I Just Kidnapped My Twin Alpha Mates

Chapter Four (Part One): That Hurt

The ice pack didn't do much to stop my head from throbbing. Katrina's healing magic worked better, but left me with the insufferable taste of (was that chamomile?) in my mouth. Plus, she kissed Elliot when she finished.

Rather than watch them make out, I burrowed further the couch with the ice pack still taped to my head, my eyes closed, and several bandages falling down around my ankle. Thank whatever fuck up of a God watches over me, Marcel hadn't gotten back from his Bahamas troll trip yet. The blood I has gotten on the cushions has a few more days to come out. The grunting and pounding reverberating from the door behind me...not so much.

Elliot came up from his make out session just long enough to nod his head at the door. "Your problem."

I wanted to smack him, but smacking required getting up, which required moving my head, which I wasn't at liberty to do without passing out dramatically. If I had a knight in shining armor or a best friend that cared about me more than flirting with his girlfriend, the fainting would have been fine. Seeing as I had neither and if Elliot caught me, there wouldn't be much of a point to the slap, I decided to remain where I was by virtue of letting out a pitiful groan. Elliot didn't even look over.

I busied myself scraping paint off the couch edge just to piss him off.

Then, like it had fallen out of the sky to make my day worse, I remembered.

Today (assuming today was actually a new day—I couldn't tell what time it was through my busted up head) was my birthday. Not just any birthday. Eighteen. My official start adulting wasn't looking too good.

And all of that nastiness happened before Marcel decided to take a break from his vacation and come check in his progeny when we least expected it. Elliot was still in the middle of sucking Katrina's face off when the downstairs door burst open, setting off half a dozen of my protective measures, which as a cave troll entering his own territory, Marcel easily dismantled, but not without a grunt that sounded particularly enraged. For once thinking on the same page, Elliot and I exchanged glances of pure horror and proceeded to stuff as many of the junk food wrappers that littered the coffee table into cracks, crevices, and under our shirt. Katrina gave us a look of utter bewilderment, probably curtesy of the unhealthy levels of stress she absorbed from us second hand.

"I thought he wasn't coming back until Friday!" Elliot hissed, his arms full of Doritos.

In by inch, I dragged myself off the couch so I could store various colored pencils and oreo cases under the couch. "You think I knew? We have a werewolf locked—" I paused, looked around, and got so dizzy I promptly face planted onto the rug before I finished wheezing out the rest of the sentence. "Where is he locked up?"

Elliot bit his lip, then pointed upstairs. Instantly I took his meaning. "You did not."

"There was nowhere else to put him! And your room has the strongest anti transformation wards!"

That I couldn't argue with. Once I got tired of going to bed a human and waking up a lynx, or a raven, or some ungodly mix of the two (shudder), I worked my ass of for three weeks layering it with as many human grounding spells as a could find. Still, my skin crawled at the thought of what my —ew— mate might be doing. I hoped he at least left the dumb stuffed platypus I had intact. So I threw whatever I had in my hand, some combination of herbs, flowers, and ritz spray on cheese cans, at Elliots hand with feeble force. He batted it away and continued his frenzied cleanup.

Marcel's lumbering footsteps started to pound up the stairs to the second story.

Ok so in all of this mess about the Kitsaria, mates, Elliot being a dick, and everything else that's gone south for me (aaaaaahhh the pain in recounting this chapter of my life for you) I realize I've forgotten to tell you anything about the layout of this place. Now that might not be a problem if this was a normal house, Marcel wasn't a cave troll, Elliot didn't hoard giant balls of yarn, and I wasn't prone to blowing stuff up accidentally on purpose. As it is, none of those things are true. So basically, the house is shaped like a cross between one of those fancy stacked French deserts with layers of magical goodies and one of those weird art museums with lots of glass wrapped in random statues. Marcel pretty much smashed three different buildings together: the antique shop, the sanctum, and the town house.

By itself, the townhouse is nothing special, just a tiny orange three story block with a roof garden wedged between two other buildings. Elliot and I live on the top floor. We use the second floor for cooking, chilling out, yada yada. The first floor is crammed with Marcel's collection, and so is half of the top floor of the basement (the rest I commandeered for my lab). Marcel, typical cave troll, added a whole extra network of tunnels to the second floor fo the basement that houses more of his collection and his grotto, which (to this day) haven't seen.

Next door, the antique shop looks like a normal antique shop, until you go into the backroom and start debating the price of various incredibly dangerous magical objects while drinking mushroom tea. I don't recommend it myself, but Elliot and I take turns running it when Marcel vanishes into thin air for a week. Then stuck onto the front of the townhouse like a bizarre glass growth is my sanctum. Picture a glass dome that ran its face into a wall then smush, and you've got it.

Either way, that's that. Back to Marcel's deafening footsteps booming up the stairs. Almost immediately, Elliot and I ceased and desisted our fake cleaning. Katrina leaned ever so casually against a potted platt that reacted to her presence by patting her head. Marcel thundered over the doorstep. He looked like your typical grumpy, plaid-wearing fisherman, if your typical plaid wearing fisherman had horns, a club, and the complexion of a granite slab.

"Why," He growled, his voice shaking the room, "did I set off every ward this house has when I came home?"  His eyes honed in on me. I realized from the warm trickle streaming down next to my that I had started bleeding again. I offered what I thought was a winning smile.

Marcel set a box down on the coffee table. "It looks like we have a lot to talk about."