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“I seriously doubt it.”
Though, to be fair, Freya got turned on by violence. We’d proven that time and time again. I couldn’t see her running into the arms of anyone who killed over fifteen people for her, though. It would piss her off if they didn’t let her deal with her problems herself.
Our grappling got rougher, and I shoved him back enough to slide myself out from under him. On my feet again, I held up my fists. Emmett mirrored me, stepping forward. When it came to a good, old-fashioned fistfight, I was faster and had more area to target. He humoured me, letting me land a few good hits before he used his foot to sweep my feet out from under me.
The breath left me and I banged my head against the mat when I fell, but I wasn’t done. This fight was giving me the clarity I’d been struggling to find. Rolling before he pinned me, I landed a hit on his side and wrapped my legs around his neck and squeezed.
He grunted and tried to grab me, but I didn’t let him get a good grip. His face flushed and I finally let him go, collapsing back.
“You guys do what you think you have to do,” Em wheezed. “I’m not in the field, so I’ll support whatever decision you make. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I do,” I said. “I always do. Caspian is being heavily influenced by his emotions, but that’s why he’s not the team leader.”
“I enjoy seeing him blushing and shy over her, so I’d rather he stay influenced and continue to not be the team leader,” Emmett said. “What’s concerning is your emotional reaction, and how you seem to be ignoring your impeded judgment.”
Sitting up on the mat, I wiped the sweat off my brow and continued to ignore the second half of his statement. My judgment was fine. More than fine, as usual. “He is damn cute about it, isn’t he? I’m pretty sure Freya wants to swaddle him and keep him somewhere safe with how he’s been acting around her. She’s pissed the fuck off at me, but it’s impossible to be mad at him.”
Em’s expression fell, and for a second I wondered what I’d said.
“If you two are feeding him now, I guess he doesn’t need to feed from me anymore, does he?” he asked quietly.
Those two were hopeless. I’d done what I could to push them together in the first place, but the fact that neither of them had admitted their feelings yet? Idiots, both of them. He was right that Cas got by perfectly fine with only two people to feed on. A half incubus didn’t have the energy needs of a full-blooded one. But Cas and Em weren’t fucking only to feed our little incubus, and no one seemed to be aware of their ulterior motives but me.
“I think he enjoys feeding from you,” I said casually. “Unless you have a problem with continuing to feed him, I’d assume he would still want some snacks.”
Emmett went red beneath his shadow of a beard. “He can snack on me whenever he wants. He should know that.”
He should know that? Oh, for the love of the gods. This conversation wasn’t the best one to have when I was already frustrated with Freya. I was trying to gently push these two together, not straight up reveal their very obvious affection for each other. My patience was thin. “Have you told him he can?” I asked, getting up and moving over to the weights.
My body was still tense, so maybe a few dead lifts or hip thrusts would loosen me up. “There’s no way he doesn’t know,” Emmett said, sounding less confident this time.
“Look, I adore him, so don’t take this in a mean way. But Caspian is not the ripest fruit on the tree with knowing whether people are interested in him.”
“Not the ripest fruit?”
Weights crashed as I took very little care in loading up the bar. “A few crayons short of a full box? There are so many metaphors I could use to describe this, but apparently it’s not clicking. He’s fucking oblivious, Em. So unless you’ve told him straight up that you’re in love with him, he has no idea.”
Hauling the heavy bar off the ground, I dead lifted it a few times, a bit too aggressively. Emmett stared at me with his mouth slightly ajar, as if I’d exposed some big secret. How did I deal with these men on a daily basis?
“In love with him?”
“Are you not?”
He paused, cringing. “Well, I didn’t think it was obvious.”
“It’s obvious to absolutely everyone except Caspian.”
“How long have you known?”
I did a few more reps until my body burned from the strain, and then I placed the bar back down again with a sigh. “Emmett, you don’t sleep with people. Ever. I’ve watched you gag when a porn advertisement popped up without warning. Someone as sex-repulsed as you wouldn’t agree to feed Cas ‘for the good of the team’ and I knew that when I suggested the arrangement.”
At least getting that off my chest was a good way to blow off some of my steam. I’d tried my best to keep out of it. I had. But these two needed fucking help. I was in love with Cas and I loved Em like a brother, so I wanted them to be happy. If I let them continue how they were going, both of their stubborn, oblivious hearts would be broken.
“You’re a sneaky bastard, Shan.”
“I helped you, didn’t I? Now that Cas can feed off Freya too, you’ve got to come clean about your feelings for him. Or I guarantee, Cas is going to stop ‘bothering’ you by asking to feed. We both know how he hates to be a burden.”
“Still a bastard.”
