeah. I don’t have to work. Unless I want to. So most of the time I just help the family out. Do any errands that people need doing. Cook. Clean. Help with Carmen. That kind of thing.”

She nodded. That made perfect sense to her. On Herta work was often communal among families. It didn’t matter who did it as long as someone did. That wasn’t a benefit she’d been able to enjoy for many years, though.

“Can I see the pictures? That the people took of you?”

“Uh, maybe.”

“It embarrasses you?”

“Yeah, I mean a lot of the pictures are so dumb. And it’s a cool job, for some people. Just not for me.”

“So why did you do it?”

He sipped the beer and handed it over to her. “Because my aunt had just died, so the four of us were alone, again. And we had barely any money left after those medical bills. And I was at this club in the city one night and a guy came up to me and handed me his card. He was a talent agent for models. I wasn’t really in the position to say no.”

“Are medical bills very expensive?”

Kain sucked air through his teeth. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

She was quiet staring at the popcorn dancing on the screen for a second. “Who paid for my medical bills?”

Shit.

He really, really wished that she hadn’t asked that. “Ah. I did.”

“Why?” He could feel those brown eyes on him like lasers.

“Because I was right there and because you’re Alec and Milla’s family and I had the money, no problem. And Alec about strangled me and so did Milla but I figure it’ll all even out in the end. And I never intended for you to find out. For the record.”

“I’ll pay you back.”

“Let’s talk about it later.”

She turned away from him for a second and when she turned back he was smiling at her, already knowing exactly what she was going to say.

“I know you don’t like debts. We’ve been through that in great detail.”

The previews for the movie flicked on and Kain was quite sure he’d never forget watching Valentina’s first movie with her. She jumped, gasped, laughed, never quite at the right parts though. Her huge eyes never left the screen and Kain’s barely left her.

“Ah, shit,” he murmured toward the end of the movie. He traced his hand roughly over his five o clock shadow as Valentina’s eyes blurred and overflowed. It was the part of the movie where the young lion saw his father’s face in the clouds and decided to return home. Kain’s chest tightened when a tear rolled down Valentina’s cheek. He caught it on the tip of one of his fingers but she didn’t even acknowledge the touch. He’d never seen her look so soft. He felt his heart break away from him and start a stomach-flipping downward plunge. And he was screwed. He was so, so screwed.

That helpless, inevitable plummeting feeling stayed with him after the movie, when she excitedly talked about everything she’d just seen. On the car ride home when she put the window down and leaned her chin on the car door. At home when he pressed her down to the couch and slid inside her hot, needy body. And the feeling only intensified when he fell asleep all in her hair.

The next morning, Kain woke up and knew two things. That she was still in bed with him and that the plunging in his chest wasn’t going away. He opened his eyes to see her large, honey eyes staring him down. She looked mussed from sleep and so serious.

“You waited this morning.” He lifted his thumb and traced her bottom lip.

“I wanted to hear all those sleepy things you have to say.”

He wrapped his arms around her and rolled them, burying them deep into the bed.