Hostage to Pleasure

“I came by for breakfast a few minutes ago,” Kit picked up. “And Tammy sent me up to wake this little guy. I found him like this-he’s alive, but it’s like he’s in a coma.”

“Keenan,” Ashaya said again, in that same strict voice, “if you don’t stop this, you’ll die.”

The words were grenades thrown into the hush of the room.

“What’s she talking about?” Kit whispered.

Dorian had no answers for him, but he recognized the apparent heartlessness in Ashaya’s voice for what it was-sheer, maternal terror. Whatever this was, it was deadly serious. He found himself moving to put his hand on the boy’s soft hair. “Keenan, wake up.” A command given in the tone he usually reserved for misbehaving juveniles.

Ashaya’s head jerked up. Those eerie midnight eyes held a fear so deep, he wondered how he could’ve possibly not seen it at the very start. She looked back down an instant later. “Keenan,” she said once more, but this time it was a whisper… a welcome.

The boy’s lids lifted. “You came.” It was that old-man tone in a child’s voice.

He saw Ashaya’s arms clench. “I told you to never do that. Never, Keenan. You promised me.” Again, that barely concealed thread of terror. It was the voice of a mother who’d been to the edge of desperation and who still shook with it.

“I wanted you to come,” Keenan said in response, staring up at his mother, but making no move to touch her.

Ashaya said nothing, but the way she looked at that boy’s face… it wasn’t anything Dorian could’ve imagined. “Go,” he said to Kit. This was a private moment, a moment he had to protect for Ashaya because she was too shattered to do it herself.

The boy left without a word. Tamsyn shot him a worried glance, but followed Kit out. Closing the door behind them, Dorian walked to stand at the side of the bed.

The boy’s eyes flicked to him, then away.

Dorian didn’t know much about Psy children, but he’d seen that same expression on too many changeling kids to count. Relief sang through his veins-Keenan truly was okay. “He broke the rules, didn’t he?” He folded his arms, trying to maintain a stern expression when all he wanted to do was pick the damn cub up and make sure he hadn’t harmed himself doing whatever it was he’d done.

Ashaya looked up. “Yes. What he did, it’s highly dangerous.” Her tone was beginning to lose that edge of panic, but she continued to crush Keenan to her. “He promised me he’d never do it again.”

Dorian met Keenan’s eyes. “You make a promise, you don’t break it.”

Keenan was only four and a half. He swallowed under the force of Dorian’s quiet disapproval. “I wanted her to come.”

Dorian felt for the kid. But Keenan had put himself into lethal danger. “No excuses,” Dorian said, enunciating a rule taught to all cubs in DarkRiver. “If you can’t keep a promise, you don’t make it.”

Keenan struggled to sit up in his mother’s arms. After a pause when Ashaya seemed unable to let him go, she allowed him to perch in her lap. But the boy’s attention was on Dorian. “I’m sorry.”

Dorian raised a brow. “Sorry doesn’t wipe the slate clean. You can only do that by keeping your promise from now on.” Perhaps he was being harsh but if this was life-and-death, Keenan needed to have that drummed into him. “Can you do that? Can we trust you?”

A quick nod. “Yes. I won’t do it again.”

“Promise,” Ashaya demanded, her voice husky. “Promise me.”

Keenan turned to her. “I promise.” Then he laid his head against her shoulder and wrapped his arms around her neck. “I knew you’d come.”

After a fragile, frozen moment, Ashaya seemed to crumble. Her hand rose trembling to his head, her body softening and curving in a protective curl. “Oh, Keenan.” It was a whisper that held such abiding love that Dorian couldn’t believe she’d managed to hide it for so long.

What had it cost her to bury that depth of emotion?

Ashaya knew she’d made what could be a fatal mistake, but she’d stopped thinking like a rational being the instant she’d felt Keenan’s withdrawal. She hadn’t cared that Amara could exploit the weakness of emotion to burrow into her mind. But now, the fear that Amara had done exactly that, and discovered the fact of Keenan’s continued existence, had her checking desperately for any hint of a breach. What she found was something else altogether-a wall of powerful new shields between her and Amara, shields full of color… and chaos. Beautiful and wild, reminding her strangely of Dorian.

A movement in her arms, as Keenan wriggled to a sitting position.

A child, she thought, he was only a child. No one should have to carry the burden that Keenan carried, a burden she’d never been able to shield him from. Because he had to know why there were some secrets he could never whisper, some truths he could never tell.

“Can I go play?” he asked… but not of her.

“Go on.” Dorian nodded, pushing back that silky hair of his when it slid onto his forehead. “But stay in the house for now.”

“Okay.” Scrambling off the bed, he scampered across the floor.