Page 40 of Fated or Knot (UnseelieVerse: The Omega Masquerade #1)

40

LARK

M y date with Marius began early the next morning. The weather had broken while I was cooped up in the palace, and most of the snow was melted, but I was still bundled up like a present due to the chill hanging in the morning air. Marius seemed amused by me huddling into him for warmth as we waited for our train to arrive. He took the opportunity to hold me.

Jani and Lon had packed the essentials for both of us in a waterproof bag with a long strap, designed to be worn over the shoulder while I rode astride my kelpie’s back underwater. If the water was as cold as the Serian chill, I was in for a frigid experience.

“We’re heading south. You’re not going to freeze from the sea’s temperature,” he assured me, rubbing my wings through my cloak. I wasn’t wearing the fur-lined one, not wanting to risk dunking my prized possession in salt water.

“Where were we going again?” I asked, batting my lashes. He hadn’t told me the first couple times I’d asked.

He nuzzled into my hair, taking a sniff, and tightened his hold on me but didn’t look up as a couple packs’ worth of alphas passed by us on their way further into the station. The rut symptoms seemed to be calming some, for now.

“You’ll see, p’nixie. You’ll like it.” And his answer hadn’t changed a bit.

I was just looking forward to whatever he’d decided we were doing and excited for some one-on-one time with a mate. I’d had little of that since I’d first been introduced to Pack Sorles, sometimes to everyone’s detriment. Clumsy love, as Fal would say.

We boarded our train soon afterward. It was heading to Laculi Point, wherever that was…other than “south.” This was a long, dingy passenger train without sleeper cars. The seats were benches along the sides of the cars, with poles interspersed through the center aisle for standing room. We headed to the back car, which was the least crowded.

Though we buckled in for the launch and nodded at the attendant passing through, Marius unbuckled me and held me across his lap when our surroundings started to rattle with the impending launch. I sank into his chest gratefully as the train lurched backward with a hum of essence. We jerked to the side as the machine shot into motion. It pivoted several times through a tangle of magirail before it went gliding toward Laculi Point.

I cupped his cheek as soon as the train leveled out but paused before kissing him. We just looked into each other’s eyes as I brushed the edge of his scar and his clean-shaven skin with my thumb. He seemed to hold his breath when my touch drifted to trace up the line that bisected his face.

His first reaction if I happened to touch his scar was usually to jerk away. Today, in the anonymity of a crowd, he let me feel it and the imperfections hidden under and around it. The team that’d reconstructed his face really had done an excellent job. Handsome male, I thought deliberately and kissed his cheeks and the ridge of his nose.

His eyes dilated noticeably. “You’re going to be the death of me, female,” he muttered.

I could feel him hardening under my thigh and flushed, a little pre-heat dancing over my skin head to toe. His lusty growl was accompanied by a hint of fertile pheromones smelling like blooming waterlily. My mouth watered for a taste. Stars, I was going to be the death of both of us. This was supposed to be a four-hour trip, and there was nowhere to go for privacy.

He turned me so I was sitting with my back to his front and held me possessively while he nuzzled my neck and inhaled. “I am starting to hate trains as much as you hate stairs,” he said in my ear. “Distract me, please.”

We definitely needed to think about something else before we made a scene. “What should I know about riding on your second form’s back?” I asked.

His tense posture slowly loosened as he shared the basics: I’d hold on to him with my legs as if I were riding a wild stallion. Kelpies had a reputation for drowning non-water fae, as their manes would cling hard to their riders to help hold them in place. Most of those deaths were accidents. Allegedly.

Also, if my nixie side was as developed as my pixie side, I’d experience the other co-evolution between our two races. A hidden membrane would come down to cover my eyes and protect them while he propelled me through the water over a certain speed. We wouldn’t know if I had that until we were underwater, though.

Now I was worried about what’d happen if I wasn’t born with eye protection. A silly thing to be concerned over, up there with the anxiety that my gills wouldn’t work. But I was worrying about both of those things. Marius’s gruff assurance that I would be fine wasn’t all that reassuring.

We reached Laculi Point and disembarked. The first thing to go was my cloak when I emerged into the sunshine. This slice of Serian was a tolerable temperature, made even warmer by thick humidity. Marius took me through the outskirts of what turned out to be a port city. We ate street food—fried, cheese-stuffed potato puffs for me and dubiously cooked shrimp skewers for him—and wandered without haste toward the rocky beach beyond the piers.

There were some purposefully placed stone ramps designed for kelpies and their riders further down the beach, shaped from boulders. They were out of the way enough for some privacy, which I appreciated since he would strip down before shifting. I had some possessive desires too, namely keeping the sight of my mate’s body exclusive.

His gaze flashed toward me, and he lifted his chin with male pride. After we’d left the city behind, he’d relaxed from the watchfulness of the protector heir and begun to smile. His anticipation was palpable, and I tingled with it too.

Not only was I about to see his other form for the first time, but we were also going to experience the most intimate connection between a kelpie and his mate. I’d be able to read his mind in a way, like he kept doing to me. I’d also discover the scope of the complicated depths he protected with his standoffish demeanor.

He was still a grumpy male with an inherent hate for small talk and other time-wasting nonsense. Yet he’d already shown me what I’d find on the other side of our bond, else I wouldn’t have agreed to it in the first place.

I knew him by the way he’d adapted to the idea of us ; how he was becoming someone gentler, kinder, and more open one day at a time. He’d never say it, but he’d shown me that he hadn’t forgotten how to be my best friend. The male I needed, no matter the situation.

I walked into him when he paused, and he caught me, tilting my head up to meet his lips. He adjusted his mouth to make it a perfect lip-lock and lifted me after a few moments to carry me up a steep incline that would’ve tested my ankles. When we parted, we were standing on a rocky outcrop overlooking the sea. “Is this dive safe?” I asked, peering over the edge that jutted several yards past the waves.

“The platform wouldn’t be placed here if it wasn’t safe.”

My palms were clammy. Water doesn’t mean danger. That’s just what Cymora ordered you to think, I reminded myself. To make Laurel feel better about being awkward with her mermaid tail, no less. I tried not to spare them any more thought than that. They didn’t deserve a foothold in my new life.

I took a deep breath and started taking off my clothes, hearing Marius do the same. I had swimwear on rather than underclothes, a tight top and shorts that left my midriff bare.

I folded and placed our extra clothes into the waterproof bag while he kept stripping until he was only wearing a pair of swim trunks. These, he eased down slowly for my admiring gaze. He let me get a good look at his muscular form before it started to change. His shift took hold as he dropped the trunks and toed them to the side, and the magic altered his body so fast that I only caught a glimpse of my favorite piercing, the lady pleaser.

I watched him transform with my mouth hanging open. I hadn’t realized it was such a quick transition, or that it would sound so violent. His bones and cartilage snapped and cracked as magic forced him into the form of an animal. I grabbed his swim trunks and folded them into the bag before sealing it and slinging it over my shoulder, scrambling in eagerness to meet his second form.

Kelpie Marius was nearly as large as a horse, though shorter at the shoulder and longer with his fish tail. It curled around him, lined with sharp fins to match the ones on the sides of his horse-like front legs. Unlike a mermaid’s tail, his ended with a bundle of smaller fins that’d probably resemble hair once wet.

His coat was the same color as his skin, a rich blue with speckles of green down his chest and back. It gleamed with a sheen of health. I approached his head, which he tossed with a snort. Even with the jeweled tags glinting on his chest, brow, and nose, his most distinctive trait was still the scar that crossed his muzzle.

All told, he made for a gorgeous animal, strong and sleek. His yellow eyes were forward-facing and predatory, full of pride when they met mine.

“What a beautiful beast you are,” I said in admiration. I stroked his muzzle, and as my fingers approached his ears, a lock of his mane magnetized to my wrist, wrapping around it tightly. These cerulean strands had a mind of their own and didn’t want to let go of me when I tried to tug away.

Marius jerked his neck to free me and stamped his hoof, motioning to the sea with another toss of his head. “Okay, okay,” I giggled. I faced the drop and swallowed, fidgeting with the strap across my chest.

Well, the only way to see if I was a proper half-water fae was to jump and find out for myself. I sprung from the boulder and landed feet-first in the water, sinking deeper than I expected to. Bubbles circled around me as I floated downward. Marius dove in a minute later, cutting through the water like a giant fish and leaving a torrent of churned silt in his wake.

I drifted on an invisible current, kicking my legs and not going far. My lungs began to burn as they emptied of air. I reached for my throat in a panic, thinking my gills were stuck or, as I’d feared, had sealed themselves shut permanently out of disuse. I needed to get back to the surface. Flicking my wings, all I succeeded in doing was spinning up a mini tornado as my body pivoted.

Two purple, glowing tendrils wrapped around my side. Those were my wings now. How surreal. They’d softened considerably and moved like fins when I twitched my flight muscles.

I used to use them to steer my body underwater. I closed my eyes, trying to remember what it’d felt like. Curling my fingers, I unsheathed the webbing between them and gasped as air flooded into my chest. Bubbles lifted from the sides of my neck rather than my mouth. My gills—they’d opened! And with them flared, I could taste the sea around me on the back of my tongue.

I laughed with a muffled sound and swam in a random direction, twitching my wing-fins until they undulated behind me to help propel me along. Just like walking, my body remembered how to do this after all. I spun and kicked up a wake of bubbles, and that’s when Marius moved to follow me and mirrored the motion.

The kelpie reached out to nudge me with his leg before shooting away far faster than I could dream of swimming. I still chased him with a clumsy turn. He let me tag the end of his tail and dove into the murk hidden where the sunlight wasn’t strong enough to reach. A school of fish darted out of the way as I pivoted with the help of my wing-fins and put on a bit of speed.

When he reappeared, he swam literal loops around me while I scowled playfully. He was as flexible and graceful as any other fish in his domain. Show-off. He must’ve sensed that I was having fun swimming on my own and remained content to stay at least an arm-length away. His mane seemed to reach for me if he got any closer.

I remembered days spent in Osme Fen’s lake. This was a similar experience, though I knew the body of water I swam in was magnitudes larger than that relatively safe lake. I used to pretend I was one with the water until the sun started setting and my dad called out my name. We’d eat dinner by the water on those nights, listening to the insects sing and…

And the air smelled of my favorite things while I rested, content after a day spent in the water. Sun-drenched grass, mint, and waterlily. Roasted mallows, smoke, and starshine. Everything I loved of my males echoed the ending to those perfect childhood days. It only made sense that my scent matches would forever remind me of my carefree life.

Marius had disappeared for a minute, sweeping away to the surface. When he returned, he swept around me where I’d stopped to tread water, slowing until we were nearly face-to-face. He tilted his equine head in a clear question. My heart pounded in my chest as I nodded at him. I was ready to take the next step to complete our bond.

He dove further into the sea, just to execute a turn and rise under me. My legs bumped his torso. I had a moment to get comfortable before his mane gripped my right arm and several tendrils wrapped around my hips to hold me to his back. Without the strong grip of all that hair, I probably would’ve been swept away the moment he tried to swim away with me.

I held his mane just as hard as it had me for balance. Marius tilted so we were heading further out to sea, kicking up bubbles with a silent snort. His tail undulated slowly at first, and he accelerated as I moved with him, leaning over his neck to help us cut through the water. We descended until the sunlight was halved, and my ears popped from the pressure around us.

Our bond strengthened slowly. At first, it was a tickle of static in the back of my mind. It was the same sensation I’d gotten when he’d first accepted my claim, but it became more intense as he carried me along until it felt like the back of my head had gone numb.

The magic at work didn’t feel like essence, but something more unknowable. Ancient forces had woven the first fae into existence from starlight, or so it was said. We mimicked those forces with our magic to this day, spinning essence like it was made of strands and weaving them into intricate spell works.

A tiny piece of ancient magic must’ve remained in the sea, ready to bind kelpies and their mates together. That was my only explanation for the connection that opened up between Marius and me, mind-to-mind. He anchored the thread of it on one side, his mind already holding it while mine grasped for the other end. Once we finished this process with him knot-deep in me— joined with me—maybe that thread would become a loop between us, creating our unbreakable bond.

But maybe that was a fanciful explanation. All I really understood was that the numbness faded from my head, and in its place was a magic-formed connection. My essence perceived it as a single, thick strand with my kelpie at the other end. His fierce joy filled my chest, and my excitement echoed it.

Then everything else he felt and thought tumbled into my head, mixing up with what was already there. It was overwhelming, and I sank into who he was, leaving myself behind until I figured out what we were experiencing.

I sensed the tug of the tide and currents streaming around us. A thread of blood in the water. Whatever it was from had died and dropped to the seafloor as a feast for the critters that skittered amongst the silt. I couldn’t see them, but I could smell them and other signs of life. There were sea creatures all around us, but they swam a hasty retreat from the apex predator in their midst.

Even now, Marius worried, and those thoughts intruded on the peaceful nature of our underwater adventure. I had the scope of what he was anxious about this time and had to sigh to myself. He thought I would peek into his mind and find that he was not nearly as complex as I kept thinking he was. There were few things he liked more than an entertaining book, a bloody feast, a challenging fight, and, as of recently, a couple uninterrupted hours in bed with me. He was a male of few words because he often couldn’t think of what to say. “Will she find me dull-witted?”

Or perhaps our bond wouldn’t form right.

Or maybe I’d back out of the bonding process at the last minute and leave him bereft.

He corrected his own thought. “Nay. The p’nixie wouldn’t do that. She loves me.” Not that he’d done enough to earn it, he added to himself.

I wanted to respond and reassure him. This triggered something else, tangling our headspaces together to the point that Marius groaned, “Oh no, what’s this?” We glided through the water on a current as he bowed his head, throwing off bubbles from his muzzle.

He’d experienced something this before, after accepting my claim, but thought it was much more overwhelming the second time around. I happened to agree, feeling ill as my thoughts mixed with his and we traded emotions in a whirl where nothing quite made sense. Then our headspaces socketed together like puzzle pieces.

We were stripped bare to our truths. He knew I saw him as an immovable wall of muscle and feral instincts. A straightforward, honest provider of a male. And he saw me as prey, just as he’d once said, small and fragile, but so resilient it humbled him. I was his p’nixie to cherish and protect, and he would not fail me again.

Worries met answers next. I had my chance to tell him, “Dull-witted? Please. Your wit is faster than mine unless you’re doing the feral stare.”

What was going on in his head during his prolonged staring sessions anyway? “Thinking, mostly. Just drifting off,” he answered. “Also, I love you more than my next breath. Just because I haven’t said it doesn’t mean I don’t forget to take that breath every time you look at me.”

My usual wing flap of happiness ended up steering us a little adrift. Right. They were fins underwater. I still wasn’t used to that. “Stars, Marius, that was romantic. I love you too.” He’d just sensed why I was observing him so closely for signs of how he felt. “I’m not going to leave you bereft. How much you overanalyze things and pick out the worst-case scenarios to dwell on does concern me, though.”

“It’s a bad habit. I think our bond will help me stop.”

We continued on like this. Nothing was a secret, and that should’ve made me feel vulnerable, but his deepest concerns were also exposed. There was only one he posed that I couldn’t answer: what if he wasn’t enough to protect me? What if I died prematurely?

“I can only promise to be careful. I still need to carry our colt someday.” When we were ready as a pack, we could welcome kids and continue the Serian royal line. This led into one of my own deep concerns, if I would birth Seelie children and what that’d mean for them.

“Seelie or not, they will be ours. Anyone who questions their legitimacy will know my fists and fangs,” he growled.

There was a surge of feral excitement at the mention of kids. Niall wanted to say something, but Marius held it back. Our mind spaces were so tightly intertwined at this point that it gave me a headache for him to even try. “It’s okay. I know it’s your instincts,” I assured him.

He pictured me round around the middle, only it was a comically large pregnancy compared to my size. I flushed all over when I realized this was a rare omega’s litter, not just a single baby. “I could breed you just right to make this happen. Feral alphas have a higher chance of making litters with their mates,” he said in his smoky voice.

In this fantasy, he was imagining all those babies were his, when usually an omega’s litter was one baby from each of her mates. Niall was sure he could sire all of them even with competition.

Oh, okay. I immediately saw why he was going to hold this back. “Um. Very generous. You know, in the future?”

“I know. It would be ridiculous,” he agreed without his feral side’s influence. “Just don’t mind if I picture it on occasion. Niall’s been obsessed with breeding you since you perfumed for me. No wonder I’m going into rut.”

“As long as it’s hypothetical.” I wasn’t as uneasy about the topic as I probably should’ve been. My core felt quite hot and empty, and when he felt how I ached, he did too. My heat and his rut seemed impossibly entwined. When one came to full fruition, so would the other.

His response was balanced between both him and Niall. “If I promise it’s hypothetical, will you indulge some breeding talk occasionally?”

While he didn’t want babies much more than I did—kids were loud, after all, and he spent most of his days trying to find peace and quiet while being pack bonded to two outgoing males—he knew what Niall really wanted. An omega was at her most vulnerable while pregnant and then nursing newborns. He’d have the fun of making them but the ongoing pride of defending me and these theoretical babies.

“That is such a male ego thing.” It was a candid thought that I would’ve never said out loud.

But he just laughed and agreed. “That’s not a no, p’nixie.”

“It’s not. I don’t mind it. You can picture me heavy with four of your colts if you want.”

Marius shook his equine head. We were coming out of the paralyzing daze of being bound so tightly together, though our mind spaces remained open and connected. “It would be four daughters,” he corrected. He didn’t really want a son, especially if he turned out like himself. That, we would need to address someday. “If we’re fantasizing, you’re carrying more p’nixies just like you.”

“Sure. Four little p’nixies as blue as their father.”

He purred in agreement, even in kelpie form. We drifted for a while as he meandered in his own thoughts before he realized we’d gone off course. He flicked his tail to correct it, working up to a speed that had something cool and translucent passing over my eyes. I could suddenly see our surroundings so much better despite the gloom of the deep sea below.

“Ah, seems we have a theme for the day: nothing to worry about. You do have nictitating membranes like any other water fae. You’re perfect,” he said affectionately.