by A Y Venona
Angus raised a brow to that. “Since when are you interested in the Gatherings?”
But Adrian replied to my question. “We definitely will. I’ll bring a lot of them.”
Them? I assumed Adrian meant the guardians, the elite warriors of the gods and the protectors of the Seven Realms. The guardians were the highest ranking military group who was directly under the Council of the Gods. And Adrian being their captain was at the top of the alpha hierarchy. He was the Alpha of the alphas. Above him was Deity Fenrir.
Adrian laid his hand on my neck and pulled me to him. I buried my head in his chest and breathed in his unique, musky scent.
“Were you smelling me?” he asked, teasingly, and pressed my face hard against his chest. I pretended not to like it by squirming myself out of his hold. His laughter wafted into the room and lifted my heart.
* * *
“So how are you? Anything new in your life? Is there someone?” He waggled his eyebrows. “Is it Female? Male?” And then his smile turned to sour. “Anyone I should beat up?”
“No.”
He ambled toward the bed and sat beside me. “No doesn’t seem believable.”
“You think I can’t kick some fae ass?”
He grinned and then cocked his head to the side. “How about tap a fae’s ass?”
“I wouldn’t do it either.”
“You won’t? So you’re one of those one-gender-preference people?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why not? This thing is important growing up. I don’t want to wake up one day to find out you’re getting married.”
“If it happens, you’ll know it first.”
He stared at me with his gleaming eyes and then changed the conversation to the one he believed I would receive with enthusiasm.
“So you figured out how to move a heavy object by increasing the dosage of your potion.”
“Yes. I did. But…here’s the problem. So far I have been asking Tela to test all of my spells and potions. This time, I believe—strongly believe—that to move something like say one whole building, it will require a high-level fae, or probably a sorcery level.”
“Can I try it?” he said nonchalantly.
A small smile played at the corner of his lips, and then it transformed into a grin, and then into full-on laughter.
I blamed it on his irresistibility and accessibility that my baser side took over. Devoid of any sense of decorum, I jumped on his lap. He responded by engulfing me wholly in his strong, muscular arms. And while my head was pressed against his chest, he said, “If you want, we can ask Xander to test a spell for you. He’s not a sorcerer, but he is high-leveled.”
He left a few minutes before my bedtime. Following my usual evening ritual, I lit the white candle with a matchstick. Most faes at my age could produce a small fire with just a simple spell and a flick of their fingers. I, on the other hand, needed to use a match. But like most living beings, and the dead, I had a secret only Tela knew. I had said repeatedly that my nature prevented me from performing spells, all forms of enchantment, including potions, and casting spells—except one.
This one.
“Eh-vah…uh-ih…oh-yoor!”
When the small flame of the candle snuffed out, I smiled. Excitement stirred in my stomach.
The Mating Spell was a rising fad among the younger faes. Mating spells, fake or genuine, were selling more than the tickets for the underground party in New Moon, a famous club outside of the island. If werekin knew their mates by their scents, faes learned theirs in their dreams.
I lay on the bed and closed my eyes. In my dream, my mate was waiting for me. I’d first encountered him when I was sixteen. It was born out of a foolish and childish prank. Tela, despite her knowing the impracticality of the task, had challenged me to summon my mate in my dream. She had outwitted a seller into giving her a Mating Spell for free, and she wanted us both to test it. And we both did. The next day, she told me that hers did not work.
“Well, I got what I deserved for a price worthy of a dragon dung,” I remembered her saying. Then she turned to me ready to hear the affirmation of her statement. An affirmation I did give. But not the one she was expecting.
The first time it happened, I thought it was my wishful thinking that had somehow crawled its way into my dream. I shared my doubt with Tela. But she was no longer listening. “It worked,” she had said. And she was adamant about it.
The second time it happened, it gave me hope. And the third time, I fully embraced it. I rationalized it in my head. I kept saying to myself that it made sense. He had loved me from the beginning. Would it hurt to claim him as mine in my heart and soul?
Adrian.
He was the face that visited me in my sleep.
Every night.
CHAPTER 4
The Gathering Counter: Saturday, sixteen days before the Gatherings
We were sitting in front of the serene water of the Oakwood Lake with our back against the huge oak tree. The grass was soft, and the wind was frisky in the midmorning sun. The sweet smell of lilac wafted from the lakeside garden, toying with my unsuspecting nose with a promise of more.
“What is that book about?” Adrian asked, pointing at the book on my lap.
I stared into his beautiful gray eyes that were so magnetic it prompted my eyeballs to feast on them longer.
“It’s a book about ancient spells.”
“Hmm…sounds interesting.”
His reply was nothing extraordinary. But when delivered in his smoky voice with a sexy timbre that could render his listeners breathless, it mutated into something worth parsing.
“It is, but I’m not reading this for mere entertainment. I’m researching for something, and this one is giving me nothing.”
“It’s probably a sign for you to take a break.”
I laid the book on the grass. “All right. What do you want to do?”
“You’re asking me? What about you think of ways to entertain me?”
“Deal!” I got up, and he did the same.
“So where to, my prince?”
“Huh, funny. You’re a real prince, so I should be calling you that. So, Your Highness, follow my lead. We’re going hunting.”
“Hunting? It’s one of my areas of expertise. But the forest is this way, my guide?” he said, giving me a wry smile.
“Nope. We’re going straight to the water,” I said with a straight face.
He cocked an eyebrow. “We’re going fishing.”
“We’re going to hunt for a fish,” I corrected with a fake air of annoyance.
He winked at me and said, “Well, in that case, let me take this off.” He pulled his shirt over his head, revealing his ripped torso.
I had to turn my face away to hide my blush. Where was this warm air I could blame it on? Thinking that not staring at him and actually doing something would best mend my situation, I took my sandals off and tossed it to the spot near the tree.
I gasped when my feet had the initial feel of the cold water of the lake. A surprised yelp escaped my lips when a piece of the tunic was tossed onto my face. And just when I was about to reply, another yelp, louder this time, burst from my throat when I felt my feet leave the ground as I was thrown over Adrian’s shoulder like a sack of flour. Thereafter, he ran to the water, waded through it a little, and then plunged us into the deep.
It did not matter that he was holding me and that his grip was strong, for I still felt my entire weight plummeting like a dead rock. Gurgling sounds muted my sense of hearing. My lungs burst, screaming for oxygen. And despite my trust in him, panic took over, and I began flailing in his arms. He held me tight as he swam back to the surface. The moment I heard the lulling sound of the wind and twittering of the birds, I sucked in a huge breath.
“Why did you do that?” I said when we reached the shallow part of the lake. I was indignant. But then he did something that caught me off guard.
He kissed me.
Albe
it on my forehead.
“Next time, you have to trust me. I’ll never ever put you in any harm.” He hung an arm around my shoulder and pulled me closer to him.
Easy for him to say.
The thing is when you like a person, or in my case love the person—no, discard that. When you’re in love with a person, everything this person does could be misconstrued as a reciprocation of that same feeling. Being aware of this possible misreading of his niceties and kindness, I had developed a response protocol. De-escalation. Or simply put—do not overhype his touches, his kisses.
When we arrived home, we walked in on Angus entertaining a guest who turned out to be Adrian’s cousin and his fellow guardian, Sara Larsa. The moment she laid eyes on me, I was immediately at the receiving end of her dazzling smile and teasing eyes that could disarm any lesser human. A female alpha was a rare subspecies of alpha, second only to delta alpha. However, all female alphas so far were classified as epsilon alphas in the alpha spectrum. Unlike zeta and delta alphas, epsilons preferred to operate alone than lead a pack or a pride.
“You’re too early for my birthday,” Adrian said, his forehead wrinkled and his arms crossed against his chest.
“We have a job—guardian job,” Sara replied.
“Follow me,” Adrian quickly said and then led the way to the library.
“Don’t you need to change?” Angus said to me.
After I nodded, I ran toward my room, closed the door, and immediately changed my clothes. I put on my gray breeches and mint-green tunic and tied my hair up in a bun.
“They wanted us to go there and investigate the area.”
Sara’s voice immediately came through as soon as I put the earphone to my ear. I had long bugged Adrian’s library, so nothing of the guardians’ business escaped my awareness.
“Do we have to go today?”
Adrian’s voice was high-pitched and upset.
“I don’t think so. Melo already went there. He wanted us to go there tomorrow and conduct our own sweep of the place and then compare notes with him later.” Sara’s voice was even silkier smooth.
“Dammit! Why did this one have to happen so close to the Gatherings?”
“Well, stupid doesn’t discriminate events.”
“I just hope it’s a work of a stupid, and not from a potential level-five threat.” Silence. “Stay here tonight. By the way, Angus made a sumptuous steak for lunch. You’ll love it. Tomorrow we’ll go investigate what happened in the An-Kian Forest.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Incident in the An-Kian Forest? My chest tightened and my heartbeat accelerated as I went into panic mode. Zeus-fucking-Hades! How could I fix what I broke if I did not know what it was?
CHAPTER 5
The Gathering Counter: Monday, fourteen days before the Gatherings
The forest swallowed me the moment I strode into its eerie abode and sent its brother dread to keep me company. And dread lodged in my stomach as I stepped on the dry leaves that covered the entire forest ground. Underneath could be a whole nest of snakes lurking, and there was no Tela to scare them away.
Where was the potion of courage when you needed one?
When I found a huge tree to hide behind, I pulled from my pocket a listening device called an amp. It was a charmed parabolic disk the size of an infant’s fist. I’d bought it this morning for fifty bits, or RP coins, which was just about my whole month’s allowance, and bought it from a classmate who was a regular trader in the underground market.
I activated it with a code, attached my earplug to the slot behind the disk, and adjusted it to human-only mode. With it, I could hear any human conversation within a certain radius without being detected. Mine could only hear up to 0.5 miles because it was cheap. That was all I needed at this time since the guardians were just within its reach.
With the earplug in my ear and the amp activated, I could clearly hear their conversations.
“This part here was clearly disturbed,” Sara said.
“I have to run a list of possible creatures that could generate this much power,” Delvin said.
“We have to inform Deity Fenrir about this.”
“You tell the deity while I stay and continue the investigation here. Make sure you come back in time for my event this weekend.”
“Hey, are you listening?”
The voice that suddenly came into my feed startled the living hell out of me. And yep, the amp could also be used for covert communication.
“Do you want me to bring in the rest of the guardians? Someone shut down the Shield, so this should be a matter of importance. You know, after what had happened the last time,” Sara said.
“It’s useless, you know,” Tela said at the same time as Sara’s voice came in the feed.
“What,” I whispered, forgetting that the communication was one-way.
“Boo!”
I swiveled around fast and made a disgusting squeak.
“Hades’ pit! What are you doing?”
“I was about to warn you that the amp doesn’t work with werekin,” Tela said.
“Yeah? That’s probably because of you.”
“Can you smell that?” Delvin’s voice came into the feed.
“I can’t smell one, but I can hear them.”
“Let me handle this.”
“I was about to say that werekin really have a great sense of smell, or hearing, better than your cheap amp’s reception,” Tela said.
My heart was slamming in my chest, jamming to the tune of “let me out of here” while my stomach was trying to break its previous record for the tightest knot.
“Eli?” Adrian said, catching me peering behind the tree.
He fixed a curious gaze mixed with anger on me. I gulped. No, I had not been at the receiving end of it, but it was definitely a glare he was throwing in my direction.
“I’m…just.” My tongue suddenly stopped working.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Adrian said.
“Tell you what?” Oh shit, I can speak!
“About her,” Adrian replied.
“Her?” I stared at Tela. “It’s Tela—you know, my best friend since like forever,” I said.
Adrian frowned. I frowned. Then I followed his gaze, and it went down to Tela’s hands around me, and my hands around her. Frantic, I unintentionally pushed her away from me. On the way to the ground, she was screaming “ass” the whole time.
“I’m sorry.” Then I turned to Adrian. “We didn’t do anything.”
“You should be in your class right now, both of you.” There was a certain edge in his voice that I was not accustomed to. “And Eli? I’ll see you at Claws after your classes.”
I nodded and pulled Tela to her feet, and together we scampered our way out of the forest.
* * *
“Why did you go there by yourself?” Tela whispered. She had been doing it the whole time, luring me into a whispered conversation with her while Professor Melo was at the podium giving his lecture in our Archaelinguistics class.
“It wasn’t planned. When Sara came by last Saturday and said there was a disturbance at the forest, I panicked.”
“Really, for something spontaneous, you were able to equip yourself with a gadget. Where did you get that amp?”
“Purchased it from the Underground.”
“Lie. You wouldn’t even know where it’s at. Try again.”
“All right, I bought it from George.”
“George? Give it to me.” She snatched the amp from my hand. After she had examined it for about two seconds, she shook her head. “How much did you pay for this?”
“Just my whole month’s allowance.”
“Really? That crook, he paid me twenty bits for this. And yes, this was mine and I sold it to him—that crook couldn’t even get himself a fake ID much less go to the Underground. Don’t worry, I’ll get your money back.”
“Are you two done, or would you prefer to step outside?” Professor Melo said.
“Being apologetic about it is not necessary. I was not the one who missed the entire lecture about the An-Kian language,” Melo responded.
I winced. My purebred fae classmates looked at me like I was about to enter the arena as prey.
“Professor, I did take notes and listened to you, for the most part anyway. In fact, here,” I said, flipping my notes to the page I had the best understanding of. “Here, you said the An-Kian language is a phonetic sound system instead of morphemic. Each sound contains meaning that may have an equivalent of a word or a phrase in our modern language. There.” I glanced toward him and smiled, hoping he would look less upset this time.
Melo scrunched up his nose like he smelled something awful. Unimpressed. I heard the snickers in the background. These numbskull purists were getting a laugh out of my embarrassing predicament. Time to prove to them that they were six books behind.
“Professor, the An-Kian language system is the most natural and simplistic in all ancient languages. One sound eliminates the tendency to use garbage words.” I addressed this one to my classmates, whose smirks could drown a thousand dolphins. I shifted my attention back to my professor. “The sound ‘oh,’ for example, is a positive indicator that, when you attach it to another sound, the sound will become a positive action. Take, for example, the An-Kian word Ruh-yih means death. When you attach the ‘oh’ sound to it, it will become Oh-ruh-yih. Its meaning then changes to ‘one who comes back to life.’ However, if you add the negative indicator ‘uh’ to become Ruh-yih-uh, the meaning becomes negative—‘one who stays dead.’”
My awesomeness earned me a deafening silence until Melo himself broke it.
“Very well.” And he turned to the whole class. “Class, you’re dismissed.”
“Hey, half-breed, thanks for taking over the class,” one student hollered sarcastically.