Oak, Sophie - Beast [A Faery Story 2] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic) (32 page)

“She says it feels nice.” Kaja liked the wind in her hair. It was the only thing she liked about being up so high. He’d caught her trying to see the ground more than once. If she made it to the ground, she would be terribly disappointed. It was noxious down there.

“And I think it’s charming, but the press is going to eat her alive over it. I hate it, but we’re a society that thrives on conformity. The occasional oddball can be celebrated, but only when said oddball makes a ton of money. Kaja is going to be seen as a cautionary tale if we don’t fix her.”

“She doesn’t need to be fixed.” This was exactly what he’d been avoiding. This confrontation. He knew Kaja didn’t fit in. He knew she was miserable.

Not always
, that voice said.
When you’re inside her and you open up, she’s happy.

But it wasn’t enough.

Susan stared out the window. It was a rainy day. Gray clouds rolled by, making the world seem foggy. “Mom thinks bringing in a tutor would help. Kaja can learn to read and how our society works. I’ve already ordered a wardrobe fit for a princess, and I can have Dellacorp’s media advisor train her on how to deal with the press.”

“No,” he said as fast as he could get the word out of his mouth. Jana was a shark. She’d eat Kaja up and spit her out. And he’d slept with Jana. She was such a bitch she would probably throw it in Kaja’s face just to spite her.

Susan rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll try to find someone you didn’t sleep with, though that makes my job really damn hard.”

Maybe Susan was right. Maybe all Kaja needed was a little time and a little training to adjust to her new home.
A little kindness from you wouldn’t hurt, asshole
. Dante ignored that increasingly loud voice. A present. He’d get her a present, and that would pacify her.

He had work to do. Work he didn’t care about.

“Do what you need to do, Susie. I’m up to my eyeballs in this sunscreen project.” His eyes trailed back to the desk and his mountain of paperwork, but his brain went to a different place. His mind thought about the forest and how Kaja looked naked on the grass.

Susan considered him carefully. “Yes, I can see that. It surprises me.”

“Because you’re shocked I can be professional?” There was that bitterness that was always lurking under the surface.

“No,” Susan replied with a tired smile. “That’s not what surprises me. I’m a little anxious about this turn in your behavior because I always believed you would leave this plane entirely and join Beck and Ci and fight for their cause. I don’t know how I feel about this, Dante. Part of me is utterly thrilled that I don’t have to worry about you dying in their war. And part of me aches because I don’t think this is who you are.”

Tears threatened. He bit them back. He’d never once imagined his sister knew him so well. He would have told anyone who asked that his sister rarely thought of him at all outside of how obnoxious he could be. Had that all been his perception? “This is who I was raised to be.”

She shook her head. “Oh, you’re more, little brother. I always knew that. You’re the kid who took on the older, bigger boys because they made fun of a girl you liked.”

He remembered her. Fourth grade. Trista. A very nice peasant girl on scholarship. He’d had no intentions toward her. She was just funny and sweet. She didn’t deserve to be picked on by sixth graders. He’d nearly gotten suspended for the fight he’d started. “I was very young then.”

Susan’s hair shook as she leaned forward. “You think I don’t know some of the things you’ve done? How about paying for our old nanny’s nursing home? You did that out of your own pocket.”

“The state-run places are terrible. I couldn’t send her there. You would have done the same thing.”

She sighed. “I didn’t keep in touch with her. You give a damn, Dante. You just don’t like to show it. You’re a crusader who’s hidden himself away as a playboy. I’ve always thought of it as you trying to reconcile Dad’s world with the one in your heart.”

“That’s a bit dramatic. I think I’ve always just been trying to live up to Dad’s expectations and failing spectacularly.”

“Only because you never understood what Dad really wanted. He wanted you to find something you were passionate about. He wanted you to be happy. I don’t think you’re happy, Dante. I don’t think you were happy when you were partying, and I don’t think you’re happy behind a desk.”

He wasn’t. And it was awful that someone saw it. He had everything a person could want, and he wasn’t happy.
But you were. You were happy with Kaja in the woods. You were complete.
“Maybe some people just aren’t smart enough to be happy.”

She huffed, a frustrated sound. “You are so slow sometimes. You are happy when you’re fighting for Beck and Ci. When you’re talking politics and how to help the masses, your eyes light up and you become this different person altogether. That’s your passion, Dante. Not numbers and spreadsheets. And I saw you the other night with Kaja. When you thought no one was looking, I saw your fangs and your eyes bleeding out. It was primal, something we try to hide. But you were happy, brother. And that made me happy.”

He tried to hide that. “If the press caught me like that, we would all be in trouble.”

“You think I don’t go a little crazy around Colin?” Susan asked. “I know royals try to hide the way consorts make them feel, but it’s stupid. It’s love. It’s how we love. The sharing of emotions and sensations is how we love. They don’t prepare you for it.”

Dante let a beat of silence slip by before he said, “I can see Kaja’s memories.”

Susan leaned forward, surprise clear on her face. “Seriously?”

He’d known he shouldn’t talk about it, but the temptation was too great. He didn’t have Beck and Ci to talk to. And he didn’t trust anyone else. “It’s like I’m there. It’s like I’m her. I live out her memories when we’re connected.”

“Wow. That must be her power.” Susan contemplated the situation for a moment. “It must be because she’s different. I don’t get anything like that from Colin. I get a lot of thoughts about how hot I am and how much he loves me, but I don’t ever become him. I’m kind of glad about that. I don’t think working on a farm would be an experience I’d look forward to reliving.”

Dante sat back, inexplicably tired. “Yeah, well, being an outcast in a wolf pack hasn’t been awesome.”

“Outcast?”

He hoped he wasn’t telling his sister something Kaja wouldn’t share, but he felt like Susan should know. They were getting close. “Her parents are dead, her siblings killed because her father tried and failed to be the leader of the pack. She was spared because she was a baby, but they treated her like shit. The pack’s leader’s son raped her and then threw her out of the pack when he was done with her. They expected her to die alone.”

“Gods, Dante, I had no idea. She’s so open.” His sister’s hand was over her heart. She wouldn’t think less of Kaja. Susan would love her all the more for how resilient she was.

“Yes, she’s strong,” Dante said. “She didn’t let it kill her heart. That’s why I cringe at the thought that she needs to be fixed. She could teach the people of this plane a thing or two.”

Susan nodded. “I understand. Just let me work with her. You’ll see. She’ll settle in. She’ll learn our ways.”

Dante had to hope so. “Just make sure the tutor is a kind woman.”

“I actually was thinking about a man,” Susan began.

“No.” He wasn’t leaving his lovely, strong, interesting consort alone with some man.

Susan smiled as though she’d been testing him and he’d passed. “Fine. I’ll find a very nice woman to teach our Kaja. Colin can help, too. He likes her. And mother wants to throw a big party for her next month. She’s inviting everyone, including the press. We’ll polish her up, show her off, and then she can go back to being herself.” Susan leaned over and hugged him. “But you should think about slowing down and really thinking about what you want. You know damn well Beck and Ci won’t run. I’ll do anything I can to help, but I’m strictly financial, brother. You could help them in other ways. Mom and Dad will try to tell you to be safe, but you’ve never been safe. It’s who you are. It’s why I love you.”

He was shocked at the tears in his sister’s eyes when she kissed his cheek and stood to go.

“And I need those reports tonight, Dante.”

The doors closed behind her, and Dante knew he had a lot to think about.

Chapter Sixteen

Kaja stared at the machine in front of her. Like everything else on this plane, she found it confusing and difficult.

“What would you like to drink, mistress?”

Though the machine had no face, it still spoke. It still asked her questions she wasn’t sure of how to answer. Everyone did that here. Everyone had questions. She could still feel the press of the people called reporters from earlier in the day. She’d been out with her mother-in-law shopping, and the reporters had found their car. When she and Alana had gotten out, there had been a rush to surround them. Kaja had changed out of sheer fear.

She could still hear the shocked shouts and see the flashes as the reporters took pictures and video.

Dante’s mother had been horrified. Oh, she’d pretended to be angry with the reporters, but Kaja had heard her calling someone known as a lawyer.

Kaja had caused this family an enormous amount of trouble. It was time to seriously consider moving on.

“Mistress? Have you changed your mind?”

No. She was still thirsty. She simply didn’t know what she wanted. It was very much how the last few weeks had gone. She was stuck in limbo, trapped between loving Dante and facing the knowledge that she did not fit in to his world.

“Tea.” Alana often had tea. Kaja had watched Dante’s mother speak to the machine.

There was a short hiss, and the machine went into motion. Kaja stared at it, but she didn’t really see it. She saw Dante in his perfect suit as he came home from work each night. He would come in and try to talk to her, but she didn’t understand half of what he said. He asked about her tutors and her classes and seemed very pleased that she was rapidly learning what he called academics. But the rest seemed to elude her.

Now, she’d utterly humiliated her new family. She’d heard the news of her failure reported on the DLs that everyone here seemed to watch. She was being called the Dellacourt Beast.

And Dante was further away than ever. He still made love to her, but he was always working. He didn’t have time for her anymore. Now that they were back in his home, he seemed to understand that he’d made a mistake.

She wanted to talk to Meg.

The machine finished. There was a lovely teacup with a saucer and steaming liquid sitting in the center of the machine. “Does my mistress wish for cream and sugar?”

“Yes.” She’d never had cream and sugar, but it seemed like something interesting to try.

“And where should I put it? Directly on your thighs and buttocks?” The machine’s voice became distinctly nasty.

“No.” Kaja took a step back and heard a chuckle.

Dante stood in the doorway, his jacket gone. He still wore his tie, but his hair was utterly perfect. He was cool and collected, and the very image of the modern vampire. He was a man who should be married to the perfect consort, not one the press reviled.

“Mom put the beverage dispenser on ‘weight management’ mode. It gets bitchy. You have to learn how to talk to it. You’re the boss, sweetheart.” He got down on the machine’s level. “Look here, you piece-of-shit machine. She said she wanted cream and sugar, and if you don’t give it to her, I will pull your plug, shove you into the recycling bin, and you’ll come back a toaster. Do you want that?”

Immediately a stream of white came from the machine’s dispenser followed by a cube of sugar. “I hope you enjoy your beverage. Please let me know if I can help you further.”