The moment I opened my eyes this morning, I could feel the awkwardness in the air. Eating breakfast no one spoke really. Cass was chewing on one side of his mouth so I was feeling embarrassed and guilty. Cass jaw was slightly swollen and bruised but nothing severe looking. It appeared it was just very tender so at least I didn't break anything.
Cass finished up and took care of his plate and headed outside to the back dojo. John was the one to sigh this time.
"I feel like he's still a teenager sometimes. He knows it was just a reflex and it wasn't intended for him but for Thietian. Just give him a little bit, he'll be fine." John smiles at me reassuringly and pats my hand to hold it.
Agreeing with him I nod, "I know, I still feel guilty about it. I wasn't really thinking, it just happened. Oh well... I can't do anything about it now. So do we have anything we need to do today as far as preparations go for Wednesday?"
"Yes, we need to make sure our gear is ready to go, fill the clips with ammo, weapons checked and cleaned, the normal. Why?" He asks taking our plates to the sink to wash them.
"I wanted to go visit Alex and Natalia, and see how Lar and Belle are doing. We haven't seen them just to enjoy their company in a while. Plus I'd like to just check in on Elena, make sure she's alright." I look out the window to the guest house, watching the Fae who are training and hanging out.
"We should check with Thietian...." John clears his throat..." Just to make sure he doesn't have any thing on his agenda for us before we go. A visit actually sounds like a good idea to help relax. We can do all the other stuff tomorrow." John smiles at me before adding. "I'll go out and ask him."
"No it's okay, I can do it. We have to talk at some point might as well be now." I get up and head out to the back house and find Cass sparring with one of the humans that I remember seeing at the meeting a few days ago. I wait a minute until Cass notices me and calls for a time out.
"Hey." He comes up to me and gets some water.
"Hey, we were wondering if Thietian had any plans for us today. We were going to go visit Alex and then Lars. We plan on stopping by and checking on Elena too before coming back. We'll probably be gone all day." I let him know our plans.
"No, go ahead. Was that all?" He finished the water and sets his glass down.
"No, but I don't think sorry is good enough." I try to convey my remorse over the situation.
He nods and goes to start sparring again but stops halfway on the mat.
"Thanks for thinking of checking on Elena. If she wants she can punch me too, if that's what it takes for her to start talking to me again. Also.... tell her no matter what... I do love her and will respect whatever decision she makes." He seems resigned to the worst possible outcome before turning and bowing and starting to spar again.
I head back out and to grab John and we're off.
....
Between the crying babe's that are starting to teethe and poor Natalia trying to ween them off breast feeding, Alex was glad for some relief as we showed up. He quickly handed one of the babes to me smiling and grabbed John to lead him out the back door.
I smiled down at the precious little one, who was fussing, and began to coo and rock them. Soon I had him calming down in my arms and starting to smile before he started making faces at me.
Moments later.... I was covered in baby shit..... that smelled to high heaven.
Natalia who had just got her girl to calm down looked up at me as I started gagging on the smell only to burst into laughter at the sight of me. This startled the sleeping baby back up into a a screaming fit as I ran for the changing table to change the little man. Realizing wet wipes alone would not be enough I took him to the bathroom and shocked him with hosing his rear off with the cold bidet water.
His little trembling lips as the cold water hit his back side was sort of adorable and sad at the same time.
"Look kid, I know this is not your preferred temperature but it's only for a minute." I tried to reason with him and do it as quickly as I could considering I was trying to hold a screaming and kicking baby in one hand, spraying him off with the other.
I think I traumatized the poor thing as I wrapped him up in a warm soft towel and he clung on to me for dear life... Glad to be rid of the cold water being sprayed over his little baby buns.
I got him changed and swaddled tight, a pacifier in his mouth before John and Alex walked back inside. Both stopped and stared at me, shocked and then laughing too. Natalia threw a slipper at them telling them in a stern whisper.
"Shut the hell up! They are sleeping if you wake them ..."
They both had to walk out of the room but not before John snapped a picture of me covered in baby shit. Natalia found me a shirt to change into and I washed the shirt best I could in the sink before snapping it back home to our bathroom sink.
Feeling some what more presentable then before, we joined the men downstairs and sat back to talk. After some good laughs and catching up we decided to bring up what we would be doing in two days time and then Elena.
"So Prince Thietian is going to have us do something for him in two days. It might get a little dicey, I mean we should be fine but just giving you guys a heads up since Cass will be with us." John casually approached the subject.
"Elena is alright with this? She's pregnant. I would think she wouldn't want him taking this risk?" Natalia sat up a little straighter al this bit of information.
John and I shared a look.
"Actually, uh... well... There's been some recent developments and things brought to light that we just found out about. It seems he can't avoid the situation." I don't want to divulge too much knowing it's not really my place to say something.
Alex catches on and tells Natalia to go call her sister. While she's on the phone inside, Alex talks to us about other things like his his and Natalia's business doings. Alex had sold two of his factories so he only had to focus on the other 4 since Natalia needed him and he wanted to be a part of his families life more actively.
I was taking glances at Natalia through the windows and could see her starting to get animated on the phone. She finally comes outside phone still in hand, "Sin, is it true or is she suffering from pregnancy hormones and they've driven her crazy?"
I give her an awkward nod yes and her eyes widen. Suddenly a strew of Italian starts coming out her mouth as she heads back inside. Alex looks at the both of us and shrugs like 'what's going on?'.
"I'll let John fill you in, I'm going to use the rest room and check on the babes since Natalia's getting a little upset in there." I get up as John sighs and begins to explain the situation.
The babes are thankfully still sleeping and even though Natalia's rambling on in Italian to her sister, she's keeping her volume under control. I am able to understand most of what she's saying and realize she's being more understanding of Cass then I originally thought she would be. There's no doubt in her mind though that even though Cass and Thietian made the mistake of not telling anyone about their situation, that this reaction was exactly why he was afraid to admit it.
After she got off the phone, John and Alex joined us inside and we all had our own discussion about it. Looking at the time we decided to go and visit Lar and Belle after promising to let them know when we were back safe from our mission.
Lar and Belle were both presently surprised to see us, they knew someone was going to visit the way Luna had been expectantly looking around for someone. Lar would be joining us tomorrow to make preparations and be there on Wednesday for helping infiltrate and destroy the labs workings.
I'm running my hands over the thick brocade furniture arm when Luna comes up and crawls up into my lap.
"Si Si" She gabbles in her little baby talk, making my heart melt. I give her cuddles before she crawls down and pulls on me to go with her as she carefully starts walking towards her toys.
Chuckling, "Someone wants to play." I get up and follow her to the toys and she hands me a ball and points to it.
"Baw!" She giggles and claps her hands.
"Oh yes a ball... you want to play?"
She nods and puts her hands out and we start gently tossing it back and forth as John continues talking to Lar and Belle.
"Some news has come to light by the way, Lar." John starts.
"Oh what news is that mijo?" Lar looks away from me and Luna playing ball, smiling.
"Well looks like Cass and Thietian share a body." John just puts it out bluntly.
They both looked at one another knowingly.
"We know, Belle had a vision of it before Luna was born but decided to keep that to ourselves. We knew that he needed to come forward and tell everyone. If we had divulged it, the outcome would have been worse. She only told me about the vision recently but that's only because she could not before."
John merely nodded and watched as I got pegged in the face by the ball Luna was tossing to me in my moments of distraction.
Laughter erupted from John and Luna burst into giggles, "Baw!"
The rest of our visit went well and uneventful except for the antics of little Luna. We'd see Lar tomorrow so we gave Belle and Luna our love and went by to see Elena.
I rang the bell outside her flat's doorway and waited for her to come to the door. The sound of foot steps came up to it as she cracked the door open with the metal safety screen still in place and locked.
"Hey Elena." We smiled at her through the door.
"You actually rang my bell? I do believe that's a first, I've gotten kind of used to you all popping in." Her remark was rather bland so I couldn't tell whether she was being sarcastic or not.
She didn't open up the door for us though.
"We wanted to stop by and check on you." John told her.
"Hold on a second I think my phone is ringing, I'll be right back." She shut the door and heard the locks going back on and the sound of her feet running across the floor.
Me and John shrugged and at each other at first then we realized.....
*DUH* FACEPALM*
We don't ever ring the door bell, she probably thinks we're not really us. John and I send a text to Cass, but next thing we know the door is being opened and it's Thietian who's opening it.
"Who are you?" Thietian asks us, right then we hear Cass's phone chirp with a message notification.
"Check your phone..... Cass." I give him a slightly annoyed look as he takes it carefully out of his pocket to check it.
He looks down at it and up at us a few times before opening the door, slightly abashed.
"Sorry, she wasn't sure and ..." Thietian started and John held a hand up to stop him.
"Say no more, we understand. We realized it afterwards. We were just respecting her privacy and giving her space if she desired it. I'm glad to see you were still the first person she called though." John gave him a warm smile.
I closed and locked the door and saw Elena poke her head out from upstairs.
Waving her down, "It was really us." I told her impatiently.
She shook her head as she looked Thietian's way. I sighed and told them to wait down here a minute. I made my way up the metal stairs my feet making light 'tinks' each step. I pulled her into the bedroom and shut the door.
"So you can call him to protect you but still won't talk to him?" I give her a confused side-eye as she looks down, embarrassed, fidgeting with her fingers.
"I called Cass. Not Thietian." She mumbled before sighing and taking a seat.
"I guess I should just accept the fact that the father of my child shares his body with a Fae prince. The biggest problem I have with it, is I fell in love with Cass. Yet from when me and Cass did talk, Thietian seemed to be laying claim to us as well. That's the part I'm not okay with." She kept fidgeting with her hands, obviously uncomfortable still talking about it.
"So you've forgiven him for keeping it from you then?" I sit next to her on the bed wondering what's going on through her mind.
"Yes and no. I'm not as upset and mad at him, but he must work to earn my trust back. It will be hard too, knowing that there is another person inside him. I feel dirty knowing he's been there now, the whole time watching through Cass's eyes. It makes me uneasy thinking about it." She shudders as she thinks about it.
"Maybe then you should talk to Cass about it now? Maybe let me and John be a mediator if you start arguing? Or we can give you both your space unless you need us?" I suggest rubbing her arm.
Her brown eyes smile at me in gratitude, "Thank you. I guess we should talk it out by ourselves now that we've calmed down. By the way.... What happened to his jaw?" She asked.
Ashamed I look away, "Uh... well.... I kind of didn't think and when I found out that Thietian knew certain things and didn't divulge them to Cass, or me, it pissed me off. He was still Thietian.... when I punched him." I scratch my head and shrug with a slight, awkward chuckle.
"Oh mio Dio.(oh my god.)" Elena shakes her head and starts to laugh. "At least one of us hit him." She gets up and walks with me downstairs to let me and John go home for the night so her and Cass can talk.
Thankfully it is Cass now sitting on the couch talking with John in lowered voices so we can't understand what's being said.
"Come on honey, let's let these two talk. We can go home and get started on stuff for tomorrow." I cock my head quickly suggesting us to let them discuss their issues.
Cass looks surprised up at Elena, he was apparently thinking she was not ready to discuss anything with him yet. He even smiled as she sat next to him on the sofa, with space between them but still close by. He gave us a grateful smile and we waved them bye before heading back home.
"You think they're going to be alright?" John asks once we're back home.
"Yes. I think they will be. Now, I know I'm taking my .40... should I take my Katana or my rifle with me though?" I ask holding the sword up sheathed in its scabbard.
"Oh, wow, honey. I love the way you're holding that weapon right now." He winks with a suggestive smirk on his face.
"Oh really? Should I free it from it's scabbard? See how you like it when I'm using?" I walk slowly over just freeing part of the blade from the scabbard.
"Yes, please. I love it when you talk dirty to me like that." John smiles, a hunger filling his eyes, as he pulls me close against his body. Passion fills our kiss as I wrap my arms around him tossing the sword gently to the sofa. Forgotten as our clothes get tossed around it.