Chapter 10

The first overpowering wave of happy relief was at a low ebb and the now familiar dark panic re-claimed the forefront of Kenzi's mind. With utmost care and tenderness she laid Dyson down on the floor and stood up, possessed by the domineering impulse to put as much distance as she could between herself and the person she cared for as much as she was afraid of hurting. The shifter was now breathing steadily, but was still weakened and horizontally bound. His half-open eyes, nevertheless, immediately picked up on the subtle movement as the girl backed towards the door. "What are you doing, Kenzi?" he rasped, his voice firming with a determination that far outmatched the current constraints of his physical state. The girl stilled, caught half-way in her flight intent, and stuttered out what she had for an explanation, "I need to get out of here, away from you, wolfie. I've assaulted and nearly killed you. I don't even know what else I can do to you."

"Whatever you can do, don't you ever run away from me," the man propped himself up on one elbow with a visible strenuous effort, his strength seeping back into him at too sluggish a pace, "Whatever shit happens to us, the only way to waddle through it is to stick together." His slightly glazed eyes never left Kenzi's tensed-up little figure as she took a tiny step back to him. "Besides, I guess you're full for the time being and, thus, I am safe from your flattering advances," he added as a painful after-joke.

"What is it with you and succubi, wolfie?" Kenzi caught on to his tone, "They just can't resist you."

"That's because I am hot," he gave a crooked smile before collapsing back onto the floor, having ridden out his current energy surge.

"That's because you're tasty and have a knack to find yourself at the wrong place at the wrong time," she countered kneeling down at his side and helping him into a sitting position again.

"This is one way of looking at it," the shifter muttered back, "Sometimes it does feel like the right place and the right time.'

Their convo resumed in Dyson's car after a mostly silent ride to the Dal with Kenzi wordlessly darting concerned glances at Dyson and the shifter slumped in the passenger seat, bolstered upright by his will and the seatbelt. She parked the car and turned to face the wolf, steeling herself to speak up but he beat her to the mortifying part. "You weren't fully responsible for your actions, Kenz," he said quietly, extending a hand to cover the girl's white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, "And I, what with my centuries' worth of experience and knowledge of the fae world, simply allowed myself to be ambushed by a mere baby. Lucky, I don't run with a pack any longer, or I'll be the butt of all the post-beer jokes."

"I almost sucked the life out of you," Kenzi shook her head suppressing an unwilling smirk and stubbornly refusing to forgive herself, "Closely after I had a hearty snack on that guy from the store."

"The guy is fine, thanks to your calling Lauren," Dyson replied in a calming tone, "and if it's any consolation, on my very first hunt, back in the day in Scotland, I killed a hedgehog that I wasn't even going to eat – just because I was too intoxicated with the sensation of being a predator in the forest. And the hedgehog actually died and derived no pleasure whatsoever from the process. My own misadventure pales in comparison."

"And you're already trying to lame-joke, means you're better," the girl didn't trust herself to touch Dyson, out of fear to see him flinch as much as of her own urges resurfacing. But the wolf had no such qualms and he scooped her into an uninhibited hug, pressing his chin into the crown of her dark-haired head.

"Are you sure you are well enough to do it?" she whispered into his jacketed chest.

"I am sure we both don't want anyone else to know what is ours to know," Dyson answered in a similar undertone and disengaged to open the door and step out of the car. His second step was clearly losing points in steadiness to his first determined stride and Kenzi was at his side in a flash. "You need Lauren," she started but was cut off. "I don't need Lauren. I need a hair-of-the-dog. If you can just pop out and across the street and get me an energy drink or two out of the vending machine, that should sort me out… more or less," Dyson directed the girl's restless energies.

The half-baked council of war in the inner sanctum of the Dal was not yielding much by way of decisions and the tension was ratcheting up by the minute with Dyson still MIA and Kenzi somewhere out there, running wild. Bo was chomping at the bit from sheer inactivity, Trick overusing the phone and straining his connections in an attempt to get information on either of his friends' whereabouts, Lauren still digging into the books.

"A location spell," the bar-tender uttered throwing the receiver back onto its ornate cradle, "Get back to the shack you call home and get me something of Kenzi, I'll try to enact a spell on that." Bo was glad of the excuse to spring to her legs and into some action.

"Hale, we need to inform Hale," Lauren felt she should also contribute, "He might use the police resources."

A vocal No! rang from somewhere up and the three occupants of the room looked towards the rickety stairs leading down from the main hall of the Dal. A pale, against-type unkempt Kenzi was making her way down, her slender form framed by Dyson's tall leanness, one of his hands looping heavily around her shoulders in what seemed a protective embrace. In an instant the room was thrown into a confused motion as voices were raised and feet shuffled. Bo rushed over to her friends, slinging her arms around both of them, tugging them closer as Trick and Lauren were watching the family reunion with their usual composure heavily dented.

When Bo finally dis-attached herself from the pair Lauren joined the group and added a professional touch to the proceedings. "I'd like to check on Kenzi, see how her body is coping with the shock," she announced in a cold voice of reason and led the younger girl over to the farther corner of the room with Bo following them as if she couldn't bare to put any distance between herself and her dearest person. In the meanwhile, Dyson seized this opportunity to finally let himself rock on his feet and stumbled across to take a heavy seat onto the couch; when he next forced his eyes open he saw Trick's inquisitive brown gaze boring into him. The Blood King, who had been standing apart from his younger friends, had had time to absorb the pale radiance of Kenzi's skin – the telltale sign of a succubus just fed, the grey-faced exhaustion of the wolf, not usually the one to be easily tired. On consideration, the old fae decided to refrain from asking the obvious question, the answer to which he didn't want to hear out loud.

"You don't want anyone to know," he said instead, his simple words conveying understanding.

"Hopefully, Bo won't suss it out," the wolf admitted easily, knowing better than to lie to his king, who was also a husband and a father to a succubus himself.

"Bo was never overly perceptive as a fae, don't think she'll be any more so as a new human," Trick replied and changed tack to ask without asking, "You are holding up, but knowing you I am still concerned."

"I'm ok, just need some quiet alone horizontal time," Dyson dismissed his worries, "Kenzi is the one who needs our care most of all."

"She and Bo, they both do," the older fae replied solemnly, "Coming into powers unexpectedly is hard but being stripped of them should be excruciating. I might have lost my heiress to the throne, but I don't want to lose my grand-daughter."

In the other corner at that time Lauren finished her perfunctory check and declared the new succubus perfectly healthy and safely well-nourished.

"The guy from the store proved more filling than a chocolate ice-cream with peanuts," Kenzi supplied blushing a little, "Though there's no saying how long it's gonna take for me to get the munchies again."

"Talking from experience, Kenz, should be another 12 hours or so," Bo held her bestie's friend squeezing it for comfort, "Which means we have time until about tomorrow afternoon."

"Time for what?" Lauren raised an eyebrow at her lover.

"Time for you and Trick and Dyson to find Dar and get him to switch us back and time for me to start training Kenzi as it seems about the only task left for me, a powerless fae, a toothless ex-succubus," Bo explained almost cheerfully, "I'll have to teach you everything I've learnt about controlling and harnessing your inner chi-sucker, Kenz. And you have to give some serious thought to calling your official boy-friend and cluing him in on what's going on."

"Oh, please, no Hale," Kenzi begged tearfully, "Not just yet. I am so not ready for this, for any of this." The younger girl's voice trailed off, her eyes fell down with guilt and fear but were immediately confronted with the dark material of Bo's top as she hugged her bestie to her generous bosom. "It's ok, Kenzi, or at least, it will be," the brunette practically cooed over the younger girl, who would have cried had she any more tears left in here, "If we can fix it fast enough, he doesn't even need to know at all, maybe as a flashback anecdote, something to laugh at over a glass of something."

"There will always be something you can't ever fix," Kenzi breathed out almost inaudibly and for a second her newly modified self was processing the source of her guilty scruples – whether they were coming from having slept with another man or from recollecting the deed with much less compunction and much more relish than was to be expected. It was Dyson's nearly dying that was giving her guilty conscience, the girl realized in a vertiginous moment of self-awareness, not the fact that she had seduced her bestie's ex and had cheated on her boy-friend.