Page 1 of Rejected By the Shifter King

Rejected by the Shifter King

by Marian Tee

The Prince

THE WOODS THAT BORDEREDthe lands of the Panthera were akin to a dark and dense maze of colossal proportions. But instead of serpentine paths and hedges to befuddle one's senses, there was just the absence of light. Trees towered all around, with crooked, claw-like branches curved towards each other as if to shun the sun and drown the world underneath in a sea of blackness.

The way Misty spoke of the place, she had made it seem that finding the jinn would be a walk in the park. And maybe it had been, for someone like her who was favored by Lady Luck.

But for the Fae prince, it was disastrously turning out to be the opposite.

In his quest to find the one creature that could be the last true hope of his race, Lysander had found himself battling against Nature herself. Thunder and lightning came after him like ravenous hounds unleashed by an unseen deity. Quicksands and sinkholes appeared out of nowhere in a devious attempt to hold him captive, and as if those Herculean challenges were not enough, landslides and earthquakes constantly reshaped the ground he trekked, and with such treacherous silence it was as if they had been specifically devised to trap him.

By the time Lysander made it to the jinn's dwelling space -just a cave, but at the same time something else, like crawling into the center of a dreamcatcher,Misty had said - the prince was bruised and wounded all over, his strength down to its last, dying embers. It was all he could do to just catch his fucking breath, and when he finally sawher,running towards him on all fours with such speed that she was nothing but a metallic blur—-

I'm fucked.

But still his hand had gone to grip the handle of his sword.

If this is how my last fight would go, then so fucking be it.

A wild-looking creature leapt into the air, and those five seconds in which their gazes locked, it was as if he was staring at something not of this world entirely.

Five...

The was bronze all over - her hair, her skin, even hernails.

Four...

It made her seem hard and fluid all at once.

Three...

Naked but not naked.

Two...

Human but not quite.

One...

The jinn landed nimbly on her feet, close enough for the bronze strands of her hair to graze his cheek...and draw blood.

Fuck.

She leaned back and straightened, and Lysander instinctively tightened his grip on his sword even as he forced himself to stay still as her calculating gaze swept over him from head to toe.

Moments passed, each one spanning an eternity.

And then her lips started to crack, into the eeriest version of a smile.

"Son of the Faes..." The jinn's voice was rusty, her accent unmistakable but indeterminable, like something older than time itself."Well...done."

It took a moment for him to understand what those words meant.All of it had been a test, he realized. All those instances back in the forest when it seemed Nature was out to kill him...it had just been the jinn—-

"Wish."

His gaze snapped back to hers at the word. That was the cue, Misty had told him.