Page 109 of Blade

“I can’t imagineanyonewanting your family in their children’s lives.” Blaine paused. “I’m sorry if that was offensive?”

“It’s the truth.” And I was gay. “We’re not going to quibble over that.”

Back to trying not to laugh, Council Guy shook his head. “You are free to go.”

That was definitely a polite way to tell us to shoo, so I decided it was time to get out of Dodge before he had questions about my past. Okay, I dawdled for a moment as the stunned men floated off the ground and through the portal, but one tug was all it took for Blaine to get me moving.

We were both smart even if I was a bit too curious for my own good.

****

“He was very vague about where he was taking them.” I only liked vague when I was the one refusing to answer questions. “I didn’t think about it at the time, but what am I supposed to tell my mother when she emails me?”

“Nothing.” Blaine shrugged before reaching over and taking my hand. “Tell her you didn’t see him.”

Not a bad plan, actually.

“Play dumb. Yes.” She wouldn’t like anything I could tell her anyway. “In our debrief, I want to start writing down questions for whoever contacts me later.”

Blaine barked out a laugh. “We both have questions, so yeah, we’re going to need a list.”

“That Pride thing, huh?” Did he need space for that? “We’ll figure it out.”

Still smiling, he leaned back in the seat and stroked his fingers against mine. “My distant cousins should’ve gotten the leadership position, but we were all spread out and don’t have the same kind of structure that wolves have.”

Ah.

“I’ve met a few of those.” There wasn’t always a lot of logic between the different groups and how they organized themselves, but in this case, the loner thing made sense. “Right now we won’t worry about it until we start tracking down more of your relatives.”

The coven mentioned a few random ones but there wasn’t anyone who still lived locally.

“Yes.” Blaine closed his eyes and let out a long breath. “For the time being we’re going to relax and travel.”

And it looked like that was a lot safer now, so my plan didn’t seem as stupid any longer.

“I’ve got just the thing for that.” I managed not to laugh when he hummed and peeked one eye open. “We’ll get there about sunrise, so just relax and it won’t be long before we’re done for a couple of days.”

Longer if we wanted.

I knew a guy who knew a guy, and because I’d saved his mate, he was going to let us camp out as long as we wanted.

“Hey, you cheated. I thought we were going to be driving through tomorrow.” Pretending to glare at me, Blaine barely held back a yawn.

“I don’t remember specifically saying we were going to be driving that long.” I’d just made it sound like we would be. “I told you that I had a surprise for you and that we’d do lunch out.”

There were supposed to be some interesting little towns in the area we were going to be staying.

His huff had me fighting to keep a straight face. “Cheater. Are we researching anything?”

I loved that his brain went there first.

“Nope.” Okay, technically there was stuff we could look into because the paranormal site was filled with some weird comments about the locals in that area, but there was nothing I felt the need to look into. “If we get bored, yeah, but this is just for us.”

That had Blaine letting out a long breath as his eyes closed. “I know my being trapped at the beginning of our relationship made things difficult, but I liked it when it was just us.”

Reality had been really far away at that point.

“Me too.” Stroking my fingers against his, I softened my voice a little more. “How about we take a long nap this afternoon and we can cuddle?”