Page 100 of Hell Fae Warden

Is it a trick? Some sort of lie? A new game?

Do I want to mate him?

I couldn’t answer that. I could barely even think.

His knuckles continued a path down my neck, more of his warmth bleeding into my skin. That decadent scent of his followed, wrapping me up in a sensual blanket that left me shivering beneath his touch.

I kept repeating his words over and over in my head, trying to decipher the hidden meaning. He never spoke the truth to me. Not directly, anyway.

Except, recently, he actually had.

On the tour, he’d been forthcoming when telling me about Lucifer and his history. He’d also helped me understand my lost time by deciphering what the book had done to me.

And now he’s claiming that his intentions are to mate me.

“Why?” I blurted out. “Because I can read the book?”

“Ironically what I wanted to discuss,” he murmured. “But what do you mean?”

“Why do you want to mate me?” I reiterated.

He smiled. “Because you’re special, little angel. Why else?”

I gaped at him. “But we hardly know each other. And Lucifer…”Is your mate? Already might want to kill me, and this will make him want to kill me more?I wasn’t sure which of those continuations was best.

But Melek had another in mind as he said, “Lucifer will take some time to appreciate this development, yes. Which is good because that means we have time to learn more about each other, too.” He pulled his hand away and sat on the bed. “Now, about Vita, why are you neglecting him?”

“Him?” I repeated, surprised by his choice of pronoun and still stunned by everything else he’d said.

He lifted a shoulder. “It, if you prefer. Why are you avoiding Vita’s information?”

“Uh, well, because Vita keeps getting me into trouble,” I offered as one very good reason to avoid the magic book. “It took me to the source, and Lucifer made it very clear that if it happens again, he’ll kill me. And just the other day, it had me make a—”

“Ty said what?” Melek interjected.

“He said if I went near his source again, he’d kill me,” I repeated.

Melek’s hair fluttered around him on an invisible wind as golden glitter shimmered just above his skin. “I see.” His tone deepened with those two words, the sound oddly menacing. Or perhaps it was his glittering eyes that gave me that impression.

Is he… angry?I wondered.

“I’ll talk to Ty.” That sounded more like a threat than a promise. “But have you considered that it wasn’t Vita that took you to Lucifer’s source?”

I blinked at him. “Well, I definitely didn’t do it.”How would I even know how to?

Melek didn’t seem convinced. “Are you certain?” he pressed. “Perhaps the book was simply trying to prepare you for your destiny by showing you the past. And maybe you took yourself to the source to see the present.”

“I wouldn’t even begin to know how to do that,” I promised him. “It had to be the book.”

“Hmm, but you’re in the Hell Fae Realm now, little angel. Anything is possible here. And there’s something very unique about you. I mean, why else could you read Ty’s book? How else did you touch the source and survive?”

He canted his head, causing a strand of his blondish-brown hair to roll across his forehead and into his eyes.

“No, little angel. I don’t think it was the book at all,” he went on. “You’re something very powerful. A mystery for us to solve. But not today.”

Something powerful,I repeated to myself, those words reminding of the ones Zakkai, the Midnight Fae Source Architect, had said the other day.

I’m just a Halfling Hell Fae,I wanted to argue.