Page 14 of Iced Heat

“She probably thinks I’m supposed to stay out of your and her arguments because that’s what Rosemary does. I’m not good at staying out of things, though. I’ll leave if you want me to, mate, but if I’m here, I’m here,” I shrugged.

“What do you want?” Sequin turned on her, standing akimbo.

“You back,” she sighed.

Their argument from the night before threatened to repeat itself and I rubbed the bridge of my nose as they shouted back and forth a bit. I only caught key words because I heard it all before.

“Okay, but what does that mean?” I asked.

“What does what mean?” Sequin asked, lowering his voice to speak to me.

“Having each other back?” I asked, standing up and twisting at the waist to pop my back.

Neither of them said anything for a long moment.

“Do I need to whisk Rosemary away on some completely platonic but far away vacation to leave you two on your own for a while?” I offered up.

“No!” They both snapped at the same time.

“Just offering. I mean you guys got along before we were around,” I pointed out.

Neither of them said anything for a long moment. I hoped Rosemary liked living near an Other World Gateway because my idea of taking her on vacation was just taking her back to our Starscale house and keeping her there until these two worked out their shit. Merely thinking about being away from Sequin left me aching and we hadn’t gone past cuddling or kissing. Well, there was a lot of talk about my dick but finally someone wanted to talk about it. I laughed at my own joke and the other two glanced over their shoulders at me. I just shrugged. As someone full of elements, I’d never fit in the way some people could.

“I liked the damn stuff!” Daliah snapped a second later. “All the girly stuff! Mom died and everything girly went. There was you, Dad, and Teddy and sometimes Duke! You kept sewing – yes but that’s not girly, not really! Everything Mom and I did together went right out of the fucking door and don’t you dare make a joke about fucking mommy issues or I’ll hit you so hardyou’ll land on an undiscovered planet that doesn’t even have coffee! So help me, Frost and Juda, Sequin Moonscale!”

Sequin took a step back and I took a step forward. They were getting somewhere, and she could make all the idle threats she wanted but she wasn’t about to put hands on my mate. Sibling or not, that shit wasn’t gonna fly. I wrapped my arms around Sequin from the back and he leaned into me. Daliah’s eyes softened but only for a second.

“I wasn’t going to joke like that. Dal, we all have mommy issues. The issue is she’s dead,” Sequin said, his voice almost deadpan.

“I know,” Daliah nodded.

“If it makes you feel any better, I might’ve been more gentler in how I said I hated the stuff but I still hate it. I don’t think she ever did that much pink. I get that you probably went overboard because you felt like we all tried to take it away from you but it was still a lot of pink.”

“And I liked it and don’t go there!”

“Go where?” Sequin smirked.

“Don’t you call it that!” she wagged her finger at him, but a grin pulled at the corners of her mouth.

“Call it what?” Now I was curious.

“Nope!”

“She turned the whole house pussy pink, alpha,” Sequin laughed.

“How many of those are you looking at to give it a hex code?” I teased.

“That’s the real question,” Daliah nodded.

“What are we going to do about you two?” I asked, trying to pull the conversation back to the matter at hand. I was a patient man, but Sequin had smelled very close to being in heat. Where I was patient, magic as old as the true-mate response wasn’t. It’dpush and push until we gave in and besides, I wanted to know what else went on in that pretty head of his.

“We’ll move the wedding and give up one color – black not pink – if you want to have a joint wedding. The deal was Rosemary’s idea, but I like it. We’ve done almost everything together in our lives, why not this too?” Daliah said, all the joking gone from her voice.

“You do know we haven’t even had time to talk about if we want the big wedding thing, right? We haven’t even,” he stopped talking and pointed at his swollen claiming gland. My gaze followed his finger and everything inside me came to life. I was extra glad to be standing behind him at the moment. Everything icy whispered that I could change that any time. I could order her out and claim him right there on the hotel carpet still holding on to its vacuum lines.

“We could give you time for all that. It’s going to be big but---” she said, starting to smell more crestfallen with each word she said.

“I’m open to it,” I said, managing to keep the husky need out of my voice. “Don’t say no on my account. If it’s a thing your family does and you want to do it, I’m down.”

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