Page 55 of Fated or Knot (UnseelieVerse: The Omega Masquerade #1)

55

LARK

M y nest was clean and nearly scentless, with stacks of neatly folded bedding and pillows waiting for my attention. I’d whistled unhappily at the sight, and Marius had delved into the piles to find my favorite blanket and pillow for me. “We’ll re-do the nest later,” he suggested.

I’d agreed, and giggled when he bundled me up in the blanket fully clothed. He only paused to take my shoes off and tuck my feet in the wrap of fleece. He untied his boots and left his clothes on too as he climbed onto the divan to cuddle me as the big spoon. I had the feeling the only thing holding him back from re-unleashing his rut on me was the bulky barrier of fabric and his considerable discipline as protector heir.

With his purring bulk angled over my back, and his hand resting over my belly despite all the layers, the pre-heat pain faded enough that I dropped straight to sleep. It was blissful, but it was over in what felt like a blink of an eye. I stirred with the vibrations of Marius’s deep voice whispering, “If you open that big mouth and wake her, you and I are going to have a problem.”

He sounded like my usual grumpy kelpie, no hint of a feral rasp. I cracked my eyes open, blinking away the fog that’d filmed over my sight.

“It’s almost dinnertime. The li’l bird needs to get ready for her next date.” That was Tormund’s loud whisper.

Yawning, I stretched as much as I could in my tight blanket wrap. “Now you’ve done it,” Marius snarled.

“He didn’t wake me,” I said groggily. I shifted around to get my bearings better. Marius was still behind me. Tormund stood just past the privacy screen into the nest. The woodsy note in his rut-enhanced scent twined perfectly with the green fertility of the kelpie’s, threatening to send me into heat right then and there.

Stars help me.

I caught Marius’s gaze. In the nest’s low lighting, the rut glow was subtle, but he put off sparks of yellow and gold from the reflection of the faelights circling overhead. I lost track of my thoughts for a moment, dazzled.

Oh, right. “Where’d Niall go?”

“You need me able to talk for the event tonight. I will speak to others that aren’t you. Grudgingly.”

“What event?” I asked.

He lifted me, blanket and all, and offered me over to Tormund, who swept me up. “I’ll tell you if Fal doesn’t,” he grumbled.

“Did you have a nice nap, li’l bird?” my gentle giant asked. He carried me into the bedroom attached to the nest and helped me out of the blanket wrap. When he saw that I was still in my wrinkled traveling clothes, he tilted his head with a line forming between his brows.

“It was really good. Um, I need a shower first. And what kind of date am I preparing for here?”

He smiled, though for once, it was a forced expression on him. “Just dinner for now. By that, I mean, Fal wants you to wear something comfortable to eat with him in his rooms.”

I hadn’t missed the for now , but I gave my head a shake and put on a bit of a forced smile too. This was supposed to be fun. It was a date, after all! I just wished my mates would stop acting oddly and tell me what was wrong.

“Okay, I can take it from here,” I said.

He stepped aside and I made my way to the rain room, finding my robe on a hook by the door and a new bar of lightly scented soap waiting to be used. The suite was quiet of house moth squeaking. I wondered if Tormund dismissed them as I showered off the trail and all the lingering slick between my legs.

I scrubbed myself thoroughly to obscure the extra-sweet note of my pre-heat. It was probably futile. My folds were tender to the touch, and the pain in my belly had transformed after a couple hours of Marius’s presence into an ache deep in my core.

“Mate,” the male in question said over our bond, while I was inspecting my sex with gentle fingertips. Ah, stars, did he feel that or something?

“Do you remember taking a crystal from Telimarr?” he asked.

“Yeah, for Fal. Do you have it?” I’d definitely lost track of it.

“Aye, p’nixie. I’ve been hiding it for you.”

He and I talked about smuggling it into the room with me during my dinner, but not why, just that I should keep it a secret and under an illusion. I would know when to pull it out, and what to do and say when I did. When I emerged from my closet, dried off and dressed, Marius was waiting for me by a decorative box resting on the pack bed outside my nest. I took a peek inside and there it was, a prism-shaped crystal that was cloudy white with generous veins of silver, nestled in a bed of velvet.

“You’re going out of your way for this,” I mused aloud.

He shrugged. “Most omegas unlucky enough to mate with a dark elf know this tradition. It’ll mean a lot to Fal.”

Unlucky , I repeated to myself, my lips twitching in amusement. “It’s sweet you’re doing this for him.”

His ear flicked a couple times. “Don’t mention me at all,” he grumbled.

I bit my lip on saying that Fal would figure it out. “Okay. Lean down so I can kiss you goodbye?” I was going a little crazy without kisses from my alpha mates. And all three of them were a good head taller than me. More, in Tormund’s case. We’d had an unspoken agreement that kisses, and the blast of pheromones that came with them, would help no one’s self-control. But I wanted them anyway.

“That is a terrible idea, p’nixie.”

“On the cheek .”

He gave me a knowing look, but still bent his knees and tilted his unscarred cheek in my direction. I gave him a kiss there and he nuzzled my neck in return. “You should go, sweet prey. You smell too tempting.”

I thought this meant goodbye, but after I gathered up the crystal in its box and placed an illusion over it—shockingly easy to weave, compared to the amount of effort I used to have to put into such basic magic—Marius trailed at the end of my shadow. I acquired Tormund, waiting in an armchair in my study, who followed behind me as well.

As I crossed the hall toward Fal’s suite of rooms, I thought of Tanith and her snark right before nixie night. “Did it really require two of you to escort her over here?”

Kauz was out in the hall too, standing sentinel with a pair of guards in the entrance to the royal wing. He didn’t turn around to acknowledge us.

I knocked on Fal’s door and a house moth answered. “Princess!” he exclaimed. “Come in.”

The small eclipse of house moths had apparently moved here, as there were several of the fuzzy betas cleaning the receiving room as I stepped inside. I’d been in Fal’s rooms before, but I’d been rather drunk on fae fruit wine, so I took in the area with new eyes. The front was very… princely , I supposed, all dark colors and orderly lines. A gigantic painting of some kind of outdoor scene, with a handful of unknown fae posing on it, hung within line of sight of the door.

“I’ll tell the prince you’ve arrived,” the house moth squeaked.

I nodded and tiptoed toward a nicely carved coffee table, situated between several comfortable-looking seats for guests. I slid the box with its crystal underneath it, changing the illusion on it so it better resembled part of the furniture.

After I straightened, Fal emerged from the next room over. He wasn’t dressed up for a formal date either, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and pants tight enough to frame the graceful lines of his legs. Shadows lined the hollows under his eyes, like he hadn’t been sleeping well. His nostrils flared and he gave me a smile full of Unseelie mischief. “ Mo stór , you’re here. And early. Eager to see me, hmm?”

“Always.” The answer tumbled from me before I’d given it a second’s worth of thought. The full truth. He could tease me if he wanted, but I was always at least a little giddy to see him. My inner omega would giggle and kick her feet, saying, “That’s my mate!”

And his scent…oh, stars. I was in trouble. His scent was strong with sunlight, male musk, and something more, something compelling . I went weak at the knees from the moment it threaded through my nostrils and took me to another place entirely. Breathing in deep as I crossed the room toward him, I felt like I was skipping through a field of wildflowers.

I was a kid again, laughing, carefree, rolling through the greenery until I had smears of pollen and crushed grass on my dress. My father would put me in white to see how many colors my clothes would be once I was done playing. Those were the best days of spring, by far.

Strong hands framed my hips, and in a blink my memory was gone, replaced by Fal’s curious face. “Where’d you go?” he asked.

I gazed up at him, mute. His feline gaze sparkled like sapphires in this well-lit room. I stood entranced by the flashes of blue light that danced with every movement of his eyes. After each blink, they’d reform to dazzle me again.

He covered his eyes with one hand and I startled. “Sorry,” he and I said at the same time.

Good going, Lark.

“A great start, I know. I’ll blindfold myself.” He sounded like he wasn’t joking.

“I’ll just look somewhere else. Like, um, this big painting you have.”

He uncovered his face and rolled his eyes as he glanced at it. “Ah, aye, The Knighting of Sir Rennick of Daraleth . A classic. You can just smell the history.”

All I could scent right now was Fal. If he didn’t have a hold on my waist, I’d probably be pressed all the way against him for more, too.

“I don’t prefer this room,” he added. “Come on, it’s more comfortable in here. Maybe a bit sparser than it used to be. My mothkin have already moved a lot of things into your rooms.”

He took me back the way he’d come, into a room with multiple, varied seats around the perimeter and a few cabinets nestled in the corners. The walls were full, mostly of drawn posters advertising various plays, and the center was empty except for the rug underfoot. “A bit sparser,” I echoed. While he could easily have a dozen fae in here, seated, it did seem rather empty.

“Aye, the middle is by design. Get a bunch of performers together and drunk, and this becomes a stage.” He pointed at the rug and nudged me playfully. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Something without fae fruit, please.”

He went rummaging through one of the cabinets, clinking bottles as he went. “Siora ruined fae fruit wine for you, huh.”

“I just don’t want to hallucinate again.”

“Okay, so she did. I understand,” he chuckled.

I opened my mouth, then closed it again with a shake of my head. I wandered the room looking at his posters instead. When I found the most recent one, I gasped. There Fal was in glossy color as the Prince of Winter, just his head, shoulders, and a gloved hand holding a rose made of ice. His slitted eyes and sideways smirk gave him the sinister edge the character was usually depicted with. Of course, he was the villain in this play, while the child and a few other fae posed on the other side of the poster.

I wished I could’ve seen it. Maybe from someone else’s memories.

“How’d you hold that rose without it melting?” I asked over my shoulder.

He chuckled. “Let me go get it and show you.” He went into his bedroom for a minute, and emerged with the ice rose in his mouth. Its fan of petals and leaves were icy blue and glinted when the light hit them. Crystals, then.

Fal lifted his brows at me suggestively and purred with a muffled roll of his tongue. A blush warmed my face. Taking it out of the clamp of his teeth, he leaned down until the crystal bloom was the only thing between our mouths. “My director let me keep it because I put too many teeth marks on it between takes.”

I took it to admire with a laugh. He would do that on purpose.

His expression softened as I tilted the rose and took in the sparkles it put off. I noticed him a moment too late and held my breath in anticipation of a kiss, before he thought better of it. He straightened and brushed a few locks of hair behind my ear. “I’ll send a mothkin off to retrieve dinner. In the meantime, I have a wine I think you’ll like, if you want to get comfortable.”

“Okay.” I smiled and picked a seat on one side of a comfortable-looking loveseat. It was squashed just right to suggest that it’s received a lot of use. Fal returned with a bottle and two wineglasses, serving us both a measure of the blush-colored liquid.

We clinked glasses and drank. It was sweeter than I expected and I took another sip immediately. He settled next to me, arm around my shoulders. We pressed together like magnets and I took in his scent again with a wistful sigh. If things were different, I’d crawl in his lap and bury my face in the curve of his neck for a concentrated taste of his pheromones.

“Well, tell me about your dates,” he invited.

I perked up and started from the beginning, which was the train ride to Laculi Point with Marius. I talked about the landmarks on the trip to Telimarr, and some of the cool things that were preserved in the old city after the flooding. Eventually he went, “Hm.” It was a loving little sound and I glanced up to see him watching me intently.

I doubted he was listening to a word I said, just soaking in the sound of my voice.

“Then you two fucked underwater like a pair of passionate wild animals?” he asked after a moment.

I nearly choked on a mouthful of wine. After I was done with my coughing fit, I croaked out, “Phrasing, Fal.”

His mischievous grin only grew. “Is that a yes, then?”

Heat suffused me. “Yes. Well, not quite. We weren’t sure it would work underwater.”

He started to chuckle. “Not sure of what not working underwater?”

“Like, sex. You can’t really thrust…the water prevents fast movements…” I let the thought fade as Fal wheezed, tears beading at the corners of his eyes.

He put down his wine before he spilt it and held his side as he continued to laugh. “No, please, go on. Tell me why you and my water fae brother didn’t have sex in his element.”

“Fal,” I groaned.

“Are you going to say you two didn’t even try it?”

“We didn’t.”

“Stars. It’s called friction, mo stór .”

“You’ve done it?” I asked in surprise.

He shot me a sideways look that clearly said, of course I have . “Sounds like we are taking a trip to the sea to rectify this gap in your experiences,” he said playfully.

I was glad I was wearing a heat pad, as I got rather slick imagining entwining with him in the shallows. “Looking forward to it.”

“Anyway,” he prompted.

A little spurred on by his reaction to the underwater bit, and the touch of buzz warming my blood, I said, “We went to a cute inn by the sea and fucked like animals in a bed .”

Fal retrieved his wineglass and sipped, nodding with an air of what seemed like approval. “At least someone’s been having sex.”

“Sorry,” I murmured.

He waved me off. “Anticipation will make my moment with you sweeter.” The heat in his glowing gaze was full of promise. “Soon, love. Tell me the rest first.”

I nodded and told him about my midair dance with Kauz and our more introspective journey through Once Else. I’d learned about my birth mother’s past and finally seen my first metalarks in person. “Kauz painted my wings. The outside edges represent him, with the stars and mist. But the inside pattern is for me.”

“They’re gorgeous.” He traced one of the curling streaks of silver.

“He wants me to paint the rest of his wings once I feel confident enough in my hands,” I added with some nerves.

“Dreamlanders do tend to view their wings as a canvas to be filled. That’s an honor.” He topped up our glasses with more wine and toasted, “To be a swirl of ink on your skin.”

I drank to that with a giggle. He did the same, then hummed. “Though I would pick a more intimate location,” he added.

“You would,” I agreed. “Anyway, then Tormund arrived and stayed for the rest of our time in Once Else. I, uh, fixed his condition with his rage.”

“Don’t get shy on me now, mo stór .”

I flushed a bit more. “I took his huge knot and the fieriness of his full rage form without getting hurt. He’s stopped losing control after that.”

“Oh, good. I did feel guilty about that.”

“Why?”

He sighed, swirling his wine idly. “As a pack lead, I’ve learned that acting selfishly in pack matters sows strife. I wanted two things when we shared you: to knot you first, and to take my date with you last. But because I knotted you and Tormund didn’t, his rage started acting up and he didn’t consider trying it before you left for your date with Marius.”

I whined softly. “That’s not your fault.”

“Fault or not, he could have knotted you first. But what’s done, is done.” He shrugged. “Then you returned home just long enough for my father to scare you off again, and went on a date with Tormund.”

I nodded and told him about it too. “Food, poetry, and the great outdoors. That’s my li’l brother,” he said, shaking his head.

“Yeah,” I said with a fond sigh. “But now I’m with you. And I think maybe your house moth got lost?” Dinner probably should’ve arrived by now.

“Oh, he’s just doing what I asked him to. Let’s talk about our date, actually. I thought I would have five days with you, but circumstances have narrowed that time down to a few hours. Your heat is imminent, and our pack is in rut in preparation of your needs.” He tilted his head back and forth, rattling his earrings. “However, I put my brothers before me for a reason.”

His tone had taken a serious turn. As I’d learned, when he stopped teasing and prodding, it was time to listen closely. “Marius needed you most. It was agonizing to watch him slowly forget who he used to be in favor of the angry, pessimistic, feral male you had the misfortune of meeting first. Now that he’s finally acknowledged you’re his fated mate, he’s found a reason to change and a new purpose to serve. You.” He gave my shoulders a squeeze. “Thank you. I used to fear I’d see his body return to the stars before he ever saw his thirtieth year.”

“It was my pleasure,” I murmured. I hoped we saw many years past his thirtieth, maybe even grow wrinkled and deaf together like the honored elders who ran the seaside inn.

He made a vague wave with his wineglass. “Anyway, you’re bonded to him forever, so you probably know all this already. Let’s talk about Kauz, who needed you nearly as much.” When I blinked in surprise, he winked. “It’s true. Don’t let his quiet and nerdly ways fool you. That’s a male who needed an Always and I doubt he even knows everything you’ve done for him.

“When all his various magical powers came to full strength, he went through the same training process all of the queen’s magicians go through. They walk the dreams and memories of the worst of society to see how their minds work. Kauz emerged from all that…different.” He sipped his wine with a hint of a troubled frown. “Eerily calm and composed. He was praised for it, but for a time as a teenaged lad, he didn’t seem to feel anything. He retreated from others and was awkward, like he couldn’t relate to anyone anymore. I was worried that Thalas had broken him.”

“Really?” I tried to compare that to the Kauz I knew. Calm, sure. But so incredibly perceptive and empathetic too.

“Really. After he joined the pack bond, I realized he felt too much from everyone around him. It was overwhelming, and he ended up suppressing himself to cope. He was trained to see intentions, and all he realized from it at first was that we all bear a burden of pain, worry, and loss. So, he started helping anywhere he could. He made Marius read books with happy endings. He taught me it was all right to be alone sometimes, and that silence is the space between bigger moments. And there are others, so many others, who have gotten a random act of Kauz help or wisdom out of the blue and gone ‘what the fuck?’ When it’s exactly what they need. Most would think, oh, he’s fine, then.”

He shook his head and met my anxious gaze. “But I hadn’t seen him express his own emotions in years, until we met you. More specifically, he went to bed with your mask in hand the night of the masquerade, walked in your dream, and raised his voice at me the next day. He demanded that we help you, else he was going to escort you to the sanctuary city you were dreaming of by himself. It was like he’d finally woken up from his ordeal as a kid. He’s been your champion from that moment on, arranging things for you when you couldn’t, and being your voice when you were forced to forget things.”

I thought back to what I’d seen of Kauz’s emotions when we’d first met. He’d gotten quite angry at Marius over the doormat comment. And, I think, he was happy to make me feel better about myself and give me the comfort I’d never had in Osme Fen. My heart grew lighter with relief. If he’d really been so flat before, I really had helped him, because I’d seen him feel every day since without losing his incredible empathy for others. “He’s the one who found and removed the silencing band. And he figured out what Cymora was doing to me.”

Fal rolled his eyes. “Okay, to be fair, we all noticed the ‘yes, Stepmother’ thing. Kauz was just the first one to mention it while you were in the room. He also spent an extra few days in a recovery sleep after helping with your memories. He’s never gone that far for another. So, what I’m saying is, you’re bringing out the best in him. Thank you for giving his smile back.”

I had a tingle in my fingertips, as I had a feeling I knew where he was going with this conversation. “Also my pleasure,” I said with a zing of excitement in my belly.

“Which brings us to Tormund,” he said nearly playfully. “You have eyes, you’ve seen his struggle. Take the sweetest soul and shove it into a body built for war and you get Tormund, the least likely redcap you’ll meet. He’s terrified of being labeled as weak by his clan but…you know they know who he is, and have embraced it by now. Unlike the rest of us, he just needed a tweak. He’s still young, you know? Not enough time to figure himself out yet, but now he has the control he’s been looking for over his rage form. He’s going to be all right. I’m sure he’s already smothered you with appreciation, but thank you anyway. Now I’m never going to see him, because he’s going to be off gallivanting in the woods carefree.”

“Of course. And you could go gallivanting with him, you know.”

He smacked his lips. “Me? Gallivant?” he asked with a toss of his glossy hair.

I leaned in closer, putting on my best puppydog look. “Wait, you would go gallivanting with me, right?”

Fal’s expression shifted to Unseelie mischief. “I would most certainly go gallivanting with you, mo stór .” After waiting a moment, he added, “To the nearest bed.”

I bit my lip on a moan. That sounded really tempting right about now. By the way he was eyeing me like the first course to a feast, I imagined he was thinking something similar.

He shook his head sharply. “Forget I said anything. Put your wine aside for a second, okay?” While I placed my wineglass and his crystal rose on the seat next to me, he did the same thing, easing his arm out from around me.

He caught my hands in his instead. Because I didn’t want to get mesmerized in his glowing eyes, I focused on his lips and the flash of his extra sharp fangs as he spoke. He’d talked about his brothers first because he was working up to this moment. I didn’t want to miss anything he had to say.

“As well as I can read others, I profess that I am not the best with introspection. Some might be uncharitable and call it a willful blindness. But I know I’m not without fault. None of us truly are.”

I nodded in agreement. I definitely had a stack of flaws to contend with too.

“I’ve been insulted in many ways for being the male that I am. One very simple word has stuck with me the longest. Don’t laugh, okay?” He squeezed my hands and I promised not to. “A female once likened me to a tomcat. She said I must have grimalkin blood, to never be satisfied with one female for longer than a few days. Of all the things, a jilted lover’s accusation was what I dwelled on. Tomcat , ugh.”

That actually wasn’t all that funny. An irrational fear rose in me that he was about to say that I hadn’t satisfied him either, despite how the rest of our conversation had gone. I held in my reaction, though, letting him talk.

“I feared she was right. At that point, I’d never invested myself long term in any female. My duty in finding the next Queen of Serian was too heavy a burden. I’ve always known, from the moment I was old enough to understand my place as crown prince, that my mate had to be a very special female indeed. Not a casual fling. So, I’d become a”—he shuddered dramatically—“tomcat in the meantime. No attachments, no long-term consequences, and no omegas. You really are the first and only omega I will sleep with.”

I nodded. He’d said it more than once, in clear enough language that I knew he wasn’t trying to hide any extra details around the fae compulsion to tell the truth.

“Until we met, I was afraid I wouldn’t know what to do when I actually did have my mate in front of me. What would it even be like to be drawn irrevocably to one female for the rest of my life? And her, to me?” He blew out a heavy breath. “And the rest of my pack, to her too? There has never been a female that’s captured all four of our attentions at once. Yet, you did that. Effortlessly . You had me the moment you stole my mask. Tormund the second you smiled at him. Kauz within the span of one dream. And Marius before you even knew you’d met him. It’s the hand of fate just…” Moving our hands, he cupped them together. My fingers were trembling.

“As for what it feels like to be drawn to one female…” He drew my quivering hand to his mouth to kiss the back of it. “I have not been so much as tempted by another since we met. I helped release you, a shy, sweet songbird from her cage, hoping you would let me catch and keep you anyway. I wanted you to see my home as your home, my bed as yours to share, and my pack as your refuge.”

He cupped my cheek, and on reflex I met his gaze and the tenderness that reflected in those sapphire pools. “And finally, my heart as yours to keep,” he murmured. “With my pack in consensus about who we want for our mate, I can finally say it: I love you. I want you by my side now, tomorrow, and every tomorrow afterward until my star and yours sparkle next to one another in the sky. My brothers love you too. We want you to be ours forever. Join your soul to Pack Sorles and be our pack princess, Lark.”

I felt like my chest was too small to contain my reaction. It would just burst out of me and I would crow to the whole palace, Fal loves me! I wasn’t blind to the fact that he’d held himself a little distant and watched his brothers with me, but I hadn’t realized how much weight he was placing on a consensus.

“I love you too,” I said, covering my mouth as a joyful sound between a laugh and a huff of disbelief escaped. Even though I’d known Fal and his brothers for months now, this still felt surreal. It was really happening, and I was truly about to be a princess. “And I would be honored to join Pack Sorles as your pack princess.”

He stroked my cheek, his smile warm and genuine, without his usual hint of being up to no good. “And I would be glad of one more thing. Can I tell you a dark elf fact?”

I perked up, but probably not for the reason he expected. Maybe I would be finding out what was going on with the crystal from Telimarr after all. “Of course!”

“We have a tradition dating back to our time deep underground. A male would go deeper into the tunnels and search for a specific kind of mineral—it gleams in a certain way to dark elf eyes. He’d present it to his intended female to ask for a mating bond. If she accepted, she turned it into jewelry unique to them. In modern day, it’s called a stone match and it’s practiced to show permanence in a relationship,” he explained.

I licked my lips, and his gleaming feline gaze followed the swipe of my tongue. It was happening, and I was prepared. “Do you want to have a stone match with me?” I asked in a hush.

“I’m supposed to ask you that,” he teased. He stood and reached under a different couch, pulling out a box that looked remarkably like the one where I was storing the crystal from Telimarr. When he returned to where I was seated, he descended gracefully to his knees. “My lady, I have traveled to a cave and spelunked for an arduous period of time to bring you this.”

He opened the box, taking out a squat and fat prism-shaped crystal. I gasped as he pulled it free and it caught the light. It was a clear blue-purple color throughout, with no hint of imperfections, truly a gorgeous shade that merged our coloring. He assumed a pose of supplication, offering it up to me.

“By that I mean, an incredible lengthy and difficult journey of, um, three hours through a well-lit tunnel. And though the trip was long and the choices sparse, I have returned to the surface with a cool fucking rock. Should you accept it and we make stone match jewelry from it, you will make me a reformed and happily claimed tomcat.” He flashed a grin up at me. “What do you say?”

I repeated the words I’d been silently practicing, lest I mess up this ritual by accident. “I say that no stone match is complete without the efforts of us both.”

Fal’s slitted pupils rounded out as his lips parted in shock. “What?” he asked in a hush.

“Be right back.”

I got up and rushed out to retrieve the box I’d hidden, returning to find the dark elf prince still on his knees and not yet recovered from his surprise. “Um, I don’t know what to do next,” I admitted.

“Lark, you’re killing me. How do you also have a rock for this?” he asked.

“Do you want to see it?”

“Aye!”

“Look at this cool fucking rock,” I said, echoing him. I slid onto my knees beside him and opened the box. “It glows in the dark!”

“Oh, you mean it’s phosphorescent? Or fluorescent?” He took the silver-veined prism from its velvet bed, inspecting it with a giddy air.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted.

“Easy test. We can do it later.” He placed it next to his crystal, beaming. “Look at these rocks! They’ll make beautiful jewelry together. I was thinking of replacing my earrings.” He flicked the largest eight-pointed star hanging off his earlobe. “You would look nice with some guiding stars of your own. Or maybe a ring.”

“Or both?” I suggested.

He nodded. “I could just cover you in stone match jewelry and my brothers could never buy you shiny things. Or we could stick to a ring. Hmm. Are you hungry?”

I nodded too. The wine was nice and all, but I was starting to crave solid food. When he got up to signal to one of his house moths, and the little beta male came in with two berry trifles in decorative jars, I couldn’t help but feel a bit suspicious.

We sat back down on the loveseat together. Of course, I dug in first when neither of them batted a lash about dessert being delivered first. The cake, berries, and custard layers hit my tongue at the same time and my eyes rolled back with pleasure. Stars, yes . This was the best food they served in the palace. No protein could compare.

Fal was halfway through his trifle when I started scraping the sides of my jar to get at the bits I’d missed. I settled against his side, purring with lingering pleasure from my bellyful of sugar. He glanced over at me, and back to his dish, before he offered me a spoonful of it. Once his dish was also empty and cleaned, he sighed and pressed a lingering kiss to my temple.

“I need to tell you something,” he sighed.

Oh, so he was buttering me up for something. My purring faded, replaced with a worried mewl.

He played with my hair, petting it in soothing strokes. “I still believe communication is vital to our mating, so I want to tell you everything and give you an option. Even if it does potentially ruin my father’s plan for tonight. My brothers and I are in a rare consensus about hating his fucking plan. It is risk-reward. The reward is the deaths of Pack Ellisar, and hopefully Cymora too.”

“But the risk?” I murmured.

His expression smoothed to a disapproving mask. “Is potential harm to you. Listen carefully. If you want to do it, we’ll do it. If not, I’ll call to our pack and we’ll push you into heat and claim you right now.”

While I was flush with heat and anticipation just at the thought, I tried to clear my mind enough to listen to the plan. His only omission, that I could tell, was that we were going to a mysterious “event.” But the rest…

I gulped an audible swallow. Rennyn probably didn’t want me to hear all this, but I was glad Fal told me and gave me the choice. There was another reward he didn’t mention. If I agreed, I would also save my stepsister from the fate of an unwilling mating.

It’d push the limits of what I could take, as a violence-averse omega, but it was a sound plan, and the reasons for every move made sense to me. “I’ll do it,” I said, unable to raise my voice above a frightening whisper. “But I want a weapon.”

“You’ll have the best one in my arsenal,” he promised. “Now, let’s go back to your rooms. The mothkin have been preparing another surprise for you. I think you’ll love it, mo stór .”