Free Web NovelChapter 136: Chapter 135: Your uncle happened
Maya went entirely, peacefully limp.
The corridor was silent.
Lora stood frozen against the wall, her hand over her mouth.
Raphael looked at the unconscious human woman in Damian’s arms with an expression that mingled genuine concern with helpless amusement in roughly equal proportions.
Damian looked at Raphael.
Raphael looked at Damian.
"That," Raphael said carefully, "was probably our fault."
"Probably?" Damian repeated flatly.
"Almost certainly," Raphael amended. ƒrēewebnovel.com
Damian looked down at Maya, who appeared entirely comfortable in unconsciousness...her face relaxed, her breathing steady, looking like someone who had simply decided that a nap was the correct response to current circumstances.
"She was fine," Damian said, his voice carrying the particular quality of a man replaying events and identifying the exact moment things went wrong. "She was fine when it was just me. She held a conversation. She mentioned the towel rack."
"The towel rack," Raphael repeated.
"Don’t," Damian said.
"I wasn’t going to say anything."
"You were thinking it loudly."
Raphael pressed his lips together against a smile and moved to help, reaching out to check Maya’s pulse with two fingers against her wrist. "She’s fine. Her body just.....overloaded. It’s a reasonable response, honestly. Neither of us was regulating our energy output."
"I was regulating mine perfectly well," Damian said.
"Individually, yes. But combined...." Raphael gestured between them. "Even supernaturals find it difficult when an alpha and an incubus are in close proximity. For a human with no preparation and no defenses, it’s simply too much stimulus at once."
Damian looked at him with an expression that suggested he found this explanation technically acceptable and personally irritating in equal measure.
A sound from the end of the corridor made both of them look up.
Eve stood at the junction of the hallways, fresh from training, still slightly flushed with exertion. She took in the scene in front of her....Damian holding an unconscious Maya like a slightly annoyed man carrying unexpected luggage, Raphael standing beside him looking guilty and amused, Lora plastered against the wall....and her expression cycled through confusion, understanding, and barely contained hysteria in approximately three seconds.
"What happened?" she asked, her voice admirably steady.
"Your friend fainted," Damian said.
"Why did she faint?"
"Your uncle happened," Damian said.
"To be fair," Raphael interjected, "you happened first. I was simply the...."
"I was in this corridor first," Damian said. "You appeared afterward."
"The combined effect...."
"Is your energy to manage," Damian said. "You’ve had two centuries of practice."
"And you’ve had forty years of...."
"She’s fine," Silas’s voice came from directly behind Eve, making her jump. He’d apparently followed her from the training room and was now surveying the scene with the calm assessment of someone who had long since accepted that his family were a collective disaster. "She’s breathing normally. Pulse is steady. She just needs fresh air and a few minutes."
Everyone looked at Silas. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com
"How do you know?" Eve asked.
"Because I can hear her heartbeat from here," Silas said simply, then seemed to remember that not everyone in this corridor was supernatural. He looked at Maya’s still-unconscious form. "Also she’s starting to come around."
Eve moved forward, taking Maya’s hand from where it hung over Damian’s arm and squeezing it gently. "Maya. Hey. Can you hear me?"
A small sound from Maya. Her eyelashes fluttered.
"That’s it," Eve encouraged. "Come on. Come back."
Maya’s eyes opened.
She stared at the ceiling for a moment, clearly reorienting. Then her eyes moved to Eve. Then to Damian, who was still holding her. Then....with the cautious trajectory of someone checking whether a very bright light was still on....to Raphael.
She closed her eyes again immediately.
"Nope," she said, her voice muffled and faint. "Still too much. Not ready."
Eve bit her lip so hard she nearly drew blood. "Maya. You’re okay. You just....you got a little overwhelmed."
"Overwhelmed," Maya repeated, eyes still firmly shut. "That’s one word for it. Another word is deceased. I think I might actually be deceased."
"You’re not deceased," Damian said, his voice carrying that dry quality that was his version of humor. "You’re in my arms. There’s a difference."
"Being in your arms might be what caused the deceased situation," Maya said, with impressive clarity for someone who had been unconscious thirty seconds ago.
Damian’s expression shifted infinitesimally in a direction that might, in generous lighting, be interpreted as endeared.
"Can you stand?" Eve asked.
"Unknown," Maya said. "Let’s find out." A pause. "Actually...." Her eyes opened again, more cautiously this time, fixing firmly on Eve and refusing to track sideways. "If there are going to be multiple devastatingly beautiful and/or terrifying men in my immediate vicinity at all times, I feel I should have been warned. With a laminated card. Possibly a waiver."
"I’ll have one prepared," Eve said solemnly.
Damian set Maya carefully upright on her feet, keeping one hand at her elbow until she steadied. She tested her weight, found it acceptable, and exhaled with the relief of someone who has successfully landed a difficult maneuver.
Then she looked at Raphael properly for the first time since regaining consciousness. She was clearly bracing herself....jaw set, eyes determined, the posture of someone walking deliberately into wind.
"You’re Eve’s uncle," Maya said.
"I am," Raphael confirmed, his voice gentled to something less overwhelming. He was, Eve noticed, actively dialing back his energy....the charge in the air noticeably reduced from what it had been moments ago. "I apologize for my part in your, ah...."
"Fainting," Maya said flatly. "You can say it. I fainted. I, a grown adult woman who has handled genuinely difficult situations without fainting, dropped like a stone in a hallway because of...." She gestured at him and Damian. ".....whatever this is."
"You’re like a walking power station," Maya said. "Both of you. Except yours...." She pointed at Raphael with the careful precision of someone still not entirely trusting their own perception. "....yours is different. It’s like....you walk in and my brain just—" She made an explosive gesture with her fingers. "Shutdown."
"That’s actually a fairly accurate description of what happens," Raphael said. "I apologize. It wasn’t intentional."
Maya looked at him for a long moment, clearly assessing. Then she nodded once with the decisive energy of someone making a pragmatic decision. "Fine. Apology accepted. But I need approximately ten minutes and a very strong coffee before I can have any further interaction with either of you."
"That seems reasonable," Silas said from the doorway.
Maya pointed at him. "You. You’re also one of them, aren’t you? One of the....." She glanced at Lora, clearly checking for witnesses to whatever she was about to say. "....whatever you all are that makes normal people’s brains stop working."
"I’ve been told I’m the manageable one," Silas offered.
"You are," Maya confirmed. "You’re still a lot, but you’re manageable. These two....." She shook her head.
Damian made a sound. It was a small sound, quiet and brief, but Eve’s head snapped toward him immediately because in the months she’d known him, she had never heard Damian Blackwood make that sound.
He was laughing.
Not the controlled, measured amusement he sometimes allowed. Not the dark, satisfied sound he made in private moments. Actual, genuine laughter....quiet and surprised, like it had escaped before he could catch it.
He covered it almost instantly, composing himself with impressive speed. But not before everyone in the corridor had heard it.
Maya stared at him. "Did you just...."
"No," Damian said immediately.
"You absolutely just...."
"Shall we get you that coffee?" Damian said, extending his arm toward the main corridor with all the authority of a man redirecting an entire situation through sheer force of will.
Maya looked at his offered arm, looked at his carefully neutral expression, looked at Eve, who was covering her mouth with both hands.
"Fine," Maya said, taking his arm. "But I want it noted that I’m only doing this because my legs are still unreliable, and not because you are...." She stopped herself. Started again. "Coffee. We’re getting coffee."
Eve watched her best friend walking between her mate and her uncle.....still slightly unsteady but upright, already recovering that irreverent humor that was her natural state.....and felt something settle in her chest.
These worlds were colliding. Her old life and her new one. Her human best friend and her supernatural family. All of it tangled together in the hallways of the Blackwood estate on a Tuesday morning, ending in coffee and a story that Maya would probably tell for the rest of her life.
Not gracefully. Not without complications.
But together.
