That taken care of, I dragged my exhausted ass up my grand staircase to the master suite. Or as I liked to call it, the mistress suite. It never made sense to me why it should have such a masculine name when both men and women resided in there.
"Yes, glorious bath time," I sighed, stripping off my clothing as I wandered through my bedroom and into the ensuite. After quickly dumping some cherry blossom bubbles into my tub, I turned the taps on to fill it and then went in search of some good bath tunes. After the few days I'd just had, I badly needed it.
Humming along to the instrumental track I'd turned on, I sat on the edge of the tub in the nude, swirling my hand in the cherry scented bubbles while the water filled up. Just as I turned the taps off and stepped one foot into the heavenly warm water ... my fucking doorbell rang.
"No," I groaned dramatically. "Go away, I'm not home."
Of course, whoever it was totally ignored my pleas and kept ringing that fucking doorbell. Why did I have to leave my car outside again? If I had just taken the time to garage her, then I could conceivably be out!
"Thea!" Finley’s voice reached me from outside, and I scrubbed my face with my hands. If Fin had driven all the way down here, and was yelling at me from outside my house ... it was something important.
"Fucking vixen tits!" I screamed in frustration, removing my foot from the water and grabbing my satin robe from the back of the door.
The whole way downstairs I muttered curses under my breath, then threw open the front door and released an angry vixen growl.
"What?!" I snapped, glaring at Fin like I hoped he would shrivel up and fucking die. It was all an act, of course, but I barely even admitted that to myself most days. Fin had been my first love, my fated mate, and I doubted I would ever lose that warmth for him ... no matter how big a cunt he had been in recent years.
"Thea," he breathed. His gaze tracked over my body from head to toe, taking in my loose hair, short satin robe, and bare legs. "Did I ... was I interrupting something?"
"Yes, Fin, you were. What are you doing here? And how did you get past the gates?" I scowled at him, like he was a sneaky vacuum cleaner salesman who had slipped past the guard dog.
"I'm a fox, Thea babe. A gate can't keep me out." He quirked a boyish grin at me, and I needed to bite my lip to stop myself returning it.
"What do you need, Finley?" I repeated, folding my arms under my breasts to hold my robe a little tighter to my body. The last thing I needed was to accidentally flash him.
He sucked in a deep breath and dodged my gaze, staring at his bare feet.
"The kitsune-tsukai have summoned you. I was tasked with the job of delivering the invitation to you." He sounded guilty as fuck, and so he should. It was his fault they'd bound my magic in the first place.
"I see," I snapped, "When?"
He gusted a heavy sigh. "Two hours from now."
My jaw clenched, and I closed my eyes to count to ten. As if these last few days weren't hard enough, now those trumped up witches wanted to show me how big their dicks were? Fuck they had impeccable timing.
"Fine," I snarled, "If that's everything?" I didn't really give a shit if it was or not, I was already closing the door on his handsome face when he stuck his foot in the way.
"Thea," he pleaded. "Let me come with you. I need to talk to you anyway, so at least we can do it on the drive."
My lips tightened, and I was ready to tell him where to shove it. But he placed his hand over mine where it gripped the door and my heart softened.
"Fine," I said again. "But I swear to foxfire, Fin. If you just want to bitch me out about Mik and Revel, I will dump you on the side of the road and not look back. Are we clear?"
"Crystal," he assured me, his autumn eyes clear and full of truth.
"Wait here, I'll be back in a few minutes." I didn't bother to wait for his reply as I turned and trotted back up to my bedroom to find some ass kicking clothes. It was a mental thing, more than anything else. The old vixens required I change into a kimono before greeting them, but at least I could feel powerful and sexy while dealing with Fin.
Wait, not sexy. I didn't need to be sexy for my ex because he was my ex.
And yet, somehow I ended up in a pair of ripped leather pants, thigh high boots, a midriff baring top and then a leather trench coat over top. Once I'd added my bone knife, dual katanas and a handgun, I looked kickass.
"Let's go," I announced, blowing past Fin in my foyer and clicking Lola's key fob to unlock her. Ziff ran after me and jumped into the passenger seat, but I lifted him back out and returned him inside.
"Sorry buddy," I apologized. "Kitsune council is just no place for you. Too dangerous." I did not put it past the Ancients to harm Ziff to get to me.
Ziff whimpered and I swallowed past a stab of guilt. Instead I freed the second mouse from its box as a reward for him staying home. With him happily chasing after his dessert, I returned to my car where Fin was waiting in the passenger seat.
Slipping inside, I belted in, then waited for my gates to open before gliding out into the street. I lived in a good neighbourhood, full of upper middle class families. Humans for the most part, but a few witches and vampires mixed in. As far as I was aware, I was the only shifter. But that was largely due to the fact that most shifters lived with their Pack, Earth, Ambush ... whatever collective noun they used.
"Don't you get lonely here, Thea babe?" Fin asked in a sad sounding voice after we’d been driving in silence for a few moments. "All these ... fucking mundanes. No forest, just a few bushes here and there. Isn't it depressing?"
Grinding my teeth together, I kept my gaze locked on the road ahead of me. "It's only depressing when my exes show up and interfere with my new life. I was perfectly happy until you had to get your panties in a wad over wanting a pure kitsune wife. Why couldn't you just go cross-species like everyone else is doing these days?"
"Like you're doing, you mean?" His tone was sour and I shot a glare at him.
"Oh, because Riot is such a fox? In case you forgot, Rusty, Riot's a jaguar. We're not even close to the same species." Calling him by his old nickname had been a mistake, and I regretted it as soon as it slipped from my mouth. I'd started calling him Rusty when we were kids, because it was surprisingly uncommon for kitsune to carry their coat colors over into human form. Fin was one of the rarer red-haired kitsune, a feature I'd always loved about him.
"Riot's different," he glowered.
"Why? Because the Earth adopted him? Doesn't make him a fox, Fin. So maybe consider your glass house before throwing stones at anyone else." It was straight up hypocritical for him to be trying to guilt me for not staying pure.
"It's different, Thea. Riot’s not dead like your new boyfriend." He glared at the side of my face and I refused to engage. I needed to keep my eyes on the road, anyway. "He's a good friend, and he’s always been there for me."
"A good friend with benefits," I snorted. "That's beside the point though, you two have been messing around for years and I honestly have no issue with it."
He huffed an annoyed noise. "Yeah, because you were a part of what we had. Fuck, you were the center of it. We love you, Thea!" He paused. "Loved. We loved you."
His slip-up in the use of present tense made me glance sharply at him, but his face was turned away from me as he stared out the window.
"This is stupid Fin. You both pushed me away with your jealousy, and judging by your actions over the past week, nothing has changed." I chewed the inside of my lip, trying to stop the hurt from showing through my voice. "You just need to let me go, Fin. You're only hurting us all by continuing like this."
"Let you go?" he laughed bitterly. "What, so you can keep fucking that vampire? That dead piece of shit who's old enough to be our great grandfather? Or maybe you want to start fucking that kitsune bitch, the one you ordered to get me off your back?"