by Lexi C. Foss
Part of me couldn’t fucking wait. I almost dared them to do something about it. Our collective power as a unit had the potential to overpower the entire damn Council.
But our strongest asset didn’t have a clue how to use her Quandary powers yet.
Which brought me to the practical part of myself who knew we were nowhere near ready yet. Hence, I leaned against the wall and shamelessly listened to Kols’s side of the conversation. His familial magic allowed his father to talk directly into his ear while the wand was engaged. Similar to answering a human phone but without the necessary device.
Personally, I preferred the physical mobiles and carried one with me to talk to my own father. The less that asshole could get in my head, the better.
Kols and Malik, however, had a very different bond than me and my father.
“Yeah, Shade and I got into it,” the Midnight Prince said, causing me to arch a brow. “That’s the disturbance you probably felt.”
Ah. Clever. Blame the rivalry instead of our Aflora. Not a bad tactic. His father would believe Kols won the battle with ease, disregarding the significance of my power as most Elite Bloods did. That was how I ran under the radar so fluidly. They all sat on their high and mighty thrones assuming themselves to be the rightful heirs to the kingdom while the true royals hid in the shadows.
Royals like me.
One day, I’d make a point of demonstrating how wrong they’d been about me and mine.
But not today.
Instead, I gave Kols a nod, accepting his story and listening while he detailed our makeshift duel to his father. To his credit, he awarded me a few positive hits but then boasted about my eventual takedown at the end. It took considerable effort not to snort at the ridiculous conclusion.
As if I would ever go down that easily.
However, to protect Aflora, I’d allow the outlandish tale to exist. I’d even go as far as to thank Kols for crafting it because it meant he’d decided to protect our mate rather than turn her in. At least for now.
That decision could change in a second.
Yet something told me it wouldn’t. I’d witnessed his concern for the Royal Earth Fae on more than one occasion. And tonight, he’d taken that concern to a whole new level of need. Suggesting the three of us bite her all at once had required a fair bit of sacrifice on his part, something he’d given without thought. He’d renounced his entire kingdom to ensure her survival.
Because there was no question now that everything would change.
He couldn’t properly ascend with Aflora as a mate. Not because the source would reject him, but because the precious Council would deny his candidacy and demand he step down. As he had a twin with a mostly proper mate, it’d be an easy solution for them. There would be a handful who frowned upon Ella being a Halfling, but knowing Tray, he’d tell them to kiss his royal ass.
Then he’d be faced with punishing his twin for saving an abomination instead of killing her.
Kols’s shoulders were tight with annoyance, his golden eyes glowing as he accepted whatever his father had just said with a contrite “I apologize for my behavior. It won’t happen again.”
I nearly said, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” but I wasn’t in the business of offering advice. Instead, I wandered into my kitchen to fix myself a drink.
Kols met me a moment later, his wand carefully stowed. “If anyone asks—”
“You kicked my ass in an unsanctioned duel,” I finished for him as I dropped three ice cubes into a glass. “Got it.”
He studied me for a long moment, his expression wary. “How the hell am I supposed to trust you not to fuck this up for us all?”
“Hmm.” I found my favorite liquor, took it from the cabinet, and poured myself a healthy amount.
“That’s all you have to say? Hmm?” He appeared ready to retrieve his wand again.
“You can start by letting me keep Aflora for the night,” I replied, giving my glass a little swirl to chill the contents. “We’ll regroup tomorrow when you bring her something to wear.”
He regarded me with a violent glint in his gaze. “If you touch her—”
“Oh, be assured that I already have,” I cut in, adoring the way his skin turned red in response. “But I would never hurt her.”
“And you just expect me to believe you? To rely on you to keep her safe?”
“Yes,” I said, replying to both questions. “She’s my mate, Kolstov. I may enjoy taunting her, but I’d never let anyone or anything hurt her. Why else would I have showed up in the LethaForest? It certainly wasn’t for a little late-morning stroll. That’s for damn sure.” I took a long, necessary sip of my drink, adoring the way the liquid burned the back of my throat.
Kols finally relented with a sigh, his head bobbing back and forth in defeated agreement. “I’m going to fucking regret this.”
“You absolutely are,” I agreed, but I wasn’t so much referring to trusting me as I was binding himself to Aflora. He would definitely have moments of regret, followed by sweet moments of reward that made it all worth it.
Or maybe that was just my fate, not his.
Time would tell.
“Zeph went to find someone who can help us hide the bonds,” he informed me, his tone low. “Until we can figure out how to move forward, we need to hide this from the Council.”
“And they call me the rebel,” I murmured, amused.
“This isn’t a fucking game,” Kols snapped.
“Everything in life is a game to someone,” I returned, stepping around him to enter the living room.
“Does her life mean nothing to you?” he demanded, his harsh tone causing me to pause midstep. “Do you not realize what will happen to you if something happens to her?”
I glanced over my shoulder to meet his gaze. “I don’t care what happens to me,” I admitted, my voice a hush of sound that seemed to slap him across the face. “But I do care what happens to her. Which is why she’s staying here tonight. I’ve given you two months with her, Kolstov. It’s my turn to care for her in my own way. You can have her back—unharmed—tomorrow.”
I didn’t bother giving him anything else, just shadowed back to my room and the beauty resting in the center of my bed. If he opted to stay and listen, that was on him.
What I wanted to do now had nothing to do with Kolstov or Zephyrus or the Council or anyone else.
It all centered around Aflora.
Just as it had since my first bite.
I set my glass down on my nightstand, pulled off my shirt, and crawled into the bed beside her. A few muttered words released her from the sleeping spell, allowing her beautiful blue eyes to open.
Palming her cheek, I leaned in to run my tongue along the seam of her mouth. She opened for me as I knew she would, her mind still caught in the land of fog and dreams and her memories convincing her this might be a fantasy more than reality.
I could so easily take advantage of her in this state.
But I wouldn’t.
I wanted to earn her trust in a magical sense, not necessarily in a traditional one. I desired her soul. Her heart. Her everything.
She was nowhere near ready to give me more than physical touch, and that was fine. We had time. We’d work up to what I really craved. She might initially despise me for it, but in the end, she’d fall for me.
Which was all part of the fun.
A Quandary Blood needed challenges and puzzles and riddles. I offered them to her in spades, existing merely to entice her, and one day our powers would mingle to create something so beautiful and amazing that the Council wouldn’t dare touch it.
Whether or not Zeph and Kols opted to be a part of that was up to them.
So far, they were following the right path.
But I knew from him that our road wasn’t an easy one, with a multitude of potential dead ends. My purpose in this life was to ensure the female curling into me survived it.
And I would do everything in my power to see it through.
Even if she hated me for it.
I gently nibbled her lower lip before kissing her deeply, cherishing her in the only way I knew how. She was too exhausted to do anything more, and that was okay with me. I’d hold her all night, guard her in her dreams, and continue watching her from the shadows when she woke.
My mate.
My little rose.
My future.
I adore you, I thought at her, not that she could hear me. I’m so sorry I have to break you, Aflora.
The only way for her to truly fly was without restraints, which required sacrifices from us all.
And this one would be mine.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kols
“Why do you still have Aflora’s wand?” Zeph asked as he entered my bedroom without knocking. I’d set her magical conduit on the dresser, desiring to keep it safe for when I went back to her tomorrow morning.
“I didn’t get to see her. Shade had already tucked her into his bed.” I grimaced with the words, not at all pleased about her spending the night with him. Of course, he hadn’t exactly given me much of a choice. I could have fought him, demanded he hand her over, but decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. As I could sense her emotions now—thanks to the bond—I knew she was safe. If and when that sensation changed, I’d do something about it.
For now, I’d let him keep her.
Just for tonight.
Tomorrow was a whole new day for negotiation.
It also gave me time to replace all her belongings and the bedroom furniture.
Part of me still wanted to kill her for trapping me in this mess with her. Meanwhile, the more logical side of me recognized it’d been a mutual claiming.
I’d wanted her from the moment we first met, and even before that when I saw her at Cyrus’s coronation. She was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, her long black hair highlighted with strands of blue. Those gorgeous eyes. Delectable curves. Sinfully sweet smile.
Every attribute she possessed lured me to her.
Coupled with her astounding power and royal bloodline, it was no wonder my fae soul sought her out as a match.
I’d been too weak to fight it, and for that, I would pay the ultimate price.
Hating her was easier than hating myself. That didn’t make it right.
“You look like hell,” Zeph said, stopping by my bed. I was lounging in the pillows with a bottle of whiskey in my lap. No shirt. No shoes. Just a pair of gray sweats.
“Thanks. I feel like hell.” I took another swig, wishing like crazy it would make me drunk already. But the power I’d imbibed from Aflora seemed to be eating at my ability to feel intoxicated.
I’d taken the brunt of her outburst, allowed it to fuel my insides, and fed it directly back into the source. Like some sort of damn siphon.
Zeph and Shade had helped, but they weren’t the ones with direct access to the dark arts. So the brunt of it fell on me.
The ink along my arms writhed in contentment, while my insides revolted.
I couldn’t believe any of this had happened, had no fucking clue what to do now. I’d straight up lied to my father, something I had never done before. Not over a major situation such as this, anyway. Little lies, yeah. Major ones, no.
“Fuck,” I muttered, taking yet another swallow before holding the bottle out to Zeph. “Want any?”
He took the bottle and set it aside rather than taking a swig. “It won’t help.”
“Tell me about it.” I’d been trying to drown my sorrows for over an hour to no avail. “Her power is like a live wire running through my fucking soul.”
“Not sure what I can do about that, but my buddy did make us these.” He dropped a pair of brown leather bracelets on the bed beside my hip. “Ching said these will help hide our connection from the others.”
“Ching?”
“My buddy who specializes in hiding bonds. Apparently, mating bonds are a popular thing to hide, so he already had several tools available at his disposal to create these.” Zeph studied the bracelets. “I didn’t give him your identity, mostly because I imagine he’d freak out if he knew. Because there’s only one reason someone would specialize in this type of magic, and that’s to hide things from the Council.”
“But he knows who you are.”
“He does. Just as he also knows I want out.” He met my gaze, daring me to comment.
I didn’t.
Mainly because I was too exhausted to fight with him right now.
I just wanted this night to end already.
Besides... “There’s no getting out now,” I told him softly, my focus falling to the bracelets. “So how do these work?” I asked, giving him a chance to deflect and change the direction of our conversation.
He accepted it. “They’re generic concealing spells. Wearing the bracelet cloaks the mating bond, making it impossible to sense or trace.”
“What about Aflora? If she wears one, it’ll hide her link to Shade, and people will suspect something is up.”
Zeph nodded. “Yeah, Ching is making something special for her. He’s going to try to have it done by morning. If not, we need an excuse to keep her out of class.”
“I’ll just say she was hit by some stray magic during my duel with Shade. No one will question it. Hell, Emelyn will probably be thrilled.” The bitch had painted a target on Aflora’s back solely because of her affiliation with me. Well, that hatred would become a lot worse when she realized we’d mated each other.
Assuming we lived long enough for anyone to find out beyond the Council.
My shoulders slumped as I sunk deeper into the pillows.
“It’s not like you to mope,” Zeph said, his tall frame towering over me as he stared down at me from beside the bed.
“Fuck you, Z,” I muttered, tugging a pillow over my head. Childish, yes, Unhelpful, also yes. But I just wanted to hide for eternity.
“You realize this connection between the four of us is powerful, right?” Zeph asked.
“Haven’t had a minute to analyze it.” My words were muffled by the pillow.
A pillow that disappeared when Zeph took it from me. “Stop being a lazy, woeful dick, sit up, and start thinking.”
I glared at him. “I don’t want to think, asshole.”
“Well, too fucking bad, jackass,” he tossed back. “We broke a few rules. So fucking what? The mating laws are archaic and you know it. You also never wanted to mate Emelyn anyway. Aflora is a much better match. She’s hot as fuck, too. Strong. Powerful. A Quandary Blood. That means, with the right training, she can rewrite all this bullshit in our favor. The only truly shitty part of all of this is having Shade involved. I’d suggest we kill him, but that’d hurt Aflora, which would weaken the bond overall.”
I blinked at him. “Who made you King Practical all of a sudden?”
“I’ve always been the practical one, Prince Crybaby,” he returned.
“I am not a crybaby.”
“You’re lounging in a pile of pillows feeling sorry for yourself instead of realizing the opportunity that exists here. She’s fucking powerful. You felt it tonight when we grounded her. The Council is going to lose their shit over it because they can’t battle it, unless we bend over and take it up the ass. Which I’m not keen to do. You?”
“What happened to they’ll probably just kill her and then you?” I asked. “Isn’t that what you said just a few hours ago?”
“Yeah, and you told me you weren’t going to let that happen. And I believe you. So stop feeling sorry for yourself and help me figure out a solution. As you said, there’s no getting out of this now. Let’s figure out what to do with it, unless you have a time spinner lounging around that I don’t know about.”
“That’s a whole different realm of fae beings,” I muttered, thinking of the Paradox Fae. “But they would be so useful right about now.”
“Yeah, except they’d never help us. Actually, they’d probably make it worse.”
I
snorted. “True.” They were deceitful little fuckers who loved to play tricks with time. To ask a favor of them required significant payment, and even then, it was never guaranteed that they would follow through without leaving some devious surprise lying in wait. “Still an avenue to keep in mind,” I said. Because all options had to be considered.
“Not really. I think we’d end up bonding her regardless of how we played it.”
He wasn’t wrong. “I felt the pull from the moment I first saw her.”
“Me, too.”
We shared a long look that ended in a mutual sigh.
“What I still want to know is what Shade has to do with all this,” Zeph continued. “He knew this would happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“He wasn’t surprised at all tonight. Just accepting. What kind of Midnight Fae doesn’t mind two other men taking liberties with his mate?”
I frowned. “I’m certainly not keen on her being in his bed right now.”
“Exactly.”
“Yet I allowed it,” I added.
“Because you’re not opposed to sharing women. But Shade is notoriously alpha in his preferences and not the type to share.”
“True.” I sat up, my hand rubbing down my face as I thought it all through. “He didn’t seem pleased by my suggestion to bite her, though.”
“He seemed worried,” Zeph agreed. “But not about our claim. He was concerned for her and what would happen if we couldn’t get her power under control. There’s a difference.”
“Yeah, there is,” I agreed, recalling the fear in his eyes as he watched her fall apart before us. “He really does care about her.”
“He also saved my life tonight when she blew up that first time. If he hadn’t shadowed me out, I would have burned right along with her. Only, I’m not equipped to survive cerulean fire.”
That was when I’d arrived, having felt her power mounting through our bond. I’d been able to absorb most of her destruction, keeping the energy centered in that courtyard with an electric current stirred directly from the source.
“This is such a mess,” I said, blowing out a breath. “I asked him about his motive tonight. He replied with his usual cryptic bullshit.”