When I returned to the front room, I found them all tucking into pizza while Tatum hand fed Saint.
I dropped into my seat and arched an eyebrow at him across the table. “Is it really necessary to treat her like that?” I asked as I grabbed a slice for myself.
“Like what?” Saint asked.
“Making her feed you like a baby,” I said, refusing to back down to his arched eyebrow of doom.
“He didn’t tell her to do that shit,” Kyan said around a mouthful of food. “She chooses to do it because he’s more uptight than a duck’s asshole and eating food with his hands would give him the twitches.”
“Yeah,” Blake agreed. “Like the full body, all over his face, I’m-gonna-stab-a-bitch twitches.”
“I just refuse to let him waste his food because he’s afraid to ruin his manicure,” Tatum joked and I relaxed a little as I realised she really didn’t mind her feeding duties.
“What if I dared you to pick it up and eat it yourself?” I asked Saint and his gaze slowly slid to me from the girl beside him.
“If you wanna play a game like that, you’d better know we don’t fuck around,” he replied, fixing me with a dark look.
“Do it,” I said just as darkly and Kyan laughed like me taunting the big bad dictator was the best thing that had happened to him all week.
With a look which suggested I’d just asked him to shove his arm down a toilet filled with festering shit, Saint reached out and selected the smallest slice of pizza he could find, pinching the crust between his thumb and forefinger with a shudder of unease.
We all paused eating our own food as he lifted it to his lips, his brow furrowing in disgust a moment before he took a large bite. The second it was in his mouth, he dropped the rest of it back onto the plate, chewing quickly and swallowing before getting to his feet, crossing the room and washing his hands in the sink.
“There,” he declared like he’d just won something.
We all laughed as he glowered at us, though I noticed Tatum had a small frown pulling at her brow as she watched him, like she wasn’t sure if that had been funny or not.
Saint headed to the fridge and snatched a bottle of premium vodka out of it before grabbing a glass and heading back to join us. He poured himself a more than healthy measure and sank the lot in one go.
“If I’m going to be subjected to this shit all night then I’m not going to be sober for it,” he muttered, pouring himself another drink as we continued to laugh at him.
“Why are you so uptight anyway?” I asked him as he drank another shot before letting Tatum feed him once more.
Blake released a long whistle and Kyan pushed his tongue into his cheek, his laughter fading away like I’d just put my foot right in it.
“Maybe I was just born this way,” Saint replied, though I could tell there was more to it than that.
“Oh come on, there’s gotta be something else. Something that made you hate eating food by hand. What do you do with a sandwich anyway?”
“Lunch abides by different rules,” he said simply like that wasn’t an utterly ridiculous point to make. “Not that I choose to eat hand held meals very often even if they do fall at appropriate times of the day.”
“That’s not an answer to my first question,’ I pushed.
“I’m not nearly drunk enough to recant those stories,” Saint said in a low voice.
“Besides,” Kyan cut in. “None of us really wants to sit around discussing all the reasons for us being a fucked up pack of monsters, do we? I, for one, am just glad I found a tribe of my own making and don’t have to bow to the whims of any other fucker for the rest of my days.”
“You see being a Night Keeper as freedom?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he replied with a smirk. “We’re untouchable. Unbreakable and irredeemable. Just the way I like it.”
“And what about Tatum?” I asked.
All of them looked her way and Blake shifted in his seat like he was uncomfortable.
“She’s Night Bound,” Saint said simply. “She chose to pledge her life to us, to serve us and satisfy us. That choice was an act of the ultimate freedom.”
“Seriously?” she scoffed, leaning back in her chair. “I’m not even allowed to pick out my own clothes half of the time, let alone choose where I go or who I hang out with. I’m the least free person I know. I can’t even go and get laid.”
The three of them practically growled at the implication that she might want to hook up with someone outside of this room and I had to admit, I didn’t like the idea of that either.
“You’re just too angry to appreciate the beauty of your position,” Saint replied evenly.
“And what’s that?” she demanded.
“That being owned by monsters raises you up to a position of ultimate power. We might torment you and rile you up and punish you when you step out of line, but we protect you too. We’ve killed for you, we’d die for you. And we all worship you as well, if you hadn’t noticed.” He said that so calmly, so seriously that it was hard to even deny it. And all I could really do was look at her as she tried to come up with a way to bite back at him for his words.
“It’s hard to feel worshipped when I’m a prisoner,” she muttered eventually.
“Prisoners don’t volunteer for their position,” Saint replied. “You touched the Sacred Stone. You spoke an oath to us. You gave yourself to us.”
“Under duress,” she growled.
“We might have
