All Hail the Shifter King
Title: Lords of Kensington, Part 18
Word Count: 1930
Notes: Oh Ryder. Always getting yourself in trouble. This was a fun one to write, not necessarily because of the "tension" (*snrk*) but because it's easy to forget sometimes that shiftkin are very much animals - they might have started their lives as humans but things change over the centuries. Sometimes the most appealing thing to an animal is being in the company of other animals.
"Bekah tells me you're going to Kensington."
They were sitting on the low stone wall like they always did, a bottle of scotch between them and the glow-bugs filling the evening air with dancing lights. The night-symphony rose from the rainforest ahead of them, the cries of nocturnal creatures and the reedy shrieks of bats rising from their roosts. It was Ryder's favorite time of day, the still hours in which the human world shut down and mankind became something akin to a bad dream, a daylight hallucination suffered by the secretive who could only stretch their legs and revert to their true selves once the humans had fallen asleep.
He didn't say anything to Eli's statement, didn't even look at him - his eyes were fixed on the treeline, the dark shadows where the canopy met the star-streaked sky.
"You know that's a bad idea," Eli continued. "Things don't work properly all the way up there."
"It's only for a week," Ryder said, throwing back his drink and setting the heavy glass on the wall beside him.
"A week is long enough."
"It'll be fine."
"At least wait until the weather is better. You don't need the cold on top of -"
"Eli." Ryder set a frustrated glare on him. "I said, it'll be fine." Eli didn't look convinced, though - if anything, he looked like he was willing to argue all night. "She needs to go home, see her family. She's been here too long."
"I just want you to be careful." Eli finished his drink and immediately topped up his glass, then leaned over to fill Ryder's as well. "You start feeling off, or something happens to that thing..." He gestured to the gently pulsing coin around Ryder's neck. "Call it a day and come home before something bad happens."
His body felt like an unfamiliar thing as he tugged his shirt over his head - the dull ache of tired muscles and deep bruising, the sting of abraded skin. Wincing, he pushed his fingers tenderly into a baseball-sized welt on his ribs - one of the kin he'd caught in the stairwell had landed a solid hit that still stung bitterly, making him wonder if there was a cracked rib beneath what would surely be a spectacular bruise later.
The drive back to Katrina's apartment had been uneventful - whoever Kaius had sent to find them either couldn't mobilize quickly enough to follow them, or was too busy dealing with the dead they'd left behind. The girl had introduced herself as Mackenzie, one of Atticus' brood that had decided to pledge herself - ("Against my better judgment," she'd said with a shameless grin, "but I'm kind of known for my bad decisions.") She'd been planning to visit after her shift, but as luck would have it they'd met up at the mall. ("Well, luck and a tiny bit of careful suggestion," she'd admitted, gesturing to the hammered silver-white bracelet around her wrist. "Okay, actually... maybe a bit more than a tiny bit. You're a tough nut to crack." Ryder hadn't been impressed - Katrina had found it absolutely hilarious).
Azrin and Benjamin were waiting for them when they returned, and within a few minutes of Mackenzie and Ryder filling them in on what happened Benjamin was on the phone, calling other kin in the area to make sure they steered clear of what was likely a hub of asperi activity. Katrina, too, had been busy on the phone - a subtle call to her mother to make sure she'd made it home alright, and then a flurry of texting before she said she needed to make a quick run to the store. It took a good ten minutes of arguing to convince her that she needed an escort, another ten for her to convince Ryder that she didn't need him to be said escort, and eventually Benjamin had reluctantly agreed to take her, dragging Azrin with him.
Mackenzie had stayed behind, calmly reminding him that Anya made the security rule and there was no way in hell she was going to get on Anya's bad side. She'd pulled a veritable magic act after that - the girl with the pink dredlocks, shimmering corset and tulle skirt vanished into the bathroom with her backpack and emerged with long, pale brown hair braided over her shoulder, her eye-catching clothing traded for a pair of black leggings and a fitted red t-shirt and the pink wig clasped in her hands. And though he'd been initially annoyed that she was there, he had to admit that she was considerably quieter than Azrin - though that wasn't terribly hard, he thought with a smirk - and before he'd headed into the bedroom to change she'd settled herself on the couch with a tablet she'd pulled from her purse and didn't seem entirely keen on making conversation.
The afternoon sunlight filtering through the blinds left bands of shadow across his torso as he regarded himself in the tall mirror affixed to her closet door, another shade against the too-red of his scars and the symmetrical curls of navy that moved beneath the surface of his skin like ink through water, persisting despite his efforts to calm himself. The lack of the comforting coin-magic was frustrating and distracting - sighing, he lifted the coin from around his neck and held it in his palm, staring down at the gleaming surface.
"The hell is wrong with you?" he asked quietly, rubbing his thumb across the surface - the gold turned a deep blood red at his touch, heating until his skin tingled. "It's only been a couple days," he said. "You can't fall apart on me n-"
With a chiming sound like crystal shattering a starburst crack exploded across the coin, the surface splitting like skin and the red light spilled out and over his hands like blood. The sensation that followed was like a gunshot, a burst of pain across his sternum that dropped him to the floor, the heavy necklace falling to the carpet with a muted thud as he clutched at his chest, fingernails clawing at his skin as if they could pull his heart from the cage of his ribs, anything to stop the nerve-shredding pain that ripped through him, seized his lungs, left him gasping and shuddering.
"Hey, everything okay in... oh, shit." There was a flurry of movement as Mackenzie dropped to her knees in front of him, her blue-grey eyes wide. "What happened?" she asked, her thin hands fluttering like small birds inches from his skin as if afraid to touch him before she finally cupped his face in her hands. "Is there someone here?" she asked, lifting his head so that she could hold his eyes with her own. He managed to shake his head - her touch sent a sheet of cold energy cascading over him, dampening the pain in an exquisite, icy chill - and closed his eyes as he took deep, gasping breaths. "Then what... oh." She picked up the coin, then dropped it just as quickly as her skin sizzled from contact with it. "Fuck!" she snapped, sticking her fingers in her mouth. "I forgot they do that." She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. "You're red hot," she told him, rather unnecessarily, and tapped her fingers against her bracelet - a low hum radiated from the metal, resonating in his teeth and bones, chasing the stabbing pain and heat from his body.
"I'm fine," he replied, his voice hoarse.
"Oh yeah, you're peachy alright." She picked up the coin again, this time by the leather strap of the necklace, and studied it as it dangled, twisting back and forth. "Damn," she said, setting it on top of the dresser beside her. "You really did a number on that thing. How much have you been using it?"
"Too much, I think," he admitted, reaching up and grasping the lip of the dresser to pull himself off the floor. It took far more effort than it should have, his muscles stiff and uncoordinated and his head spinning with vertigo - when he finally felt steady enough to open his eyes, Mackenzie was staring at him with her jaw hanging open.
"Wow," she breathed, and stepped to the side so that he could see himself in the mirror. "You're a hot mess."
"Thanks," he muttered, wincing and holding his breath as he straightened and swept his hands through his hair. "Because you're such a great judge of..." He saw, then, what had shocked her - spread across his sternum was a navy starburst, jagged lines rising slightly from his skin like scars. "Holy shit," he murmured, running his fingers across it, his skin uncomfortably hot to the touch.
"It happens to you folks when you're up here," she said, nodding slightly. "I mean, I've never seen it, but I heard that it happens." She closed the space between them and pressed her palm to his chest. "Does it hurt?"
"Not anymore." He wanted to push her out of his space, shove her out of the room, but there was something so intimately familiar about her, the predator-scent on her skin and the energy that rippled off her body, the unique imprint of the magics that made her so much more than human. He tried to remember the last time he'd been this close to another shiftkin that wasn't Eli or Rebekah - not since Rika, he realized, though it felt much longer than a century and a half. "Guessing I have you to thank for that."
"It's good for some things," she said, looking down at her wrist and shaking the bracelet, sending sparks of magic into the air like tiny fireworks. "Kerry tells me I'm the shits at healing, but I got this magic thing down." She looked up at him again. "But you know, breaking the thing isn't going to get Kaius off your back," she mentioned. "I think you've killed enough people to piss him off, now."
"I'm good at making a nuisance of myself," he replied, and she laughed at this, slid her hand up to rest her palm against the side of his neck, the burst of cold it sent through him making him momentarily dizzy.
"Kind of expected more refined behavior from a king," she said, patting his cheek. "But if that's the case, I think we'll get along just fine." He caught her hand before she could pull away and held it, marveling at the smoothness of her skin, the thrum of her energy, the calm and intense pulse of her heartbeat. Reason told him that he had no business with this girl, but reason meant so little when he was caught in the near-euphoric intensity of her energy, of being close to his own kind - it didn't matter that she wasn't tesairen. What did matter was how she looked at him, the ease and honesty in her movements, the beauty of her fearlessness. She stood so close that he could feel the alternating heat of her body and the soothing chill of her magics, and as his free hand slid around her waist he saw the glow from her bracelet flicker, pale tendrils of blue-white light weaving around and under her skin, sweeping in long strands of coloring that lit the curves of her muscles beneath her clothing, the gentle swell of her breasts and the arch of her collarbones before settling into her eyes so brightly and brilliantly they almost turned silver. He could feel the tremor in her body, not nervousness but the tensing of her muscles, the firing of her nerves, the will to shift that shook her like a physical craving, and in that moment she was so inhuman, so perfectly beautiful, that it took his breath away.
"Is this your charms again?" he asked. She laughed a little, a breathy, quiet sound.
"Afraid not, Your Majesty," she told him. He winced a little at the title and shook his head.
"Don't call me that," he said. "It's just Ryder." She stared seriously at him a moment, her eyes picking him apart, before that same coy smile crept across her face and she stood on her tiptoes to brush her lips against his.
"Alright," she breathed. "Just Ryder, then."
Word Count: 1930
Notes: Oh Ryder. Always getting yourself in trouble. This was a fun one to write, not necessarily because of the "tension" (*snrk*) but because it's easy to forget sometimes that shiftkin are very much animals - they might have started their lives as humans but things change over the centuries. Sometimes the most appealing thing to an animal is being in the company of other animals.
"Bekah tells me you're going to Kensington."
They were sitting on the low stone wall like they always did, a bottle of scotch between them and the glow-bugs filling the evening air with dancing lights. The night-symphony rose from the rainforest ahead of them, the cries of nocturnal creatures and the reedy shrieks of bats rising from their roosts. It was Ryder's favorite time of day, the still hours in which the human world shut down and mankind became something akin to a bad dream, a daylight hallucination suffered by the secretive who could only stretch their legs and revert to their true selves once the humans had fallen asleep.
He didn't say anything to Eli's statement, didn't even look at him - his eyes were fixed on the treeline, the dark shadows where the canopy met the star-streaked sky.
"You know that's a bad idea," Eli continued. "Things don't work properly all the way up there."
"It's only for a week," Ryder said, throwing back his drink and setting the heavy glass on the wall beside him.
"A week is long enough."
"It'll be fine."
"At least wait until the weather is better. You don't need the cold on top of -"
"Eli." Ryder set a frustrated glare on him. "I said, it'll be fine." Eli didn't look convinced, though - if anything, he looked like he was willing to argue all night. "She needs to go home, see her family. She's been here too long."
"I just want you to be careful." Eli finished his drink and immediately topped up his glass, then leaned over to fill Ryder's as well. "You start feeling off, or something happens to that thing..." He gestured to the gently pulsing coin around Ryder's neck. "Call it a day and come home before something bad happens."
His body felt like an unfamiliar thing as he tugged his shirt over his head - the dull ache of tired muscles and deep bruising, the sting of abraded skin. Wincing, he pushed his fingers tenderly into a baseball-sized welt on his ribs - one of the kin he'd caught in the stairwell had landed a solid hit that still stung bitterly, making him wonder if there was a cracked rib beneath what would surely be a spectacular bruise later.
The drive back to Katrina's apartment had been uneventful - whoever Kaius had sent to find them either couldn't mobilize quickly enough to follow them, or was too busy dealing with the dead they'd left behind. The girl had introduced herself as Mackenzie, one of Atticus' brood that had decided to pledge herself - ("Against my better judgment," she'd said with a shameless grin, "but I'm kind of known for my bad decisions.") She'd been planning to visit after her shift, but as luck would have it they'd met up at the mall. ("Well, luck and a tiny bit of careful suggestion," she'd admitted, gesturing to the hammered silver-white bracelet around her wrist. "Okay, actually... maybe a bit more than a tiny bit. You're a tough nut to crack." Ryder hadn't been impressed - Katrina had found it absolutely hilarious).
Azrin and Benjamin were waiting for them when they returned, and within a few minutes of Mackenzie and Ryder filling them in on what happened Benjamin was on the phone, calling other kin in the area to make sure they steered clear of what was likely a hub of asperi activity. Katrina, too, had been busy on the phone - a subtle call to her mother to make sure she'd made it home alright, and then a flurry of texting before she said she needed to make a quick run to the store. It took a good ten minutes of arguing to convince her that she needed an escort, another ten for her to convince Ryder that she didn't need him to be said escort, and eventually Benjamin had reluctantly agreed to take her, dragging Azrin with him.
Mackenzie had stayed behind, calmly reminding him that Anya made the security rule and there was no way in hell she was going to get on Anya's bad side. She'd pulled a veritable magic act after that - the girl with the pink dredlocks, shimmering corset and tulle skirt vanished into the bathroom with her backpack and emerged with long, pale brown hair braided over her shoulder, her eye-catching clothing traded for a pair of black leggings and a fitted red t-shirt and the pink wig clasped in her hands. And though he'd been initially annoyed that she was there, he had to admit that she was considerably quieter than Azrin - though that wasn't terribly hard, he thought with a smirk - and before he'd headed into the bedroom to change she'd settled herself on the couch with a tablet she'd pulled from her purse and didn't seem entirely keen on making conversation.
The afternoon sunlight filtering through the blinds left bands of shadow across his torso as he regarded himself in the tall mirror affixed to her closet door, another shade against the too-red of his scars and the symmetrical curls of navy that moved beneath the surface of his skin like ink through water, persisting despite his efforts to calm himself. The lack of the comforting coin-magic was frustrating and distracting - sighing, he lifted the coin from around his neck and held it in his palm, staring down at the gleaming surface.
"The hell is wrong with you?" he asked quietly, rubbing his thumb across the surface - the gold turned a deep blood red at his touch, heating until his skin tingled. "It's only been a couple days," he said. "You can't fall apart on me n-"
With a chiming sound like crystal shattering a starburst crack exploded across the coin, the surface splitting like skin and the red light spilled out and over his hands like blood. The sensation that followed was like a gunshot, a burst of pain across his sternum that dropped him to the floor, the heavy necklace falling to the carpet with a muted thud as he clutched at his chest, fingernails clawing at his skin as if they could pull his heart from the cage of his ribs, anything to stop the nerve-shredding pain that ripped through him, seized his lungs, left him gasping and shuddering.
"Hey, everything okay in... oh, shit." There was a flurry of movement as Mackenzie dropped to her knees in front of him, her blue-grey eyes wide. "What happened?" she asked, her thin hands fluttering like small birds inches from his skin as if afraid to touch him before she finally cupped his face in her hands. "Is there someone here?" she asked, lifting his head so that she could hold his eyes with her own. He managed to shake his head - her touch sent a sheet of cold energy cascading over him, dampening the pain in an exquisite, icy chill - and closed his eyes as he took deep, gasping breaths. "Then what... oh." She picked up the coin, then dropped it just as quickly as her skin sizzled from contact with it. "Fuck!" she snapped, sticking her fingers in her mouth. "I forgot they do that." She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. "You're red hot," she told him, rather unnecessarily, and tapped her fingers against her bracelet - a low hum radiated from the metal, resonating in his teeth and bones, chasing the stabbing pain and heat from his body.
"I'm fine," he replied, his voice hoarse.
"Oh yeah, you're peachy alright." She picked up the coin again, this time by the leather strap of the necklace, and studied it as it dangled, twisting back and forth. "Damn," she said, setting it on top of the dresser beside her. "You really did a number on that thing. How much have you been using it?"
"Too much, I think," he admitted, reaching up and grasping the lip of the dresser to pull himself off the floor. It took far more effort than it should have, his muscles stiff and uncoordinated and his head spinning with vertigo - when he finally felt steady enough to open his eyes, Mackenzie was staring at him with her jaw hanging open.
"Wow," she breathed, and stepped to the side so that he could see himself in the mirror. "You're a hot mess."
"Thanks," he muttered, wincing and holding his breath as he straightened and swept his hands through his hair. "Because you're such a great judge of..." He saw, then, what had shocked her - spread across his sternum was a navy starburst, jagged lines rising slightly from his skin like scars. "Holy shit," he murmured, running his fingers across it, his skin uncomfortably hot to the touch.
"It happens to you folks when you're up here," she said, nodding slightly. "I mean, I've never seen it, but I heard that it happens." She closed the space between them and pressed her palm to his chest. "Does it hurt?"
"Not anymore." He wanted to push her out of his space, shove her out of the room, but there was something so intimately familiar about her, the predator-scent on her skin and the energy that rippled off her body, the unique imprint of the magics that made her so much more than human. He tried to remember the last time he'd been this close to another shiftkin that wasn't Eli or Rebekah - not since Rika, he realized, though it felt much longer than a century and a half. "Guessing I have you to thank for that."
"It's good for some things," she said, looking down at her wrist and shaking the bracelet, sending sparks of magic into the air like tiny fireworks. "Kerry tells me I'm the shits at healing, but I got this magic thing down." She looked up at him again. "But you know, breaking the thing isn't going to get Kaius off your back," she mentioned. "I think you've killed enough people to piss him off, now."
"I'm good at making a nuisance of myself," he replied, and she laughed at this, slid her hand up to rest her palm against the side of his neck, the burst of cold it sent through him making him momentarily dizzy.
"Kind of expected more refined behavior from a king," she said, patting his cheek. "But if that's the case, I think we'll get along just fine." He caught her hand before she could pull away and held it, marveling at the smoothness of her skin, the thrum of her energy, the calm and intense pulse of her heartbeat. Reason told him that he had no business with this girl, but reason meant so little when he was caught in the near-euphoric intensity of her energy, of being close to his own kind - it didn't matter that she wasn't tesairen. What did matter was how she looked at him, the ease and honesty in her movements, the beauty of her fearlessness. She stood so close that he could feel the alternating heat of her body and the soothing chill of her magics, and as his free hand slid around her waist he saw the glow from her bracelet flicker, pale tendrils of blue-white light weaving around and under her skin, sweeping in long strands of coloring that lit the curves of her muscles beneath her clothing, the gentle swell of her breasts and the arch of her collarbones before settling into her eyes so brightly and brilliantly they almost turned silver. He could feel the tremor in her body, not nervousness but the tensing of her muscles, the firing of her nerves, the will to shift that shook her like a physical craving, and in that moment she was so inhuman, so perfectly beautiful, that it took his breath away.
"Is this your charms again?" he asked. She laughed a little, a breathy, quiet sound.
"Afraid not, Your Majesty," she told him. He winced a little at the title and shook his head.
"Don't call me that," he said. "It's just Ryder." She stared seriously at him a moment, her eyes picking him apart, before that same coy smile crept across her face and she stood on her tiptoes to brush her lips against his.
"Alright," she breathed. "Just Ryder, then."