I swallowed hard, still fighting to keep my pulse from trying to jump out of my throat, and turned to look at him. I was suddenly staring into those big lavender eyes from inches away. I was just suddenly calmer. I wasn't sure if it was the fact that I loved him, or that he was sharing his own calm with me. Maybe it was both?
"We're going to Ireland to catch the bad guys, and then we get to see Ireland together." He squeezed my hand and I realized that he was excited about the trip. It was one of those moments when I felt the age difference, or the experience difference between us. I'd never brought him on a police investigation trip on purpose. He'd been with me when crimes happened and we were suddenly ass-deep in alligators, but I'd never deliberately taken him into the lion's den before. I suddenly remembered why. I was going to spend most of the trip looking at dead bodies and hunting rogue vampires through the city. It was like we were going on two very different trips.
Nicky leaned across from the seats in front of us and put his big hand over mine. "We've got this, Anita."
I looked at him and felt that sense of calmness that he usually made me feel. He'd fixed his hair back so that improbable fall of bangs hid his right eye again. I looked at that one blue eye and wished I'd had a hand free to touch that long fall of bangs and let him know how much I valued that he let me see all of him.
The plane was gaining speed. I started to tense up even with both of them touching me, but Damian leaned forward and wrapped his hand over Nathaniel's hand where he held mine so that he was touching both of us and I was suddenly calm. I looked into those grass-green eyes and did a slow blink. Calm became something solid and sure. I felt the plane leave the ground and that spurt of fear shot through me, but Damian leaned in closer and the green of his eyes seemed to fill my vision. I was calm again, so calm.
I could feel the plane climbing, but it didn't seem to matter. It would be fine. We would be fine. It was fine. I was fine. I did a long blink and took a deep, slow breath.
"How do you feel?" Damian asked in a low, even voice.
"Fine, good," I said, and my voice was low and even, too.
He smiled at me and I smiled back.
"We need to bring him on all of our out-of-town trips," Dev said from the seat behind us.
"I thought you were all upset that you didn't get his seat," Domino said.
"I was," Dev said, "but I couldn't have calmed Anita down like that, so I take it back. Damian can have my seat on the plane if he can do that every time."
I blinked past Damian's red hair to Dev's white-blond, but whereas Damian's fell down well past his shoulders, Dev's barely touched his shoulders, and those shoulders were almost twice the width of the vampire's. Mephistopheles--our Devil as Asher had called him--was a big guy, and would have looked bigger if he hadn't been sitting so close behind Nicky, who made everyone on the plane except for Giacomo look smaller. Dev would probably have seemed bigger as well if he hadn't been sitting beside his cousin, Pride, who was almost as broad through the shoulders and as wide through the chest. Pride's eyes were rings that managed to be both pale and bright at the same time. Dev's eyes were pale blue with a ring of golden brown around the pupils so that it was as if his eyes were hazel, if blue eyes could be hazel. Most people looked into those pretty eyes and that was all they saw, but if you knew what you were looking at you knew they were tiger eyes. It was the eyes they'd been born with, because all the pureblooded clan tigers had the eyes of their beast half permanently in their human faces. Both those faces were model handsome, Dev's a little more square jawed than Pride's, but all the gold clan tigers were handsome, or beautiful, as if they'd been bred for height, athletic ability, and beauty. The other tiger clans had some people who were pretty, but it wasn't all of them; of course the two largest clans had three to four times as many members as the gold clan, so maybe it was what happened when your genetic pool was too small--everyone started to look alike. You think that would give you deformity or physical weakness, but sometimes it's like breeding for the best racehorses. They're all beautiful, athletic, fast as fuck, and a little high-strung. That about covered it. Dev and Pride were two of the calmest and most even-tempered, which was why they were the only two on regular guard duty with me or Micah.
We hadn't told Dev yet that Asher wanted to apologize to him, too. There hadn't been time, and now didn't seem to be the time either. I was feeling calmer than I'd ever been on a plane. Talking about Asher would upset me, and talking to Dev about Asher would probably upset me more, so fuck it. I'd keep this strange new calm as long as I could. There'd be time to discuss the vampire who broke Dev's heart and then tap-danced on the pieces later, when we were safe on the ground. Just thinking that much started the fear bubbling up again.
Damian said, "Anita."
His saying my name made me look at him and into those impossibly green eyes. The fear receded again like waves pulling back from the sea, and I was back to walking on that calm metaphorical beach. It was better than any meditation I'd ever managed to do.
Socrates asked, "Anita, how do you feel?"
It made me turn and look at him sitting across the aisle from Damian. Socrates' newly short hair was almost shaved so that the tight curl of his hair was completely gone. His face seemed bare, shorn, which would have robbed most men of some of their beauty; I was a big one for nice hair, but his face could carry it. It made his brown eyes look larger, and the dark planes of his face seemed more prominent so that an attractive face had become handsome. Which meant he'd always been handsome. I just hadn't noticed.
"Anita, can you hear me?" he asked.
I nodded. "I hear you."
"Okay, how do you feel?"
"I feel . . . fine, good, though every time I think that part I know I shouldn't be fine on an airplane, and that makes me poke at it and realize that it's not me."
Magda spoke from the seat behind him. "Please leave well enough alone, Socrates. Anita is happy enough, aren't you?"
I nodded.
"Fine. I'll leave it alone while we're in the air, but I have some questions when we land."
"When we land," she said.
Socrates looked back at her. "You're okay with this?"
"Have you ever flown with Anita before?" Dev asked.
"No."
"I have; trust me, this is good."
Nathaniel said, "She's fine, Socrates, I promise."
"Please don't make me overthink this," I said.
Socrates held his hands up as if to say okay, and settled back in his chair. Domino was sitting beside him, watching me with his red-and-yellow fire-colored eyes. They were so much more exotic than the golden tigers' eyes, even Dev's blue-brown ones. The black clan could never pass for human with those blaze-colored eyes.
Ethan, sitting just behind Domino, looked at me with soft gray eyes. They were tiger eyes in a human face, too, but the color, like the golden tigers, helped him pass for human. Though I'd learned that they looked like tiger eyes, all the clan tigers' eyes that they had from birth functioned more like human eyes for seeing. It meant they didn't need prescription glasses to read, or see far off the way that Micah did with his permanent cat eyes. They looked like tiger eyes, but they functioned more like exotic human ones. Until Micah had admitted his need for glasses, I'd never asked the clan tigers how it worked. Unless you ask, you never know. Ethan's hair was white-blond with gray highlights, or I guess gray lowlights, but there was a streak of dark red that ran from the curls at the front to the back of his head. It wasn't a talented dye job, just natural coloring. He was part white tiger, which gave him the white-blond hair and the paler skin tone, but blue tiger had mixed with the white to make gray in his hair, and the red streak was red tiger clan. What didn't show physically was that he also had gold tiger inside him. He'd gained that as a form after he
met me, but he'd always been able to change into three forms; now he had four. If he'd been black tiger clan he'd have been a clean sweep of all of them. His mother had been red tiger clan, his father white, but where the blue and gold had snuck in no one knew. Both parents were supposed to be pure red clan and white clan, respectively. Guess not.
Ethan looked back at me. "Anita, is there something you wanted?"
I blinked at him and said, very calmly, "A lot of the clan tigers were pushing me to date you more seriously because you have most of the bloodlines."
Damian's hand tightened a little around my and Nathaniel's hands as if he were afraid I'd say the wrong thing. I didn't plan on it. Nicky's hand stayed neutral on my leg as if he knew better, or didn't care about Ethan's feelings; it could go either way with him.
Ethan nodded. "I remember; it was a way for you to not choose among the clans but marry most of them. My mixed heritage that had made none of the red clan want to mate with me was suddenly an asset."
"I know the clan that raised you treated you like shit," I said.
"You rescued me," he said with a smile.
"I'm sorry that after I rescued you my dance card was too full for the romance you wanted, but I saw Nilda kissing you good-bye in the parking lot. I didn't know she had that kind of happiness in her. I really thought she was too crazy to date. I'm glad I was wrong and that you found each other," I said.
Ethan smiled that smile you get when you're first in love. "All the ancient werebears are a little crazy, but Nilda just needed love and couples therapy."
"You went to couples therapy when you'd just started dating each other?" Socrates asked, turning in his seat to look at the other man.
"She was on the list for mandatory therapy or she'd be fired from the guard. It scared her to go, so I told her I'd go with her if it would help, and it turned into couples therapy after a while."
Socrates shook his head. "You must have wanted to be with her bad, or you're just a better person than I am. When my wife asked for therapy, I said no."
"She was in the parking lot kissing you good-bye. Did she forgive you?"
"No, she left me. I think I wanted her to leave when I first became a shapeshifter. I thought I was a danger to her and our son, and then the hyena group in L.A. was crazy violent. It wasn't until I came out here that I thought I had a job and a life that wouldn't endanger them."