14. Mav Begins His Courtship

14

MAV BEGINS HIS COURTSHIP

Telos groaned. “Let me have three minutes to eat.”

“Don’t you need to wait for the results, though?” Ace said. “You could piss first, then go back to eating.”

Telos glared resentfully at him. “Shut your face.”

“Let him have a few bites,” Mav said. “Human rights, team morale, and all that.”

“Huh.” Telos blinked and shoveled fried chicken into his mouth. It was crispy, juicy, and savory, and it cheered him up. “I never thought you’d take my side for anything.”

Mav shrugged. “First time for everything.”

With Estie cradled in his lap, Telos flipped Ace off with both his hands. He inhaled half his box of breakfast, set it down on the side table, and took a gulp of coffee.

It was made the way he liked it. Telos stared at the cup. “Did Hilly-Billy order this?”

Mav shrugged and looked away. “I added the cream and sugar.”

“ You? ”

Mav glanced back. “Did I get it wrong?”

“How—” Telos drank from the cup again, to be sure. But no, it was perfect. “How did you know?”

Mav sighed. “I’ve heard the rest telling you, several times, how much sugar you shouldn’t be putting in your coffee.”

Telos sniffed, trying to appear unmoved. “Fine. You did acceptably.”

Mav ducked his head, but Telos thought he saw a smile.

Mav was smiling.

Because of him.

This is the weirdest day of my life. “Okay, hand over the piss sticks. I’m ready.”

Hadley gave him the stuffed bag.

“I’m not pissing on twenty kits,” Telos said.

“Of course not. Besides, that’ll be hard to get the timing right.” Mav reached into the bag, frowning when the first test kit came out wrapped in a giant pink bow.

“What,” Telos said, turning to look at Hadley. Except the butler had vanished behind Hilly-Billy, watching them from over his brother’s shoulder.

“It’s a celebration!” Hadley said cheerily. “We want a baby!”

Telos scowled. “You want me to have a baby. Not your choice to make, baby bro.”

Mav pulled apart the bow. A slip of pink paper fluttered onto his lap.

It was a handwritten note.

To the man I manfully knocked up, I think your buttcheeks are round and glorious like the moon.

Telos read the note over Mav’s shoulder, impressed.

Hadley cackled. “Dragon Master, you’re supposed to give it to Telos.”

Mav frowned. And hesitated. Then he offered the note to Telos. “Do you want it?”

“Not if you don’t mean it.”

Mav sighed and shoved it into his own pocket. Telos fought back a stab of disappointment; Mav looked up.

“It’s not that I don’t think—” Mav cleared his throat. “The note is vulgar.”

Telos’ eyebrows crawled up. “How would you phrase it, then?”

Mav glanced at the seven pairs of eyes watching them, and scowled. “I’ll tell you some other day.”

But that meant there was something to be told. Telos’ heart fluttered.

Mav glanced at Telos’ chest, and smiled his tiny smile again.

Okay, maybe Telos could get used to this.

He grabbed a test kit from the bag and unraveled the bow, expecting the awful pickup line this time.

When my big alpha balls and your big alpha balls collide, they make a sound so loud, both our worlds vibrate and merge, just like our souls merging to become one.

“How do balls make that much noise?” Telos asked dubiously.

“There’s more on the back,” Hadley whispered.

Telos turned over the slip of paper.

We will merge like slime monsters who will be stuck together for the rest of the movie and then something terrible will kill us.

Telos groaned. “Okay, even I think that is bad. No one should die in a movie!”

“Even in a horror movie?” Mav asked.

Telos sniffed. “I don’t like horror movies.”

“Ah.” Something warm flickered in Mav’s eyes. “I don’t enjoy them either.”

“Well, good.” Actually... were they flirting? Telos couldn’t quite tell. It was nice, though, sitting with his shoulder bumping against Mav’s, leaning into him while Estie yanked on her stuffed rabbit’s ears.

Mav picked up Telos’ discarded pickup line, and tucked it into Telos’ hand.

Telos stared at him. “You didn’t want to give me the line about my ass, but you’d give me one about us dying in a horror movie?”

Mav rolled his shoulders. “Pretty sure we’d end up surviving in one of those movies.”

“Yeah? Want to demonstrate some moves?”

Ace cleared his throat loudly, snapping his fingers at them. “Go piss on those sticks so we can get on with the mission!”

“Fine,” Telos grumbled. He grabbed a few more kits from the bag, and stared at Estie on his lap. Mav was watching them. “I suppose you could hold her again.”

Mav brightened, scooping the baby off Telos just as she burst into a ball of flames.

Mav’s face softened in the orange glow of fire. “She’s so beautiful.”

Telos wasn’t sure if he was supposed to hear that. His insides turned into mush, and he hurried to their bathroom.

Mav followed with Estie.

“Are you serious?” Telos asked, brandishing the test kits at them. “You’re gonna watch me pee?”

Mav shrugged. “You need extra hands to help hold the sticks, don’t you?”

“I guess.” Telos sighed. He tore open the next few boxes and took out the kits; Mav read the instructions on all of them.

“This one first,” Mav said, picking out a purple stick. “It’ll take the longest.”

“We don’t even know if they’ll work for alphas,” Telos grumbled.

“We don’t have many other choices if we want an answer right now.”

It felt weird pissing in front of Mav. Telos felt the slow sweep of Mav’s gaze down his body, lingering on his scars.

“Where did this come from?” Mav asked, brushing his knuckle against the jagged scar on Telos’ hip.

“Some king had a harpie problem and hired me to drive them off his land,” Telos said. “They were getting too close to his castle and killing his soldiers. Turned out, they were a pain to fight.”

“I don’t like them either.” Mav winced. “They trapped one of the wagons in a caravan I was traveling with. Took us a while to fight them off and continue on our way. We had to kill some harpies so they’d stop chasing us.” He brought his knuckle to Telos’ abdomen, where there was a series of nasty-looking, star-shaped scars, almost completely faded. “What about these?”

Telos snorted. “Got those when I was much younger. Fell off a tall roof and landed on a spiky iron fence.”

Mav recoiled. “That looks like it bled a lot.”

“Yeah, it did. My parents were worried.” Telos shrugged. “Old news now, though.”

“You shouldn’t be putting yourself in danger.”

Telos raised an eyebrow. “Really? Are you saying that to me right now, in the middle of a mission?”

For a second, Mav looked sheepish. Then he nodded at the test kits. “Piss.”

“Fuck off.” But Telos held the sticks in front of himself, and finally managed to wet all their tips. He exchanged the soaked sticks with the fresh ones Mav held, and peed on them too.

“Start the timer,” Mav said.

“Timer started,” Hadley sang from the living room.

They gathered the kits and returned to the couch, where Telos resumed stuffing his face with his reheated breakfast. Hilly-Billy was the best.

Everyone crowded around the seven test kits laid out on the coffee table.

“This is like watching water boil,” Crush said.

“More like watching buns baking in the oven,” Raptor muttered.

“And you still haven’t kissed,” Ace said, shaking his head. He went back to tapping a message on his phone.

Mav jerked his head up. “What?”

Telos buried his face in his hands. “No one’s kissing anyone.”

He peeked out through a crack in his fingers, though, watching Mav wet his lips.

What would it be like, if Mav ever wanted to kiss him? If Mav wanted to pin him and carefully touch their mouths together?

Like Telos was precious?

Telos ached with longing, only to tamp it down too late when Mav glanced over. Damn it.

That was supposed to be a secret, too. This mission was turning out to be the worst.

Mav buried his face in Estie’s fiery belly; she giggled and yanked on his hair. Telos didn’t have the heart to tell either of them to stop.

He jumped when someone’s phone timer went off.

Everyone crowded over the test kits, the tension in the air so thick that Telos could cut it with a knife.

“Oh,” Mav said quietly.