Then Lorien faces me. “I’m sorry, dream mate, that you had to see that.”
I run into his arms and hold him. My heart is still racing, and as much as I couldn’t acknowledge it until now, I was afraid.
But he’s amazing. He took the fight here, where the kids wouldn’t see it. He kept everyone safe.
“I made sure they wouldn’t remember anything,” he says into my shoulder. “They won’t remember how they escaped him, just that they ran.”
Reve points a finger at the guy. “I think I’ll just send him to the nearest cop car, don’t you think?” He snaps his fingers, and the man, along with his friends, is gone.
Lorien sighs into my shoulder. “I’m not used to losing it like that, Tess.” He pulls back, brushing my hair back. “Every day, I’m more impressed with you for staying so strong in this world.”
I look at all of them. “None of this stuff happens in the fae world?”
All three shake their heads, looking shocked.
“What happens, then?”
“Love,” Lorien says. “I won’t say we are perfect, but it has been a long time since a murder has happened in our world. Even then, murders would usually happen between a warrior and a nightmare, not a male and a child.” He swallows, eyes meeting mine nervously. “To be honest, many things happen here that we have only read about in books.”
“Books?”
“History books,” Reve says. “Before queens took control of the training of warriors, there was violence and war and rumors of things like you mentioned. The male chemicals incite such things if not properly harnessed.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I mean, I’m the last woman to care, but isn’t that a bit sexist toward men?”
Reve shrugs one shoulder. “Is it fairer that they are allowed to kill and assault, and the rest of society merely has to take it as collateral damage? Is it fair that human women have to adjust every aspect of their life to protect themselves from being assaulted by men?”
I think for a moment. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.” I try to imagine it for a moment. A world where men don’t cause so much hurt.
My world would be so different in an instant. I could walk at night, anywhere, anytime.
I could walk in a public park or down an alley.
There really are good men in the world. Even I acknowledge that when I’m not feeling bitter about how much bad the bad ones do.
But it’s hard to deny what the fae are saying. That my world doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
“I should have killed him,” Lorien says, staring over at the spot of yard where a Brad-shaped dent still compresses the grass. “I should look up a way to find all of these types and—”
“Woah, boy,” Jerrek says, coming up to put his arm through Lorien’s as Lorien moves away from me, still on edge. “Look, I’m the one who usually loses it. You okay today?”
He gives me a lost look, and I wonder if what we talked about this morning is bothering him in addition to what he just said.
I’d give anything to see the dream realm right now. I wonder what a world run by women is like.
“Maybe I should check out your world sometime,” I joke, trying to distract him because he truly seems distraught.
He walks back over to me. “When you’re my mate, we’ll go together. And never come back.”
I put a hand on his chest, pushing him back as I take a step away from him. “Sorry, what?”
“Obviously, you don’t want to stay here, right?” He blinks at me. “You can’t be serious.”
“My friends are here—”
“We’ll take them too,” he says glibly. “After Reve and Jerrek complete their mate pursuits.” He smiles, relaxing slightly. “We’ll all be safe there.”
“They’ll be so shocked when we bring back our mates,” Jerrek says with a wicked grin.
Reve nods, but I can’t help but feel hollow.
I love my world, as flawed as it is. And more importantly, it needs me. I want to see another world. But to never come back?
“I think you’re misunderstanding, Lorien. I don’t want to leave… not permanently.”
He raises one eyebrow, then nods. “We’ll talk about it later, soul bond. When you’re sure I’m who you want.”
A part of me thinks he’s just going to be too confident he can change my mind on this.
But it’s not that easy to just let go of your world. Just like it’s not that easy to let go of your fear and open your heart. He’s pushing me too quickly, and it makes me feel like I’m going to break.
But then he’s there for me and I’m looking in his eyes again, and it feels like we know each other from a long time ago or that my heart just knows his face.
It all sounds so silly, and we’re still standing in a backyard where a man was almost beat to death.
Still, I guess you don’t mess with a dream fae.
“So when you punish, it’s just full-on beating?” I ask, leading the way around the side to open a door that leads to the front yard.
Reve laughs, throwing an arm around Lorien’s shoulders, which seems to calm him down. “Oh, no. Usually, we use our whips.”
“Wait, what?” I ask, stopping suddenly. My cheeks heat with an unexpected flush as I imagine Lorien with a whip. “I have to see that.”
Lorien simply brushes by me, grabbing my hand with his. “Hopefully, you never see it, soul bond. But if you do, I’m sure you’ll be impressed.”
And then I smile at him and he returns it, and as the other fae banter, everything starts to return to normal.
As normal as it can be in a violent world.
But somehow I feel like my friends and I are less alone now. Mate pursuit or not, whips or not, I can’t help but start to truly trust the fae.
And it feels like it’s only a matter of time before I fall hopelessly for Lorien.
I just hope there’s no crash at the end of my fall.
21
Lorien
“Did you mean what you said about going to the fae realm and never coming back?” Tess asks, staring at me over her ice cream cone.
We spent the day in the human world, going to watch a film on a large screen in a room filled with dirty, noisy people.
It was surprisingly fun, but as Reve had informed me that shootings have happened even at theatres, I found it was hard to keep my guard down.
“Of course,” I say. “Every day we’re here, it’s like staying around packs of ravenous wolves.”
“I really think you’re getting the wrong idea about this place,” she says, eyeing me as she takes another lick of ice cream.
Strawberry, which she said is her favorite.
I catch a little drip at the side of her sumptuous lips and then lick it off my hand, meeting her eyes.
I understand she loves this world. She was born here, though I have no idea how.
I lick my own ice cream, admitting there is nothing quite this messy and delightful in the fae world.
“I get that there is danger here, but the majority of this world is still safe.”
I don’t want to argue with her. I don’t want to keep telling her about a world where she’d never have to fear for her life or a violent person around every corner.
Cities with walls and guards and beings inside who care for one another no matter what, who seek to give each other the best society possible.
I’m not saying we are superior, because obviously, my friends and I were born into a world that was already waiting for us, full of peace and order and love.
She was born into this dark, fallen world. And she still loves it and fights for it, and it makes me love her even more.
“Come on,” she says, finishing up her ice cream and eating the cone, showing me how to do the same. “Let’s go for a walk.”
I narrow my eyes at the darkness outside the eatery. “It’s not safe now, is it?”
She grins at me, pulling me out of the booth by my arm and yanking me toward the
door. “I’m with a big, strong dream fae. I’ll be safe, right?”
I grin at her in amusement. “I’m with a strong dream fae too, so I guess so.”
She flushes at that, always surprised when I bring up the fact of her female strength. I love when she lets me be protective, but it’s not because I feel she needs it inherently.
It’s simply something you do when you’re in love.
“Come on. Let’s go walk down by the docks.”
She holds my hand and leads us in the opposite direction of her car, which is parked outside the eatery.
The night is beautiful in a slightly human way.
Above the city, smog rises, making a hazy glow that fades into the dark-blue sky. The moon, shaded by dark clouds, glows softly, a blue-ish white.
There’s a monochrome look to everything, the dark blue of the sky and the gray clouds and light moon. I wonder what she would think of the fae moon, the fae sky.
Would she like it? It’s hard to imagine she wouldn’t, as it’s so gorgeous. Rainbow and pastel shades, not these boring hues of the human world.
But there is something about this place, the realness, the solidness of it, that does make it hauntingly beautiful.
Perhaps the fleetingness of the lives here or the way humans somehow live in such a dangerous world without fear.
“You’re quiet,” she says as we reach a long, concrete barrier at waist height that looks over a port of ships that cast ghostly shadows over a navy-blue sea. Little white caps splash in the night as tiny waves splash against the shore far below.
“Just thinking about how beautiful this place can be despite all the things wrong with it,” I say, quickly wrapping her up in my arms to protect her from the slight cold.
She smiles up at me, relaxing in my arms. I believe that, although this has been a somewhat rocky mate pursuit, I am finally gaining her trust.
Her walls are falling down around me, and it won’t be long before I can take her from this place.
I just have to help Reve and Jerrek first also.
“What are you thinking right now?” she asks.
Her green eyes look darker, the color of the sea, perhaps reflecting it.
“Just that I can’t wait to take you far away from here where you’ll be safe.”
She turns in my arms to face me, and I lean back against the seawall as a slightly salty scent wafts up. “I just don’t get it. Are people rigidly controlled in your world? How can it be so safe?”
I cock my head. “Of course they are. But once we’re raised properly, there’s no reason for us to behave poorly. We don’t commit crimes because we love each other. We don’t steal because there is always enough to go around. We share. I don’t know how else to explain it.”
“Then what are nightmares?” she asks, pulling out of my arms to lean against the seawall next to me so it’s easier to talk. “When you showed me your scars, you said you fight them.”
“Ah,” I say, my neck warming. “That’s a different matter. I mean, you have them here. Every fae society has them. The cold ones. The empty ones. They can happen two ways. One is by being raised by another nightmare, so simply preventing them from mating by tossing them out of the gene pool takes care of that.”
She nods.
“But if a nightmare never showed their nature before mating, there is a chance it can happen genetically. Passed on.”
She blinks at me, mouth pressing into a frown. “Wait, what do you mean tossing them out of the gene pool?”
I frown back at her. “It’s not like we banish them for intention. We watch for the early signs of something different. Something signaling betrayal of our society. And then we fight them and cast them out.”
“To where?” she asks.
“We just call it the dark realm,” I say. “Beyond our realm. No one knows really. But it’s a punishment no one would seek in a place one could never be found.”
“Oh,” she says. “Sounds kind of like hell to humans.”
“Hell?” I ask.
She folds her arms, smiling at me. “Well, depending on the religion here, a lot of humans believe this world is a testing ground and that if you do wrong here, you get sent to hell after.”
“Hm,” I say. “Sounds somewhat similar. Only dream fae live a very long time, so we don’t wait.”
“Savage,” she says.
I raise an eyebrow. “More savage to let innocents suffer and die.” The scene from earlier today still shakes me. That’s the second time I’ve lost my temper in the human world.
The first was with the humans who wanted to rape her.
But I have to think that the dream matriarchs would understand if they saw what I saw, how lawless this world is.
“So what do you watch for as signs that someone will be a nightmare if they are caught before they commit a crime?”
I cock my head. “It’s complicated. Sometimes it’s a simple feeling of malcontent, the way they look at others when they aren’t looking. Sometimes it’s exploitative behavior, trying to get ahead in a trade unfairly. Sometimes it’s cruelty to animals, though that is punished swiftly. But anyone a king or queen deems worthy of punishment can be sent to the dark realm.”
“It sounds very authoritarian,” she says.
“I suppose it is,” I say. “The queens are quite good at sensing things about a fae warrior, and I trust them in their judgment. Kings too, though those are rarer.”
“And you were a king?” she asks, smiling. “Impressive.”
I flush. “My sister runs a nearby realm, having settled there. I was the next in line for my family’s realm, so it was agreed I would take the throne, as I had the right temperament.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have a good heart, and I’m calmer than most warriors. My sister made sure of that,” I say. “She showed me the right examples in all ways. Our mother was always busy with royal business.”
“I see,” Tess says. “It’s nice to hear about your family, your sister. Things I can relate to more than I can relate to banishment and kings and queens.”
I don’t want to ask about Tess’s family because I know her mom betrayed her and her stepfather betrayed her worse.
But I’m glad she has me, and I hope she’ll let me and my family be her family now. Or quite soon.
“What color is the moon there?” Tess asks. “In the fae realm?”
“Green,” I say, smiling at her. “Kind of like the color of your eyes.” I touch a lock of her soft hair. “When I saw you in my dream, I thought this was the most gorgeous, interesting color. Every dream fae has hair in a shade of purple, blue, pink, green, or red.”
She grins, reaching up for my hair, which is currently short and black. “Your hair is so gorgeous,” she says. “So it’s not part of your illusion?”
“No,” I say. “A fae warrior’s hair is his pride, so we take good care of it. Even in the other fae realms, outside dream fae, most warriors have long, beautiful hair.”
“I want to see it again,” she says, eyes twinkling. “Leave it down next time we make love.”
My eyes quickly snap to hers. To be truthful, my body is aching. Every moment I’m by her, I feel like a magnet that’s drawn painfully close.
After a thousand years, every moment with her feels like a sip of water after nearly dying of thirst.
But each sip fills me up so that I’m happier than I ever could have thought.
Tess is so much more wonderful than I ever imagined. Her smiles, her tears, her strength.
I love everything about her.
And it’s a different love, this love that grows from being her friend and her lover after so many years apart.
It’s not like the tortured dreams where I wanted to see her. Or the times I visited her dream realm and no one was there.
It’s real, and though this world is gritty and dangerous, as long as she is here, there’s nowhere I’d rather be.
“I think I’d like to see a gree
n moon,” she says, looking up at the sky and then over at me. A gust catches her hair, blowing it back, and I lean in to cup her face and kiss her.
It reminds me of our first kiss on that perfect, sparkling beach in a dream.
It’s darker here, different and real, and it’s just as wonderful.
Because it’s Tess and me and a fire between us that will never stop burning and a love that was destined from a long time ago.
Her lips open and my tongue entwines with hers, and I savor the little moan it draws from her throat.
I pull her in closer, one hand around her waist.
“Let’s go to a hotel,” she rasps against my neck. “Or my car. I don’t care. I just can’t make it the two-hour drive home.”
“I could poof both of us there, and the car,” I say, grinning at how she describes my magic.
But she’s already grabbing my hand and dragging me toward her car, crossing the road as wet pavement gleams beneath us.
She throws open the door to the car’s back seat and shoves me in, then climbs in with me, pulling the door shut behind her.
It’s dark with only streetlights streaming across the street from the dark parking lot we’re in.
But that almost heightens things as her hands move over my chest, pushing my shirt out of the way as she kisses down over my neck.
I reach up to cradle her face and kiss her again, and I can feel her heartbeat at the base of her neck.
My queen. My dream mate. My soul bond.
Someday, we’ll be looking at that moon.
I swear it as I help her pull her shirt over her head, and we begin to make love.
22
Tess
I can’t believe I seduced Lorien in the car. The scent of sex and his beautiful sugar cookie aroma is still lingering as we drive back to my place.
My body is still tingling from everything he did to it and the connection between us even though we’ve been driving for hours and we’re almost home.
His body is beautiful. His eyes make me trust him. I can’t fault his actions.
He truly seems like the best man that’s currently in this world.
So why can’t I shake this nervous feeling?
Sweet Dreams Page 17
