Hunted

Um. Does that mean the High Priestess doesn’t have a vampyre, uh, consort?”
    “Mate,” he said quietly. “If he’s a human who has Imprinted with a High Priestess, he’s called her consort. If he’s a vampyre, he’s given the title of the High Priestess’s mate. And no. It doesn’t mean she can’t have both.”
    That seemed like good news to me. Clearly it wasn’t such good news to Erik, but at least I was beginning to believe other priestesses had gone through this kind of boyfriend stress before. Maybe I could read up on it or tactfully question Darius when the end-of-the-world stuff was resolved. For the time being I decided to put a Band-Aid on the issue and clean up the consequences later. If there was a later. “Okay, Erik. I don’t know what I’m going to do about Heath. It’s all a little too much for me to deal with right now on top of everything else. Hell, I don’t know what I’m going to do about you, either.”
    “We’re together,” Erik said softly. “And I want us to stay together.”
    I opened my mouth to tell him I really wasn’t totally sure that was the best idea, but Erik bent and kissed me gently on the lips, silencing my comment. Then someone cleared his throat and we looked at the entryway to see Heath standing there, looking pale and pissed.
    “Heath! What are you doing here?” I hated how shrill and guilty I sounded as I frantically wondered how much he’d overheard.
    “Darius sent me to tell you the roads are too bad. There’s no way I can get back to B.A. tonight. He and Stevie Rae went to find a four-wheel drive so that he can get you and the rest of the fledglings back to the House of Night.” He paused. I recognized a tone I’d only heard in his voice a very few times. He was seriously pissed, but he was also hurt. The last time he’d sounded like this had been when he’d told me I’d killed part of his soul when I’d had sex with Loren and broken our Imprint. “Hey, carry on. Pretend I’m not here, just like you were doing before. Didn’t mean to interrupt you two.”
    “Heath,” I began, but just then Aphrodite, followed by a bunch of cats, including my Nala and her hateful white Persian, appropriately named Maleficent, came into the room.
    “Awkward. Again,” Aphrodite added, looking knowingly from Heath to Erik and me.
    I sighed and realized my head was starting to hurt almost as much as the cut across my chest. Then the Twins and Kramisha piled into the room, too.
    “Ah, oh,” Shaunee said.
    “What’s ex-boyfriend doing here?” Erin said.
    “The roads are too bad. Heath can’t get home,” I said.
    “So that means he be staying here?” Kramisha asked, giving Heath a long look.
    “He’ll have to. He’s safer here than at the House of Night,” I said, keeping an eye on Kramisha and adding silently to myself that I wasn’t convinced he’d be safe here either. “He and I have Imprinted again,” I added for good measure.
    Kramisha curled her lip. “I know that. I can smell you in his blood. He ain’t good for nothin’ now ’cept for being your boy toy.”
    “He’s not—” I started, but Heath’s sharp voice cut me off.
    “No, the girl’s right. That’s all I am to you,” Heath said bluntly.
    “Heath. That’s not how I think of you,” I said.
    “Yeah, well, I don’t want to say shit more about it. I’m your blood donor, and that’s it.” He turned away from me and I saw him grab a bottle of wine someone had left by the bed and take a big swig of it.
    Damien, a puffy-eyed Jack, and Duchess (causing all of the cats except Nala to hiss like insane creatures) crowded back into the room then.
    “Hey, Heath,” Jack said. “I thought you were on your way home.”
    “I can’t get home. Looks like I’m stuck here with you in the left-behind pile.”
    Jack frowned, close to bursting into tears again. “Damien’s not leaving me behind. Not really. I just—I just can’t go with him right now this second.”
    “That’s right. We’ll be back together as soon as we can,” Damien said, putting his arm around Jack.
    “Okay, I hate to interrupt all this gay-boy romance stuff, but I wrote me some more poems when I woke up and thought you better see them,” Kramisha said.
    That broke though my confusion about what to do about Heath and Erik. “You’re right. I do need to see them,” I said. “Damien, did Jack get a chance to explain to you about Kramisha’s poetry?”
    “Yes. I even got a copy of the poems