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My home is where you are.
I wanted to go right now and show Ricky just what that meant to me, but first I needed to support my pride, especially after the weirdness with Apollo.And Ricky needed to support the town.It didn’t escape my notice that Glass spent more time staring at the door Apollo had vanished through, rather than keeping his attention focused on the proceedings.Would he find his lion after the meeting?
I sighed and focused on the speaker, a rhubarb who clearly didn’t like our pride but had a good point.
“The fact is no one knows who’s sneaking into Valentine to snatch innocent stalks off the street.We’re Valentine, a town of good rhubarb shifters who keep ourselves to ourselves,” he said querulously as I spied the deputy badge tucked in his pocket.Why didn’t he just take charge then?
“And everyone knows everybody else’s business,” Ricky muttered in my ear.
“We’ve no CCTV,” the stalk continued.“We need eyes everywhere.”If he was in charge of the town security, why didn’t he come up with a plan?
“It’s a good point,” Crimson replied, eyeing the stalk thoughtfully.
“I have a plan for that if Crimson and the townsfolk agree,” Maximus said.“The pride will install cameras all over town.”
There were unhappy mutterings among the rhubarb residents, but the deputy stayed quiet.He clearly wasn’t up to the job, but no one seemed to notice, so I kept quiet.
“Who would be looking at the video footage?”one young stalk asked, his expression worried.
I wondered what he got up to that being on camera would concern him so much.
“It’s an excellent idea, and we’d take shifts,” Crimson said firmly.“Teams from the town and the pride.”
“The monsters are outsiders, how dare they take our stalks for themselves,” the young stalk muttered.
My head ached so hard I couldn’t work out whether he was talking about the attempted kidnapping or the mating, but I felt anger rolling from Maximus and Ricky.
“We don’t call them monsters now and you know the Great Rhu decides who is our mate,” Crimson snapped, her stern gaze fixed on the stalk who shrank away from her scowl.“Not every rhubarb needs to go through the entire town to find the one for him.”
The stalk flushed an angry red, and he looked away.I heard Ricky’s snort in my mind.I guessed the stalk came with a reputation.
You have no idea.Ricky chuckled.
“Be quiet, Howie,” Glass reprimanded.“The monsters—the pride—are going to help us.”
Howie subsided with an annoyed huff.
“The pride will pay for the cameras,” Maximus insisted, “but we’ll need volunteers to help man it.One from the pride and one from the town.Just until we catch these lions.If we see something suspicious, we’ll be able to relay it to the whole town.Tim and I will take the first shift.”
“You’ve got to focus on the cameras,” Crimson said pointedly, her gaze going to Tim, then Maximus.
Maximus flushed bright stalk pink, but Tim just smirked at his former alpha.
“We can do that… and have some fun.I can multitask.”Then the color drained from his face, and he clapped a hand over his mouth.“Sorry, gotta go,” he said, his voice muffled.He bolted for the door.
The smell of vomit tipped my delicate stomach, and I rushed after him.We stood on opposite sides of the path, tossing our cookies into two poor shrubs that didn’t deserve such abuse.One vomiter was bad, but two were just plain terrible when they were sicking up the front of Glass’s home.
When my stomach quit trying to crawl out of my throat, I looked over at Tim, who was still heaving.I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing and ignored the bitter taste in my mouth.What I wouldn’t give to go brush my teeth, but I didn’t want to leave Tim on his own.I felt better now, although I wasn’t used to being sick, so I was still a little wobbly on my legs.Shifters didn’t get sick as a rule, or not that I’d heard about.Was there something wrong with me?With Tim?Had we caught the same bug?
Tim stared at me over the path, wiped his mouth with a shaky hand and gave me a wan smile.“You too?”
“Is this what humans call a bug?”I questioned.“Do Rhubarb get sick cause I gotta say, it sucks.”
Tim gave a wry smile.“No, honey, this is no bug.This is something much bigger.”
I was confused.“What’s wrong with us?Is it like the wilt?Because Ricky is fine.It’s only me who’s sick.”
We’d made sure to bite each other, everywhere, during sex, after the scare of nearly losing Tim to wilt.I wasn’t taking any chances with my mate and if the biting was fun, then doing a thorough job wasn’t a crime.
