by May Dawson
Males are so irrational, no matter the species. “It’s the word you used with me.”
“I was trying to make you feel comfortable.” His gaze drifted over me.
No matter how icy, something about the way he looked at me sent a strange thrill of lust throbbing through my body. He hadn’t touched me except for that staid touch when he knelt to check on me in the shifters’ den, but it was easy for me to imagine what it would be like if he did run his hands up my body. I wondered if his hands would feel cool against my skin or if he ran hot. The thought made me bite my lip.
Nothing about Azrael made me feel comfortable.
“In the Fae world, firsts don’t matter like they do here. We don’t believe in virginity or prize…” He broke off suddenly.
I stared at him, wondering what he was going to say, what he was clearly debating. He seemed so cold and controlled, that I thought he wouldn’t speak at all.
Then he said flatly, “But you were my first. You were my first everything.”
I frowned at him, but he was already striding out of the room. There was the creak of my front door, distantly, and I swung my feet out of bed. What now?
My head ached and the world reeled for a second, but I found my balance as my toes pressed against the cold hardwood floor.
Finding my balance after being drugged into blissful oblivion? Check.
Finding my balance anywhere around Azrael?
No fucking check marks for me there.
Chapter Eleven
Duncan
“What are you doing back here?” Azrael demanded, entering the living room from the narrow hallway just as I walked in the front door.
“Hello to you too,” I grumbled. I ducked under the nonsensical string of flamingo lights hanging across the doorway, slamming the door behind me. “Someone found the bodies. There was much weeping and lamenting.”
“Did you follow them back to where they came from?” Azrael threw himself onto the couch, one arm over the leg of the chair, and reached for the cold, sweating beer on the coffee table. It figured he’d made himself comfortable while I was out trailing smelly shifters.
“I did,” I said. “To some shifter compound. They seem to be keeping some other girls as breeding stock.”
“We have to help them.” Alisa clung to the doorway. She swayed on her feet, her pale face even paler than usual.
She was going to lose her balance. Azrael twisted to look at her, but by the time he rose from the couch, he’d be too late.
“Foolish girl,” I grumbled, even as I dove across the room to catch her.
She grabbed for the doorway, her eyes widening, as if she realized she was going down. But I caught her first, scooping her up against my chest.
She was so light—bird-boned, built for flight—and she twined her arms around my neck automatically. My muscles tensed, going rigid at the feel of her lithe body pressed against mine so intimately.
I hated her.
But she smelled delicious, like a perfect summer day, like fresh-squeezed lemons and spun sugar and clean cut grass.
Azrael sat back on the couch, a grin spreading across his face.
“I’m just a little dizzy,” she protested. “Put me down.”
I scoffed at that. She was always independent to a fault. “I’m not sure you can be trusted to stand. I never trusted you, but that’s a whole new level—”
I broke off as Azrael shook his head at me.
Instead, I sat on the couch opposite him, still holding Alisa in my arms. “Where’s Tiron?”
“I sent him to fetch dinner,” Azrael said. “We should gather some strength before we head back into the Fae world.”
“We need to help those girls first.” Alisa sounded sure of herself, earnest. “I have some friends—”
I snorted at that, even though I’d glimpsed her friends at a distance after her run-in with the vamps. Humans were foolish; it was no surprise Alisa had woven her magic around them, even though she didn’t know how to cast a glamor consciously.
She gave me a confused look, even as she went on, “They’ll help. Then once I know the girls are safe, I’ll go into the Fae world with you.”
“You trust us?” Azrael sounded pleased.
“No.” She struggled against my chest, pushing away, but she still seemed dizzy and weak.
I raised my hands to my shoulders, palms out, making a show of not holding her.
Her ineffective struggle to escape me amused me, as her warm, slender body pressed against mine. Then as she struggled to leave my lap, her ass brushed my cock over and over. My cock hardened, and I didn’t know whether I wanted her off me or wanted her to stay.
When she looked at Azrael, I could see just how pale her lips were. High, feverish color still lingered in her cheeks from those damned drugs.
“We don’t need your friends.” I ran my hand up her arm to her shoulder and pulled her against my chest again. “You are going to hurt yourself. Just relax.”
Azrael stared at me with jealousy flaring in his deep purple eyes. I glared back over her shoulder. He’d put me in the position of pretending to care for her. He shouldn’t resent how I played the game now.
“We can take care of the shifters on our own,” I added.
She rolled her eyes. “Sure. You don’t know anything about the shifters but—”
“There are eight of them.” I tucked my chin over her head, wrapping her in my arms. “Easy enough.”
I didn’t know why I pulled her against my body—although it would annoy Azrael, which was always a hobby of mine—but for some reason, she stopped fighting me. She must be exhausted.
I clarified, “Eight male shifters. I think there are two females there, against their will.”
“Eight to four, I like our odds,” she muttered.
“Eight to three, Majesty,” I mocked her. “You don’t need to do anything.”
She laughed, rubbing her hand across her face as if she were still exhausted. “You want me in a management role? I’ll just boss you around?”
“That would be what you usually preferred,” I said. “You’ve generally taken the easy way out.”
Azrael shot me another warning look. I gave him my most innocent expression in return.
“You were just injured,” Azrael said, sitting on the edge of the couch and leaning toward Alisa.
But I was the one holding her. Azrael must relish that.
He seemed to be trying to ignore me, focused on Alisa as he went on. “We can take care of the shifters, and then we’ll go home.”
“Why don’t you want my friends to come?” she asked.
“Fae try not to reveal themselves in the mortal world,” Azrael explained.
“The mortal world,” she repeated, her lips quirking. “This all seems quite unbelievable, you know.”
“From our perspective,” Azrael said, “the idea our beloved princess of summer was hidden in this world all this time is unbelievable.”
Beloved princess. Azrael was really overselling this.
She glanced up at me skeptically. “I thought he was my ex. Doesn’t he hate me?”
“Yes,” I said.
The look Azrael shot me was murderous.
Well, he should despise her.
I shrugged. It didn’t matter what I said. She’d spent so long immersed in the human world, and she knew nothing of ours. She’d laugh off the truth.
The door swung open then, and Tiron came in.
“Did you guys lock the door?” She struggled to sit up. “I have enemies, you know. You shouldn’t be leaving the door unlocked.”
I could’ve laughed. She had enemies. As if she had to tell us. I was one of her enemies, and here she was, snuggled on my lap. The lamb wrapped up under the lion’s paws.
Although it was hard to feel entirely confident that I was the lion, while I had a hard-on and kind of wanted to lean forward and breathe in the scent of her hair again. She was so fucking dangerous, even when she seemed sw
eetest. I knew that.
Tiron glanced at her, then at me, skeptically. “What did I miss?”
“We’re going on a mission together,” Alisa said cheerfully. She finally struggled off my lap to sit beside me. “Duncan found the shifter compound, and it looks like they’re holding some women they abducted against their will.”
Tiron set a paper bag on the coffee table between us all, his face troubled. “A mission. In the mortal world.”
Azrael shrugged. “Whatever Alisa wants.”
Tiron nodded slowly. I didn’t know why it mattered so much to Azrael to bring her home willingly. Unless he wanted to increase her distress when she woke in a world where she was surrounded by enemies.
I didn’t think my brother was that vengeful, though, even if he should be.
“Why?” Tiron asked Alisa, frowning. “Why do you care?”
Azrael raked his hand through his hair, obviously irritated by us both.
“Because they’re in danger?” Alisa frowned up at him. “Because I should have protected them in the first place? I was sloppy, or the shifters wouldn’t have been left alive to hurt anyone.”
“The Princess Alisa was careless with someone else?” I deadpanned. How unexpected.
She turned to me, frowning. “Did I do something to you in a past life?”
A past life to her. Over her head, Azrael fixed me with a dark look, his mouth moving with threats that I didn’t bother to lip-read.
I met her gaze. She had luminous eyes, as brilliant and blue as the ocean that Faer was going to bury her under.
“Yes,” I said. “You were spoiled and willful, and you hurt everyone who ever got close to you, Princess Alisa.”
Her eyes widened, then shuttered, a look of calm coming over her face as her chin rose. But I’d seen the flash of hurt and, more than that, fear first.
She was afraid I was right.
“If that’s who I was,” she said carefully, “and I’m not saying it’s true, then I’m not that person anymore. For the last five years, I’ve tried to protect people. I’ve hunted down the dangerous things in the night—”
“And you enjoyed it,” I finished. She had always enjoyed fighting and killing.
It was the one thing we had in common.
The crease between her eyes deepened. “Yes.”
“There’s nothing wrong with enjoying your work,” Azrael interrupted, as Alisa and I stared at each other. “Tiron, what did you bring back?”
“Chinese takeout,” Tiron said cheerfully, although I could feel his gaze fixed on Alisa and me. “I love Chinese.”
Azrael groaned. “I do not, but fine.”
“Alisa does,” Tiron said. He nodded through the doorway to the tiny kitchen, where a scribbled-on Chinese menu was stuck to the door with a magnet.
Alisa pulled her gaze away from mine. I could tell she was shaken by the way her posture was perfect, rigid, her chin held high, and she rested her open hands on her lap as if she were back at court. She didn’t even know she sat on this threadbare couch as if she were on a throne.
But anyone who knew her could see it. Already, I could see her shifting, covering her upset with relaxed confidence.
“So Tiron is the charmer,” she said, fixing him with a smile that he returned, “and Duncan is the grouch.”
“Who am I, then?” Azrael asked, without looking up from the paper bag he rustled through.
“That’s a mystery,” Alisa said, her voice light.
But I used to be good at reading Alisa. We were alike in some ways, as much as I hated to admit it. The perfect straightness of her spine, the way she folded her hands into her lap and tucked one ankle over the other, was the power pose of a princess.
She’d been taught how to stand, and how to sit, and how to be in every moment. When we were young, she’d shattered the glass cage the summer court tried to put around their doll. She’d insisted on being her own person—a person who was messy and flawed and dangerous, but at least her own.
When she was nervous, though, she always went back to that pose.
She didn’t know how right she was to be afraid.
I knew my brother well, but I didn’t know who Azrael was when he was lost to her clutches—whether he was lost in his love for her, or his desire for revenge.
He might still love her, but that love wouldn’t save her when we returned to the summer court.
Chapter Twelve
Alisa
When I was steadier on my feet, I closed the guys out of my bedroom. They refused to leave me until the drugs wore off completely, and I didn’t have the energy to pick up my sword and force them out. Honestly, I didn’t entirely mind having them here while I recovered. I felt safer with them around.
I felt safe, but I didn’t feel comfortable. Even with the door closed between us, I could have sworn I felt their presence outside, watchful and waiting.
It was hard to breathe with them around me, even though I never would have admitted that.
I went into my closet, stepping on shoes strewn across the floor, and closed the door behind me. Hidden in the dark, amidst my hanging sweaters and dresses like the fearless badass I was, I called Elly. At least with two doors between us, it felt like I had some space from them, even though my wool coat made my arm itch every time I brushed against it.
Azrael and Duncan and Tiron all made me feel jittery in a strange way. I didn’t feel like I was in danger, exactly. They didn’t feel like a threat.
It was a feeling I wasn’t used to; something sharp and anxious, something aching. The mere presence of their bodies did something to mine. My nipples suddenly hardened painfully against my bra. A strange sensation of emptiness pooled low in my belly. I felt like a horny teenager, noticing everything about the way their muscles rippled when they moved, about their easy, deadly grace. It was easier to think straight when I didn’t have to look at them, breathe them, sense them.
“Alisa!” Elly sounded sharp as soon as she picked up. “When you didn’t come to dinner and you didn’t pick up your phone, I thought the worst. We’ve been looking for you!”
“Well, the worst was right,” I said. “Remember the shifters who were kidnapping humans to turn against their will for breeding stock? They took me off the street.”
“I assume they’re all dead now?”
The brusque question was touching. She had so much faith in me.
“Yep,” I answered. “Well, the ones who took me are. The rest are headed that way.”
There were children’s voices in the background. Her grandchildren were fighting about something. She cupped her hand over the phone for a second, and her voice was muffled when she said, “Take it to the boxing ring in the basement, I’m not hearing it.”
I smiled. Hunters raised their children in what seemed to be strange ways by most human standards.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “Are you all right?”
“More or less,” I said.
“What’s going on, Alisa?”
“I didn’t get away on my own.” I hated to admit that. “I was rescued. By some men who claim they’re Fae… Do you know anything about the Fae?”
“Not much,” she said, her voice troubled. “I’ve heard rumors before. I’ve never seen one of the rips between worlds, but there are Hunters who swear by them… Hunters I trust.”
“But you’re still skeptical.”
“Whether the Fae are real or not, doesn’t mean these men have innocent reasons for claiming you should go with them to another world.” When she spoke the words so tartly, my desire to go with Azrael seemed like insanity.
But part of me was curious if there were answers to be discovered, and maybe even a crown…
“They claim I’m a princess.”
She snorted. “That sounds too good to be true.”
“Doesn’t it?” There was something off, but I wasn’t sure what it was. The males themselves didn’t feel like threats to me. Duncan’s little asides suggesting I was so
meone else in the Fae world were chilling, but I didn’t get the feeling my life was in danger.
“Do you need help?”
“No,” I said it automatically. Then I added, “I was thinking about going with them. If I really lost my memories in that world, and nothing else can bring them back, maybe I’ll find my answers there.”
There was hesitation on the line. “Alisa, I don’t know how to help you if they’re dangerous to you. Once you leave our world…”
“I know,” I said.
“You’ve always wanted to find answers,” she said gently. “I understand why you might need to do this. But I’m worried about you.”
“Me too,” I admitted. “I feel like I know them.”
“Like the shifters’ mating bond? Fated mates?”
“No!” My voice sounded outraged, and she huffed a laugh in response. I went on, “It just feels like I know them. Like they say.”
“They’re old friends? What do your instincts say?”
I remembered that note I’d carried from my old life. I wasn’t supposed to have any friends.
My voice dropped low, afraid they’d overhear, as I admitted, “I feel like I can trust them.”
“I’m coming over,” she said. “I want to meet them too. So will Carter and Julian and Amy—”
“We are not having a party.”
“Those men hurt you, we’ll be having a castrating party,” she grumbled, and I smiled.
“Just you,” I said.
“And Carter and Julian,” she argued. “You can’t go off into another world without saying goodbye. They’re your best friends.”
I sighed. “Okay. Okay, I can do that.”
“Damn right you can do that for us. We’re your family.”
Warmth swelled in my chest, but I went silent. I didn’t know what to say to that.
“And if you do go,” she went on, ignoring my lack of reaction, as she always did, which made me feel a spike of gratitude too, “you don’t stay long. You hear me? Don’t run off to the Fae world and never come home. You have friends here.”
I closed my eyes. “I’m glad I met you.”
