Page 47 of The Buck Stops Hare

Storm visited the bed, glancing over Buck’s face, staring into his eyes. He muttered to River, who nodded sagely. Warm hands roamed my shoulders as a familiar scent caught my senses.Eve.“Sup, dweeb?”

“He won’t wake up,” I caught myself saying, voice still wobbling.

“I heard.” It wasn’t Eve’s voice that responded, but Grim. His hand rested on my shoulder as well, gripping for the briefest moment before releasing. “I’ll offer what I can, considering I severed my ties. It’s not much for the time being.”

“Anything helps, you old hummingbird.” River’s snarl made Grim’s shoulders pinch, and he left to stare at Buck with the rest of them. For someone so small and chaotic, the other gods feared him very much.

I would have watched them unblinking until my eyes dried into raisins if it weren’t for Brook reaching over to grasp my hand. “It’ll be okay.”

A scrambling sensation on my calf drew my attention. I glanced down and blinked in surprise to see Jacque staring up at me, his big, dark, walleyes focused as much as something with wider monocular range could. “Where did you come from?”

“I brought him,” Grim said, earning a nod of approval from Eve. “Eve was rather insistent.”

“It was your idea, dingus.” Eve huffed and scooted over, finding a spot to sit on a kitchen counter nearby due to the distinct lack of chairs. Buck only had the three currently occupied by myself, Brook, and Rayne.

Grim ignored the commentary and turned away, but I didn’t fail to notice when Jacque went sniffing about the house, that he had his buttons here to use.

Buck. All gone. Sleep. Mad.

“You said it, buddy,” Eve said, much to the interested surprise of the others. Jacque wasn’t the talkative sort around strangers, often. Then again, among gods, I’m certain that a lil bunny with communication skills was perfectly capable of surprising them. There was magic, and then there was…whatever Jacque was.

“The hare can talk?” Grim’s question broke the silence of the others.

“Yeah. Buttons. He understands that we can understand him, so it makes the difference.” I drew my gaze from Jacque and his board to Buck, still lying in our bed. I didn’t even care that the place still reeked of us in that primal sort of way.

“Brook.” River turned away from the rest of them, all bearing dour expressions as he beckoned his mate.

I watched carefully as he approached, wearing a similarly sad expression, and I waited for the worst.

“Will it be worth it?” Brook’s soft whisper cut off when River muttered in response. “That’s all that matters. I’ll be right here.”

“I know you will be. You always have.” River reached up to take Brook’s face in his hands, pulling him down for a kiss that stayed soft, innocent even. I didn’t think River capable of a gesture so tender until he dropped one hand and gave Brook’s groin a nice palming. “A reminder for when I get back.”

Storm, Grim, and Brook all stepped away when River approached the side of the bed and slid his arms under Buck’s body, where he effortlessly lifted him and turned. With each step River took, he carried Buck closer to the door, his bare form somehow not as vulnerable or lewd as I would have thought. Like family caring for the infirmed.

“Cliff?” River paused at the door as Storm stepped forward to pull it open. I stood, but Grim gestured for me to stay back.

“I’ve enjoyed your company immensely. You aren’t afraid of me. And I owe it to Buck for not instilling that fear. And tell Dani it was a pleasure.” River stepped outside and the other gods followed.

Brook didn’t let me leave the house when I stumbled toward the door. His face could have been a mirror of my own as he turned and smiled, the expression not meeting his pallid blue eyes.

I halted when Brook wrapped an arm around my shoulders and cinched me tight, shushing me with a finger over his lips. He didn’t stop me from looking, though, as I turned my head and saw a new godbeast standing in the clearing before Buck’s cabin. Like all godbeasts I’d seen before, he was powerful, as big as any Clydesdale horse, and graced with incongruent features that drew memories of crocodiles and sharks with his teeth, a kelpie with his mane, but in the stead of six legs, he bore only two, front clawed things that blended into a body ending in the prehensile tail of a great fish. He lay on the ground, tail curled primly behind him as he stared down at what I hadn’t realized right away was Buck, limp in his godbeast form, chest heaving in shallow pulses.

“Buckling Stone,” the creature I inherently knew to be River said. Eyes like glowing sea glass stared down at the prone form. “You’ve torn apart who you are to shed the blood you wear. A luxury I will never have. For you embraced death, and I am.”

“What’s he doing?” I asked, my chest tense with a new level of sadness that weighed not only on my mate but on River as well.

“What he needs to.” Brook’s whisper held a broken quality to it, as if—

“No. He’s not going to die fo—”

“No. He will not die, but it will hurt. It will take time to recover. Many months, seasons. Maybe years. He wants to do this for you.” Brook seized me tighter as something shuddered in my chest.

River’s chest opened. Like a flower, it spread petals of colorless flesh, revealing at his core a complex sort of thing. The shape within appeared like a heart, but round, made of light, pulsing. Around the orb of light, a little red orb spun about, caught in an invisible current.

“What…” Brook’s soft whisper drew my gaze, his face twisting in confusion.

From Buck’s chest, a similar thing occurred, but much smaller, lacking the little red orbiting sphere.

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