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“Possibly,” Ambrose says. “We have notified his niece and her mates as a precaution.”

“I doubt they will try and target her given she lives through the portal. The fae guard access well, but still, I will feel better all around with those bastards eliminated. You should have killed them when you had the chance.”

Seven sighs. “With hindsight, perhaps. We don’t know their intentions. Petty revenge, or something bigger? I need to know how deep and far this spreads. Killing them might have stopped this, but it might also have escalated matters, making them into martyrs.”

He nods to Ambrose and indicates I should accompany him out of the door. We exit the room together, taking a long corridor that leads out to the back of the palace.

“Where is Eiden?” Seven asks, his eyes suddenly narrowing. “I think it best he does not attend further patrols for the foreseeable future until we get more information.”

“With Fawn. I told him not to fuck her.”

He raises both brows. “Do you trust him?”

We take the wide sweeping staircase at the end of the corridor.

“Yes.”Mostly.

“And how did it go?”

I feel a tightening in my gut. “It went well… Actually, she was a fucking nightmare. I’ve never seen a more joyful creature in all my life. Her damn tail never stopped wagging. She was lucky she didn’t get fucked.”

“She clearly does not know the significance,” Seven says in his reasonable tone, although I notice a slight tightening in his jaw.

“No, she does not… Eiden became an unruly level of aroused. Fawn likewise became aroused.” After she caught me blowing Eiden—I elect to skip this detail. “I ordered Eiden to go down on her.” I shrug. “I fucked Eiden.”

“You fucked Eiden?” Seven brings our walk to an abrupt stop in the doorway leading to the inner palace courtyard. He rarely uses such blunt language, so I take it as an indication of his state of mind. “In front of Fawn?”

A tic thumps in his jaw. Maybe I should have mentioned the part about blowing Eiden after all. It might have provided some context. I’m not usually troubled by Seven’s wrath. He is eminently reasonable in all things and rarely directs it at me. But I also don’t wish to risk him rescinding fucking rights to Fawn,who I have not even fucked yet but already know will be an experience beyond all comparison.

“Yes.”

“And?!”

“She encouraged it.”

His golden eyebrows crawl into his golden hairline.

Despite the escalating tension, I find myself grinning.

He narrows his eyes. “There’s no need to be smug.”

“I wondered when you were going to crack.”

His glare turns haughty. “This is not me cracking.”

Keep telling yourself that, Master Stag.“I have been around her for less time. I’m already halfway into my damn rut. It is only fair that we all suffer the same.”

“Locate Jude for me… you might want to wash her scent off you first, lest we set him off.”

Wolf

A royal guardsman named Gideon shows me around the barracks and training ground. He is young, handsome, and overly polite.This way, my lord… See here, my lord…Wolf shifters are not this formal, and it is fucking exhausting.

Also, he keeps side-eying me like he expects me to shift at any moment and rip out his throat.

“What?” I mutter.

He looks away.