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A sharp sensation gathers at the corners of my eyes, moist and stinging like salt. This response is hardly Fae. Yet it feels natural while enmeshed with Lark, as all extraordinary sensations have felt with her.

Safety and strength. The antidotes to loss and longing.

That’s what this hug offers. That’s its power.

We stay like this, naked and soaking with each other, until my mate’s impulsiveness resumes. Lark reels back and rolls her hips once against my cock, sending a bolt of lust straight to the head. As the water laps against us, the swollen flanks of her pussy abrade my crown and provoke the cruelest of teases.

I hiss and grip her waist. “You mutinous thing. Taking no prisoners, I see.”

“You know it, baby,” she pants while gyrating onto my cock. “You expected otherwise?”

The hiss morphs into a pained chuckle. “Dear me, never. In addition to your sassy mouth, defiance is among my favorite traits about you.”

Her sneaky fingers wedge between us and strap around the stem of my cock, which hardens and throbs in her hand. “Then what are you waiting for?”

“Indeed,” I husk, nudging my erection into her grip. “Does this mean you wish to be fucked by your wild Fae? By the one who was raised by animals? Do you long for his cock to fill you in this untamed park, where the fauna roam?”

“Yes,” she urges. “Now.”

A roar tears through the haven from one of the levels. Bushes shake in the vicinity, horns spearing through the vegetation as its owner passes by. And we are part of it, part of this environment in which creatures dwell freely.

Tonight, Lark needs to feel wild. I need that with her. To combat the rage and sorrow, we need the peace, the hunger. We need to feel all of it, to unleash all of it, to launch ourselves off the precipice.

With a groan, I lurch forward and yank my mate into me. Water thrashes around us, and the stars bite into the sky. My mouth catches hers, muffling her delectable moan and consuming the sound for myself, taking it like the selfish Fae I am.

My hips snap between her legs, our bodies rubbing, slick and sinuous. I roll my cock up the tight slit of her pussy, teasing out her whimpers. The crest of my erection is about to pitch high between her flushed walls, to fuck her beautifully, slowly, wetly.

A screech peals through the night, neither fauna nor Fae.

Lark goes still. I do not.

The noise snatches me by the gut. I shove Lark off my lap, whisk her behind my back, and thrust out my arm. The wind answers, blasting across the hollow and punching through the trees toward the source of clamor.

My other hand whips out. The javelin shoots into the air and lands in my waiting grip. It spins in my fingers and freezes, the helix tip angled toward the gazebo’s threshold.

But no one’s there. My ears pick up the commotion of fauna scattering to avoid the tumult, none harmed but all startled.

I listen as the gust I’d hurled across the park fades. In its path, I feel no disturbances in the atmosphere, no figures lurking nearby.

But something was there. Something wasthere.

Lark’s voice slices through my head. “Cerulean, look at me!” She grapples my shoulders and wheels me toward her. “It was the gate,” she says while framing my face. “It was only the gate.”

I blink, stumped. My eyes stumble across the path leading to the park’s main entrance, which always makes that infernal racket whenever a large enough bird lands on it. Any one of the resident avians could have been the cause.

“Fucking Fables,” I mutter, chucking the weapon to the ground. “I thought…I thought it might be…”

“It’s okay,” Lark coaxes.

“I thought it was another raven…or a Fae who would…or anyone that could…”

“There’s no one else here. They can’t get to us. Not you or me or the fauna. All right?”

It’s not all right. I’d overreacted and mistaken the noise for the enemy, but I wouldn’t have if that sound weren’t a trigger in the first place. It’s happened before, during Lark’s first night in the tower, back when she had been playing my game, running the labyrinth. The sound had leaped out of nowhere and rattled me to the bone.

Since then, I’ve meant to fix the gate’s hinges. So many times, I’ve meant to fix them, so they would never make that rusty fucking shriek ever again—so akin to a raptor in pain or a cage shutting its doors on a prisoner, a Fae stripling who can’t escape.

A recollection sweeps through my head—young fingers clawing at iron bars and sizzling from the burns, mortal rods poking my forearms and scarring them.