Page 9 of The Buck Stops Hare

“Who has touched him?”

“Does he look like an omega that’s been touched? I spoke with him. I’ve kept his door locked. I only allowed females near him, if not for myself.” Grim rested his hands on my shoulders, eyes drifting toward Eve. I glanced over to catch her pretty hazel eyes glaring at us. Something became immediately clear to me—Eve was an aspect. The touch calmed me. “He is not my aspect.”

Unsaid words.She is.

Eve would be hard to convince.

Jacque barked from my ankle and nipped at the hem of my jeans, tugging.Mama!

Of all the static, and muteness that came from the hare’s mind, that one word stood out loud and clear. Jacque was infantilized and had formed a maternal bond with Cliff.

“Jacque? Bunny boy?” A rustling of sheets changed from fevered masturbation to hasty dressing. Cliff stumbled free, hisvoice nothing like Rayne’s, all husky and rough. Without a few days of razor and the exhaustion of untouched heat, he called to me, a precipice. My Cliff. Made of me and for me. As I came from the mountainside, there he was, too.

Jacque stomped his back foot and barked before scrambling over to let Cliff pick him up, all while frantically whimpering.

“Oh, lil bunny boy baby dumpster muffin…” A crack of tears inundated his voice, and the two snuggled, the hare lapping tears from his cheeks as they formed. “Daddy’s here. I promise… You’re okay.”

His voice soothed the hare amid pricked thoughts ofscared, mama, happy,and more. He healed the hare with his presence. “I know, I missed you, too. I’m sick, buddy. It’ll be okay.”

“You’re in heat,” I said, unable to keep the rasp from my voice.

“Yeah, genius. Grim already explained all that shit,” he said, his words gruff and breathless.

I approached a step then two before Jacque barked and struggled in his arms, leaping just close enough to me so that I could catch.Not mama! Good!

Cliff scrutinized me, eyes trailing me from head to toe. Resignation rested plain on his face while Jacque rubbed his face all over my chest and neck affectionately. The calm, cool, and collected composure I wanted to show for my mate all but slipped away.

“Jacque likes you.” He stared at the hare for a moment before his gaze flicked back to mine.

Not knowing what to say, I nodded once. A hundred words lay on the tip of my tongue, a million more to be left unsaid. The stare we shared spanned the thousands of years I’d been alive, sweet like honey, as hypnotic as that of the mountain bees feeding off rhododendron nectar. Colder than the summit top. But even in the face of gods, he didn’t cower or bow. He had noignorance to share, as Grim had told him all. “And what aspect are you, my Cliff?”

“Weathering,” Grim said. His hoarse voice behind me seemed muted, and I barely gave him a glance. Eve still stood at his side, arms crossed.

“As your Eve is Adamant.” If he was going about giving my aspect his moniker, I’d push hers, too.

“A life for a life paid. I’ve chosen my compensation.” Grim turned to Eve, his face melting under her sneer. A raw arousal whipped about in the air. Not just from Cliff.

“Oh. Hell. Naw. No, sir. Nobody’s picking me as their com—” She silenced when Grim knelt and bent his head forward.

“I pay the debt myself. My life is yours, my aspect, my Adamant Eve.” Grim’s voice shivered, and a sob clenched free of his throat.

“So, do we fuck now or—” Cliff offered me a wan smile, and I froze, my cock pulsing in my pants so hard that I felt the beast within me rise to fuel it.

“Do not soil him, brother. He is not at peace with his nature.” Grim kept his head bowed as Eve stared him down.

When I met Cliff’s eyes, the reservation remained. He reminded me of Rayne the day he discovered his power, hesitant and determined. “How have you managed so far?”

“I think you saw how.” Cliff’s upper lip curled as he shuffled back to the wall to lean in. He tilted his flattened palm in the air a little. “I got two more days of it, but you’re the first I’d let in on it. Grimmy wouldn’t touch me, but he only felt kinda right.”

“Grimmy?” I raised a brow and glanced at my cowering brother.

With words unsaid, Grim nodded, shoulders hunched up. “Hurakan… Tlaloc.”

I nodded sagely. Our brother’s names, a god of storms.

“Does any of him live on in Tempest?” Grim had never given the god of storms consideration before, always animosity, regarding Storm as an inferior substitute for his companion.

“If you believe in reincarnation of gods, then believe he’s there. And believe that he found rain, and in his water layChalchiuhtlicue. I think this is why the Drowning River loves him so. They both swim in dark waters,” I said. If he would bring up our fallen brother’s name and assume that our Storm had been reborn from him—I’d assume that his lover’s element of life-giving water, who died before her power had been actualized, had found home in Rayne. But what confounded me far more than the surreptitious representation was the three aspects being found in siblings with otherwise unremarkable parentage. Three siblings for three brothers.

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