“It doesn't exactly look like we're in Court though, now does it?” I asked, putting my hands on my knees and watching as the queen lifted her sloe-eyed gaze to mine. “Why hide us out here in these ruins if we're welcome guests?”
A frown crossed the faerie's face, as sharp as the blade of a knife. I could feel it cutting me from across the circle, those long fingers of hers twitching against the tattered white fabric of her dress. It was shredded in a very purposeful way, deshabille chic or something.
“You presume much, Wolf,” she hissed, her dark hair lifting in an unnatural breeze. Watching her now, I would not forget how quickly she'd moved in the forest, pinning Tidus up against a tree by the throat before I could even register that she was moving. But sitting here, in this big, empty room with a half-dozen brownies for company … I was starting to get a hunch.
“Who are you?” I asked, knowing that even if I was right and the faerie sitting across from me was not actually the Unseelie Queen like I'd thought, she'd still be privy to glamour magic I couldn't break. Either she revealed herself to me willingly or I'd never know who I was really talking to.
“Are you asking for my name?” she said, her voice like the crack of dry, brittle bones. The unspoken threat inherent in her words was obvious. I didn't react, waiting calmly with four of my alpha males on one side, three on the other. Their presence gave me strength—even if some of them were virtual strangers. Alpha-Majka was right; the Pairing had been more than just a series of empty rituals. I felt a closeness to the men around me that I couldn't explain.
I totally should've taken today off like I'd planned, I thought, resisting the urge to groan. It was one thing to deal with daywalking vampires and faeries who thought teeth covered belts were the height of fashion. It was a whole other animal to try and do all those things while sorting out my feelings for the seven men I was now essentially engaged to.
“You know mine,” I said, lifting my chin and breathing deep, fighting past the reek of decay that permeated the old room and pulling in the musky, wild scent of wolf instead. With so many different packs represented by the boys, when they got together, it all just sort of amalgamated into the earthy, natural scent of werewolf. “Zara Wolf of Ebon Red,” I announced, the ritualistic nature of the words bringing a calm, soothing sort of effect washing over me. “I've accepted your invitation and brought my mates to Faerie, just as you asked. So tell me: do you actually have any authority with the Unseelie Court or are you acting on your own?”
The dark fae sitting across from me smiled, a sinuous slip of laughter crawling from lips the color of ashes.
“You're quite the quick-witted one, aren't you?” she asked, pulling a small shimmery pouch from a deep pocket on the side of her dress. At first, I thought it might be made of the same gauzy material as the robes I was wearing. On closer inspection, it looked like it might actually be made of bits of translucent wing. I could see the delicate webbing in the moonlight, like veins in a dragonfly's wings. Only … on this side of the Veil, it was more likely pixie wings that I was staring at.
The sidhe girl loosened the leather drawstring on the pouch and dumped a small pile of knucklebones onto the ground in front of her. Based on the various shapes and sizes, I had a feeling these had been collected from a variety of species. Right away, I got the whiff of wolf off one of them.
“Sometimes,” she began, leaning close to the morbid mess on the stone floor, studying the bones and the pattern they'd made. There were also runes carved into some of them, symbols I didn't recognize that shimmered with the same, sickly silver light as the dual moons above our heads. “Those who should take action, don't.”
She snatched the bones up and put them back in the pouch again, shaking it carefully before dumping them back out on the floor. I had no idea what she was doing—some sort of divination spell most likely—but for what purpose, I wasn't sure.
“And that means, what, exactly?” Che asked, drawing the fae's attention over to him. “Look, we don't really have time for riddles. Why don't you just tell us what you're all about so we can get the hell out of this nightmare?”
“How uppity,” the girl said, teasing one of the bones with the tip of her finger. “Maybe that's how you like your lovers, but I prefer mine to be seen and not heard.” She looked up at me and smiled another one of those awful smiles, letting it stretch across her face in a gruesome caricature of a grin. Her skin caught the light and shone like diamonds while strands of abyss colored hair dripped into her face. “I didn't have to tell you anything, you know? I could've left you to flounder in uncertainty, the Bloods on one side and the witches on the other. I did you a favor by paying you a visit.”
“You must have a reason,” I said as she picked up the bones once again, stuffed them in the pouch, and handed it over to me. Without hesitation, I took it, shook it up, and dumped the knucklebones on the floor. A cold chill slithered down my spine when I realized what was happening.
“Zara?” Nic asked, nudging my left knee with his own. I ignored him, picked the bones up, tried again. And again. And again.
“They're falling in the same pattern,” Montgomery said, leaning close, his white braid sliding over his shoulder and into his lap. “Every single time, it's the exact same pattern.”
“Precisely,” the faerie said, leaning back on her palms and looking up at the strange sky through the hole in the roof. “No matter how many times we ask the dead, the answer's the same.”
I handed the bag over to Tidus and let him try, watching as the yellow-white bone fragments clattered against the stone floor and, against all odds, managed to land in the very same way they had for both me and the faerie girl.
“And what is it exactly that they're saying?” I asked her, feeling my heart rate pick up, my breath catch, my palms start to sweat. The girl ignored me for several moments before dropping those purple-black eyes to mine.
“I've decided,” she said, sitting back up. “You can call me Aeron.”
“I can call you Aeron, or is Aeron actually your name?” I asked. All I got was a wicked smile in response. “Are you at least going to tell me what your connection to the Unseelie Court is?”
“I'm just like you,” she told me, taking back the pixie-wing bag from Tidus. “The … Alpha-Heir as you might say? I'm the queen's daughter.”
Oh. Great. A literal faerie princess. One who played with bones for fun. Even better.
The faerie girl stood up and stepped backward out of the circle.
Sensing that our short meeting was about to come to an end, I stood up, too.
“I need to know if there are wolves involved, if there's more than one coven, one kingdom.”
“I'll answer one question,” she said, holding up a single finger and smiling with teeth too sharp and pointed to be human. “Just one. You decide what that question will be.”
I glanced around at the boys and then looked up, meeting her dark gaze dead-on.
“What did they say?” I asked. “The bones.”
A breeze blew in through the roof, ruffling the faerie girl's dress, teasing my wet, red hair around my face. It carried with it the sweet scent of decay, making me wrinkle my nose. There was something big and dead and rotten nearby.
“The hunters have become the hunted; the monsters have become the prey.” Aeron reached out with a toe the color of shattered diamonds and rested it against the fractured remains of a human femur. “Either find a way to harness the magic inside that blood of yours, use it to fight this war … or watch it wielded against you.” Aeron's gaze met mine and in it, I swear I could see my destiny, scrawled in blood and dripping. “The fates have never been so unclear: your ascension as Alpha either harkens a new era for the wolves … or their last gasping breath.”
She kicked the bone aside, breaking the circle and sending the eight of us crashing straight through the floor.
For the longest time, I just sat outside on the porch with my knees tucked up onto the cushioned seat of the rocking
chair, a blanket slung over my shoulders. Now that the ceremony was over and most of the wolves had either gone home or spread out across the sixteen thousand acre property, the Pairing House was showing just how remote it really was. From where I sat, all I could see were trees drenched in moonlight, snow dripping down the long thin points of icicles.
I didn't know exactly how long we'd been in Faerie, but we'd left in the afternoon and come back in the late evening. Across the Veil, it'd been night the entire time. I didn't know if that was because time worked differently over there, if they were on a different solar calendar than we were … or if it was simply one endless stream of night.
The screen door opened and Silas slipped out, a pair of black jeans slung low on his hips, a loose red and black striped tank hanging over his slim, muscular form. He paused for a moment and then lifted a cigarette to his lips, flicking the wheel on his lighter and coloring the lower half of his face orange with the flame.
“I thought you might want this,” he said, moving over to stand next to me. I waited while he dug my phone out of his front pocket, the wolf and moon charms jangling as he passed it over into my hand. “Someone's been blowing up your notifications. It buzzed right off the coffee table and onto the goddamn floor.”
I smiled as I flicked a thumb across the screen and found several texts and missed calls from Faith. Apparently, she'd snuck Owen into her room at the house and hid him in the closet when her dad had come knocking. And she'd been lecturing me about how I was eighteen, an adult, capable of making my own choices? Please.
But my smile faded pretty quick when I remembered the blood, the syringe sticking out of Diya's arm, the wooden sword cutting through her neck.
“Faith likes to send me disturbing updates when Owen's around,” I explained, holding up the screen so Silas could read the newest text.
listen One-Kiss-No-Date, it's time u & Nic just went 4 it already! the sex 2nite was ah-ma-zing! Owen does this thing w/ his tongue that—
“Okay, that's about enough of that,” Silas said, pushing my hand aside and smoking his cigarette with the other. “Please tell me she doesn't send you pictures, too.”
“Usually not,” I said, smiling as I tucked the phone under the blanket and watched as Silas folded his arms over the porch railing and leaned out into the night. “But once she did forward me a dick pic.”
“Fuckin' A,” he snorted, gray-white smoke rising from the cigarette clutched between his tattooed fingers. “Humans are weird as hell, aren't they?”
“As weird as a werewolf princess living in a cottage in the woods with seven men who cause magical explosions when she touches them?”
“Point taken,” Silas said, glancing over his shoulder to flash a sultry smile my direction. The silver light from the moon caught on his scar, limning it in color and reminding me that we didn't just have problems of gargantuan proportions to worry about, we also had large, medium, and small ones, too.
Silas was hiding something from me.
I'd nearly forgotten.
I almost asked him about it. Almost. But then I remembered that not only had I not gotten any answers about Selena and Kingdom Ironbound, but I'd also managed to have an ominous fortune laid at my feet by a bone wielding faerie princess.
“What's One-Kiss-No-Date mean?” Silas asked after several quiet moments had passed between us. Most of the boys were asleep, scattered across the house like broken dolls. Sleeping on floors and couches was all fine and dandy for a night or two, but it wouldn't work for a whole year. I'd have to see about getting them all to use the custom bed in the upstairs bedroom. It shouldn't be all that weird—wolves slept in puppy piles all the time. I think it had more to do with a sense of rivalry between them than it did any sort of modesty or discomfort at physical closeness.
“Prior to … Thursday,” I said carefully, referencing my first time with Nic. “I'd only had one kiss and no dates.” Silas smiled a little at that, turning around to face me. Now, his bad boy lean was more … casual, less practiced looking than Che's. Che Nocturne was angry; he had a bone to pick with the life he'd been given and was supposed to lead. Silas was just … well, Silas. Tattooed, scarred, disturbingly beautiful with his gold eyes and chocolate dark hair. “I guess now you might call me Seven-Kiss-No-Date,” I said with a small half-smile.
I'd only just now realized that I'd kissed seven guys, had sex with two of them … and still never been on a real date. How depressing was that? The worst part was, the only person I wanted to talk to about all of this was Faith and yet, how could I burden her with something so frivolous when I knew—I knew—the awful truth I was keeping from her? And besides that, how was I supposed to tell my best friend—my human friend at that—that I'd not only lost my virginity to Nic Hallett, but also slept with a guy I'd met on fucking Friday. Oh, and that I'd kissed all of the others at least once.
“Hey Faith, you know how I lied to you and told you my mom was trying to marry me off to another well-to-do family? And remember how disappointed and weirded out you were? Well, guess what! I've started making my rounds and I've already managed to get two of them into bed!”
Nope.
Not happening.
I was either going to have to make a werewolf friend that I wasn't dating that I could tell all my gossipy secrets to or else I was going to be stuck befriending Aeron, the creepy dark fae girl who possessed other people's bodies and accidentally sent my boyfriends to die at the hands … hooves? … of flesh-eating horses.
“We could at the very least change that to Seven-Kiss-One-Date,” he said, and it took me a moment to figure out what he was getting at.
“Are you asking me out?” I said, blinking up at eyes the color of a warm summer sunset. In the snow drenched dark of night, they almost seemed to glow with their own inner light.
“Why not? We're supposed to get to know each other, right? Let me take you out, make you forget about all of this shit for a little while.”
“You mean like how it was just prophesied that I might bring about my peoples' last dying breath?”
“Exactly,” he said, coming over to sit in the rocking chair next to mine. His natural scent—that warm cherry vanilla flavor—helped soften up the harshness of the tobacco clinging to his skin. “We could go to a concert, grab a milkshake afterward, take a relaxing stroll through the cemetery.”
“You find cemeteries relaxing?” I asked, feeling the right corner of my lip curve up in a flirtatious smile. Sitting this close to Silas, looking into his eyes, watching his breath plume in the frigid air between us, I could feel that attraction bubbling up between us, nice and hot, scalding the inside of my belly, my throat, my thighs. I wanted him both the way I'd wanted Nic—as a human—and the way I'd wanted Che—as a wolf. It was almost a relief, to feel both sides in agreement like that.
“Fuck yeah,” he said, leaning back in the chair and crossing his bare feet at the ankle. “The only humans that are there are dead, and the Numinous …” he trailed off with a small laugh and shook his head, referring to the non-human, non-animal species of the world with a resigned sounding sigh. “Well, they don't often give a lot of shits about humans at all—especially not dead ones.”
“Just pick a day then and if we're not fighting a vampire-witch war that particular evening then … I'd love to.”
“Is your boyfriend going to crap his pants over this?” Silas asked, reaching out the tattooed hand with the wolf on the back of it. He tucked some hair behind my ear, and I noticed right away that his pulse was picking up, thundering against the side of his neck. He was either very, very nervous … or very, very turned-on. Maybe a little of both.
“Nic'll be fine,” I said, although fine was a relative term. Knowing him, he'd probably freak first and calm down later. But that was his natural personality. It was just how he was, and I loved him for it. I tried to imagine what it would be like if I were in his shoes, watching him kiss and fuck and flirt with six other girls.
The thought made me murd
erous.
“Are you sure about hanging out with this Julian guy tomorrow?” Silas asked, interrupting the mental rage I'd just conjured up. “If the vampires really are working with the witches, then he should already know that we know. This whole thing stinks of a setup.”
“It really does,” I said, thinking of Selena, sobbing and shaking and pregnant. The day my mother had kicked her out, she'd packed her bags in a haze of tears, hugged me and my siblings close, and walked out with a backwards glance that I would never—never—forget. For a werewolf, banishment is worse than death. It's like a severing of the soul, an excavation of the heart. I could barely even imagine what'd be like to wander this world alone. Things were hard enough and I had plenty of backup. “But I have to at least try and see what information I can get from Julian.” I tapped my fingers against my leg and listened to the staccato song of the forest. A rustle of leaves here, the terrified squeak of a mouse there, the distant melancholy cry of an Ebon Red wolf on pack lands.
My own throat tickled with the need to call back, to tilt my chin to the sky and let them know that yes, yes, I was here. Pack was here. Everything was going to be okay.
Instead, I ran a palm down my face and gave Silas a brave smile.
“You want to try crawling into bed with Nic and see what happens?”
He shrugged his tattooed shoulders at me and I swear, my heart skipped several beats.
“If it means I don't have to sleep on the couch next to Jax, then sure.”
I grinned, stood up and offered him my hand.
We made our way upstairs, curled up in the warm sheets next to Nic, and dropped off the edge into sweet, sweet oblivion.
The next morning, I woke up late as usual, shook Nic until he grumbled a mild curse at me and dragged myself into the small upstairs bathroom. By the time I came down the stairs, the house was rife with the smells of breakfast.
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