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CHAPTER29
KAI
When Kai entered The Bookshoppe with the pup wrapped in a blanket, hidden beneath his arm, he hadn’t expected that Rhydian and Davina hadalsodecided to pay Jonah a visit at closing time. Initially, he had planned to slowly introduce everyone to the newadditionto their home, starting with the shopkeeper, but that had gone out the window quickly.Veryquickly, in fact, since the moment the pup heard new voices, he squirmed in Kai’s hold enough to shift his cover and peek his head out, all but one of his floppy ears on show.
What had started as joyous greetings from his family rapidly fell to wide-eyed, flabbergasted looks and frozen stares.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Jonah seemed to understand exactly what Kai held despite never glimpsing a bak in person. He’d been heading for the back shelves when Kai walked in and now placed the stack he’d been carrying back on a nearby cart.
A baffled Rhydian sat up in the chair he’d been lounging in across the study table from Davina, whose own eyes were wide with intrigue, confusion, fear, and that same touch of endearment he’d found in Isla’s. “Is that what I think it is?”
Kai pulled the blanket back further and adjusted his hold so the pup was perked up properly and fully in view. “Depends on what you’re thinking.”
Rhydian’s gaze remained fixed on the red eyes, the wet, twitching nose, and the sallow gray skin. “A bak?”
“Ababybak,” Kai corrected as if it made it any better.
Jonah braced himself against a book-laden column, his appearance conflicted. Kai knew exactly why. A bak, in general, was rare to see, but one that wasn’t actively trying to kill you was even more so. “Why did you bring it here? Why do you have it?”
Kai felt like he shouldn’t have found their befuddlement so amusing. Maybe it was because he’d already gone through it himself.
“Because Isla didn’t want me leaving him home alone.” He absentmindedly scratched the pup beside one of his ears, which he seemed to appreciate. “Apparently, he gets scared.”
Though he’d said it slightly mockingly, Kai didn’t bother mentioning Isla had been entirely right. When he got home, the pup had been whining and whimpering in his crate in their bedroom. He’d also destroyed the blankets they’d left him in some type of retaliation. Kai was shocked when he practically leaped into his arms once he opened the crate’s door and then again when he jumped from Kai’s grip and sniffed about their rooms for at least ten minutes, clearly noticing Isla’s absence.
Davina’s jade doe-like eyes were fixed on the baby as she asked, “Why do you have it?”
“It’s kind of a long story.”
And they had time, so Kai enlightened them. He had nowhere else to be. No one to go home to but Sebastian, who he hoped was at the House so he could honor his promise to Isla. Otherwise, it was going to be a long night trying to track him down to make sure he didn’t do anything irrational.
Kai began his tale further back than the night they’d gone searching the tunnels. Instead, he spoke of Isla’s coronation morning when he’d initially found the bak in the passageways and fought and killed what had likely been the pup’s mother. He refrained from mentioning the flare-ups of his power, if only because the guilt for what he’d nearly done to Rhydian reared its head and made him so sick he needed to sit down in a nearby armchair.
His brother hadn’t seemed to notice or realize what happened that night, and none of them had ever really commented on what he’d done to Brax, but Kai wondered how horrible it made him not to warn them about all he could do, what he felt. How dangerous he truly was when he could slip and break any one of them if he lost control.
But he had the bane now, and it seemed to be working—granted, it had only been a couple of days. He had to take the victory for what it was.
By the time he’d gotten to disclosing his and Isla’s voyage into the tunnels last night, the pup had somehow located one of his mate’s sweaters behind the shelves. Any attempt to wrench it away had been futile while he dragged it everywhere he went, wrapping himself in it as if he’d already come to know and miss her scent. Kai tried to pinpoint when exactly the creature had become so obsessed with her, but there had been so many small kindnesses from her last night—saving him from the rats, coddling him, feeding him, bathing him, and putting him to bed.
Kai couldn’t deny the soft place it warmed in his heart. He, most certainly, would become a fool when he saw her with their own children.
One day.
Once he’d finished explaining, his eyes settled on the pup and Davina, who’d slid to the floor to play with him. He rolled onto his back and exposed his smooth gray belly.
“He is a cutie,” Davina cooed, rubbing the pup’s stomach and making him elicit a tiny, satisfied sound like a sigh. She giggled.
“Don’t think about asking for one.” Rhydian’s voice held a hint of caution as he remained firmly in his seat, his typical bravado cracking from the memory. Kai knew the guard had seen a bak once in his life, the one Isla—or her mother, technically—had killed in the house within the wasteland. That one had been dead but also an adult, likely ten times the size of the pup—what they had to look forward to in the future. Dead or not, the shot of fear when one glimpsed the legendary monsters never went away.
He asked Kai, “How are you sure this thing isn’t going to try to eat you?”
They weren’t.
“His teeth are barely sharp enough to cut through meat. Isla had to chop up and tear every morsel we’ve fed him to bits.” He’d had to do the same just before they got here. Maybe he should’ve brought more food with him. He had no clue how big his appetite was.
“Mother of the decade,” Jonah commented from where he’d been shielded behind the stacks, having gone to get things from his apartment. “Hasn’t she killed like twenty of these things?”
Six, Kai was pretty sure.
